nothing. zero connections. i'm looking at this arm and i'm thinking -- finally i said okay, i'll bite. what are you bad as? the patient says what? i say, what are you bad as? what? i said your tattoo right down the forum, badas. what are you bad as? the patient for the first time screams out i'm badass. i'm badass. i said you spelled it wrong. [laughing] ..

. >>. [audio lost] >> good afternoon, welcome to the cato institute, my name is john samples, vice president here at cato.

an overview of our events today. we shall first hear from our author, keith whittington about his book speaking freely. then we shall have comments from cato scholar interests: and time for questions and answers for our panelists. we say words about the question and answer period. we will be taking questions via twitter , so direct your queries to hashtag cato 18. that's #cato1a. in any case, that's #cato1a. we look forward to questions here at the hyatt auditorium or online. if you do not wish to use twitter, please use the

current you were given when you checked in and we will collect those later. a few more words by way of introduction. cato institute is a public policy research organization, a think tank dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, peace. those who work here see themselves as working within a long tradition of individualism and limited government. that is a political philosophy called classical liberalism and the sometimes called liberalism. the rights of the individual matter to us. we have long defended freedom of speech as a topic of our forum today. we can be thankful for freedom of speech does enjoy support in the united states, not least because of the strong protections for speech recognized in the first amendment to the constitution . as the constitution says, congress shall make no law pressing the freedom of speech. many outside the university and some inside today wonder whether framer freedom of

speech is in danger on campuses where communities and scholars depend on free exchange of views. we are happy to have here at cato keith whittington whose new book speaking freely: why universities must do friend free speech addresses the foundations and reality of freedom of speech at american universities. that's by way of introduction 40. keith whittington is that william cromwell professor of politics and the department of politics at princeton university. he is the author of a current book speak freely as well as constitutional construction: divine powers and constitutional meaning and constitutional interpretation, original intent and judicial review and a third book , political foundations of judicial supremacy. the presidency, supreme court and constitutional leadership in us history.

this work has made whittington along with the late justice scalia a leading proponent of the school of constitutionalism of the original ism . that sounds esoteric but trust me, it's a very big deal. he has written several other scholarly works in american constitutional theory, federalism, judicial politics and presidency and is completing two new books in a very ambitious solo. one of which is repugnant loss, judicial review and an act of congress and the second one is the idea of democracy in america. and the american revolution and the gilded age. i've known keith for many yearsand it's a delight to have you here, keith . [applause] >> thanks for having me and thanks for coming out. i don't bear with me a policy

prescription today. i mostly want to talk about principles. i think there are principles that matter not only on college campuses but in american society more generally. we can think about this problem of campus free-speech is a particular microcosm of the larger problems that confront us living in a democracy more broadly so i see these principles have some particular importance for those of us who spend a lot of time in college campuses but also a lot of importance i think for all of us working in a liberal democracy more generally. so this book was a bit of an interruption to things i was otherwise working on and some of these books that are actually are genuinely about the forthcoming it this point have been sitting in my desk for quite a while and they activated a bit in order to work on this book but i did find myself increasingly disturbed over the last few years and a few months. and really disturbed by a lot of things but things with

relevance to the moment, disturbed by a seemingly endless string of events on college campuses, in particular that seem to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of what universities do and what they are for. and really not a week goes by, even days sometimes go by during the academic year , but hardly a week goes by in which there are news reports of disruptions of speakers, expansive demands for safe spaces on college campuses. calls for hiring controversial faculty, death threats against faculty and public policies sometimes designed to hollow out what universities do. love you stress coming from campus and some of them are threats from the political left but there are threats that come from the political right and mostly those come

from off-campus but in all these cases the common thread is a fundamental intolerance of disagreement, disagreement on campus but also disagreements in our society more generally and an unwillingness to accept controversy and controversial ideas. there's a tendency sometimes which i think is misguided to blame this particular generation or many of these problems and so the phrase snowflake generation is often tossed around. to characterize this generations as particularly sensitive, particularly incapable of dealing with disagreement and intolerance and like i said, i think this is a misguided way of thinking about what our problems are, and also a misguided way ofthinking about this generation of students . toleration for disagreement and respect for liberty of others are persistent challenges. not only in american society but in western liberal democracy more generally. if you look at survey research focused on people's

tolerance for free-speech and civil liberties which at this point we have been studies owing back decades, we find this is been a constant recurring problem. people saying in the abstract that they like free-speech but then when you confront them with particular examples of speech that they find unpleasant, they very quickly backpedal . and the content of what it is that they may have acceptance for, the specific speech people find disagreeable and very overtime. it's very across the political spectrum so different people have different views about what it is they regard as intolerable but it's genuinely true across american history that the abstract principles of free speech is often very easily qualified in the moment. when we see particular episodes of people trying to exercise free speech and in essence this is no different, the students of a generation ago or three or four

generations ago or even of the american populace more generally. what we're seeing on campuses therefore reflects a fundamental feature about the nature of living in democracies and recurring challenges about living in liberal democracies and they give good reasons why we need to think through carefully what our commitments are, but the principles of a liberal democracy are and it's important that we reaffirm those liberal values and disagreement and sometimes unpleasant examples of particular speech that we have to tolerate and deal with. i think also the snowflake generation way of thinking about this problem underestimate some of the ideological opposition of free speech which exists on

college campuses but on college campuses. there are some people who oppose free speech not simply because they are overly delicate or because they find particular things controversial but because they are hostile to fundamental liberal values. fortunately i think that's a small minority even on college campuses but they are important segment. of the american population and campuses in general and we should be trying to articulate what the commitments are of american democracy and liberal universities more generally in order to help persuade people that that's not that we ought to be going down and instead ought to be going down the path of tolerance and reason and deliberation about those we disagree with so the concern of my book is to show how free-speech is intimately tied to the core mission of a modern university. it's not just the case that we are legally obliged to respect those because we have a u.s. constitution first amendment and the first amendment constrained a particular public universities as state actors but it's also true those of us who value universities and those of us who are members of the campus community also value campus free-speech and those of us living in liberal democracies should value

free-speech because they are important principles and they are valuable, not only because some judges going to tell us we have to. but that requires thinking about whatthe mission of the university is and as i understand what modern universities are committed to , despite the fact there's a lot of variation about how they do this mission across the landscape is the university generally is committed to production in the nation of knowledge which means that free speech, particularly political that truth seeking function of the universities. free inquiry and open debate are necessary to generating and communicating knowledge though it's nonsensical if you think the universities are primarily there to indoctrinate. universities are there only to convey things that we already know that if we think we are pushing the boundaries of human knowledge then we need room for experimentation, unconventional thinking and for mistakes to be made which is always important than that universities are going to fulfill their core mission are quite tolerant of a wide

