[inaudible conversations] >> like a politician, kissing babies. >> i know. one two, three. >> thank you so much. >> glad to be in northern california. >> take care. see you. >> hi. >> thank you so much. >> tough for coming. >> for all you've done here. >> my pleasure. >> may i jump back there as well. >> sure. >> take a picture. have to be a -- giving you the last line of the novel. >> thank you.

>> thank you so much. >> keep up the good work, i am a high school english teacher. >> i love it. >> that's awesome. that's awesome. >> i learned another lot from you guy. >> thank you. >> nice to see you. >> you're a book lover. >> yes. [inaudible]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [speaking in foreign language]

>> great talk. >> hard to be funny dealing with these topics. >> thank you very much. >> hi there. >> came with family. you weren't him. i mean, i knew you weren't him because you're too young. >> autobiographical. >> hi there. >> good evening. >> thank you for coming. >> tried to write a book for 43 years, and every one -- [inaudible] >> i'm so honored by that.

not all book clubs feel the same way. it's good, your book has shared interests. thank you very much. >> you look familiar. >> you may have. i really had a hard time reading that book because i came looking for somebody that was -- >> okay. >> i wanted to believe in him but i couldn't really, and i was at the war. at the time it happened. and we were trying to do the same thing. it's hard. trying to find one side oar the other or one person -- >> i don't believe in -- i

believe it's -- [inaudible] >> boy, in a big -- a big way. i tell you that. get too the point where i start to sympathize with him, and then, boy, it hurt. >> good, i did what i set out to do. >> thank you for doing it. >> my pleasure. >> thank you. >> you have the hard cover. all right. >> my name is -- >> yes use, are you a collector? >> a little of both. >> 22nd, right? >> thank you. >> thank you for this one, too. black.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> my brother was in vietnam. >> he was. wow. >> wow. >> [inaudible] >> one of the untold stories. what branch was he in? >> i -- >> has a story called "a brother in vietnam." and it's about her brother who spent his tour in an aircraft carrier, with bombs, a similar experience and he was tormented by it.

>> so my brother was in the army. >> he was in the navy but dim already -- similar kind of thing. didn't actually shoot people. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> all right. i hope that -- [inaudible] >> like i say, the book gets rough at timed. thank you. >> thank you for your question. >> what was the name of the book. >> the land at the end of the world "antonio lobo antunes.

>> after reading "ashes" one of the professors at the uw, made mention of this book. >> it's not being taught. just curiosity. thank you. >> thank you. >> i just want to tell you that my husband was a professor of theater and music and a playwright and he took his play to the military during the vietnamese war, but they wouldn't let goes to vietnam. but we went in 2006. it was glorious. thank you. >> thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> hi. >> what pleasure and privilege.

>> thank you into much. >> my friends and i have a book group and we're reading your book, seven of us. we're sharing about how growing up -- [inaudible] -- don't know about history. from the beginning of our lives. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much. >> i really enjoyed the book. >> and booktv on c-span2 is

live from madison for the annual wisconsin book festival. we'll be back with more in just a few minutes. for a complete schedule of author events, visit book there.org, follow us on twitter@booktv and on facebook, facebook.com/book tv. >> the booking cawed "arms in the university." military presence in the civic education of nonmilitary students" with professor donald downs as the co-author, and professordown down outside write that though universities pride themselves on being liberally minded and open to challenging ideas, this pride seemed less merited when it comes to the military. >> right. i think that we're less open than we should be. how ready he headlines from the last two years or so all the

graduation speakers not allow today speak on campus. so i have been concerned for a long time about the status of intellectual diversity, intellectual talent on campus and after 9/11 i could see in certain places, themes about the military were part of the closed mindedness. >> in what way. >> guest: after 9/11 most of the discussion, on this cam campus that was welcome was thinking less about a military solution i'm against militarism as anybody. wars you have to be careful about. very serious endeavors, but to not even consider there might be some sort of military response along with others at 9/11 seemed to me to be shutting off an entire realm of discourse and policy thinking, which was going on all over the country at that time, and you would think a university, which is supposed to pride itself on thinking of all possible things.

