author and law professor ronnie sat down with us to discuss her body of work and answer your questions. she's a professor at harvard law school former special assistant to the civil rights division of the u.s. department of justice

former assistant counsel to the naacp legal defense and educational fund and the author of six books.how did professor lani guinier come how did he become known? >> guest: how long do you have? .. 1993 and by june of 1993 i was no longer nominated. it's an intense be but short period of time -- intense but short period of time so your question, how long was i being considered, you could say two months, but then before they mom nailed me -- nominated me, there was also some discussion of it, i'm sure. so depends on your math. >> host: who first used that, that term, quota queen?

you for excuse that term? >> guest: i don't know who first used the term. it was first published in the wall street journal but i can't tell you who came up with the term. i think they've adjust have been somebody early on. >> host: was it a fair term? >> guest: no. i wasn't the queen. i guess somebody liked the fact there two qs. i didn't relate to the concept. >> host: where did they give that term? from your lot riding? in leading quota queen? somebody made up the term and passed it on to someone in the

wall street journal. >> host: in your book "lift every voice: turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice" you write about that time period when you were nominated. fuelled by cartoonish characters by right-wing advocates of the media soon defined me. i kept waiting for the white house to put together a strategy. meanwhile the right wing had the field to itself. >> guest: that is true. >> host: you go on to write that quota queen completed three rationalized images, welfare, quote ups and then married, loud demanding black women. it became part of an organized campaign that continues still to convert the 1960s slogan for unqualified and undeserving black people. the right wing story was i

wanted more black, less for whites by any means necessary including the destruction of democracy. quota queen made any further communication superfluid. announced my agenda loud and clear, an imperious black woman who did not know her place. i would do to whites with centuries of whites had done to blacks. it speaks for itself. >> guest: i don't know that i have anything to add. that was written in a way that reflected what happened a year or two we're talking about something that happened 22 years ago. i am not sure what the value is in repeating what they were doing. they speak for themselves in their terminology. precociousness, this assumption that they can attack people

based on nonsense but as long as they keep tracking them somehow the challenge will become like a tsunami and you get caught up in it. you need to know how to swim but you also have to know how to exit. >> host: back to your book "lift every voice: turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice" we considered ourselves, you write, a group of serious longstanding friends, to be the president and first lady's intellectual if not political peers. each of us shared the sense of a rival, we believed in him bill clinton his passion for justice. how did you get to know the president and mrs. clinton? >> guest: i went to yale law school and they were there. they were helpful to me because when i was at the law school i

was competing, you get to do a fake litigation ended? good job you move to the next level. they played a role in who determines to be a participant in the union and although there was another student who was challenging the they were more sympathetic to the arguments i was making and as a result i participated in the finals. later on i graduated from law school. it was a program, an annual program in south carolina right off the coast during the period

between december and january or the first part of january. they both, hillary and bill were at that retreat and my husband his daughter and i also came to the retreat and that is where i got to know the little better because hillary and i were on the same panel. >> host: june 3rd, 1993, wants to show you a little of the president's press conference. >> give us an idea of what part of the riding you have trouble with. >> i will give you an idea. in the michigan law review. lani guinier analyze the weaknesses of the voting remedies in the voting analysis act and i agree with that but seemed to be arguing for

proportional representation and minority retail as general remedies, and anti-democratic, very difficult to defend. >> host: very difficult to defend. where were you when the president had that press conference? >> he had a press conference in the evening and i had an opportunity to speak the following morning when all the media came in to find out who was this evil which and at that time the news became much more fair minded and realistic. i had spent an hour and a half explaining to him what was in the law review articles and at that time he didn't have any

objection to them. there was no argument he made to me personally that explained his subsequent remarks. >> host: the same evening as the press conference when you met the president in the oval office in you drove the department of justice, heard the press conference and heard the word is difficult to defend how did you feel? >> guest: he was under a lot of pressure to retreat. >> and withdrew your motivation. >> the call me up and said i am sorry, i am going to have to withdraw your nomination and i said ok and then there was no further comment so i hung up and he called back and said you just hung up on me? i said i am sorry. i thought you had finished telling me what you had to say and so he continued and the next day he gave a very friendly talk

about how he would give me some money if he could, he was very fond of me but couldn't make this move to consider. some of the arguments i was making which by the way our arguments derived in part from what happens in germany and who made the german system? the united states of america after world war ii so these concepts are not unusual in fact the united states has adopted them for other people. >> host: you write the president, like many others who are unfamiliar with the law review style may have simply skin the text and failed to appreciate that i was describing a particular strategy promoting black faces in high places but not agreeing with many of the basic ideas behind the strategy.

what is the law review style? >> guest: the law review style requires number one that you review a lot of footnotes. it also wants you to articulate all of the other options that could be considered in addition to what it is you are trying to introduce or develop further. and although it is based on example it is often much more theoretical and thus people who are not law professors are often not aware of or able to distinguish the difference between an argument that is falling and implementation of a particular set of functions that haven't really been developed. >> did you ever get a chance to

publicly testify? on your nomination to be assistant attorney general? >> guest: i got that opportunity through the media, not the justice department or the other branches of congress. >> host: would you like to have testified? >> i was looking forward to it. i wasn't as upset about -- let me put it in the affirmative. i was eager to play a role in the clinton administration at the beginning of the administration. i had been at the justice department in the civil rights division in the late 1970s and i knew a lot about the civil rights division because i had been there for four years so i felt very comfortable with that nomination. on the other hand i had a great job at the university of pennsylvania law school. i enjoyed teaching.

i enjoyed riding and exploring the ideas so what offended me was not the fact that the nomination was withdrawn but the way in which was withdrawn. and the absence of any articulation of the substance of my comments. it was just trying to create an image of me that was apparently scary enough that no politician would want to to touch base with me or even touched me. >> host: if you had done in front of the senate judiciary committee and a republican senator looked at you and said do you believe in quote as? what would your answer have been? >> guest: i never articulated. i was called the quota queen but i was not arguing about quotas. the allocation of power in ways

that respected the citizens of the united states. white people of black people or latinos or asian americans but a fairer system of allowing citizens who have a larger voice in the election of and operation of our senators or congressman or women or the people who actually are in the states, the governor, the represented to their but there were other ways of ensuring that the citizens of the united states were playing a significant role in determining what the responsibility was of elected officials and whether

the unelected officials were in touch with the citizens themselves and representing the citizens themselves rather than an ideology or some other identity that the elected officials had almost complete management and power over comment and the citizens themselves in some ways very much ignored except to come to the ballot box and elect a, b, c or d. they were not in a position of making decisions that were being made, we have a system of elections created in the 18th-century. we are now in the 21st century. the idea that we are stuck with people in the eighteenth or nineteenth century were doing is ridiculous as far as i am concerned because they didn't

have computers or cars. there are lots of ways in which citizens have or could have a lot more influence and opportunity in the democratic processes of the united states. >> host: what do you think of majority rule, 51% determine who gets to rule? >> i am sure certain circumstances where 51% versus 49% makes sense. the question, is that the way it should always be? the answer in my view is no. if you go around and look at germany or south africa or australia there are lots of other ways of ensuring citizens are making decisions, not the corporations that i subsidizing the individual who then gets to draw lines to make sure he or she gets reelected and the whole

procedure becomes foreign to most citizens and potential voters. >> host: one of the themes and a lot of your books is the voting rights act, something we are talking about in 2015 as well. what are the strengths and weaknesses of the voting rights act? you can take that wherever you want. >> guest: the voting rights act is without a lot of it strength. it is difficult i just had dinner last night with somebody who was in the voting rights act. was in the voting rights division of the civil rights division of the justice department and she said once they killed section 5 there was carried left for people who had been working hard in the voting rights section to have something

still to do. more power to the states to determine what the election protocol is even with regard to federal elections not just in regard to state elections. >> host: what is section 5? >> guest: section 5 a section of the voting rights act that coverage a certain number of states because in the ways in which they behaved in the previous 75, 80, 100 years in terms of the allocation of the opportunity not just the allocation but the commitment to insuring the citizens of the united states and the citizens of that state a genuine opportunity to influence decisions of the people who are ultimately elected. we have a system in the united

states in which the allocation of representative positions is done by the representatives who are already in power and they draw districts that look very strange and they draw districts that put people that they don't want in their particular district out of it and they create districts in which they are pretty much guaranteed to win or at least that political party is going to guarantee to win and it is a way of quieting the citizenry when in fact in a democracy the people you want to speak out on the citizens themselves, not simply the people who get elected and then ignore the concerns of other people because they are not in their district or they have drawn a district that has people in the district but they have no

allies. >> host: before we move on to your other writings, another topic. how did that period of time, april through june of 1993 change you, change your life? >> guest: a changed my life in very good way is. i got to write a number of books and got to write books that people were willing to read so that was an opportunity and also more of an opportunity to speak to people to get engaged, not just what academics in many ways much more important very few people are willing to challenge the way in which we divide up power in this country because we

are stuck on what the founding fathers did in the 1700s and the founding fathers were people like george washington, thomas jefferson the founding fathers determining what the rest of the country is like, how to allocate power and determine who represents whom. >> host: lift every voice, where does that term come from? >> guest: it is a song that is very important black community. the black community is -- its great strength is its sense of community. it has a sense of community in terms of what makes it the community is the feeling blacks have not been respected.