range of views on campus and tolerant of people saying things that are controversial, even things we think are in fact white mistaken. there are other reasons or supporting free speech, often in other kinds of environments, for example free-speech it is important to make a democratic process work . that you can't evaluate performance of your government officials unless you are free to give your criticism of those government officials and some of those concerns are less critical and thinking about the university setting but then in a university environment, free speech is valuable things connected to what universities are for.and we've seen this for a long period of time, people recognize it and understood this poor connection between free-speech and universities so that dylan was the first president of johns hopkins university, and told his board of trustees when he assumed that presidency at

the tail end ofreconstruction , the institution we are about to organize should not be worthy of the name of the university if it were to be devoted to any other purpose than the discovery promulgation of truth. and it would be a noble in the extreme that the resources being given by the founder without restriction would be limited to the lec ethical differences perverted to the use of promotion of political strife. as the spirit of the university should be that of intellectual freedom to pursue the truth and a broad parody towards those with whom we differ and this certain factory and parts of preference should have no control over these features and should not be apparent in the official work of the university. this fundamental precept that takes action between a truth seeking institution and tolerance and disagreement on university campuses to advance that mission has been essential and how we've understood the nature of modern universities. we haven't been perfect, have

always fully appreciated those principles. there's been a long tranny struggle to appreciate what those principles are and we need to continue to burn those principles today as well. we will try to lay out then the liberal case for truth in institution then i won't rehearse those arguments particularly but just note that the key points are one, the only way to gain true knowledge, this is tested, that we may have things we disagree on today but if we want to believe and know that they are correct and then to criticism, we need to see them stand up to criticism, need to see them tested and what universities are committed to, the testing of claims and whether or not they need to be modified or accepted. also, it's the only way to do that is to tolerate a great deal of inquiry. secondly in the context of controversial speech we've learned as americans across a

long period of time we can't trust any potential sensor. that's true in the university environment but also true in american politics more generally that we may be identifying particular areas of speech that ought to be suppressed and we may have good reason but as soon as we empower somebody with a general power to suppress speech causes unfavorable, we may soon find all kinds of speech will be suppressed even speech that we think is important and that's necessarily going to be the case once you're telling somebody to suppress controversial speech, it's controversial because people disagree about the value of that speech so at the consequence of being extraordinarily cautious about trying to empowerpeople with her administrators or officials to suppress speech that they find particularly disagreeable . with those principles in mind we are better positioned to think through controversies as theyarrive and working through all the controversies we see on college campuses . but we will likely make

mistakes and thinking about this controversies if we don't start with god first what's guiding us in this general. so as you start thinking about specific kinds of controversies that arrive, you might start thinking about the university operations which is what we ought to have is a perspective to and freedom to pursue scholarship and teaching with regard only to professional standards and without regard to social and political pressure so the core of what the university does is allow for research in students and in that context, we developed the concept of academic freedom to drive the text that core area of university activity. this is the freedom to say anything in the classroom for example or even anything in publication, but the freedom to push the boundaries of human knowledge but even beyond that core aspect of what universities do, campuses are vibrant intellectual communities in which debate over ideas extends well beyond the basic

research and teaching. a long been places where important matters of concern can be discussed and the students can engage with controversial ideas and a great deal would be lost. and universities then need free-speech as well as academic freedom if they're going to truly serve their function and the all of intellectual contest more generally. this is recognized for example by a federal circuit point in the 1970s by mississippi to close a literary magazine that officials said published things that were tasteless and inappropriate so several judges advised to their campus administrators the historical role of the university and expressing opinions which may not make favor with the majority of society and serving of the vanguard in the fight for freedom of expression and opinion. sometimes you have to tolerate things you regard as

a full and inappropriate or offensive and even dangerous, precisely because universities are trying to make space for people who disagree, people to test out new ideas and sometimes for people to make mistakes and sometimes even for people to be outrageous and offensive. recognizing the role of universities, universities have allowed students to form numerous groups on their own and giving them equal access to resources to explore their own interests. that's for example when the virginia commonwealth tried to ban the gay alliance for students in the 1970s. again, university officials caused that particular student organization was promoting sickening ideas and a federal circuit court to point out the student association devoted to the advocacy of social and other objectives are part of higher education and used in the incorporation of later life. students are going to live in an american democracy about basic commitments and basic

values and the university should be all for students who experience that and learn how to work their way through it. recognizing this role or universities, for robust public debate is meant there should be a robust space for protest on college campuses. students and others should be able to express their views about matters of public concern, express those in a way that makes sense and attracts attention but inappropriate protest interfere with others to pursue their own activities. willing speakers should be able to communicate with willing audiences. members of the campus community should hear ideas and ought to be able to hear the ideas they want to hear. disruption, this indications, tearing down signs, throwing out papers all efforts to block communication and shutdown the free exchange of ideas.

we shouldn't have a right to ignore speech they find appalling or unpersuasive ortega cameron each speech with arguments of their own. they need not engage with what they might regard as unsettled topics as some students said but they do not have the privilege of insisting no one else to be allowed to treat those questions as unresolved. the college campus cannot claim to be serious about trying to create an environment open to inquiry and pursuit of truth if it cannot tolerate the airing of controversial, discomforting ideas. faculties and administration do not have the courage of their convictions, they cannot tolerate having their students hear from speakers that the students themselves think are obnoxious or mistaken but that implies responsibility on the part of those inviting speakers and hosting events. the faculty hired are evaluated by their peers and their ability tomeet disciplinary expectations about the understanding of their subject . outside speakers are brought to campus for different reasons.

