>> author and princeton university professor eddie glaude sits down for "after words" with national urban league president marc morial to discuss the state of black america. this book is "democracy in black." >> host: i'm marc morial, i'm the president of the national urban league and i'm proud to be here with professor eddie glaude of princeton university. professor, welcome. >> guest: i'm honored. as my mother would say back home in mississippi, this is high time. i'm really honored. >> host: you've written a new book we want to talk about. we also want i think it's always fascinating to viewers and certainly too many how you got from moss point mississippi, a great community down on the gulf coast, all the way to princeton

university. maybe we are just over the toggle bit about yourself estimate it's because folks like me. i'm a country boy who made it big. that's what i'd like to see. my dad was a the second posting from black african-american postman hard at the post office. >> host: that was a big job. >> guest: we were living in moss point at the time in just one side of town to the other side. we were the third african-american family that moved into this nice neighborhood on the hill. he knew he had precocious kids. we went into a better school system. much more disciplined. didn't have as many distractions. went to, integrated school, wrote of the because moss point is the type of data it was predominantly black. people worked in shipyards, and

having to do with periodic layoffs and dealing with, but i some wonderful teachers. my sister graduated valedictorian of our high school and she went to selma. i wanted to leave home because i had a very contentious relationship with a man called my dad. she which is spelman, but everything i am is because of him. i went to a summer science program, lied on the application is that i wanted to be a doctor. i went into conditions your beautiful these are. i went into the office of the dean of admissions at the time, dean hudson. some science program at i sat down and i said i'm going to convince you not to send me home. and for 30-40 minutes i sat there and told them why he

should at me. i walked out of the office with a scholarship. my mother put me on a bus with a powder blue suitcase, a greyhound bus, and from that moment on, morehouse has been in the. >> host: when did you know that you wanted to be a scholar? when did the idea of teaching and being a scholar really, really grasp view, grand view? did you get there after a long line in the road or was it something you focus on from early on transferred my mother told me i was born to push a pencil because i was lazy and didn't like manual labor. i asked once what can i get shift yard? she said to go someplace else. i realized i want to be a professor when i was a more it. he was a theologian trained out

of every and each is took an interest in me. i remember i would say something and he would just put his head on the table. >> host: the relationship with a faculty member who becomes a mentor. and i'm sure a friend. >> guest: close friend. effingham so beautiful about it, i did have to navigate and negotiate how i got there, whether or not i should be there. i walked into brawling all, when it is terminal. everything around me just a from who i was. even though i was come from a working-class family, post office was a big job back then. my mother claimed toilets. had her first baby when she was in eighth grade but my dad stuck with it. they made a life for the family. but it was at morehouse that

something was putting me. even as i'm struggling with morehouse and to try to get out like three or four times, but it was something about this race, sunday by the dedication to justice, something about martin luther king statue from over at the king chapel as you know. he ha have spoken at the king chapel many times. giving us the charge that changed my life. i always say wherever i am i am supposed to be. moorhouse educated me. winston trained me. i am in morehouse men were ever i go. >> host: moorhouse was transformative. so you would say to those young men who are looking for a top college experience come to -- >> guest: they come in morehouse man. look at tuskegee, look at xavier sisters, look at spelman. look at bennett.

hbcus play such a crucial but the challenge, i say this in the book, challenge go and you know this, given your work is that much of company of institutions that were so central to us, to our flourishing, they were crucial for our salvation. they provide us free space is to imagine ourselves in robust terms. many of those institutions struggling to keep their doors open. >> host: is talk about this. the truth is that our institutions and those who may look at these institutions from the outside me since a remark ability about how, in fact, in the days of reconstruction and during the days of segregation certainly into civil rights and beyond you had 100 plus

institutions of higher education that were historically black. and next to that you had dozens and dozens and dozens of voluntary associations, whether they be religious organizations, fraternal organizations, civic organizations and professional organizations which gave african-americans who were excluded an opportunity to organize themselves for the benefit of the committee. sell some would say that in the age of post-civil rights, these institutions have outlived their relevance and usefulness. how would you respond? >> guest: that's wrong. the reason i would say that is the presumption is that post-civil rights, immigration