the feeling that slavery dominated the united states and punished black people in ways that are still being felt 200 years later, 50 years later. i fink for in terms of my experience as a litigator when i was working for the naacp it is a tremendous sense of community in the domain of a particular state or city that there is also interested in not just improving life for black people but in making things more fair for all people. one of the potential opportunities or options that have not in my view been taken advantage of war developed is

find ways to encourage poor blacks and whites and latinos and poor people generally to work together to think about a fair way of incorporating their views in the political process. right now we have corporations determining who gets elected rather than the population determining who has the money to run for office much less win. >> host: one more quote from "lift every voice: turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice" and if you discount on this, certainly, you write, no one had prepared me for a sound bite litmus test for public service. >> guest: that seems to speak for itself but what i was saying is the media comes in and they put a name on you for a position on you and that is the end of

the conversation. i don't mind people challenging my views but i would like an opportunity to respond. >> host: lani guinier, professor at harvard. how long have you been at harvard? >> guest: since 1998. >> host: why did you move to harvard? >> guest: it was a difficult decision. i pretty much enjoyed working at the university of pennsylvania law school. i have a colleague, we taught a class together. there were several reasons why harvard was appealing. number one it was challenging the university for a long time. they didn't have any black women working at the law school and very few black people working at the university. it is an irony because not only

did i attend what became part of harvard but my father had gone to harvard college in 1929 and he had applied to the college. he had been accepted and when he showed up at the school they were appalled because he failed to submit a photograph with his application and so they refused him in the dormitory and ralph bunche who was there as a graduate student. in the dormitories where my father could feel comfortable. he then told me how proud he was

when i was admitted to harvard but also the challenges of being at a place where you have a lot of people who come from much more elite, more important, or supported families. he left harvard. he could no longer afford it. my going to harvard, applying and going, i felt as a tribute to my dad. >> host: what did he do after

two years of harvard? >> guest: he went to new york. he was valid victorian in his class and boston english high school, he had been editor-in-chief of student newspaper, a group that brought all the students, editors of their high school journal to -- to recruit people who are interested in journalism to come to the new york times. had left harvard, came to them in that room when you were

inviting us. the second thing, confidence with him in the elevator and editor of the new york times, they would hire him as elevator operator. that is how i got to work in the new york times. read the new york times each day from cover to cover. then he went to school, at city college. and from there, graduated from city college and ultimately wind to law school but that was several decades, world war ii. >> host: you were raised in new

york city. to was your mother? >> guest: who was my mother? what was her name? >> host: tell us about her. >> guest: my mom was the daughter of jewish immigrants who came to the united states. my grandmother was from poland in a but when she was 8 years old. my grandfather, my mother's father came to canada and russia, ought to the united states. they set up a restaurant, two children, she was 6 years old, taking care for 4-year-old brother. at some point she was very worried her brother was not

acting responsibly. she did the elevator down, takes the elevator down to the first floor, was told not to cross the street waiting for one of her parents to look out through a store to see her in the department. they moved to queens. >> host: in honolulu, >> host: interracial marriage in 1945. what was the reception? >> guest: in hawaii -- >> host: your father was in the service but he was sent to why. >> guest: she went to hawaii, she wanted to be a red cross person but she was offended by a lot of the racism in the red

cross so she left the red cross in hawaii and started working act and organization associated with the people in the army and that is how she met my dad. they met in august and october. >> host: one of the troubles they faced with an interracial marriage in 1945 through the 50s when they moved back to new york? >> guest: my mom had trouble with her parents. they were not happy. but they grew to respect my dad. i don't know that there were a lot of problems after they came to the united states because hawaii was not a state yet but it was part of the united states. they lived in manhattan and i don't know.

they never told me about issues of racism and my dad told me about a lot of friends who were relatively powerful. the person who experience the racism was me. the first thing i remember i took ballet lessons when i was 4 years old, 5 years old and i remember having to memorize, speak to the audience, the ballet i was participating in, i remember having to memorize this introduction. at the same time i was doing that which was fun, was hanukkah. my mother is jewish, took me to

a high point event and the people were very unpleasant. i was 4 or 5 years old and i remember i couldn't understand my mother bringing a black kid to a jewish event. i remember it that to this day and remembering something in my view have a long term affect. i got along fine with my cousins on my mom's side. >> host: something you write about, why you wanted to become a civil rights lawyer. why? >> guest: a black woman escorting james meredith in mississippi in 1962 and i saw her walk to the court or to

school and she had such stature, this was in an era where it was very dangerous but i thought if she did fact i could do that too. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv's "in depth" program. this is where we have an author talk about his or her body of work and this one is law professor lani guinier, she is our guest, she is the author of six books beginning in six books beginning in 1994 schools and institutional change" change" 11, into a new vision of social justice," "the miner's canary: enlisting race, resisting power, transforming democracy" which we will get to later came out in 2002 and lani guinier has just

published this book, "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america". one of the rest is a "in depth" is viewer participation. we will put the phone lines on screen. if you would like to dial in and join the conversation 202-748-8200. in the stands central time zone 748-8221. in the pacific and central time zones. if you can't get through on the phone lines, social media, we have been dealt, booktv@c-span.org is our e-mail address and twitter feet@booktv. you can make a comment there as well or join the conversation on our face book page, facebook.com/booktv. we will get to those calls and e-mails in just a few minutes. lani guinier, in your most recent book "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america" if you could explain what i am

about to read that would be great. e s 8 t is actually more reliable, more wealth test and a test of potential. you have three hours. >> guest: i want to mention the articles you mentioned. >> host: we will ask about your co-authors as we go along. >> guest: in terms of "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america," the s.a.t. as amines of determining who has access to wealth, to the opportunities to practice before you take the tests. in the book i borrow a term

which i did not coin parent to provide $30,000 which is often required to prepare your student to take the s.a.t. or whatever the particular tests is in order to get selected for a position in college or a position in law school. my concern is in part based on some -- some of the research i ended up doing as a result of a student at the university of pennsylvania law school. sheet initially came to me. i don't know if you want all this background. this young woman came to me. the first thing she said to me she was in the course i was

teaching on the political process and i was talking about the civil rights movement and adoption of the voting rights act of 1965 and i was showing some of the people who were participating in that effort and she came to me and said you have shown us pictures only of men. where is there any women involved? i was so ashamed that -- i was very grateful to her. i came back the next day with women who were very important, with the 1965 voting rights act. so she was pleased i took her comments seriously and came back to me with another concern which was a game that was played at pennsylvania law school but also other law schools. i don't know if i want to --

>> host: where is she saying? that is what this is and what that means. >> guest: it is a way for the students who don't talk as much in law school classrooms as they appeared. they're dominating the conversation and facing of their peers -- they play this game where they create the equivalent of a big goal box. you have to predicts three in a row like tic-tac-toe but three in a row, diagonally, horizontal the or vertically and if you pick the right people who are raising their hand and speaking and taking up a lot of time you have scored. how do you let the other people in their room not everybody

other people playing the game, how do you let them know you just scored? you use a pre agreed upon word, and that lets everyone knows that he or she at the time, the only he had succeeded and the concern was the men and the bingo board were assholes and the women were semi not seek dikes. she was one of the women who was consistently on this game and she hit the video that was not about law but medicine and looking at the body of a woman and all the people who spoke in the class were women and there was a man who raised his hand, very tentative and said what happens if a man gets this disease?

the woman looks at him and says you are smart, extrapolate. wanted to do something like that where instead of med school law school and she came to me because i had been responsible where the women of the civil rights act so i told her i didn't know anything about video and i don't know that your experience is only york experience but maybe you should do us survey and see what is happening with the men and women in law school. two things happened. she did -- basically had people answer questions and she had a 52% response rate. she had really good data and i went to the dean who was the new dean and he gave me access to four years of information's 0 i got the sats course, undergraduate cpas course law school scores four years of students at the university of

pennsylvania law school. that is when i became much more aware of the predictive affects so that data and the reinforcement of that data from people involved in creating the s.a.t. for high school and law school, what we found was the oaks. 80 predicted 14% of80 predicted 14% of various grades and that means it was not predicted for most students but 14% of the students but not for 86%. so that was -- to was a long way of explaining that that is how i got interested in our

preoccupation with tests that are not really predictive of performance but in many ways adversely affecting women in terms of their performance in law school rather than the men. it was not just reaction as a woman but women in law school at least in the law schools that have been involved in are not doing as well as men even though they come in with similar credentials of something happening in the law school environment for the law school culture that is adversely affecting women. >> host: what do you think that is? >> guest: that is where is this new book comes in. what i think is happening is competitive individualism at stake in legal education with the the women, they're not as

competitive and also very much more likely to collaborate and so it was that sort of door opening that got me involved in looking more deeply at this and looking at the work of people like anita o lee and others she did a study with somebody at m i t where they were trying to see how groups are making decisions or solving problems and she and her cohorts created these groups, some of which were all men, some all women, some had some men and some had some women. what she found was the more women you had in the group the better the group was at solving the problem because the men in the group tended to be much more individualistic and dominating. they wanted to show they were smart. the women were trying to solve the problem and trying to get

input from everybody or as many people as they could in the group's though her finding was the more women you had, up to 85% women, the better the group is at solving the problem. once you get to 85%, having men there is done. >> host: lani guinier, would you sue away with the s.a.t.? >> guest: if i was god? >> host: answer that however you want to. if you with the dean of harvard president of harvard and could make that decision? >> guest: if i were in those positions, it would be very difficult to make the -- to articulate the position i am making. i don't have anything to lose by speaking out about my studies of women in law school. if i was a dean a president of

harvard i would have multiple constituents. it wouldn't just be the students who were admitted. it would be vote students who are in position to provide money for the school but they graduated, they have got a good job, making a lot of money, they feel proud of the schools that enabled them to proceed. the alumni are much more comfortable thinking about the kind of law school or undergraduate schools they were admitted to and graduated from. i don't think one individual who is president of any school is going to change things but i do think that the point of the book the seam of the book the we have to reconsider how to solve problems, competitive individualism which is what we

have been used to through the nineteenth and 20th century may need to shift and be inclined to shift to something much more collaborative in which you want to have more women certainly 50% women working with men to solve a problem, but bringing a different kind of strength to the situation. >> host: you also write in "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america" that racial diversity and hours those with a dissenting opinions to speak up. explain. >> guest: what i am saying is that you want people that you disagree with to be able to talk and feel comfortable in suggesting their perspective. that doesn't mean you agree with them but it is important that they feel comfortable in providing their own perspective. you want environment in which

people are honest, people with different backgrounds who are prepared to share that and i say that because we all benefit from having these diverse perspectives rather than determining some one who went through a private high school and went to and important college and get to law school, that somehow that person is superior to someone who went to a state school or high school, state school for college and they get to law school and are not as sharp in some ways with those who went to more elite schools but they have a perspective, they have information, they have a context that can represent the holes in the argument that people who are very smart carmaking but jumping