they are bought to discuss public affairs and not expected to meet those standards. their contributions are different than what the faculty contributes so hopefully their contributions are still real and valuable . the students want to hear from examples peter navarro or kid rock or michael moore. universities should have the courage of their convictions and allow students to evaluate their arguments, no matter how badly flawed or morally bankrupt institutions might think those arguments ultimately are. the goal of winning such speakers to campus should be to enlighten and not to provoke. students should want to hear from the best representatives of serious ideas and that are worth their time and attention. students will have somewhat different ideas about attention and i do for example. but they should take seriously their own responsibility to advance the mission of the university by seeking knowledge and not just pushing boundaries. when we are making decisions about who to invite to speak , the goal should neither be

our closer allies nor to sprinkle in the most extreme product tours. the goal shouldn't be to make available to a campus opportunity serious ideas. free speech is easy, speech never seems very challenging. it's easy to listen to pleasing ideas and affirmations of our own beliefs, much more difficult to tolerate those with whom we disagree and whose ideas we find preposterous in content or even dangerous. we should however learn not only to tolerate those disagreements but it is through controversy and contestation that we can make progress, often in the most unexpected ways so let me end by noting the university sometimes should sustain the kind of diverse intellectual communities that would best silicate this dissemination of knowledge. john stuart mill worried that society was too comfortable in its own convictions would retreat. despite their own aspiration, universities rest their own retreat into comfortable balls. the university must strive to

pull out bad ideas but must strive to bring those that will question and not affirm or receive wisdom. the community of scholars has not become a party and the advancement of knowledge is to proceed that scholars cannot be complacent in the study and inclined to their own decisions. universities should be striving to nurture intellectual diversity on their own campus. in training, hiring and promoting scholars to make their home on college campuses, universities demand rigor and professional accomplishment there should also be an openness to new ideas and a spirit of skepticism and intellectual curiosity. if universities are to operate at the boundaries of our state knowledge and push those boundaries outward there must be places where new unorthodox disturbing ideas can be raised and scrutinized. students are to prepare themselves to engage with a wide range of problems that they encounter out in the world across their lifetimes, they must learn to grapple with and examine ideas and

find difficult and offensive. for more than a century, universities have committed themselves to the mission of advancing and disseminating knowledge and have recognized the free exchange of ideas was essential to the base of that mission. they have pursued that mission perfectly and have sometimes needed to be called to account to realize their own ideals but recognizing and respecting the principles of free speech is difficult and challenging but there's no alternative that we are dedicating in pursuit of truth. the pursuit of truth is unknowable and important mission of any university. >> thank you kate, very good. i'd like to remind you that if you would like to ask a question, the hashtag cato 18 is where you send it. #cato1a. let us know and someone will pick it up. our comments are today is iliana, ilya somin.

she is an adjunct scholar as i mentioned at the cato institute. his research focuses on constitutional law, property law and thestudy of political dissipation and its implications for constitutional democracy. he is the author of democracy and political ignorance, why smaller government is smarter. in 2015, another book , the grasping hand, the limits of eminent domain from a second edition originally 2015 but in fact 2016. he's co-author of the conspiracy against obamacare, the conspiracy and the healthcare case and also eminent domain, a comparative perspective. democracy and political ignorance is translated into italian and japanese . mentioning the obama conspiracy, professor sullivan contributes to

public debate in leading venues, writes regularly for conspiracy law and politics which is now affiliated with the magazine that was previously as you know, affiliated with the washington post. he's been a coeditor of the supreme court economic review , a cooperated law and economics journal. he earned his ba from amherst which again maybe we could get some insight about what amherst was like in those days and an ma in political science from harvard and a jd from yale law. welcome back. >>. >> i like to start by thanking the cato institute for organizing this event and congratulating keith on an outstanding book on currently an extremely timely topic

which one might even say has been made great again by recent events so as keith explains in the book, it's been a very important topic for many years so it's not entirely a new issue by any means. >> normally when i serve as a commentator i regarded my job as sort of fine point disagreement and take issue with some of the things the author says. in this case i agree with about 95 percent or more of what he says in the book. it may be somewhat tough to get so instead in the first part of my presentation, i'm going to amplify keith's argument in a number of ways and in some ways, the problem that he identifies has been worse than he suggested it is and i will in fact take issue at least to a limited degree with some of keith's analysis of the problem of faculty hiring. here i think we free speech principles are important it may be more difficult to apply them that in other settings on campus and more

difficult perhaps then keith's legs on in the book. at the end of my presentation i will talk briefly about what we can do about this problem, how can we bring protection for free speech on campus. so keith opened the book and in his presentation, he states quite eloquently the nature of the problem and why we should be concerned about. in some ways though however there's been more reason for concern that perhaps he suggests. one reason is that if you develop a kind of ideological orthodoxy, on campus or in particular departments or part of universities, this problem itself is reinforcing. when you have a group of people who are ideologically wide, research like people at harvard shows that they set on each other, they become even more extreme over time and more intolerant of opposing views and i think we have seen this happen in some academic fields, also in him campuses as well and it is

permission that once you get started down this path, it's difficult to stop. closely related is the phenomenon of what economists reference qualification. it's to think that the expression of certain views that you have is going to be dangerous, it will be social sanctions or dictates faculty and administrators, it will damage your career. you are likely to hide those views and i think we see some of this certainlyamong some scholars and also among some students on campus as well according to surveys . when people either dissenting views, that makes it more likely of a consensus than there actually is and it reduces the quality of debate and this phenomenon is due to some extent feeds on itself and that it's most of the other adherents of your viewpoint are hiding their true preferences, that makes it more of an incentive for you to hide yours as well. you don't want to be the only

one that sticks out as perhaps getting all closed or that orthodoxy should be questioned. and i think the extent to which there is a problem varies between different academic disciplines. it also varies between different campuses. i'm not suggesting that all campuses are homogenous for all academic fields are from it but this clearly is a problem. in some fields and in some campuses more than other. another fact that developed in recent years and makes the situation worse is the growth of ideological and partisan station. we can trace it in many surveys taken in recent years , we have data indicating hostility towards supporters of the opposite political party is stronger and more deeply rooted even then

racial or ethnic or religious hostility. for example, recent survey data indicate some 30 to 40 percent of people would be angrier and happier if a relative of theirs married a member of the opposing political party.this is far higher than the percentage who said they would be unhappy if a member of their family married somebody from another race or ethnicity. in fact, much higher than the number who said they would be angry or unhappy if somebody in their family bury a member of the different religion. so these examples have grown , strengthened and obviously the more we still feel hostility to adherents of other ideologies, the more difficult it is for us to tolerate free speech, apply free speech principles equally and so forth. i think we see this phenomenon in both the right and the left, growing hostility to theother side. obviously on campus , itself more often in the form of

attempts to suppress right of center speech because of the fact that on most campuses, the political left is a relatively dominant institution but this is notto say the right would be any better in situations where they could predominate . finally, i think the rise of trauma actually makes this problem worse. during the 2016 election i wrote a blog post entitled how to strengthen the forces of political correctness. it seems strange, how could we possibly be doing that and that these been full mating against political correctness. many people say that what the election represents is a backlash against it but the way he strengthens it is that given the things he says and the way that he said them, he reinforces the perception of the pc wrath that the only alternative to their viewpoint is racism, sexism, zeno phobia and prejudice and