has happened in a substantive and significantly. but you know by way of the work you do and i know by the places i teach, the places wher which h of the places i navigate that immigration isn't really a reality in many other sectors. more importantly, in addition, i talk about some and a book called the value gap. that value gap is something i think is fundamental. we had the achievement gap, wealth gap, empathy gap but underneath it all is something that is much more fundamental and that is to believe and why people matter more than others. who believes that? i think it's not about individuals. i think it's about the way in which the country has been built. what i mean by that go back to the example of me moving from one side of town to the other. when we moved from decide of moss point to the website, i remember when my dad was moving

to the side, i was eight years old your the police drove by and my dad got the keys and said yeah, i own it. i was outside playing with my tonka truck and i hear my neighbors stop playing with that boy. i grabbed my coat and when inside. i tell my daddy, vietnam vet, worked hard, his eyes dark and and then he runs outside. now typically the story, that is the story of american racism. black family achieves the american dream. big house on a hill, child is wanted by some means. adult and the child spends his entire life working over against that work. the interesting thing is that at eight years old i knew but removing the black side of town to the white side of town. >> host: i had an experience, not exactly the same, we went,

my sister and i, mid '60s, just as the schools in new orleans integrated, the school we went to was about three blocks past the dividing line between the black neighborhood we live in a predominantly white neighborhood. one day, i believe i was in first or second grade, a white kids invited several of those black kids to go play at the playground, which was about a half a block away but it was a predominantly white playground. we begin to play it after we were there about 15 minutes, a mother came up and ran us off. she ran us off by saying you know you shouldn't be here. you don't belong here, and if you don't go home you are going

to be in trouble with your mother. no of course at that age you interpret it as i was doing something wrong. not understanding or really knowing that she was basically saying look, black kids don't belong on the playground. usually do, you get the realization going that you are being run off of a place where you have every right to be. those experiences are sometimes tough to get beyond. what did it say to you? did you harbor a sense, if you will, anger or a sense of befuddlement? how did you reconcile that experience? >> guest: all of a sudden you find that maybe the boys were playing with his fathers have such such a nice person. in fact, he may be a racist.

>> guest: the thing that came out was my dad who was a really strong personality, he wasn't happy and the always made it clear to us that we were valued. that whatever these people said, it meant nothing. his rage in response to it signaled to us that we should not abide it. so i remember when we moved in, the neighbors in the back shot the back window out with the pelican. my dad responded with a 12 gauge shotgun and blew one of the limbs off the tree and said don't shoot back here again. that was a model. when we think of racism we think about the moment of injury. what i'm thinking about is much

broader. i knew something was different about me as a child biting fired i grew up in before we move. every time it rained because the pipes were not as good, our neighborhood flooded. before we moved to the west side. our sidewalks were not paved. our baseball field, because i was a baseball player, hi chris. no backstop. the schools were not good. the houses were smaller. so by being called that word we wouldn't overcome it was just the icing on the cake. i had already learned, when we talk but where is the value gap can who believes it, it's built into the very environment of our society. >> host: how does it manifest itself in 2016? so if one says you're actually right this is, in fact, what and

how does it manifest itself? the concept of institutional issues, challenges hard for people to grasp. because it can be in front of them and they don't see it, and how does it manifest itself transferred two quick examples. one is a story and one is a tragic reality. first of all my son. my site does not at brown university, a sophomore, majoring in urban studies. he had anderson we had to go to into rich neighbor. he does and he's in this park anything is reported to police cruiser drives by. this is in providence. does a quick u-turn and pulls up on the sidewalk, jumps out, hits him in the eye with a flashlight and looks at the bushes and says who are you and why are you here? my son says i'm a student at brown and doing an assignment.