it would be there, too, and wasn't as much. >> host: is there abias against the military on this campus and on others? >> guest: is in campus, we did some empirical research and there isn't much. we have hoyt here, twice they cried to kick r.o.t.v. officer train can corps off campus during vietnam but was aturning point because of the unpopularity of the war and because of the gays in the military issue. we kept r.o.t.c. and people kole rated it. some people really like it. few don't but there has been sort of a dearth of military history courses until recent time. a famous military historian here, who retired. his class is filled to the brink back in the '70s, '80s, and '90s and he retired and there was no replacement for a long time and had a big political battle. finally we got a good one who has done a good job.

so i wouldn't say there an outbias bus bias by neglect in some departments, military history, and r.o.t.r. is marginalized but i don't think it's disrespected. real problem with schools withr.o.t.c. has been kicked off or let go after vietnam. and the battle to bring them back and that was the theme of the book. look at the ivy league struggle because five of the eight ivy league schools did away with r.o.t.c. back after vietnam, and one of them brought it back in a very marginal form. a big battle on campuses, that would do after 9/11. a lot of students wanted to have more appropriate military presence, and but then again the military was discriminating against gays which conflicts with the civil rights agendas of universities, which is a proper agenda. so, groups organized to try to bring it back, and after congress and the president did away with "don't ask, don't

tell" which marginalized gays in the military it cake back to four school inside the ivy league. >> host: what's the negative effect of not having r.o.t.c. on a college cam put. >> guest: it limits limits the intellectual diversity of the university. foreign policy, military policy, are important parts of national life. sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. you look at the war in iraq. very colorful. -- very controversial but is an important part of national policy and should have a presence on campus. also, the book has really two themes. one is the intellectual diversity theme of universities and the other is what a lot of people have been writing about over the split between the civil society and the military. one percent or less of our country, are paying the price of military duty in the war against terrorism. and so most people don't really understand what's going on.

many people that are in more elite aspects of society wouldn't let their children go into the military for example. there's real split and represents a civic scandal. we're asking a very small percentage of people to do this really hard work for us, would we're just going about our davely lives so there's a split pen between the military and civil society and i talk about in the book. my thought was that having appropriate military presence on campus, abiding by the rule us of university, academic standards and et cetera would be one important vehicle for bridging that gap. so an appropriate military presence on campus, one be good for the university because broaden the university's mind and intellectual experiences and, two, might be one way to try to remedy at least to some extent the gap between the military and civil society more broadly. >> host: here at the university of wisconsin i drove by the r.o.t.c. office, very prominent on university avenue sunny.

>> guest: that's the naval one. we have all three branches. the air force is by camp randle, the big football stadium which is very prominent. and the army one is further out on observatory drive. >> host: if you go back to vietnam, what kind of protests were held here at the university, what kind of connection did the university have too the war itself? cincinnati was both. i'll start with the protests which were prominent. the madison was possibly the most radical antiwar movement in the country. that's kind of hard to say because there were so many others. but we were certainly one of them. and we had a becoming in 1970, the famous bombing of sterling hall. i happened to be in summer school here during the bombing, even though i went to another school, i went to cornell. but i was here visiting my future wife and one class in summer school, and we heard

about the bombing. an army research math center, or math research center. very prominent physicist who apparently -- i don't think he was involved in research but part of the complexer. late at night, four individualsed, antiwar, drove up with a huge truck of fertilizer and they did make some attempt to clear the place out ahead of time with a phone call but these are very dangerous things, and word never got to this man, and he was killed. family man. very high potential in research. so, we had a campus bombing that led to a death in 1970. that where is the antiwar group had to cool it a little bit but still pretty radical after that. also some fire -- firings, attempted arsons of the r.o.t.c. headquarters.

kent senate 1970, fire bombing of the army rotc that led to all the protests that led to the shooting. so, all that stuff is going on here. and this was just one of the most radical areas in the country when came to student protests. >> host: did the university have a connection with the defense department, with the research? >> guest: yes in terms of that, some of the -- that particular organization was doing research with the pentagon. we had social science programs doing research for the pentagon. there's a young scholar, ph.d student here, i was teaching at mcfarland or nearby, has a book out about 1960s in madison, and the military research. the cold war university. model applied to madison. so there's a fair amount of that going on here. we weren't do some of the high level technical work lining

universities like columbia war doing, bombs and things like that, but pretty substantial. we were part of the cooled war military industrial complex. >> host: you talk about one of the themes of the book, averages in the university, being intolerant on campus is. is there a political correctness? >> guest: a bit. >> always been there. >> guest: somewhat published of the dna of a place like this. the school was founded out of the progressive tradition, one of founded in 1855 -- no -- 1849. and we became really prominent later in 19th century, 20th 20th century, as one of the primary examples of the progressive kind of university that was taking advantage of the land act passed in the civil war during ain't are abraham lincoln. we were the first school that,