as the most prominent representative of the political rights in american society today, he makes it easy for people to feel that the political rights is not intellectually serious . they don't actually have ideas worth consideringthough very little will be lost if we don't tolerate their speech on campus . much will be gained because that may be the only way to prevent the rise of racism, sexism and other prejudices with which troll isassociated . some people argue really the politically correct themselves or their call for the rise of trauma, his electionrepresents a reaction against their excesses . i think this argument is overblown but in this particular presentation , i'm not answering the question of who started. all i'm saying is that what from says reinforces political correctness and to some extent they do reinforces his position as well though this problem has become a cycle which may decision worse, not only on campus but certainly on make

my campus in particular so these forces coming together, ideological polarization, the rise of trump, so forth, they all make the problem in some ways worse. most of the book chase argues and what i agree that what we need to do isapply free speech principles , not suppress the paste on content or viewpoint or offensiveness . but keith recognizes we may not be able to completely do that when it comes to the area of faculty hiring. and that keeps, in his presentation he noted when faculty are hired, they have to be judged by disciplinary standards. whether the quality of their work is up to snuff in various ways and at least in some cases that may involve judging the substance of your viewpoint. for example, if you see a

candidate for position at a geography department was an exponent of flatter theory, no matter how good his qualifications, the fact that he's a flat earth enthusiasm is going to be a dealbreaker. if you're hiring a world war ii historian and it turns out he's a holocaust denier, no matter what the quality of his other qualifications, you probably can't hire that person. being a holocaust denier is in and of itself a indicator of professionalincompetence in that particular field . so keith is the way we address it is we should leave the disciplinary hiring decisions and promotion decisions to experts in the field rather than say what bureaucrats or politicians decide things and to a large extent i agree, we want people judging faculty candidates who are qualified in the relevant field. however, even for such people, it is often difficult

to draw the line between situations holocaust denial where expelling a particular viewpoint really is an indicator of professional incompetence. versus other cases where people don't like or disagree with the two points founded by the scholar and we know both from some studies which have systematic data and also from a great deal of anecdotal evidence that often particularly in some disciplines, scholars don't do a good job of drawing a distinction between these two things so you get ideological discrimination in hiring which i think is a significantphenomenon . and it contributes to the ideological live in a of other factors that i mentioned earlier. notice that could be self-perpetuating if you hire people with the second. then again, the faculty in your particular department will become more and more

homogenous over time and it will become more unthinkable to hire people who disagree. and it is not like my claim that underrepresentation of conservative libertarian academia is solely due to discrimination hiring, far from it. there are a number of other factors as well but it is a contributing factor and it's one that's relatively difficult to break because we can't simply say we're going to hire faculty without regard to their viewpoint. we have to draw this fine line between spaces where expelling a viewpoint really is an indicator of incompetence. spaces where we had a perfectly legitimate contribution you base by the person being discriminated discriminated against because the people doing the hiring like his ideas or ideas and often those people who are guilty of making this are in fact other faculty members who are the experts who are supposed to be doing the hiring. it is not primarily the fault of bureaucrats or politicians or other kinds of forces.

i don't think there's any easy solution tothis problem . other than perhaps for people to be more aware of it and try to be more tied to the need to check their own thinking and if you are on department is ideologically homogenous or whatever reason, maybe you want to make more use of outside experts who can be more ideologically diverse to help evaluate the seniority don't to some extent in geography hiring decisions and i think they don't make a special effort to get ideological diversity among the outside referees who would probably be desirable to you that more often. so what can we do to alleviate this problem? keith offers some well taken recommendations which i certainly agree with you such as enforcing free-speech rules on campus. also outside people tried to

some speak or use violence to prevent them from speaking, that need should be prevented and it needs to be punished. if you don't punish exercises of the veto, you should see more vetoes and some campuses have handled these situations better than others. i mentioned earlier, trying to promote nondiscrimination and faculty hiring. also, and universities all panels or events on politically controversial subjects you have eaten many cases they should try to have an ideological balance. certainly not suggesting that should always be done. there's some efficacy having a more homogenized one but they should at least have some significant proportion of their ideologically balanced and the very last couple of minutes of my topic, i'd like to talk about the advocates of free speech on campus to promote their ties better. in particular the libertarians on campus need

to have a group that is not always but often the one most victimized by campus policies and that may be hostile to free speech . and i think the biggest recommendation i have to these groups is that you should be an intellectually serious group of people. that you should not behave in the way that i described as behaving earlier as someone that's easily dismissed as a blowhard. when you decide who to invite on campus, you should make sure that you should not be inviting people simply because they anger or offend the other side. therefore, you should not be inviting the and coulters and milo you not pluses of the world, people who are basically provocateurs and have little of if anything of substance to say. the only virtue of your speaker is that you will attract them headlines by saying something stupid or offensive and that you enjoy the people on the other side,

that means it's probably a bad speaker. i hasten to add a student groups to invite these people, they should not be met with violence and the schools should not suppress their speech, but the fact that they should not be suppressed is not an indicator that it's actually a valuablecontribution to intellectual discourse . what you should be doing is inviting the sorts of people who really do have a valuable contribution and the sorts of people who at least potentially can appeal to those who don'talready agree with their viewpoint . if you look at the history of how different minority groups have succeeded in promoting their rights, then getting a better image for them and the relevant society, it is by the behaving in a serious way, and by engaging in outreach that you don't already agree.this is how the civil rights movement succeeded, more recently the gay rights movement, there are other examples and campus conservatives, libertarians could take a lesson from those examples rather than from milo, and coulter and

others of that ilk. in addition, concerned libertarian groups would be well to also oppose free speech from the right as well as from the left. for example, they should condemn things trumps encouragement of violence by his supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign. if you condemn the speech from your own side of the political spectrum, you are more credible when you condemn them on the other side. so more can be set on these topics but for now, i conclude and i very much look forward to the discussion. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much for you. >> could someone please get that particular question?if you have a paper, i'm going to go to twitter also. thank you very much. andalso again, on twitter ,

hashtag cato #cato1a. >> libby pose a question to keith that i think we've actually talked about and many people do, is it the case as far as you can tell that the issues about free speech, the liberalism you referredto , you mentioned some are actually anti-liberal, anti-free speech, those things correlate highly with not perhaps the entire university what parts of it in particular departments . here i would say one way to think about this would be you are more likely to have those points of view if you're one of the children of the shell and you're a postmodern kind of department. if you're an english department, that is this is

the notion that all knowledge is power and therefore that it directly contrary to your vision of a university. so i guess the question i'm asking, these are new. they seem to be the most glamorous in some ways, the most heard from kinds of departments. they also seem to be departments that administrators are very reluctant to respond to . >> given all that, we suggest that first of all, it's what i've described, do what extent does it describe a more general issue at the university. are these departments small and marginalized or are they in fact important and in one of the departments, you read the chronicle of higher education seems to be the department of english which is an older department but still, same kind of new ideas so i guess the question is to what extent has the notion into the faculty that everything is about power and that truth is just a kind of