the police officers the park closes at 9:30 p.m. my son says yes, but it's only 7:30 p.m. the other officer comes round with his hand on his weapon and he says, they both link and, park closes at 930 tonight. my son put his hands up. and since we don't want any trouble. this was 2000. that's one story. the other store is flip michigan. united community devastated by deindustrialization, devastate national by the loss of manufacturing, automobile industry. now they're dealing with the fact that their babies have been poisoned because badwater, lead. what does that mean? somebody made an economic decision not to upgrade the pipes, get water out of the river as opposed to going from detroit. made the decision because they

knew these people who live in that community somehow were valued less. so from policing to access to opportunity. you know social science data has said that for every one opportunity african-american even in the workplace, a white person will get four or five opportunities. we know in terms of social network. social networks are defined 73%. >> host: when you talk about the value judgment, talk about the book in the context and why you wrote the book. because i've read the book. what's the take away that you want a reader of this book treachery the first thing i want is we are at -- we have experienced the extraordinary joy and symbolic significance of the first african-american

president. but as you know more than anyone, the reality is that african-americans are getting kicked out at every turn. particularly these young folks who came of age with a black president are trying to figure out how they're going to make their way to give you all of this economic devastation not only over the last eight years but over the last two, three decades. i wanted to write a book to say that we need to fundamentally reimagine our politics. the stakes are so high and we are in territory the we've never seen before because we are coming off of a just by the first african-american president. we are going to have to speak to black suffering in a way that is radically different. and so the book is really about dealing with the paradox of people talking about the great recover in relation to the great recession, given all the devastation in our communities. and the fact our babies are

being shut down in the street daily. >> host: with the first black president, i want to take you back to january of '09. in january '09 there was a self-congratulatory narrative been created that quote-unquote the country because of a single election on a single day had somehow transformed itself into this quote postracial america. it manifest itself because there were those who said that organizations like the one, like the national urban league and a close their doors, discontinue their work, are no longer relevant because quote your community has one of its own in the white house. at that point and at that time, what was your reaction to that

thought process and the inherited? >> guest: i said we had, i've been over this very, very, very well. because our member watching cnn and i remember bill bennett sang on election night no more excuses. and i said oh, my god. we're going to be diligent. we are going to have to be alert. we're going to have to be more politically mature. at that point i thought, our member saying this this to my wife and even though we were experiencing the joy of watching president obama in chicago, at hyde park, and i said we're in for some dark time. they were not only questioned urban league, now the question hbcus, they will question, and they have questioned any attempt to speak specifically to the

suffering of black committees. what we witnessed over the last eight years, and you've seen this through your work come as a difficult it has been to give voice to the suffering that is taking place. >> host: at the time i immediately believed that the postracial was a spin move being confected that was false and overblown. because historically the ascension of the advent of the first african-american in any institutional instance, whether it's jackie robinson in baseball, the first african-americans who work in the class that my father was in but it became the first black to do certain things, it never meant that there was this immediacy of change. in fact, history i think teaches

that the corollary is true, that all of these advances are followed by backlash. and an irrational fear by some of some of things are going to hell in a handbag. so i thought it was not only false but also thought that the objective for america should not quote be what i call the postracial but should be a multicultural democracy that function for everyone, so my you can get past some aspect of history without a real clear sense of what your athlete trying to create. so in that sense though you have to concede a couple things. when the president took over in 2009, no matter who that would

have been in 2009 in january, they were facing 700,000 jobs being lost per month, a banking debacle and the financial crisis which was more extreme than any in american history. the decline and almost demise of the american automobile industry, and in many respects black people were suffering. black people were not the only people suffering that all people were suffering of black people may have been suffering more. so in that context, in the context with those facts, how would you evaluate the president's performance? i mean in terms of time and i would start by saying what did you expect? if you could've written the script of barack obama, giving him a january 20, 2009 memo,

what would it have said? >> wow in some ways i wish, so let me try to answer because there's a lot in that. part of what didn't tackle what can i expect i didn't expect much but i also was hopeful. does that make sense? there's something about that i was speech, something about seeing him in hyde park that maybe we have an opening. but at the same time i understood the forces that were afoot. but i knew we green screened him. what i mean by that is we may president obama everything we wanted him to be. the antiwar folks they didn't the antiwar candidate. the progressives who want a progressive savior made him a progressive. african-american judges were an african-american president, that's all we wanted.