over streams or not necessarily engage with all of the dimensions of that need to be addressed. >> host: as someone who has taught law school for a long time when a student comes in what do you look for? what is a good predictor for you of success? >> guest: i am not in a position to predict people's success in general but i can tell you about the students a i higher faculty assistants, they tend to be people who have a different focus than i do because there are areas of the understanding i don't penetrate or focus on as much as i should. having students who are looking at the issue from a different

perspective than i do. i had a student, getting a degree from the school at harvard, this is just brilliant, at drying things. she was there for many reasons. when we were trying to figure out a problem she could draw a picture of it and map it out in a way that made things very clear. that is not something you measure on the s.a.t. but she is now a professor. there are ways that people demonstrate talent or demonstrate their own experiences or build on and work

from their own experiences. if you are open to that it opens up your mind. that is why i find collaboration with research assistants, a very enjoyable, very helpful. >> host: people out there listening heard 50% come at least 50% women and i am sure there is a couple screening, that is the quota. 50% women, aged be at least 50% women. >> guest: that is not a quota. that is based on the number of women in the country. 50% of the people in the united states are women. that is not an arbitrary quota. that is just reality. the point i am making is we want to ensure that everybody in the united states with the they are men all women have the

opportunity to excel and fact that there are 50% women or men i have no control over that. >> host: we are talking with lani guinier about her most recent book "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america" the gee give your students' test? and what kind of tests do you give? >> guest: they have a take home tests, usually three or four days to respond. i do that because having been a voting rights lawyer and having worked as a lawyer, people planning to be lawyers when i was writing a brief, i would often seek the help of someone working at the naacp legal defense fund, it is helpful to

get feedback and would introduce that. it comes from my own experience of being a litigator trying cases where you really do have to work with your colleague or you are not going to win the case and not only not going to win the case to you are not going to win a friend. my sense has always been important to work with other people but some people in individualistic and conceptualize things by themselves. i am not saying every time you have a thought you have to talk about it with somebody else but if you are trying to challenge or stop a really hard problem it

is very important to bring together people with different strengths. here it is where some of the other social science literature scott page for example is a professor at the university of michigan. he talks about having a test with ten questions and what if you had somebody who gets seven of ten questions right? you have other people who get six of ten questions right and some got three of ten right but got three questions the person with seven had missed. he was saying in that situation you want to have the person with the highest score and the person with a lowest score working together because they have different perspectives and it is bringing those different perspectives together that gives them greater power, greater insight into how to solve complex problems.

>> host: that is one form of tests you give, the take home test. how is the internet affected the grading of those tests? >> guest: you mean that people are cheating? i haven't found anything new from the internet. it never even occurred to me. if you are teaching at a loss cool like harvard, you have the big textbook and lots of cases and questions after the case and you would have to not come to any classes and even then if you went to the web site, you would be in a difficult position to be able to do well on the test by going off into outer space.

it is not a good example of cheating. people may think that some of the students are cheating but i don't think so because if you because if someone is not doing it right they will bring it to my attention, divide up the requirements so that this is what x wrote, this is what why wrote, and this over here is what zero wrote and we don't have anything to do with it so zero is basically zero. >> host: lani guinier, have you noticed the trend when it comes to students today as opposed to the 90s? are they getting smarter? are they learning the basics more? are they better writers?

what have you noticed as someone who has been in the teaching profession? >> guest: i don't think i have noticed a lot of change in the past 20 years. i am sorry to say that. >> host: why is it unfortunate? >> guest: i think the culture of law school and the dynamics of legal education in the classroom haven't changed very much in that 20 year period and some of in particular the issue i have been most concerned about is that women don't do as well as men at harvard law school. they come in looking very similar and the men rise to the top of the class and the women, a few of them may be at the top of the class. if you look at them, most of the names are men. not the much in the cum laudes

but part of it has to do with their is a book called the female brain. i am not a doctor. i can't say this is accurate but what the author says is in a man's brains the information is in one place and the mouth is right there and did those 3 from information to the mouth and a person speaks whereas in the women's brain it goes to several portals before the women speak. and so the woman tends to be slower at working through the problem and a man speaks right away. that shows on the one hand he has a lot of confidence but it also suggests that he is not considering smaller points but the woman is grappling and the two are working together.

that is of good team but often happens is the men dominated and the -- the women come knocking on my door and start to cry. >> host: what is your advice? >> guest: my first a device is get a tissue. if they really -- just to give them a sense that once you graduate from law school and start working as of lawyer you will find places where you can work as a team and you will feel rejuvenated. being a lawyer is not working to become a lawyer is a test but being a lawyer is much more complicated in terms of strength. in one of my articles i cite a lawyer who is now deceased who

is in a well-to-do law firm and he says the students who do well as lawyers are not necessarily the students who did very well as law students even as a large new york law firm. >> host: we have been talking for an hour. we have two hours to hear from our viewers on phone calls and social media. here are the phone lines. we will put those on screen and cycled through and show different social me at addresses as well and we are going to begin this "in depth" segment with lani guinier with a call from andy in san francisco. >> caller: hi. nice to have professor lani guinier on. .. deplore political correctness, as the conservatives do but they practiced against the professor

in 1993. >> host: what do you mean? how so. >> caller: well, they applied this name of quota queen instead of actually looking at what she was trying to say and trying to understand what she was trying to say and i remember back then very much wanting to hear what she was talking about what you were talking about professor, and wasn't given the opportunity. i was unhappy that president clinton did not stand behind did not stand behind you even if you would have been voted down, much as president bush stood behind john power who was a capable person but flawed. i let the senate do its job so i wish we had not, i wished, the republicans and then president clinton had not followed political correctness. and, labeling professor guiner. now the question i have is youe q talk about, and i'm a fan by the way of the founding fathers and sys

system we have but i would very much like to hear your suggestions, professor as to changes you think ought to be made. an >> guest: first of all thanks very much for, am i looking --ight >> host: right into the scam a. if you're uncomfortable doing that, talk to me. you can talk to a face over here. so andy will understand. >> guest: okay. so what i was talking about andy, at the time, and since then in the courses that i still t teach that we need to lookuntr around the look what other countries are doing. so one example of alternative forms of voting comes from germany and it is an example that we the united states imposed on germany in 1945 after world war ii. so it is not, something that was, developed in the closet

somewhere else, it is something that we, the united states approved for germany and my point is well, if we could suggest this for germany why can't we suggest it for the united states? so what is the system inave germany? they have each citizen get two votes. and they can they use, one vote for a political party, and one vote for someone to represent their community. so one person is, representing their ideas and the other person is represents their needs. and, that is the system that germany has used since 1945. i think it is an interesting system that, if we thought it was good for germany we might want to consider. i'm not saying that is the only system or that is the best system but i'm suggesting 300 years after, after this country, the united states became ay

country, it may be time for us to reconsider the what the slaveholders george washington and thomas jefferson, they were the ones creating our, our electoral system and i i have lots of respect for both of them in many ways, but on other hand, both of them hold slaves. they were supportive of the the constitution that essentially said we'll count sheriff's for the purpose of determining how many people are in a congressional district but wooer sl not giving slaves any voting power. so it is not about political correctness.ess. it's about trying to consider the range of election election systems or electoral system that will engage the american people to participate more actively inivel the political process. p >> leon posts on our facebookage page, something that andy referred to, the only major

problem i ever had with bill clinton when he kowtowed to the republican opposition and withdrew her nomination. i saw it as a cowardly act. do you agree with that statement? >> guest: , well i like the statement.t. and, i appreciate lee on saying it. owned i don't want to be seen as somebody who 20 years later is still complaining. so, i just want to say i have o moved on. i don't regret the fact that i'mill still a law professor. and, i think i've outgrown the sadness, the sad that i was, not given a chance to speak for myself. it wasn't so much a concernncer about getting the, getting the nomination approved what i regret what what made me feel sad is that i never had an opportunity as leon suggested

or as, andy suggested excuse me to explain these ideas. so ies was, you know, it was, as if somebody was going through a factory just decide arbitrarily to print some information on my for ahead which had nothing to do with in fact was behind my forehead. >> host: in her 1998 book, lift every voice, lanny guiner -- lani guinier precisely talks about her meeting with the president in june 1993, being in the oval office. if you're reading that book you will get a very good description what that day was like in her life. one other thingo you note in that book, that was written in 1998. that was last conversation with the president, june third, 1993. does that still hold true today? wor

>> guest: yes, he has people who work for him call me but it is never clear why they're calling me. if they called me and saidthey bill clinton would like to talk to you.ell i would like you to go. they call and say bill clinton will be at this particular event, on this particular day. maybe you like to go there. where is it, how many peoplee? will be there? oh, a thousand people. that is not the kind of interaction that will in some way relief some of the, theesti questioning i guess of, what, what pushed him to, to, i don't want to say to throw plea out o but, that he just never gave mee a a chance to speak. that was my concern. if i had not been voted by the senate to hold the job, that is another story. s but i felt that, in his case he

was, he was, i think he was scared. i think he felt that that i was, i just don't think he understand what i was ultimately trying to do. and, to be frank, there were other situations, you know he and i were friends which he would say he would come tostif testify on behalf of my clients. this was a case in, in arkansas when he was governor but he never came to testify. and that was before the nomination. so, he is a man with good ideas and i think a warm heart but i think he gets distracted. >> host: have you seen or mrs. clinton or talked with h mrs. clinton? >> guest: no, i haven't seen her or she has its contacted me. >> host: could you support her in 2016? >> guest: well i could, i don't

know. i don't knowo what kind of president she would be. i know she was a good secretary of state but, i can't say what kind of president she would be at this time. and i to give them credit ia thought bill clinton gave a brilliant speech at the democratic convention in 2012. so i mean, so, i respect him. i admire him. but, i don't think i want to be in his company at least, not, not without some prior conversation. >> host: timothy is calling in from the bronx. timothy you're on with harvard law professor and author lani guinier. >> caller: yes, good afternoon. my question is, is it significantly more painful for a

person of color -- >> host: timothy? please turn down the volume on your tv. you will get a little bit of a delay and blake, when he talked to you on the phone, he tellsyou you turn down that volume. it is very important. talk through your telephone.roug we're listening to you. a and, don't worry about the tv. don't look at the tv. and turn down the volume. now go ahead. we are listening. >> caller: my apologies. i wasy really concerned about the status of american civil rights. equality for all people. and i'm concerned about, whether a victim of a violent crime who gets stabbed in the back. and, a person who isted discriminated against by society and the courts, which is more painful for us to live with, for liv all of us who grew up in then '60s who have college degrees c

and masters degrees and served the community where do we go g when we find that the courtsour fail us and then we go to the law for the, as a victim and the victim is penalized? >> host: do you have a follow-upqu question for timothy professor? >> guest: imat this, i apologize i am not entirely sure what your question leads to. do you think you could give mee an example of what you'restea describing? t instead of talking about it an strackly, give me concrete example where you experienced what you're describing or you have a friend who experienced it? >> caller: yeah. i have personally experiencedr owning a major company earning 3.3 million a year. being injured in a ox store by a