veneer for power and therefore your conception and ideal of a university is held by some but really not by the dominant groups . so ifeither of you can answer this but keith first . >> and this goes to some degree to billy is concerned that i'm underselling the problem that actually exist on campus. >> which may be true to some degree. my instinct is to in general counsel not to panic and to be relatively optimistic about what things can do but it may well be that the best way of selling the book is to tell you it's a crisis. you should panic and the only way to solve the problem is to write a book. so let me say that. but i do think it's becoming a problem and moreover i think it's true that some of these tendencies that you highlight are certainly not randomly distributed across the university. you don't find equal numbers of students and faculty in,

say, the chemistry department have who are quite illiberal and hostile to the value of free speech and the tolerance of opposing viewpoints then you might find in some other departments on campus. so i think that's true. there are people on campus and one reason i wrote the book is precisely because in part, we on college campuses are confronting an internal battle about what the future of universities are going to look like and what are going to be the predominant sets of ideas that are going to be heard on college campuses in the future and i think it's critically important not only for universities but for the united states and western civilization more generally that it be liberal ideas that are dominant on campus in the future. the same kind of ideas that are articulated by university leadership for the last hundred years and more and i'm optimistic that will be

true. and it is true now and i think it will be true in the future that there are a small minority of students and faculty who are quite hostile to those ideas on college campuses but they exist and they should be countered in part by trying to empathize the fact that theyremain a small minority that is not representative of what college campuses are like more generally. that's important for the outside world to know what also for those of us on college campuses to recognize, that these loud voices are very loud , but they are also a small group and should be treated as such and don't without such as a much broader group of students and faculty that either are already committed to liberal values or are persuadable to liberal values and we ought to be trying to appeal to them to appreciate the importance of toleration in civil discourse. >> so first of all, it's not my claim that we should panic

. and i do think it's possible to overestimate this problem and some might do just that so it is true that it varies a lot by department and by university. it's also true for every time you see a right of center speaker disrupted, there are hundreds of instances where right of center speakers including myself be without any problems or disruptions so you can regard the glass as half-full rather than half empty. indeed it's more than half full. that said, if some departments perceive it as a serious problem and in some ways it is growing over time, therefore it should be dealt with where possible before it becomes a crisis and i do agree also that on the faculty side, in terms of ideological discrimination and the like, is much worse in some departments than others. i think as a general rule it tends to be worse in the humanities and in the social sciences or hard sciences and it probably is true those

fields were postmodernist ideology as a large presence it's worse, partly for the reason you mentioned, suppression in some instances but largely because he's fields under the influence of these kind of ideologies, they lack intellectual rigor and the less intellectual rigor you have, the easier it is to fall prey to your prejudices. do you have intellectual rigor, but it's even easier when they do not. so once a department or a field has been heavily captured by this kind of approach, it's not easy to figure out what to do with it. what ideally we would want to do is hire adherents of other methodologies so that the field would be less homogenous and so it can gradually be brought back to more serious intellectual discourse by doing this in an aggressive way would require waiting the autonomy of the faculty in that field as

opposed to hiring so once the property ability on a certain point in a particularfield , it's difficult to deal with. the problem is somewhat less severe in those fields that are actually more importantin political discourse, social sciences, law, economics and so forth and therefore there we can probably address the problems without having to resort to drastic means. >> . >> so to the twitter feed. >> is the problem of free-speech crisis, is that it work is a crisis of identity and higher education. >> i think the marketplace of ideas just doesn't work as well anymore because universities and students see their mission as more about credentialing and less about discovering truth. what do you think? >> i think that's a real concern. that and that's not so the questions sort of mixed with a couple of things. one, this view that identity

politics might be important on campus and that may run afoul of this core commitment of universities in the pursuit of truth, but also universities might be perceived as sort of a consumer driven and recredentialing service in which case the pursuit of truth isn't very important either. that really what you should be encouraging on college campuses is the ability of students to move smoothly through the process, give their credentials that will set them on the road to higher incomes and preferably nothing that will put dirt on the brand. and so then quashing controversy might very well be in your interest. a lot of senior administrators on college campuses think exactly that, that the worst thing that can happen is somebody says

nothing controversial because then you will get public attention and it will hurt the brand and the brand is we can credential those students who would be good employees and i do think that self-defeating. in the long term what makes universities valuable including valuable for those going through them and getting degrees is that they are learning something and part of their learning is that ability to grapple with disagreeable ideas, to think seriously andcarefully . and to think independently and unconventionally. and if we suppress that, in the name of credentialing, then at the end of the day the credentials we are giving out are not going to be seen as valuable and worth defending. >> i think the issue of credential is an is an important one. recently the economist brian kaplan published a book called the case against education where he argued we invest too much in higher education where often people either learn relatively little or at least very little that's useful to their future lives but that the

additional education, they can improve their grandchildren and there's a lot of waste there.i think there's definitely some input but i'm skeptical that the threat to free speech and free inquiry on campus comes primarily from this direction. if you look at the people trying to press re-speech on campus, most of them are not people who only care about credentials. those kind of people can be indifferent to speech or indifferent to the search for truth. rather is people who do in fact care deeply about what an issue is themselves, critics of credential is an and capitalism in the light. so the problem is not that there indifferent to truth, is that they believe they have the truth and pernicious ideas are the net they see as hostile to the truth could be suppressed so we have multiple different problems on campus. one is the issue of credential is an and ways. the problem of free-speech is largely separate from that one. >> what role the rising cost

around free-speech then play in the role of universities having protecting free speech ? we had this incident recently where a student group in florida was to pay additional security costs. is this a big issue? >> is becoming a very big issue. universities are starting to take very seriously the potential need for security. for some events, and that security is expensive and universities are trying to figure out how to grapple with that expense and one way of dealing with it is to push the expense off on students which will have the consequence of effectively suppressing speech that might otherwise take place because it can't be affordable. it's going to be a challenge for universities to figure out how to navigate that current situation. i think the correct answer to not be we are going to tell you there is a set of

speakers you can't bring the campus because they are too expensive. and particularly that's going to cut in very particular ways. so universities i think have been cautious about how to figure out how to deal with this problem in a way as relatively neutral across the range of speakers that might be brought to campuses and they need to deal with it in part by trying to address the security needs from a different perspective which is don't necessarily take for granted if students and others can be on your campus and the extraordinarily disruptive and therefore you have to hire a lot of people to deal with the disruption but there's no long-term consequences, you need to try to create a campus in which that kind of thing is discouraged in the first place. >> . >> if we agree free-speech should be suspended for direct incitement of violence, how do we draw the line without making it the fault lineeveryone wants to move in their preferred direction . i would add to this question, what about this view we hear that seem to be fairly common that speech itself equals violence? is that correct?