so we didn't really look at what his policies were. when you read the audacity of hope, when you see what he says, president obama is a senseless democrat. plain and simple. is not some lefty. he's not someone coming from -- is on the left. he is a centrist democrat in the vein of bill clinton. support of what i've been wanting if i were to write something in 2009 is a progressive agenda. do what you have to do to stop the bleeding of the economy but let's we orient, let's change the frame, let's change the frame so the every -- everyday ordinary working people can have a chance, a chance to only dream dreams that make those dreams a reality. what would that mean? that would mean in some ways we would have to change the economics that we have seen since reagan and some ways since carter.

we would have to change the economic philosophy that the democratic party in silly ways has conceded to so we can begin to emphasize how do they get these wages from being flatlined? how do we get homeownership to be such where folks are subject to predatory lending? how do we check the financialization of the economy? what's interesting about president obama's state of being is that he understands what the new economy means for everyday ordinary folks. he understands the level of inequality that's happen. so on his watch white wealthiest out 13 times that of black wealth. on his watch child poverty has increased. african-american child poverty has increased 38%. for the first time that is keeping the data are more black poor people and our poor white children and three times as many white children in the country than the our black children. so on his watch hbcus is going to escalate to keep -- post but

also the black unemployment rate has gone from almost 14 down to 8%. on his watch 17 million people, a significant portion being african-american now have health care and health insurance. so on his watch, happy, satisfied with the status of economy and the conditions of black joblessness our joblessness rate large? not at all. but if you think it's important to recognize that on his watch black and the plan the rate has come down guess but i agree with that. >> host: significantly. and the subcommittee to take the affordable care act by itself, it's done more than any other single gesture to reduce health disparities. >> guest: i grant you this.

what's interesting come when we talk about the unemployment rate, at the height of the great black depression which a call in the book, it was a recession, it was a depression, still is in so many ways, in some places it was at 15, 16%, particularly demographics 16%. now we have to be very wary of the genuine numbers because of holiday hiring. macy has already said they will lay off 40%. what's interesting is that the height of the great recession unemployment for the nation was at nine-point something. about 9.6 or something like that. people were screaming, this is the greatest economic calamity in a generation. we are still at a level of crisis. we don't want to take away from the president. we don't want to take the affordable care act.

i do know there are certain moments, and i would love to get your reaction to this. when there's a way in which president obama may rates the stock a black freedom struggle which narrows it to culmination in his election for the moments when there's a sense in which the more radical elements get rid of us been irresponsible. i'm thinking about the speech of the 50th anniversary of the march on washington, or the weight in selma and which are stored gets wrapped into a narrative of american progress and american exceptionalism. and what has happened over the course of his presidency, over and beyond the actual policies come we can go back and forth is a narrowing of our tradition. i always think about the years the urban league was founded, 1900 before the naacp in '09. think about that period. black association so rich, black

common is, black pant africans, naacp think about international, the vibrancy of black politics, the vibrancy of black politics. >> host: let's be honest. it was also a period where hundreds of people were being lynched, were african-americans had no right to vote. ..