when r.o.t.c. was considered mandatory, for four years, we went to court and cut it back. the first school that did that. so, madison has that kind of tradition, which is part of the dna of the place, and one of the things that it attracted me here. although i don't tend to agree with that stuff. it gives the place a real heritage, real life. coming here was an exciting thing for me. i love this place. but i also would like to see more intellectual diversity because it would be better because you would have more base and discussions. sometimes when you have liberal orthodoxy, things are taken for granted and ideas dismissed and that's not good education. so, plus i think that we need a military. we need to have knowledge about it. hefeng insufficient knowledge of military can lead to two related but different problems.

one is it can make your -- james foulus, the editor of the atlantic, that the politicians and the public tend to be too uncritical of the military because they sort of put it up on this pedestal and don't know enough about it. so they let it -- they give tight much of a pass. -- too much of a pass. this other extreme is not respecting the military me and hard work it does and dismiss it as if you're somehow superior. let them get their hands dirty and we'll sit back in our chairs and look down on them. consider that just antidemocratic attitude. >> host: politically, that disconnect as well, that can be -- can have an effect, can't it? >> guest: it can. there are fewer people in the military that are now serving members as congress than at any time in our history. few of them come back, joany

ernst from iowa and a few others, but some recent times representation by veterans in congress was at an all-time low pretty much, and that can lead to policies that are not wise. we don't have a military experience to put the policies in the right kind of context. >> host: what do you teach here at the university of wisconsin? >> guest: i teach political science. i'm a affiliate professor at law in journalism, too, and three things that people are getting mad at, lawyers, journalists and politicians. but policy -- polysky is miss area. so constitutional law, government law, administrative law, regulation, law, politics and society. a lot of civil liberty stuff, criminal law and justice. and pride myself on having started first amendment class here.

which i did help partly to educate the campus on first amendment issues so they can make more informed judgments on zen censorship issues and we have had a lot of them in recent decades. so do seminars on privacy, foreign policy, unanimous security and the law. >> host: professor downed would arms in the universities in a sense could that fall into a first amendment -- >> guest: i put it in that context. looked at it as a way of providing the kind of -- we call it in the book productive friction. military thinking is different from that of everyday life. it's more command oriented. it's people that have to deal with violence. it's part of their profession. sort of like police in that respect. even more so. and a different kind of training. so it brings a different mindset to campus, especially given conflicts over war, like vietnam war, the iraq war, it would bring a perspective that is

sometimes different from or supplements that of the normal campus mind. and so challenges the campus mind. and freedom of speech principles and the book they talk about jon stewart mill and other free speech theorist whom i've written about before, as supporting the idea that an appropriate military presence would actually enhance the intellectual environment of the campus and we found some empirical validation for that based on surveys which are introductory surveyed. >> host: with the first amendment class, how can you incite a real argument or a real controversy in class? what is the topic -- >> guest: well, we do flag burning. we could posh nothinggraph, hate speech. when is its protected and become a threated and not protected? so inherit i-haynes dub inherently controversial issues. one case is are universities allowed to require studentses to

fund other student groups they may not like in and raises the question called compelled association. and that case went to the u.s. supreme court and i was at the hearing. the university of wisconsin madison case. the class takes place in the context of a university that according to the president of fire, the leading academic free speech protection group in the country, with whom we have a lot of links here. they claim -- the head of it, has great book on free speech and had a wonderful article with jonathan haig, and the atlantic mobil on the importance of challenging people's ideas as part of intellectual and moral growth. they said there have been more nationally known colorful spree speech type conflicts at the university of wisconsin maddison than any other school in the country in the last 20-some years. and i've been very involved in

almost all of those. a campus activist and i bring them into any first amendment class, and my motive was to -- when these cases arose, students would have the proper information about the principles and dock trophies threw make educated responses and evaluations of what ways going on rather than just circumstance late the jerky knee. that person shouldn't say that. that's bad. something like that. so, it's been really fun. >> donald downs, professor here of political science at the university of wisconsin. co-author of "arms in and the university. military province and the civic education of nonmilitary students" thank you for your time today on booktv. >> guest: thank you. ...

[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> hello. it is 9:00 p.m. the book festival has been going on for nine hours. the next event -- if you have