do you hear that quite often and that's of course the ultimate fall from the line it is the ultimate fall line. it's a somewhat powerful metaphor that in some context and some direct theoretical literature is started off really being a metaphor and people understood in a metaphorical way. now people increasingly are recognizing it in order to use that idea that speech is violence. in a more literal way, therefore justifying guaranteeing speech but actually using violence in order to oppose speech and that's pernicious. and it should be rejected. we should reemphasize there is a difference between speech and violence in general. you get speech we might think of as relatively dangerous. i also emphasize in terms of the first point that where you draw the line is that this is something you have constitutional law struggling with for centuries.

where do we draw the line with free speech? what most of the people we thought were articulating dangerous came from the left in theearly 20th century and in the 19th century , it was relatively easy for government officials who suppress betsy on the claim was potentially dangerous. the lesson we learned from that we should trust those government officials who suppress these because they would to muster widely press far more speech than was necessary in order to prevent violence itself. so we've made a gradual march toward trying to type not those restrictions so we suppress less and less speech in order to draw the line as narrowly as possible to prevent actual violence and we got into a reasonably good place from a legal perspective and part of what's important culturally, we need to come to the defense of that basic legal position that we've now reached. >> i largely agree with any

rule or legal doctrine there are going to be difficult borderline questions but as steve mentioned, we have decades of constitutional law and legal decisions on these cases and for the most part they have done a reasonably good job of feeling out the cases where there's direct incitement of violence from cases where there is not incitement of violence or violence can be prevented by means other than suppressing free-speech landa practical matter , we are committed to protecting free speech can simply make use of these legal doctrines. it may be there are some details that have to be to a little bit for the campus environment but overall, i think where there is a will to protect freedom of speech, you can generally find a way while simultaneously preventing violence. i would further add one of the better ways of preventing

violence is simply to deter it. if you commit to punishing people who disrupt speakers or otherwise engage in violence, you should see less of that sort of activity to begin with and therefore your security class might actually be lower in the way you prevented is not so much having lots of armed guards all over the place but making clear for example that people who engage in violence, if they are staffed they will be fired. >> .. in order to engage in the disruption and those kinds of people are deterrable. >> back to twitter. these tendencies of intolerance at universities will hurt the students after the graduate and into the real world. in the real world problems did not get resolved with shouting,, right, putting people down. why isn't there more resistance,

more unhappiness about all of these things from the students themselves? can you give us insight as to how students view these kinds of things? on the in different? these comments suggest this is harming their education and, of course, it may be harming the people, the students that are involved. >> i am a little bit optimistic that if the students and also campus administrators and faculty are having their eyes open a little bit as to what the situation might be like on college campuses if you don't push back on some of these. i think students themselves are storing to appreciate that they prefer to be on a college campus of which it's possible for people disagree with one another, possible for people to say things are controversial, possible to attend a class or attend a lecture without

disruptions and had it be shut down. i think the students themselves are beginning to push back on this and embrace more of the values. it's important, one, two armed them with a better understanding of those principles and commitments and why we have been and what the implications of them might be. i think it's also important to remind students that that is in some ways the silent majority. that there is a very noisy minority of students who want to be disruptive, who want to shift of speech. it's easy for students to start thinking, all the students think this way, on the outlier, i think we shouldn't behave that way. campuses have made some progress on things like emphasizing to students that not all your peers behave in those particular ways. you do not have to emulate them to follow along. just as you think of what is doing it. in fact, not a vote is doing it it.

the same thing has to be true in a speech context as well. you have to push back. >> i basically agree. it also reinforced his caution from the stock that we shouldn't overgeneralize about students and painted with a broad brush. both survey data and other evidence review there's a wide diversity of attitudes amongst students. only a small minority students engage in violence speech or support such activity but that when we can have disproportionate clout. i do think also while students and others have, to pay attention and in many cases dislike and the pose sort of visible forcible construction of speakers, i think they may be more likely to be oblivious to more subtle problems like the issue of discrimination and faculty hiring and the like which not violence going on. it's the sort of decisions are made calmly, seemingly normally behind closed doors but the

result is you do end up with a great deal of ideological homogenate is with a number of academic field and it may not be primarily the responsibility of students to try to combat this. it is first and foremost at a faculty administrators but if more students were aware of the problem and we spoke up about it, that would help at the margin to try to address this. >> to go to the cards now. thank you very much, i did one is coming up with great questions. this is for all panelists and i assume it relates to the university situation. should hate speech be tolerated? should we allow voice speech when it marginalizes minorities and otherwise? before keith answers i have to say on may 7 cato is going to have another book forum with

nadine and she is a book on this very topic, so please keep your eyes on the cato website and sign up and come back on may seventh and will talk about this further. but for now, for fso whittington. >> there's a section in the book on hate speech. a lot of people think about it because it's a serious problem causes for serious thinking. apart the conflicts here are real. there are some tensions in the valleys we want to recognize. we should be very cautious about the label hate speech, huge number of things can fly under that label and is often unclear what exactly people are talking about. sometimes it suites are broadly and sometimes it sweeps much more narrowly. i think we should be particularly cautious about its sweeping broadly. when some people talk about hate speech what they really are

wanting to suppress are a set of ideas defined particularly disagreeable. and they think might be leading to particular social and political consequences. that has to be resisted. universities all about hearing controversial ideas. skeptically examined them and expressing the disagreements, not simply suppressing and censoring them. on the one hand, we want to emphasize universities or inclusive communities that we want people with a wide range of views and expenses and backgrounds on college campuses. that's critically important, but what you're getting is and if i'm in which people are willing to think seriously about difficult ideas. you should recognize that's part of what you're doing on a college campus and the one to either accidentally or on purpose designed a speech code that will try to suppress the latter, even as it is trying to advance the former.