>> this is a debate about the

president and his role. barack obama was the first black president but also president of the country where african-americans make up 12-13 percent of the population. also a president elected by the multi dimensional coalition. he has african-americans, he has latinos and whites. he carries the majority of the white vote in 10-12 states. the majority of african-american and latino vote nationwide. in the south, mississippi, alabama, and missouri he doesn't get more than 14% of the vote in that state. here you come to power understanding, if you will, you are the inheritor of this

dimension. what would be your advice about here is your responsibility to the african-americans, mr. president? >> that is a hard one. >> but that is the question. >> going back to what we talked about saying how do we change the frame. i think i wanted to president to be bolder. what i mean by that is change the frame. if we have to list all of those, which is something that comes with sbr's, and sbr managing southern races, we have to lift those because we don't want to trigger white fear or white backlash. as long as we do that we allow that stuff to stay in place. as long as we engage in the practical politics of navigating and moving about and trying to avoid what is really at the heart of the problem and that is the value, what is really at the

heart of the problem, so when you govern and engage in reverse dog whistle, i have to speak to let you know i am not the candidate that will allow black folks to rule. >> for president obama and i said there were very few, if any, role models. although i would say, and i have said this to many reporters, the best example of the trajectory the president faced can be seen in the faces of the first african-american mayors. it was the same thing. expectation, backlash, and very challenging navigation. lots of first african-american mayors, like president obama, had difficult re-elections.

their enemies came after them. they wanted to regain control of city hall in all of these communities. so president obama in many respects really had no, if you will, role models. really, if you will, had no one. this is the first african-american to hold such a high up position. so i think in fairness with the reality of the situation that the waters were so unchartered by particularly in the early days and the president was dealing with steep and difficult questions. clearly, i on the record, for the record, in the meetings have been and continue to be a component of more targeted, air specific economic policy. i don't care what you call it. here is where the poverty rates

are highest. i don't know if that is rural or suburban. i think in that vein moving the administration's economic advisors in that direction was far more difficult than i thought it should have been given to electoral coalition and the track order of what works in economic down turmoil. what i was interesting about your book was when you talked about the president was that john boehner and mitch mcconnell are not there. they are not mentioned. and the question is were you surprised by the reaction to the president's election inconstitutionally within the congress and what we will call the republican collation?

in constitutionally -- did you think it was part of those dark times? >> absolutely. i am not laying the blame of the great black depression at the feet of obama. i want to be clear of that. i liken him to a confidant man selling hope and change. but didn't change the framework. but he is not alone. bill clinton is the same. jimmy carter was the same. reagan. >> can it be done from the president? is the insteinstitutional offic the president where a movement can bring change like this? johnson's movement pushed and pressed him. >> i think of the bully pulpit of the president can open up

space for that kind of movement. we are seeing that now. i think at the end of the day, we have to confront the reality obama is on his way home and we will have to imagine how we are going to address the circumstances on the ground and what we know for sure is that there are communities in ruin and what we know for sure is the previous ways of engaging in black politics have changes because of the last year. the way in which we held the state, the way in which we engaged the white house, the way we engaged our issues publically because some of us, like you and others, had to walk the tight rope of engaging in the critical press without giving fodder to the right knowing all along communities are suffering; right? what was the opening?

the opening were these grassroots movements all across the country whether it is black lives matter responding to epidemics of our babies being murdered or the for together movement in north carolina with reverend barbara taking the martin luther king approach and organizing a broadbased coalition to challenge.

>> and the fair house act. king as a result of the activities i would call traditional, the civil rights movements, not considered traditional at the time, dr. king, whitney young, and dr. randolph were central to organizing this because they never had a march for the sake of awareness and the endgame is raising awareness. they had marches because they were trying to change consciousness to change policy. >> when we think about this, it wasn't traditional policy that got the chief fired, those folks

in the streets were the ones responsible. i am not saying that is the only form of politics. but i think we need a strategy for the streets, a strategy for everything. >> if you went on the ground in ferguson, you had new voices represented by black lives matter and you had have churches, the naacp, and urban league and others who were part of a broader coalition. the burnt out quick trip is going to be an urban league center or disengagement in youth involvement. what i sort of push back on is the notion the new movement is in contradiction to the