17-year-old who was illegally driving a forklift, disabled me.d a filed a petition to the court. the court procrastinated and found a way to deny me a negligence case when they were absolutely wrong. and i found that the judge was recipient of funds and had fiduciary relationship with the box company, a very large corporation. and that at the same time, going home from court, i was robbed. and stabbed.hy, >> host: timothy, you want to put this into a civil rights, a race based issue, is that iss correct?? >> caller: well, yes, in terms of the courts relating to theto rights of individuals. and how the corporations nowow

considered as individuals can, this precociously disregard the rights of people who are injured as citizens of the united states. >> host: thank you, sir. let's hear from professor guiner. go. so -- >> host: where do you start with something like that? as a law professor, as a lawyer your client comes to you with this, what do you do? >> guest: well, as a lawyer, you do different things than as a d law professor, right? >> host: right. >> guest: so as a law professor i would just say, we would have a long conversation so i had a better understanding exactly what was happening. the more, just the fact that we asked the gentleman who, who has been injured that and then hen was robbed and stabbed going

home. this is a very complicated and serious about it of different different kinds of problems putther together in one suit. so, for example, this, that he he was disabled and injured by a 17-year-old, that he was robbed and stabbed going home, and then he was denied the money he was entitled to, there is too much going on for me to be able to work through out, he and i would have is it down and talk for at least an hour. >> host: all right. abstractly then if he had called in and just said i think that the court system is unjust to african-americans.as >> guest: then i would have asked him can you give me an example of what you're saying? i certainly agree that mass incarceration, which is related

to what happens through the court system, is not functional for the black community. it is not functional for the white community. it is not functional for asian-americans or latinos. because we're'r spending too muchmo money keeping people in prison, rather than taking that money and educating them so they in fac fact can find a job so that they are less likely to end up in prison. so, it is, it is what i'm saying is intervention needs to be made earlier in someone's life and we need to spend more money educating people, rather than imprisoning them. p >> host: in fact that is something professor guiner addresses in her book the miner's canary, resisting race transforming democracy. what is the miner's canary and how is that related to your book thesis? >> guest: so the miners, this is based on, 100 years ago the miner's would take a little

canary into the mine with them to alert them when there was a potential problem in the mines. the canary because of it is more fragile system, would would he note that something was about to happen and, would, then alertrt the miners that they needed to leave the mines. and that's the thesis that professor gerald torres and irkin are working with. that, the problem is not with the canary. the problem is with the mines. and so, you want to have people becoming more alert, the way the canary is to identify a problem in advance of the capitulation of of people's lives, et cetera. but it the miner's canary is very valuable for alerting you in advance there is a problemrob and that you need to, to step back and focus on it and then, t

do something about it. >> host: from the miner's canary those who are racially marginalized are like the miner's canary, their distress is the first sign of a danger who threatens us all. who is gerald torres?uest >> guest: he is a professor of law. i first met him he was a professor of law at thew university of texas. he is now a professor of law at cornell university but presently visiting at yale lawng school. so hce is a man of many schools. >> host: he is your coauthor iner c the book? >> guest: yes. >> host: another call from the bronx.rnoo hi leo. >> caller: how are you doing? >> host: good. >> caller: my question for professor guiner, my understanding that associate justice clarence thomas is beneficiary of affirmative action yet he is opposed to

affirmative action. do you have any thoughts about this contradiction? >> host: what is your view, leo, of affirmative action so-called, affirmative action? >> caller: i just think people should be judged by their abilities. but it is just that it is just that if someone takes a position someone is a beneficiary of something, and turns around and says, hey, i'm against it, it looks like the contradictory.it or they're, or they're vacillating. i mean i expect someone who is a judge to have some consistent theories and concepts as to whats the law is. >> host: thank you h sir. professor guiner. >> guest: well leo, you're f asking somebody who knows clarence, i know him well having gone to law school with him, and

at the time, i actually got himirst his first job, he was interested in being a civil rights lawyer. l he wanted to go back to georgia because that's where he grew up. and, i got him his first job at a law firm in savannah georgia. he and i had gone to hear elaine jones, who at the time was a,er w lawyer with the naacp legal defense fund. she was a fantastic speaker. i went up to her after the talk and i told her i wanted to work with her. she said, you get the money, you can work with me. meaning i had to raise the money as a law student to, to, but she didn't have the money. the organization had the money. but clarence and i went to this event together and after i had found a position at the naacp legal defense fund for the summer with elaine jones i also worked with clarence to get him

a job working at an integrated law firm in savannah georgia and he and i were actually going to write a law review article together after that summer because the reason at the time he wanted to work in georgia, is that, there was a lawsuit challenging the georgia bar about theab way in which blacks, black applicants were denied, denied the opportunity to become lawyers. in other words, they would take t the test and then they would fail the test and invariably they would fail the test because they were black not because they had put down the wrong answers. at the time, for example elaine jones, the person that i ended up working with took me to a, a meeting involving the same kind of case in alabama where she was

interrogating one of the one of the people who executed the bar exam and on the piece of paper she was using to question him she had the names of the people who had taken the state bar exam in alabama and then next to the names of some of the people who had taken the bar were the letters, c o, l period. so she was questioning the gentleman who was in charge of of all of this. and she wanted to know why did they have the, the letters col p period next to names some of the people. turns out of course the people were all black but the answer she got, well they may have been colonels in the army. that's why they had col. next to their people.

i tell you at that time the time clarence thomas and i not only people at yale law school in the same class we were people of color at yale law school in the same class, and, as i said, clarence thomas intended to be a civil rights lawyer, at least at that time and i i agree withh you that people should be judged by, by what they're saying, and i can not predict or can not explain to you why justice thomas, who as you say benefited from affirmative f action andce certainly when he was at law school was also very concerned about integrating the integrating the number of lawyers in georgia which is wa

where he wanted then to go back. so i can't explainas' clarence thomas's psychology to you but i can just give you the facts. >> host: is he still a friend of yours?yo >> guest: he is very friendly with me, yes. >> host: are you friends withiend any of the other supreme court justices acquainted with?quai >> guest: i'm aquainted with. to be a friend with somebody on the supreme court is a little intimidating and it is also --th there is an awe about it. not awful but awe a-w-e. my son is going to be, he graduated from harvard law school. he has gotten a clerkship on the supreme court. i would rather not put him in a position where now all of these people start to call him.

but, i mean, i think i think it's a great opportunity to be astic clerk to any of the supreme court justices. i do think i do think that the supreme court could use a little, a little attention in terms of having, having a court with nine justices having a court that's that's, a very powerful position, but i'm just not not convinced that our current system which, made sense in the 18th century is necessarily making the same sense in the 21st century. >> host: that said what is one change you would make to the court? >> guest: i would probably put you know, like a 10-year period, that you get on the court for you're there for 10 years, maybe

12 years. but you're not bat there for life. because i think it is very important to bring in other people's perspectives and not feel like the country, thees a country's rules and country's values are dependent on same nine people over a very long period of time. mor i think there needs to be more refreshening. >> host: was clarence thomas treated fairly in your view in 191991 in his hearing and was robert bork in his hearing in 1986? >> guest: i was not paying attention to robert bork and that hear something full of so many different themes and so ma many different views i can't say whether he was treated fa fairly or unfairly. i do think that anita hill was treated unfairly. i do think that, that she had

other people she wanted to testify and the senate decided wer they weren't going to bother to hear them. i there are several people including gentleman named bosker, who is trying to rewrite how, how the supreme court might be re, redeveloped. that we shouldn't be relying on the same nine people over a period of time. and, i don't object to the idea of having a supreme court, but i do think that it should be a court where there is more rotation. where more peopleti have access, or come in and so we're not locked into the views of aof a particular group of people who

then get a chance to determine what's allowed for 10, 15, 20 years. on the other hand, having said that there are some justices who in my view have been terrific. t i think justice ginsberg is doing a great job and, she has has been there a significant period of time. so, i'm not the right person to be organizing the supreme court. >> host: well, did you get borked?no, >> guest: no, because i never got, i i never got, say anything. >> host: you got pre-borked. >> guest: i got pre-borked. i like that. >> host: another call from the bronx, sandra, three in a row. lani guinier is our guest. you're on tv. >> guest: hi sandra. >> host: she is coming. we're listening. >> caller: can you hear me?