>> again i largely agree. i i understand some of the motivation for the effort to suppress racist and of the prejudice speech. if you write publicly in defense of things like open borders, immigration as i do you will get hate e-mail and the like which is from people saying ugly at anti-semitic and of the kinds of things. i do understand how it can be painful to hear that kind of stuff because i've heard in my own life and it's very unpleasant and in some cases, i want to suppress these people and locked it up. but that should be resisted for a couple of reasons. one is even people say hateful things to have right to freedom of speech for inherent reasons. it's part of the freedom that we should all be able to enjoy. but also because as keith explains very well in his book we cannot trust either government officials or in most cases university authorities to draw the line in the right place. if you do try narrowly you will

get the experience that actually some european countries have had where they ban racist speech and anti-semitic speech but then you still have the afd neofascist party waiting 13% of the vote in the german election. how does the afd operate? what they do its bit symbols which are slightly different from the officially banned nazi symbols, and they engage in rhetoric which is just slightly different from the officially banned nazi rhetoric and, therefore, they're they are abo propagate their ideas anyway. if you respond to these kinds of circumvention by casting your network broadly and banning more stuff, then pretty soon you have a much more robust and severe censorship regime out there and it will ban a lot of ideas that are not racism in the narrow sense or anti-semitism and,

therefore, i think in a vast majority of cases the way to prevent this are probably is not to start down the path of censorship in the first place, even though it does mean that we will suffer some pain from people who really are racist, neo-nazis and so forth. >> to what extent do think misinterpretations of federal civil rights statutes like title vi and title ix has contributed to campus intolerance? d.c. legal solutions? this question is for either panelist. >> you want to start without? you may have a better sense than i do. >> fontenot to an expert in this field. my wife was in the audience actually is written about this. i think there have been some problems with broad interpretations of what counts as sexual harassment under title ix, which in some cases you end up suppressing speech. not sure there has been as much a problem with title vi, what could be wrong about that.

my general sense is these over broad interpretations should be cut back come one of the few good things the new administration is doing is they are, in fact, taking a look at this and probably will cut back some of the guidance memos that were issued in the obama administration on this. at the same time i think that this sort of phenomenon accounts are only small proportion of the free speech problems we see on campus. there are other aspects of it such as dealing with sexual assault cases or sexual assault charges where there's insufficient due process given to those accused. that's a problem separate from the issue of free speech. the title ix thing does contribute to the free speech problem on campus but is probably at least my sense is it's a fairly modest contribution. >> that's where i land as well. >> i want to combine a couple questions on twitter. to what extent is campus

censorship driven by culture of extreme risk aversion among administrators which is a boy by local minorities rather than any ideological administrative hostility? if so, what we do about it? the second question connected to that is, does this explain why there's so few people, students being expelled or band as, banning of outsiders who cause many of these problems? >> risk avoiding administers are part of the problem, and in part because it willing to tolerate things they shouldn't tolerate such as bad behavior in some cases. but in other cases because they are willing to actively to suppress speech he should be doing. it's very common as ilya mention that faculty whose comments get picked up by the public media and attract attention and a broader political landscape wind

up generating controversy and then administers think the best way of dealing with the fact that some of the faculty said something noncommercial -- noncontroversial is to fire them as soon as possible. that's often a function of risk avoidance by those administrators rather than the administrators themselves are intrinsically ideologically motivated or concerned, is the vision what universities ought to be doing is to have a sterling brand that parents find very comfortable, and that that controversial professors or speakers on campus or controversial students run contrary to that image. i think it's important then for parents and alumni and donors to understand what universities actually are, to exist that universities not be pursuing a brand in which everything looks very shiny and there's no controversy. but instead they pursue a break brand which people are

intellectually serious and willing to have controversy and willing to disagree and insist administrators respect those values and try to promote them. it's hard for ministers to do on their own. we need to create a larger culture that insists on that as well. >> i think it's easy to blame administrators and in some cases they do deserve the blame but it's worth also remembering that there is a lot of variation in the behavior because some universities like the university of chicago taken a strong stance in favor of freedom of speech. uc berkeley which is often seen as this bastion of leftism, nonetheless they have ensured that people like jan in opposite others can speak there. they picked up the security cost themselves. the new dean of uc berkeley law school, a very prominent left of legal scholars been very outspoken and defensive campus free speech. yes co-authored a book about the subject which is, recently.

i think there is variation here and we should try to build on the good developments and to the extent people are risk averse it with conveying to them that there's risk in a long speech suppression as well. that doesn't create a good public image for the school. and i think we can work on it that way. not want to try to achieve a situation where we have like really big risktakers as college administrators. i think there's good reason for administrators take them well-established universities do not be people are constantly taking future risk because they are administering they complicate institutions that have lots of moving parts and a good high ranking and measure has to be aware of that. >> i should know my own president a princeton university very good on these issues. these local and free speech mode and that's important of the university leadership that understands and appreciates the principles as want to articulate and defend them when particular

controversies arise. it makes a difference on a college campus if you administers wanted to stand up for that. i should also note because my sometimes co-author howard gilman is now the chancellor at uc irvine is a co-author on free-speech book. howard has been very good at uc irvine in trying to incite these issues and speaking out on them as well. there's is a perfectly good book although it takes more of a common-law angle than my desperation what a nice -- if you have extra money you should buy theirs. especially given interest in sort of a summary of constitutional and issue. every good about that. here's a question the goes to i think suggestion many people up or suspicion many people after you make the point in the book there's been a number different crises at various times, there's been donors and sometimes at various points and even today conservatives or outsiders

particularly conservative have some effect on speech. is it the case that really there is no price is a free-speech? this is just something are relatively few very extreme conservative talker tours have caused these kind of events? and it's all been played out by the conservative press and individuals and so on. you have a tv channel may be. nothing really here. it's just all, it's not all politics of the left but rather all politics of the right. what do you think? >> i think he can be simultaneously the case both things are true. there are people who want to play it up, and it are and have their own reasons for trying to play it and exploit these problems when they arise and even create the problems on occasion by being provocative on campus in a way that is perhaps designed to generate clashes that will put people on campus in a bad light.

i think that's true. it's also true that some of these things are just much more visible than they might once have been. when charles murray was shouted down at middlebury, for example, part of what got the change was the fact that was recorded and the video went viral. that would not even true ten or 15 years ago. we are much more aware things that happened on college campuses now than we used to be. that made it look like it's happening more often than in fact, it does but also makes if it's like it's happening a lot more often than it used to happen. it's not completely evident that that is happening more often than it used to although there are particular elements of it. having said all that it is true there are genuine problems on some college campuses. the places within universities that are very hostile to free speech. there are some particular colleges and universities would have a very problem in the own immediate campus culture. it's important to address those problems when they arise.