traditional versus complimentary to what is going on. the question for all, whether it is black lives matter, is consciousness movements do they remain consciousness or do they morph into something more substantial. >> there is a line that says democracy isn't about marches or boardrooms. at the heart democracy is about changing the context in which power operates. trying to bring it out until we have a form of black leadership in which you guys do your work, you go back there in those board rooms and you have those dark rooms, and lord knows what would happen if you were not there, but the idea of a robust form of democratic politics where every day ordinary people are not outsourcing that work to leaders like you or reverend jackson or

brother brooks or the naacp what it would mean for us to imagine robust democratic policy that is not distorted by the reality of black policy. >> i think what you are speaking to is people on the community and street need to be more engaged and more active in one way shape or form of another. and in trying to think about how the power dynamic is changing you have less spectators and participators. i like to say women can get rid of the custodial leadership.

>> since i have sat in different places. i have been an elected official, a mayor of a big city and led the national urban league. before that i was anti par tide actvist i believe a weakness is there is a single model and activism doesn't need elected officials and you don't need volunteer organizations. i push back about this sort of notion. sometimes the mainstream press promotes this that somehow there is a singular leader. and i said obama can't play that role. but he is the president of the united states and the single

leader of the nation. what do you think in terms of that going forward? what do you think? do you think the generation of elected officials have fallen down from doing their job? what is needed? >> we need an aggressive agenda to respond to the opportunity desert. we need an aggressive agenda and a plan around three central areas. we have to do it around education, around jobs, and mass incarceration. we need to focus, like laser focus, on those three areas. the closing of schools across the country and what happens in new orleans and detroit and philadelphia and chicago. what does it mean for these schools to close? what does it mean for charter schools, 4-5, failed within the

first five years. and our children are not being educated. what does it mean for our communities to be under such surveillance? as people call for more community policing and do all of these things but they are not calling for the mobilization of -- >> if you thing of it in president obama accomplishments his main accomplishments, affordable care act, dodd-frank regulatory, and the creation of continuing financial protection, and the economic recovery called the stimulus. when congress shifted, there was a proverbial wall and very few thi things could happen. what you are suggesting, and we

suggested this, we had a meeting with the president, ben and i had a meeting, reverend sharpton -- the first meeting took place on a snow day but the second meeting we pushed and pressed him for a jobs bill. we wanted a jobs bill. he tawalked out saying i will da jobs bill. it was introduced and far ranging. it didn't get a lot of publicity but we got no movement so i think in in clarity what i think your book, if there was a second book or another chapter, it would be the opposition to really, really tell the story of those that have opposed the president. and the intensity and magnitude

and the money that really, really went into the effort to create the tea party, to take back control of the congress -- >> i can see the public obstructionism and i can see the fact that the congress driven by the insanity of the tea party but what i am arguing for is something more fundamental. we need to put forward a radical vision of what democracy is in this country. i understand the practical policy. after the two years and you saw the berlin wall go up go bold. >> do you believe --

>> what if that is thought his politics? the berlin wall goes up and the book is not about president obama in this sense it is about disappoi disappointment and the current frame. there is an economic philosophy that governs this country and has produced disposable people. what we need, and you know colleagues of princeton, said we are no longer democracy but al. black folk are suffering. we need a revitalization of democratic politics. radical democratic politics. but it has been difficult because of the republican opposition and because of our failure, democrats and otherwise, to put forward a radical democratic vision that takes as its front piece the most vulnerable.

so there has been a narrowing of the constitutional frame in this country. what i am calling for in this book is a revolution of value. we have to change how we view government and the way we change how we view government is we change our demands of government. right? we have to get rid of this pipe story, this false story, from reagan and before that big government is bad. we have to understand what that has meant as they tried to starve the beast. and moved everything downstream. we have to challenge this view of government and understand that what we asked and demand of government changes. the second point is that we have to change our view of black people. to change our view of black people means we will have to change our view of white people. white people don't matter more than anybody else. and i believe, and i write this in the book, it is a