>> guest: i hear you. >> caller: thank you, so jus much. professor, i want to say it is an honor to have the opportunity to speak with you. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: i have followed you from the time ii was a teenager and learned a lot from you. currently i am a social justice advocate. i did study law through the urban legal studies program. ira decided not to practice. and, over the past couple of y years, a lot of people would come to me who knew i had a legal background and ask me if i could help them with their eeoc cases because they couldn'tys afford an attorney. so, i've been able to help quite a few individuals actually through the state agencies in new york and through eeoc. what i have been noticing over the past, i'd say three years, is that i'm not sure what it is

but something is going on with the eeoc where valid cases are being ignored dragged out and in my estimation killed. and i have been able to through writing letters to the department of justice, directlyo to eric holder and directly to the president, really pushing, for them to do some oversight,o so that these cases these valid cases don't get dismissed do you have any insight into this and any recommendations? >> host: we'll keep here on the line in case professor guiner has a follow-up question. >> guest: first of all sandraeres i'm really interested in what you're doing. i think it is very honorable what you're trying to do in terms of helping other people who are are not in a position

to find somebody else who can give them guidance. but i frankly don't know anything about what is going onwith with eeoc right now.ou so i can't answer your question but, what i would urge you to do is to and you said, you know ha you've written and you have tried to to reach out. my suggestion would be to think about writing something like an op-ed that could be published in a newspaper that might then be read by other people who could who would then contact you and give you perhaps better suggestions at, because they're more knowledgeable. i think you would benefit but i also think having the issues that you'ree putting out today, put out more publicly with with something written in "the new york times," in a magazine, on the web i just

think that you're in a position t to try and get more peopleged engaged in the issue that you're. trying to raise. >> host: all right. we're getting a lot of these comments on facebook so i thought i would let you address them. we'll get them out of the way. jane asked, wasn't she not paying taxes or social securityja on her nanny? >> guest: got me confused with another woman, baird. >> host: have you heard thisman, before? >> guest: no, i have not heard this before.t: a i'm a black person. zoe baird is a white person.ed b >> host: she was followed by kim ba wood, followed by janet reno. how well did you get to know janet reno? >> guest: i got to know janet reno pretty well. she was terrific. she has a strong backbone and a she is a person of, i think, she is just an honorable person who

follows the rules but also challenges the rules when she thinks that they're unfair. i don't mean challenges them by ignoring them. i mean raising a question whether this is the right rule that we have to follow. she was she was extremely supportive of me during the period of my nomination and and, i also thought that while she was attorney general that many of the things that she did do were helpful, significantgn and, and should make her and her supporters feel proud. that, she played that role.d th >> host: sheila is calling in from new york city. go ahead, sheila.t >> caller: hello dr. guiner. pleasant afternoon listening to your interview.a >> guest: oh, thank you.i >> caller: there are certain things thatvi really disturb and outrage me. one of them is the miseducation

of african-american students.n their districts in new york city, primarily servinge african-american students who consistently fail to educate. consequently we are continuing to destroy another, haveg destroyed generations and are destroying another generation of african-american students. what are your thoughts aboutught vouchers? a lot of the critics believe that vouchers would enable segregated schools segregated schools. but as you know new york city is one of the most segregated has one of the most segregated school systems in the country. >> host: sheila, what do you think about vouchers and charter schools and some of these newera concepts?

>> caller: well, some ofu the newer concepts. there are some good charter schools and there are some very poor ones. so i just think that a lot of teachers that are appointed to low income schools, they're not very good teachers. i've had some tutors from some of the colleges in harlem, columbia nyu downtown, who can teach the specific subjects. science, math, better than most of the teachers in the public school system. but if you don't have a license you can not teach in the school system. for instance louie armstrong couldn't teach music in thefo school system. you know and on and on. but, everyone says education is the key but i don't see the

urgency about rectifying what isn't happening in the public school system. >> host: all right. sheila, we'll leave it there and get a response from harvard professor lani guinier. >> guest: so sheila, you raised so many different aspects of the education challenge. i'm not sure which one to, to address or to emphasize. i think you're making anr excellent point, that in the united states of america we are not teaching, we are not taking advantage of our our skill set and, there is a sense thate people in affluent communitieshat deserve to have excellent schools and people in poor communities are entitled to go to school but there is less concern about the excellence of the school. so your first comment that you are disturbed by the

miseducation of african-americant students i agree with that.he i think, that there is, a failure to educate, not because people are, unable to educate but because we haven't we haven't, as a society, really invested our attention and our knowledge, and our and identified the opportunities that are available for more people to be teachers. i think we could use a lot moreb teachers, because you haveche classes sometimes that are 30 40 people. are and that there should be for emphasis on, having students go to the library. having opportunities to use the library, as a place of learning. and i think it is, also,

important for our country to understand that a better educated citizenship not just, one's own children, but theci children in the community you live in or the children in the state that you live in, or the children in the country that you live that we will all benefit if if there is better sense or better commitment a strongers commitment to the education of all students.ent, you go to places to other countries, go to finland and the children there score so much better on some of these tests than in the united states, ande it is cold in finland right?se t but they manage to insure that all of the children get a good education. and what, what i think is a big problem in the united states is that we, we basically have decided that the people who can afford to pay a lot more for education are the people who

deserve the run the country. ultimately i think that then leads to lots of problems that are complicating the lives of the many people that is, youe have. that is, you have mass incarceration. you have people who are trying to make a living selling illegal drugs. there are all kinds of, many things are happening that wouldn't happen if we were to just invest more time moreing energy and more money in the education of all of our children, not those who are the children of middle and upper middle class families. >> host: we have o a little less than an hour 1/2 to go in our conversation with lani guinierou this afternoon. she is the author of six books, tyranny of the majority, came out in 1994, the forward in that book written by stephen carter.t becoming gentlemen, came out in

1997. michelle fine. and jane bail are authors. lift every voice, 1998. who is qualified? 2001.9 susan term who she mentioned earlier from the university ofster pennsylvania.univ >> now at colombia. >> host: now at columbia law school. the miner's canary came out in 2002. gerald torres was her author. >> guest: now at cornell. >> host: now at cornell. the tyranny of the meritocracy is her recent book out in 2015. every time we have a guest on in depth, we ask them what are their influences. what are they reading. some of their favorite books. here is a look what lani guinier told us. ♪

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>> host: lanny guiner, one of the books you listed was the says of sacco and ven set at this. by feel licks frankfurter. didn't know he written a book about that case. >> guest: i learned about sacco and venzetti, from my father. he may have learned from it when he went to law school. but it is, how i think i wrote a paper when i was in junior high school or high school about sacco and venzetti. i used to sit down with my dad at dinner table. my sisters would go, for them it bass boring but my dad and i would have a conversation about some esoteric, this is long time since their, their trial. and, he, it, if i was looking for a topic for one of my classes, this is when i was in

high school or, at some point he came out and said you should learn about sacco and venztti. >> host: so you chose supreme court justice felix frankfurter's book? >> guest: i didn't read the book. so much as there were chapters or excerpts about the case. >> host: "cheaper by the dozen." what is that? >> guest: oh. that's a really fun book by author, who was trying to get his family, had 12 children to be very efficient in the way in which they used water or the way in which they did their chores and, so, it was, it was all about his, his effort to be more efficient because he had so many children and he didn't have a big house. so he had to figure out ways to, i think he taught them how to

take a shower you go from the pot up. not the top down. there were all kind of -- >> host: why did that book -- >> guest: charm me? >> host: make your influential list, your influence list? >> guest: because it made me think about efficiency and, and if you you know, that you're taking up too much water or you're doing something, that is not good for the larger society or for other people. you just focused on yourself. >> host: lani guinier is our guest. we'll continue taking your phone calls. we'll put numbers up on the screen. we'll put up our social media addresses as well. rick in st. paul, minnesota. rick, you've been very patient. please go ahead with your question or comment for lani guinier. >> caller: i want to thank your screener for taking my call. i'm, i have studied the works of sis celia bogg, concealment on

the ethics of revelation and concealment, book of secrets. then her book, lying moral choice and public and private. and, i was just wondering if she would be able to tell me anything about bock and her husband derek and i would like to be able to hang up and listen. >> host: talking about the former president of harvard derek bock? >> caller: yes. >> host: great. thank you, rick. anything for that caller? >> guest: i'm sorry he hung up. i don't know anything about cecilia bock but i was a student at the college at harvard when derek bock was pet of harvard. i'm not sure because he hung up what he wants to know about the president of harvard at that

time. there was a lot going on in terms of the vietnam war. a lot with more attention paid to african-american students and the study of african-americans. that was the same time, my father who had applied to attended harvard college for two years, he came back in in the beginning of the, 1969, 1970 at the beginning of the african-american department, department of african-american studies, that me and other students had mobilized to get derek bock to consider adding that to the syllabus. >> host: and were you successful? >> guest: yes, yes. my father came. he was the head of the african-american studies program. >> host: when did you graduate from harvard, undergrad? >> guest: '71. >> host: when did you get

involved personally in the civil rights movement? and in what fashion? >> guest: when you say involved, in some ways i was involved ply mom, for example went to the 1963 event that is when martin luther king -- >> host: martin luther king. >> guest: gave his amazing speech. >> host: march on washington. >> guest: right. it is one of the if you asked all of the students in the united states about the march on washington and martin luther king's speech i think 90 or 95% of the students know about, "i have a dream" speech. that is like the most famous speech in the united states. anyway, that was when i was 13. my mom went and took my baby sister, with her to that march. and my father and i watched it on television.

>> host: did you, at harvard, did you participate at all? did you go south at all? >> guest: oh, you mean with the civil rights movement? >> host: yes ma'am. >> guest: yeah. i, first of all, when i was at harvard college i, i didn't go south then but i did work for some various organizations that were interested in the issues of a affecting black people in general and black students in particular. but, i ended up, doing much more when, once i went to law school. then i had an agenda and, realized i wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. and so getting to know elaine jones, driving clarence to the talk that was we drove from new haven to philadelphia. that was an important moment in my life because i got to work

for her at the naacp legal defense fund some that was the beginning, in some ways, of my feeling, that i had a contribution to make. >> host: april 5th, 1968 you would have been at harvard. >> guest: this is when dr. king was assassinatorred. -- assassinated. yeah, i remember that day. it was during our spring week. so i was in new york. and i had just come back either from the doctor or something. my mom and i had gone to manhattan. we were still living in, in queens. that's where i grew up. and we came home and my father was sitting in the living room and he said that martin luther king was just assassinated. it was terrible. >> host: cathy marina, california. hi cathy. >> caller: hi. well it is great talking to you.

i like the idea that you're not for, or you are for having different opinions everybody's opinion being able to be voiced in this country. part of the problem with the media, and different, different for other different reasons you know different voices are, and opinions are vilified, or labeled as hate or that kind of thing. and, i think, what we really need in the country it seems like this is something that you engage in your schoolroom, to have the ability to look at all sides of an issue. i'm not talking about being, kind of like gray. i hear people say oh you're too black and white. gray is kind of muddledded and i'm not kind of wishy-washy. but if you look at gray, what is makes up gray, made up out of black and white. you mix up black and white, you get gray. you can get through the gray and

see things. i think too much leisure time i guess, because it takes a lot of talk to get through things. i give you an example. there is something on facebook people are leaving california to go to texas. more opportunities and freedom. and so there was a translation chart. socal fornash, if you're you know, a single mother raising kids by many different fathers, you know someone who just, i can't remember how they pgt it on a chart unfortunate soul who needs money. and then in texas, it's a freeloader who is sponging off the system. guns in california. you own guns you're an evil person and guns need to be removed. texas, getting dinner tonight with the guns. protecting myself from tyrannical government and thief. it went on and on for every topic you can imagine. >> host: cathy, where are you going with this? can you bring it to conclusion?