it's important to fix the problems and it's important to push back against those that advocating the other side. when we think about what exactly should we draw the line legally on suppressing speech we might think is dangerous or where should we think the lineup on hate speech, if you do not fight those fights on the college campus now with students and faculty now, don't be surprised that can't or 20 years from now you don't see courts making decisions that move that line on dangers dangerous speech or don't embrace that you that hate speech is not constitutional protected. the debates we're seeing on college campuses now could be a foreshadowing of debates we'll see in the legal arena down the road so it's important to make these fights now. >> i i largely agree. it is true that are sort of right-wing provocateurs who go on college campus and say offensive things, for the

purpose of generating a violent reaction. this features some extent though if you're an opponent of ann coulter you should realize this is what she wants and, therefore, even aside from free-speech principles it's not in the interest of your movement violently disruptor. it's better that it doesn't happen. at the same time disruption is not limited to these cases with the ann coulter of the world. working cases involving left-wing figures like peter singer, the famous political philosopher, speakers rupturing the aclu. you are enough cases involving people who cannot be placed in the same category as ann coulter or milo yiannopoulos, that it is a problem and there's more subtle problems of ideological

discrimination, and faculty hiring and other such matters which are quite significant and, therefore, while it's important not to paint with a broad brush think this is the end of civilization and we are not designed or gulags on campus or whatnot taking over. it's also important not to go to the opposite extreme and say there really is no problem except whatever has been ginned up by some right-wing provocateur for the purpose of getting more retweets. >> a couple of questions about high school. this last week and we saw a really large marge here in washington, march for our lives, which featured several high school students exercising free speech and political participation rights to what extent do you think on the students cite a thing that dishes about freedom of speech issues about tolerance, when the students arrive, i don't know if

you teach freshmen or not but when did you ride they are, they've been there because in high schools freedom of speech itself is not very protected or perhaps taught or there's a fair amount of control of speech. is it the issues before the university that really are crucial? >> that's true that students arrive with a set of experiences and expectations based on what they've seen growing up including what they've seen in the particular institutional environment, primary and secondary schools. it's natural for them to credit over to the university environment, and those schools somewhat abruptly are not as free-speech oriented as universities are although student of some free-speech rights in secondary schools as well. part of what's important as we orient students to campus and bring them into college campuses is to get them to appreciate

that they are not small children anymore, that are not in the same kind of institutional education environment that they once were in and that they have broader rights of free speech and moreover, they are in and if i'm at which free-speech will be valued and protected in a way that they might not even previously familiar with, and they should understand what you're getting into when they come into higher education in with her graduating from high school. >> so the whole issue of free speech in high school and the way students lives managed in high school, earlier in school, perhaps requires a whole of its own and are somewhat of a desire to have more. if you think about it what happens in average high school is that your time is highly regimented by the school authorities. he had to go to the classes they say you have to go to and you get todd are most part a state-mandated curriculum which in many states includes some elements of indoctrination, and

some of this is perhaps inevitable given the age and relative immaturity of the students but someone needs to be series, at least in quite of at of school things are been getting worse particularly age of zero tolerance policies and the like. i don't have a complete answer to this in my own might even if i get i couldn't schedule all out here but the problem bears serious consideration, not just or even primarily because of its impact on free speech on college campuses. i think there are these broader problems that are caused by having this sort of model of education. >> for our final question, what role does first-year student education and training, first year at university, education and training on free speech, civil debate, and so on, what role does all that play in better educating students on civil debate and dealing with some of these issues? do colleges and universities do

enough of this now, this kind of education? >> i don't think they do and i think they should. i think colleges have taken for granted that students had an interest investment of free speech. they've taken for granted the students understood what they're getting into and coming into an educational environment in which they will be tested and ideas will be pushed and it will be exposed to unsettling ideas. universities should not affect enough for granted. we should students don't necessarily understand what you're getting into. they are not necessarily being socialized and educated into one would need to be a responsible member of a campus community at a productive and contributing member of that community. universities need to more subconsciously tried to explain to students including prospective students that not only do they have really great gems and nice dorms, but also they really controversial people on campus exploit ideas and really serious way.

if you're coming to a college campus you should expect your ideas to be tested, and if your beliefs that are very dear to you and unquestioned beliefs of your own, you should recognize some on a college campus there are people who question his police and don't hold him dearly, and that's fine and appropriate. you should expect you're going to encounter this people when you get to a college campus. it's important to explain to the larger society but especially the incoming students that that's what universities are. that's what makes them great. they may not be right for everybody but if you're coming to college you should expect to encounter some unsettling ideas. >> i agree. >> ilya mention preference falsification was a powerful idea in the social science and it occurred to me for the first time that there's a phrase for that. it's called knowing what's good for you. >> right. >> it actually exists and many

campuses so this is been great. i want to thank our speakers today, keith whittington and ilya somin. i would like to thank you for coming and i would like to invite you to go upstairs to the second floor now for our traditional lunch after the event. thanks very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> every weekend booktv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more here on c-span2, or watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> rule number one on this conspiracy that is undermining respiration, when i say your respiration, i need to be clear because this is primarily an audience of color but but i say thing to a mainstream caucasian audience last week in new york city, and i'm going to say goodbye is your problem is not that you're black or white picket such a part of what i call the invisible class. you are invisible to par, invisible to welcome invisible -- you don't feel like your vote count that's why 109 people didn't vote. there's a very prominent got any media now, i will mention his name, he's done a lot of great things for social justice civil

rights but he didn't vote. he's proud he didn't vote. i have a problem with that because that then creates an environment where some people become elected office that don't represent your interests and maybe even public interest but we endorsed that by not voting. but when you get invisible you don't show up in your own life extremely important point which means the bad guys win. so i want to make clear here that there's a bogeyman in your life, but it's not just your life. it's 80% of everybody in america because 70% of all americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. so if you're living in new york city, making $70,000 a year, you're struggling to make ends meet. reading in atlanta, georgia, making $50,000 a year, $40,000 a year, which, which is

middle-class, struggling to make ends meet. can i get an amen? that wasn't a black amen. i wasn't a white amen. was a latino or asian. it was just an amen. you're living in a small town in alabama making 30,000, 25,000 living in a white rule committee making $25,000 $5000 a year used only to make ends meet. you have too much month at the end of your money. there's a third of all americans have to sell the car to race $3000. 65% american soil $500 in savings for an emergency. did you knew that did you that? 65% americans don't have $500. that's not a racial thing. as a human thing. thing. there's something going on in the world, this is a global issue by the way. 1% of the world's population own half of the wealth of the world. i'm going to repeat that. by the way, these are not just rich caucasian pick these are rich asians, which russians.

yes, some rich africans. these are just rich people from all parts of the world got the memo. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> welcome to asheville, north carolina, located along the blue ridge mountains, it is the largest city in western north carolina with a population of 89,000. since the arrival of the railroad in 1880 asheville has been a popular destination for relaxation and for the seeking to experience the therapeutic qualities of the mountain air.