controversial statement, but i said white people are going to have to kill the idea of white people if we are going to reach -- >> what does that mean? >> what we see in the trump rallies and across the country is there are white communities that feel vulnerable because of the economic reality. and there is an assumption that voter ability is the result of big government taking things that they have earned and giving it to people who didn't earn it and don't deserve it. if racial inequality is i have to lose something for you to get something we will never win. the only way we will change that is folks are going to have to challenge this idea there is a correlation between being white and being -- >> i think what is interesting is in today's politics and today's frame you have the right

gravitating to trump and the narrative you just described. it is about economic anxiety and the problem is government. on the other side, you have anxiety, and the problem is big business. so you have people feeling anxious, and all they are doing is this: they are pointing fingers and politics, right, the art of politics, the electoral game is to win an election it doesn't help advance your plans. so what politicians to do today, more so in the past and this is because of technology, more access to public opinion polls, and more access to what people are feeling. so today a lot of politics is shaping how people feel or how politicians talk and how

candidates talk about opinion polling and what i call it the madison avenue where i think you had a time where it was more intuitive and principle driven and philosophical than what you see today. today you see techno politics on the right and left. i told folks it even gets down to people who run for office filtering out in their formula and their messaging don't show up to the polls. they will say these voters -- i don't want to count them because they will not have an impact on the outcome of the election. what i am saying is that you are making an excellent point point

here about the reality and i am not defending it, but i am describing it, which makes is difficult for bold plans to surface absent of a tremendous crisis that compels that type of thinking. i believe we need to understand democracy. small d. beyond two year and four year election. and understand democracy as being more vibrant than who we elect to office. we have seen this with wto and the ground swell around the iraq war and the ground swell around occupy and ground swelling with black lives matter. organizing is taking place on

the ground all ovthe country which gives me hope -- over the -- we have to imagine democracy in terms that are not reducible to two and four election cycles. the second is we have a crisis of imagination in this country. the first stage of revolution, revolution of value, is a revolution of what we think is possible. what is happening, and i say this in the book, and this is the key to the book, what is happening today is this: people want us to believe our only options are those right in front of us. if we are going to save this country, if we are going to transform democracy in a way of substance we have to imagine america a new and that will take work from the ground up and we will have to do that now the black man has gone home. >> you are a scholar and a distinguished scholar at a great institution as we begin to wind

down the role of academics and as a scholar you have an opportunity to talk to an audience of young people all of the time. the young people you talk to represent an important segment of the country. what is the role in the revolution of values of those in the academy versus those who are what i call on the practical side? >> you know, i think it is -- the beauty of a liberal arts education is this: it creates the condition for us to engage in that arduous task of continuing to climb from self questions. part of the ugliness of our politic and folks are so certain about everything.

they have dug in their heels. what are the things about what i do that is so wonderful is the way it engages us in the forced military and reach for broader expansion of who we take ourselves to be. one of the beautiful things about how we started was i was able to be four or five people over the four years i was there. my life was the canvas. we need to create proventual personalities. but when academics become a justifier of the current status

quo -- >> they have the obligation to be constructively critical. that is a role. sometimes that role has been adopted by the media. >> big money has taken over. >> you only have a handful of television and news organizations in america that have the power and reach to gather some of the news. social media requires one to be more sharp in exercising judgment. just because you see it or hear it on the internet -- no one is

ed titing th editing this stuff. you gravitate to the positions that reaffirm the positions you believe in. >> professor, it has been a great hour. too short. i like a little bit of what you say. i might take issues -- >> that is what we need. >> -- on the dialogue you say. i would like to see you write a book on the forecast 50 years from now. appreciate you. god bless you. >> god bless you, too. take care. >> that was after words where authors of latest non-fiction books are interviewed.

watch past after words programs online at booktv.org. >> authorer and former fox news host eric burns is live next. >> author and journalist eric burns is journalism the first draft of history. >> yes, and it is one of the reasons histories makes so many mistakes. journalism is done quickly, done according to deadlines, very often wrong, and i understand this is self-serving, peter, but something that is