>> caller: i wanted to mention to her, i read that chart and i thought, okay sometimes there are people sponging off the system. and are freeloaders. sometimes, a woman really, a mother really is in need lost a job, husband died. you know. sometimes a person having a gun is just fanatical about it and kind of crazy. sometimes they want to have -- >> host: cathy. we'll leave it there. do you you know where she is going with this. >> guest: i'm really sorry. i think it is she was saying people are leaving california, are going to texas. first what evidence are people leaving california, where are they going. once they get to texas. what are they doing? i don't know. >> host: if you're watching on tv and see professor guiner's

head down. she is paying attention. you've taken pages of notes for every call that has come in. why? >> guest: oh. because i want to be able to respond to what really bothered them. if you just listen to it in a vacuum, you may respond but often not to the, to the central point. >> host: is that lawyer training? to take copious notes? >> guest: that's a good question. i don't, i'm trying to remember if i didn't take copious notes when i was in junior high school or high school. or even college. i think i take copious notes since elementary school to be honest. i got in trouble actually in fourth grade. i had skipped third grade. and, i, started fourth grade with mrs. buxton, who was the teacher. and, she gave us a spelling

test. and, i had skipped third grade. so i didn't know how to write in cursive. i tried to practice but, you know it takes a little while. so she was giving us, this test and i think one of the questions was arithmetic. i was on the h. she went to the next word. so i, i went up to her afterwards, i said some of us are just learning cursive. and do you think since you will give us another spelling test tomorrow you could go more slowly so we could write down all the letters because some of us don't write in cursive yet? and she said, okay. i will think about that. the next day she made it even faster. she and i did not have the greatest experience in that sense but on the other hand, i felt for some reason very brave in her class in part because,

in the middle of her class, a number of students were added to the class and most of them were black. and, their presence in the back of the room, because up until then most of the students in the class, in fact i would say 90% of them were white. i should say5% were white. there were -- 85%. and then there were a couple of asian-americans. once there were sense there were other black students in the class, i would raise my hand all the time and ask mrs. buxton questions like, it is one thing to celebrate george washington and, you know be proud about or thomas jefferson but they both owned slaves. don't you think we should deal with that? she thought i was so out of touch. she was quite offended that i would, you know, that george washington, thomas jefferson were heroes. they had no faults and i was

making stuff up or focusing inappropriately. so, i didn't convince her of anything but, speaking up gave me a sense of confidence because i had, a lot of the black students who had just come into the class. they now saw me as their speaker. and so i then could talk to mrs. buxton and not feel that i was crazy, right? that i was out there all by myself. so you know, it is nice to be part of a group and feel like, there are other people who are going to support you, not, not just because they're arbitrary or because they like you but because they feel connected to the points that you're making. that you're that you're concern is their concern too. >> host: never in a million years would i have predicted that the question about copious notes would have led to that answer but that was a very

interesting story. brian is in pike'sville maryland. brian you're on with lani guinier. >> caller: thank you. thanks c-span for these wonderful programs. you yourself are very, very able moderator. my question to your guests is, i am an irish jew living here in the united states, very happily and, very fond of this country, for all it has done. but, i know we've had problems over the years, in the history of this country. and but, the interesting thing that find these days well it has been going on for some time, there is a tremendous amount of anti-semitism among the black community. you only have to mention farrakhan for one who represents about a million supposedly represents about a

million people and other members of the black community who, from time to time come out with statements that are can be nothing else but anti-semitic. considering the contribution that the jewish community in this country has made in supporting the black community in obtaining their rights and so forth, people actually died down in the south, as you may remember. two jewish young men were killed. so it just baffles me a little bit as to why this is what i would like to hear what your guest has to say about that. thank you very much. >> guest: okay. brian, i'm sorry but i don't think have had any experience that is comparable to what you're describing. so you're talking about

anti-semitism among the black community, but i frankly haven't experienced that. so, do you have an example of what you're talking about? >> host: brian is now gone. i apologize. brian is now gone but as somebody who is jewish and african-american, you have not had -- i don't know how to ask the question? >> guest: the only time that i have experienced any kind of concern about the relationship between blacks and jews was when i was five years old and, the jews were saying that, i needed to do my hair differently and that i was looking too black. but i was only five years old. it didn't it didn't occur to me to do anything about it. it did make me feel like i didn't belong.

email. lani, i get it, issue of meritocracy goes to issue socrates had with -- i'm sure i mispronounced that. how to come up with a solution that unites people in exercising good judgment. do you agree? . .judgment. do you agree? this is from robert. >> guest: robert would need to give me more information. i am not sure where to go with that -- what is there like five words in the sentence? he is not giving me enough background i am afraid. i am sorry, robert. >> guest: let's try jb in toledo. you are on live. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. first of all, i would like to start with the last question. i don't think socrates' had

much to do with what they indicate he instituted. he probably learned much of what they taught him to be originator of but he killed himself and the greek society was not a part of this current concoction they indicate. but to get to that question. you indicated president bill clinton offered you money upon your resolve from the canvas of attorney-general and i wondered why and how much.

2 can you indicate what policies were enacted you might admire and if you campaign to president obama what are the policies you might admire? thank you for taking my call and i will hold off testing case. >> chances are she will. okay. >> guest: the only one i have information on is bill clinton offering the money. he is the one who's signify needed money he would give it to me and it was his way of saying that he liked me and supported me. i didn't have -- it was not an actual offer of money, just i would do this for her. not something you write about.

>> host: recommend picking up by lift every voice. >> guest: the question about policy and obama comparison. what policies of president clinton's do you support so think about that? did you campaign for president obama at all? >> guest: yes. >> host: what policies of president obama's do you support? a policy of president clinton and the policy -- >> guest: i have no views about president clinton. with regards to obama i did campaign for him and in terms of his policies the idea of trying to create a system in which people in the united states will be able to get well stay well

and find doctors and nurses and others who can enable them not only to get well but to stay well, i support all of that. i would go even further to look at what the european countries do in terms of providing medical assistance to their country. is really important intervention and i wish -- i would like to see more of the relationship between the amount of money very few people in the united states have and the absence of many many people in the united states have and what i am speaking to when i safe that is a study done in ohio where they had 6,000

people answered the question if you saw the distribution of wealth in three ways which one would you pick? everyone is getting everything exactly the same, people who are rich, a third of the money, people who are poor have a third and it turns out in this study of 6,000 participants that 90% preferred the swedish model in the existing american model, they fought too much money was being aggregated too few people. they didn't see it in the abstract. they only saw it when they saw these three circles of it is

hard to talk about people's plans in the abstract or if you could show people these examples and say look at the united states the way we distribute money and compare that to sweden or other countries people say maybe it is not as fair as it should be so i would like to see more comparisons with what other countries are doing with distribution of wealth and i would like to see people drawing pictures because that helps them to identify who has all of the wealth and is that fair in a democratic society to have 2% of the people or 5% of the people having 30% of the wealth in the united states and 30% of the people who have very little.

sometimes it is helpful to have visual images to talk about it at the abstract level. >> host: you are on with professor and author lani guinier. >> caller: i am so excited to speak with you today. i am not fan and during our mother's conference and talks with jack and jill of america they believe you were thrown under the bus with president clinton just want to make a note of that but i want to know what your opinion of the current ag that is up for eric holder's position. i am a fan. i am a member of delta sigma fayette and you know each lane who is also dealt the but what

is your opinion? i believe once she gets confirmed this is my old brain trust on this she is going to be the first black supreme court justice. just a thought. i wonder what your opinion is and we love you much here. >> i am delighted to make your acquaintance and if you would like to send me an e-mail with these questions i would be happy to answer them. in terms of the current nominee i honestly haven't been following that. my inexperience in washington made be less willing to worry about what is happening in washington because is brutal and often unpredictable. i may not be doing my work as a good citizen in terms of worrying whether this or that

person is being treated appropriately because it brings too much of my own experience into my current thinking and i try to put that aside so that i am not taking -- my goal is not to intervene or interrupt what is going on in washington d.c.. i would rather talk to people outside washington d.c. about ways of changing the country at a larger level not just one small part one small physical part one large set of power part of our country. >> host: is eric holder somebody know? >> guest: no. >> host: you listed derek bell as an influence.

who was he? >> guest: derek bell is deceased now but he was a black man who was the first black -- one of the first who was hired as a professor at harvard law school and he was a very important teacher for me, not in the sense that i didn't go to harvard law school, but the teacher in the sense that i could call him up on the phone and talk to him and he would give me very good advice of the example that is most clear is after -- if i graduated from law school, a

wonderful person who is still alive in his 90s, a clerk for him for two years, like being in detour it so much i was so surprised i stayed for another year and worked in juvenile court, that was a really i opening experience, i was essentially the judge of other people's lives and didn't feel very comfortable being in that position when i had to rely on other people to give me the information i would need to make a fair decision but the other people themselves were not necessarily open minded so i learned a lot from that position. so after clerking for two years and loving detroit i was offered

this position at the justice department in the civil rights division and accepted it and that is when i moved to washington d.c.. it was an interesting job as assistant head of the civil rights division. i went to law school and wanted to do what i had seen with other brave people and that is to be a lawyer who takes on cases that involve going to the south end not being in part of the country where i was necessarily welcomed into the ways of the people in power. among the black people in the south they were very happy to see me and i ended up, and

really self affirming experiences litigating the case with bob patrick who was the governor of massachusetts for two terms, he and i litigated case in selma, alabama and it was a wonderful experience, very challenging, people accused of a criminal case jefferson beauregard 1/3 from alabama the u.s. attorney in that case we were up against someone with a lot of power and my point is i learned most of what i know working at the naacp derek is

in many ways an important reason i did that because after working in the civil rights business and had these other options and he is the one who said you need to go out and litigate, meet the people who are hurting it gives you not only a sense of confidence but a sense of values that this is important >> host: in "lift every voice: turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice," lani guinier talks about selma, alabama, the kiss or context. it is much broader than if you had just seen the movie. there are 100 more chapters the need to be added to what the movie shows. is that a fair statement? >> guest: i enjoyed the movie but it is the top of the cake, the frosting.

it didn't have -- they were trying to reach a broad audience. i think they succeeded in doing that but i would like to see something follow up in greater depth and that gets more of the people living in selma and living in that era who tell their story. he was -- a black lawyer in selma who feels in some ways he has two identities. on the one hand as of lawyers, and the litigator he has to get those judges on his side. he has to get the judges to trust him, that when he makes an argument there is merit to that argument. on the other hand he identifies with the pilots who were challenging the status quo, dale

chestnut, one man with two personas. >> host: someone she about in "lift every voice: turning a civil rights setback into a new vision of social justice". calif. high. >> caller: how are you doing? i want to thank c-span and lani guinier, a terrific program. i live in havana cuba where i retired three years ago, i am getting a new view of america from down there and die went to yale, undergrad, univ. of virginia law school, i was a law professor in places like to lane and other places i visited and i sued lawyers for legal practice in california and even sue lawyers for obama three years ago, up the bank's, so i have been all around and one of my complaints i guess, two things

is lack of diversity in the legal profession including academia when it comes to latinos. i was always the only latino and all these law schools five different law schools where i talked and also the federal government latinos if you look at these statistics only about 8% of the federal employees are latinos and most of them are janitors so when you get to the level of lawyers where i was i was the only latino there and even at the time i was teaching law school harvard law school have continued latino professor. i don't know if it has improved since then but i just wondered what i your thoughts about the difficulties that i saw in having latinos in the legal profession, specifically in legal education. the other thing i have since i

live in havana and have been a socialist all my life is i see there is not a socialist voice in the united states. there is a gallup poll in 2010 that said 37% of americans have a favorable view of socialism but when you look at the politics all you see is bernie sanders, are only socialist in congress. when you look good the new york times you don't see any socialist or latino columnists or anything and it is sort of -- i don't know if harvard has known chomsky and harvard law school not but if you could say a few comments. >> what years were you in dlj? >> caller: i was at the fdic suing lawyers, i wasn't at the

o.j.. >> host: what years were you there? >> caller: i retired three years ago so we are -- >> guest: 2012 or so? >> caller: yes. december of 2011 i think was my last day. i work 2011, 2010. >> host: what are the mechanics of moving to have an act? how can you move to have an act? do you have to renounce american citizenship? what are the mechanics? >> repatriated but for 12 years i have been going back and forth. under obama i can go legally. i'm married to a cuban woman, the eighth wedding anniversary and so i bought a house i bought a car. one of the 1% of cubans that has a car. is a different culture but i was

born there when i was 8 years old and to me my heroes were always j.. i married a woman, bush and the republican party. does your living cuba as well. we go back and forth. i got four american california kids. >> host: manny has a book in there too. >> i got a book out. if you want to do that. it is called q but e-mails. my happy face and it is called cuba for key women and humus is what you call foreigners in cuba, what cuba is about. my new passion is tried to explain cuba to the rest of

america. >> i didn't get a sense there was any question he was asking me a there it than are there more latinos. >> caller: >> host: he wanted to get your impression of latinos. >> it is not a large percentage of faculty. that is something people are working on to change but it hasn't yet succeeded. >> host: is there a known shawn's the lakers at harvard law school? >> i would say those people are tired. they feel -- there is so much

emphasis on education a small group of people most of whom come from families of some wealth. there was a time when the faculty as well as students were much more engaged in political activities where now for the last ten years much more quiet. at the same time given what happened in the last year with the police killings of a number of black males there has been a renewed interest in issues of race and not just in black or white but also asian-americans

and latino americans. >> host: any conservatives? >> guest: of course. i won't out of them and say this person is conservative, they all speak for themselves but it depends what you need by conservatives. a lot of people, shouldn't sale lot but a good number of people who are interested in economics which takes you to a different domain of law and it is more about economics and the bought. >> the female, explain the history and significance of tyranny of the majority and this country is moving from white majority to white-minority. are there behavior's in the present or future to be expected as a result of the loss of power inherent in losing the majority?

>> guest: i got the facts but not clear on the concern. do you have a sense of what this person -- >> host: tell us about "the tyranny of the majority: fundamental fairness in representative democracy," your first book, and secondly as we move into more of a pluralistic society where white population will be less than 50% in this country, what have you got? >> caller: >> guest: thoughts are consistent. raptors and think about everything in black and white, republican versus democrat we need to expand our understanding of people's politics and goals and having a two party system limits that sense of connection

based on commitment. this or that. if you don't careful -- you don't have much of its lease. if you had a system that was more like germany, more like south africa, more like countries where there are multiple parties, not just two parties on the democrat or republican as in you have opportunity, it is an important opportunity to get more of the citizens involved in the ball but laurel process involved in focusing and watching and thinking about what congress is doing. if it is only the democrats versus the republicans you have to make a choice that doesn't represent fully what your concerns are because it is arbitrarily saying you can only have these two choices whereas maybe there are a couple things republicans are doing, a couple

things democrats are doing and a couple things neither of them are doing that you would like to do. where would you like to put yourself? there are groups of people who are very much to the rights or very much to the left but very small not necessarily influential. we have a tweet 2-party system. i don't think that is democracy at its best. it is democratic but we can do better. >> host: i you ever uncomfortable being in one of the two parties presumably the democratic party? >> guest: i don't feel uncomfortable, i just feel it is inadequate. i feel i have no choice because you -- this is why those system we impose on germany at the end of world war ii has a lot of value we should consider since we offered it to somebody else,

they are using it, that is going back to those who were not listening for three hours sitting germany you get two votes one for somebody who represents your district, your community and one for somebody who represents your ideas. in that way you get a congress that is much more diverse that can create different kinds of connections depending on what the issue is. people are not required to vote a particular way because there are only two parties. it is much -- it is much more engaging and as a result if we did something like that in the united states we would have higher levels of participation. that is another thing we don't admit that we really should. we have at most 60% 65% of the population voting. you go to other countries, 80%,

australia, you are required to vote. if you don't you are punished. in the united states somehow we want to make it difficult for some people to vote or it is not necessary not necessarily so we want to make it difficult but we are comfortable having made it difficult for people who don't have access to a car, truck or van. people who don't have a lot of money in order to take time off from work to engaged in political activity or to even vote. somehow we blame the people opposed to our a lot durrell system. i am thinking of a case that i litigated with a professor at stanford in arkansas in which we were challenging some of the

people the decision, 15% of the vote if you got more of the vote and what that meant in this part of arkansas is for many of the working class with the they were white or black they didn't feel enough incentive to participate a car, truck or van, to me that is about -- we tend to put the burden on the individual land

they they could the. effect they didn't walk 13 miles is their problem. or we could say our goal is to get as many people participating in the political process because it will influence the outcome of the process in a way that is more fair and number 2 it is a way of inviting everyone to reconsider our initial commitment and i may not agree with my, quote, direct opponents there is some measure of the future of the potential. if i consider what the third or fourth person is saying and we are not locked into democrat for republican. there's more diversity. >> host: next call from new york a high, kenneth. we're going to put you on hold. got to turn down the volume on

your tv. craig in tulsa, oklahoma. >> caller: it is not laudable goal. have you ever considered education will philosophy. what i mean by that is since the publishing of the maryland conspiracy there have been two education loss philosophies use in america. one is damaging not only to minority communities but all communities. if we don't have children than what do we have. a study of arkla muscles. i found one educational philosophy puts productive citizens out. the other puts out an inordinate amount of youthful offenders. instead of graduating with cap and gown, it is a given that they will get their yellow jumpsuit. what i found -- orange jumpsuit.

the two philosophies are based in human nature. one is the biblical philosophy of child raising which is a need discipline some time this, children are born pristine, they will always jewess rice they need a counselor to tell from what to do and they will do it. that fails because the bullies get canceled and go on and get bullied and that turns into the bullied kids, the smaller kids get into gamecocks. it feeds games because the adults won't. so that also leads to columbine which made me wonder about all this. what i found is the biblical philosophy view of child raising works and has worked since our founding. the new philosophy is the philosophy of plato which has come in and it is destructive.

>> there is a lot there. lani guinier? wikipedia i don't think he was asking a question. he was making a statement. >> host: anything you want to agree or disagree with or question him on? >> guest: i agree with three quarters of what he said. we have to talk at greater length but i agree with him that there is a difference between building a society that has emphasis and commitment to developing productive citizens versus a society that abandon certain groups of people and as a result you get youthful offenders who could have made a contribution to society, the ways in which our country works

but instead end up costing millions, billions of dollars because they spend their life in prison. >> host: in your book "becoming gentleman: women, law schools and institutional change" is that a tongue in cheek title? >> guest: it is based on my own experience which was at yale law school there were not many women, maybe a fourth of the student body was women and i was taking a course in cooperation with a professor who said good morning, gentlemen. there were at least seven women in the class, you too will become gentlemen of the bar. this was a nut room that had very large larger-than-life

portraits of men. i didn't focus on it when i was in law school but ten years later i was asked to come and speak as an event at yale law school in support of the 40th school in support of the 40th year of brown vs. board of education decision and i was on a panel and all of a sudden i felt i couldn't talk and i wasn't sure, i gave my little talk very quickly and i then looked and those same portraits of the gentlemen that i had experienced when i was in the same room and that is when i realized being in an environment that you don't belong makes it

very difficult to concentrate and makes it difficult for you to feel competent to feel as if i can't do this. since this professor said good morning, gentlemen, every day, and in the same room ten years later i realized it had a lasting effect so that is the reason i address or challenge our goal is educator's to make men and women, quote, gentlemen. >> host: lani guinier's most recent book is out "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america". richard in dei wer, please go ahead with your question or comment for lani guinier. >> caller: earlier caller, brian 15 or 20 minutes ago wanted to review followers of

those fire suppands the caller noted by jewish young men and others rather your guest had responded to her own experience and didn't address the question. >> host: in stead of that, why don't you put it into question form and make it your question. what would you like lani guinier to respond to? >> caller: you neglected having the guests respond to the question. i am bringing this to you. >> host: i appreciate that. anything yo c1 flike lani guinier to respond to? >> caller: i would like her to respond to what brian -- >> host: tell us what ryan said in your own words? >> caller: i just told you, you forgot all ready? >> host: there are a lot of

words going on here. i am not sure where he was going. i apologize if i didn't follow as closely. i am not a law school prospect, trust me. anthony is in mount sinai, new york. with your question or comment for lani guinier? >> on oller: thank you for spending the afternoon with us and this opportunity for me to ask you a question and thank you for your patience and i apolooing on h for the last calleques he does not realize the degree with which you go to -- it is not easy your job and i know you resoing the best you can and i greatly appreciate that. lani guinier, my question i have is what can we do the state of democracy seems to be in declindd there seems to be no safeguards when you have -- the code presidency of george w. butho and dick cheney they came to power, their biggest funder

was a group called enron. that was where a lot of their money came to rise to power and they seemed to coming to power with the grand degree of baggage as well as ulterior motives and they led what was basically the la? est military industr> cl complex into a war against the nation. that comiziied with 12 years of sanctions and my other question -- are you there? >> host: yes. >> other calls coming in on my phone. it is distracting. the george bush and cheney, the gu3 c1 started a war, i felt as though they came into the presidency with the conflict of interest. halliburton does business before our government, a vested interest in starting a war he

profited immensely from. my last question is barack obama, his first signing statement as president of the united states was to let go or grant immunity to the telecom industry for having spied on american people. spying on the american people for a great number of years. there was at&t executive named cline who was on c-span and part of the class action lawsuit. president obama is a constitutional law scholar. how could he grant immunity for what was basically defying the constitution and stopping that court case from going forward? >> host: anthony, hang on. let's see if the professor has anything for you. >> guest: it is interest >> guest: it is interesting, anthony, what you said at the very beginning i completely agree with and that is we are

real-estate of democracy in decline as opposed to a state of democracy that is bugging and blooming in ways that encourage more people to participate. once you got beyond that you lost me. i apologize. i don't know anything about the idea of george bush and cheney coming in to power through war. you are moving into an area where i frankly don't have expertise. do you consider yourself to the political? what does -- >> host: are you involved in politics at all? do you take positions? you write position papers? >> guest: for candidates? >> host: anytime. >> guest: no. i am critical of our understanding of a democratic

mission. i sternly vote and i am happy to engage in a conversation with people why i would vote and why but i am very disappointed with the american system of floating where for example you have these new rules the supreme court is interpreting cases from around the country, particularly in the south but not only in the south in which we are discouraging people from voting and then claiming those people who are the problem as opposed to rethinking or conceptualize in alternative system is that might engage more people in the participation of this country. i would be very enthusiastic about a system that got 80% or 90% of the people to vote and

feel like they are engaged in a democracy in which they are citizens in which citizens are respected. >> host: what you think of voter id laws? if someone has a voter id to present at the polls? >> guest: i don't object to voter id but i object to the burden being put on the individual to get the information that enables them to be a voter when in fact in a democracy the burden in my opinion should be on the state to make it easy for all the people in the country to participate in the election. i am not saying in some way they should miss use their vote but i feel as a society we should be more committed to encouraging people to vote rather than

discouraging them. >> host: thomas is calling in from columbus, ohio. >> caller: thank you for having me and it is a pleasure and honor to be able to talk to lani guinier. i have -- bear with me. i never studied in junior high, high school or whatever. my hobby has been reading for 47 years. i am 60. not everything can be changed but nothing can be changed until that is faced. i am an alcoholic. when i face my alcoholism i was able to get sober. i have been sober since 1986. i let myself know that i am an alcoholic i faced it and what i want to say to make my comment shorter is in the book the

united independent conference college system concept, a textbook, workbook and for victims of racism, white supremacy and he said in that book to you understand the concept and dynamic of racism in this country? everything else will only confuse you. and i am a firm believer of that and what i want to ask her is shouldn't we put the name racism on the actions and the love that their passing and make it a daily part of our speech?

our life and our ancestors life. >> host: thank you, sir. lani guinier. >> guest: i want to say congratulations because he has been sober since 1986 and that is something that is hard to do and i am proud of him for sat. i also like his idea that we name what is happening more honestly. i couldn't really give you a sense of how that would be done or how it would affect people. i think his goals were very

understanding. >> host: let me put my spin on the statement he made. everything in this country is about race. it always has been always will be and i am overstating it, making it way too obvious but -- >> guest: i didn't hear that. he said the dynamic of racism. what he intended, i would have to talk to him, get to know him better before i could speak but i think he was saying as a 60-year-old how kollek has been sober since 1986 that he has been in a position to observe the way in which he as a black man and other people have faced challenges throughout their lives and haven't been

respected for taking advantage of the help that was given to them and working together to overcome the challenges. he has been sober since 1986 and that is a real accomplishment for somebody who has he said is an alcoholic. he has been successful at that but i think he feels he has been unsuccessful having been sober and living until he is at least in his 60s but not really -- he still feels i have think that this -- time for people -- it is time for the society to engage people like him with other people in conversations so that it is not just blaming him, but what in this particular community or what in terms of your children or what in terms of your grandchildren would you want to change or do you think

should be changed in order to encourage more people to be participating in an affirmative way rather than a negative judgmental way. >> host: if someone picks up your book "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america" will they learn if you think $60,000 year harvard education is worth it? >> guest: if they read that book? i don't think they will come to any decision whether they should go to harvard or if they have the money to go to harvard. certainly i would say a large percentage of the students at harvard come from families for whom $60,000 a year hayes each of one's children is not that difficult. a large percentage of the students are from -- parents are

alums or people, parents have enough money to subsidize their children. i don't know the data. i don't want to mislead anybody, but there are certainly students at harvard, some of the students have taken my law school classes, one brilliant student who came and became a research assistant for me and my sense is they didn't have money in harvard. possible to enroll. i do think that as a society, not about fixing harvard or fixing yale or stanford.

it is really about fixing higher education more generally so that we are more like canada, where if you have a high school record of 80% of your classes did well that you are entitled to go to college. to me, that is partly generated by the commitment to the importance of democracy and engaging people in that democracy that is being ignored. a lot of the people who go to places like harvard or yale or stanford come in with the desire to make a contribution to the larger society and they graduate

with a different commitment which is to make a lot of money. so the democratic commissioner of higher education gets lost. it worries me in part because we are focused on competitive individualism rather than collaborative working together collaborative problem solving where you bring people with different strengths together and they learn how to use those ranks in a way not to dominate others but to collaborate with them. >> caller: >> host: we are almost out of time. if someone were to pick up one of your books tell them which want to pick >> guest: "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america". >> host: why is that? >> guest: that is the newest book and the one that i would

really appreciate feedback on. do you agree with what i am doing more suggesting? have you had a similar experience? are there better ways of aged kidding our young people? i am very interested in an ongoing conversation about higher education. >> host: there are quite a few courses offered free online. >> guest: that is not what i have in mind when i talk about higher education. what i am thinking is this is an experience where you have a chance to work with other people to solve a problem and it prepares you for that challenge in the world, not just the university or college you are attending and i think it is

really important to engage people in decisionmaking that will affect their lives and the lives of their children but also important that they can engage in that collaboratively meetings bringing together benefiting from differences rather than remake and so they're all the same. >> host: e-mail chester -- does that sound familiar? >> guest: i had a sister who went there. >> host: what is that? >> guest: it is up rick school k-12. >> host: i wish to hear your thoughts on proportional representation voting that i believe occurs in the city of

cambridge, municipal elections and secondly the personal note about the school. i went there with your sister mary, graduated with her in 1974. where is she and how is she doing? if you don't want to address personal questions that is the deal but proportional representation voting city of cambridge. >> guest: proportional representation voting there are lots of different approaches. the key point and i think a better example of cambridge is what i have seen in the south and that is everybody in the community in the county gets a certain number of votes and this is in other communities as well and you can use those four votes in any combination, but all four on one person you can pick four people and give each of them one

vote. you can give two votes to one person and two votes to another. it is a way of ensuring that the people in the community are making the decisions as to who is elected rather than the people who are in a position of great power determining who should be elected and choosing who should be the candidate. the idea of proportional representation is similar to what i mentioned earlier in terms of germany. everybody gets to vote. one vote for the party and another vote for the individual who is representing their particular community, is not proportional representation, there are many alternatives we could consider. the only reason i am going at lincoln about this is we are currently using a system of voting that was brought to our attention in the eighteenth

century. we are in the 21st century and we have access to many more ways of being fair and distributing power. we shouldn't be locked into what the founders did in the eighteenth century especially when so many of those founder's own >> host: "the tyranny of meritocracy: democratizing higher education in america" is lani guinier's newest book. harvard law professor and author, thanks for being on "in depth". >> guest: thank you. i really enjoyed it. >> c-span created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable satellite provider. >> here's a look at upcoming

book fares and festivals happening around the country. on march 14th-fifteenth booktv will be at the university of arizona with live coverage of the seventh annual tucson festival of books. the following week the va festival of the book will be held in charlottesville, va.. march 25th through the 29 the tennessee williams literary festival. and the los angeles times festival of books will take place on the eighteenth and nineteenth of april and will air live on booktv. let us know about the affairs and festivals in your area and we will add them to our list e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> being published this week.

look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv.org. >> give me --

>> welcome to galveston on booktv. located in an island off the gulf coast texas is the main port for the texas navy during the texas revolution and served as provisional capital of the state of texas. is visited by 6 million tourists experiencing beaches and other attractions. with the help of comcast partners we will learn about the history of this city from local waters. we begin with casey green -- casey greene undone 1900on the 1900 storm that devastated galveston. >> the 1900 storm struck galveston in 1900 on september 8th, a