agree, partially agree with or disagree with but it doesn't mean that art doesn't have political implications and it doesn't mean that institutions that funded and promoted should not also have political goals. >> i think the panel for coming and you all for coming, the authors will be signing their books at signing table 1. barnes and noble's will be selling their books there. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. it's so delightful to see so many bright, warm faces here for discussion about hate. we couldn't be happier about that. my name is brian tate and i'm

really honored to moderate this conversation for the brooklyn book festival. we're going to dive in, just to set a set the tone i will simply refund the description of this panel that is in your programs and then we will get started. there be an opportunity for questions after we have a moderated conversation. the inhumanity of hate. the news is full of stories of hate, from incidents of discrimination and disrespect, to mass shootings and the riots and protests turning america into a divided country your community activists and civil rights lawyer arjun singh sethi, the author of "american hate: survivors speak out", records the heartbreaking true stories of individuals affected by hate. peel -- please welcome arjun. [applause] >> down at her opposite in,

pulitzer prize-winning journalist eli saslow, the author of "rising out of hatred", should the journey of a white supremacist leader as he evolved to disown his heritage and bigotry and hate. please welcome eli. [applause] >> and dolly chugh, author of "the person you mean to be, how good people fight bias", shows a research to effectively and respectfully confront one's own personal biases and prejudices. these authors hold up the mirror for us to see the victims and the instigators, but more importantly for each of us to see the opportunities and urgency to reject the inhumanity of hate. moderated by brian tate. you know -- [applause] >> to organizers and found the book festival are very dear, dear friends of mine and they asked if i would moderate this

conversation. and they pressed me as recently as a couple days ago. would you please send your bio so we could put it in? i also say that i'm a marketing strategist and a culture curator, and also organized a panel discussion series called what will be different, conversation on the changing america. it looks at how diverse issues and communities affected by the sweeping article change we are not experiencing. okay, let's dive into our conversation. oh, thanks. [applause] eli, can you tell us, please, what prompted you to track them tells the strip to their lack? black? >> i was writing about dylann roof who would murdered ten people at a church in charleston, south carolina, and he spent some time on a message board called storm front which for 20 years was the biggest

racist message board in the world. so in writing about dylan and trying to understand storefront, when spent some time on this message board where of course people are saying or both celebratory things about what dylann roof had just done but the biggest threat on this message board was still about derek black who would been raised at the epicenter of this new -- and a been raised to sort of lead and mentioned this movement and then had a radical change of mind and heart and that sort of disappeared, disavowed a very publicly. the threat on the messageboard was about him, what happened to him, what can we do if we find him? i want to set out to fighting and see what it happen. that was the beginnings of the book. >> okay, thank you. arjun, what prompted you to tell the story of survivors of hate? >> i'm a a community activist t i will close with muslim, arab, south asian and sikh americans.

what i was hearing from infected persons both in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and the inauguration of donald trump was that hate was spiking in every facet of american life, in the classroom, in the university, workplace and public life. i thought it was important to meet with survivors into homes, houses of worship and community centers, and the children what "american hate: survivors speak out" is. it's a collection of 14 testimonials of muslim voices,, trans, disabled, jewish, sikh, document, people who have been impacted in this moment. >> okay, thank you. and dolly, what led you to write about unconscious bias from willful ignorance to willful awareness? >> yeah, unlike my very esteemed co-panelists here are writing about hate the world around

them, i'm someone who studies buys and also grapples with my own everyday bias. i am a professor and i sometimes confuse to students of the same race who look nothing alike or each other. i consider myself a feminist. i'm raising to feminist daughters and yet i get e-mails from a student, i get an email from a student saying i have assigned sexist reading. a study this stuff is a social psychologist and i listed the challenges of being the person they mean to be. so for me this book was how do i take what i can keep about and know a lot about as a scientist and how to make that come to let both for myself and based on the sites we do the vast majority of us are also wrestling with unconscious biases and systemic biases the sometimes benefit us. my book is a combination of stores and science, people

interviewed as well as science done by myself as well as others that gives us a path and some approaches towards managing our own biases. >> i have a question for each of you, , and dolly, like to start with you. based on the books come in your case based on the book you've written and your own understanding of history, what's your sense of what we are today as a country? light question. >> i thought you're going to ease into it, right? it's a great question. so i think we are all, my guess is everyone in this room is in an agitated state, like most of the time now, and it's a real struggle to find are we trying to reconcile that and call ourselves down, or are we trying to stay agitated and not allow

normalcy to take over. for me given the kinds of things i write about and study, , whati think is really helpful right now is how much has become visible. i write a lot in my book about noticing and i use the studies that are done by people who study things like vision and cognition to show how much we don't notice what is literally in front of us. picture when you're stirring in the fridge looking for the butter and don't see it and then somebody is in next year pointed out and you're looking at it the whole time. that lack of noticing is really actually normal for our brains. what i think it's happening right now is that whole bunch of like butter that a lot of us didn't notice that was happening in our country for a really long time, some of it has become louder and more vocal, but some of it is that our noticing has also gone up. to me the noticing is actually that this part is not so great this part is a really good news

story. >> arjun, same question. >> the united states was built on a hate crime. the decimation and genocide native communities, and was furthered on additional hate crimes including slavery, jim crow and mass incarceration. but it's nevertheless, the fact that hate in all its forms is spiking in this moment. and i think it's spiked because of president trump's policies here i think it's spiking because of his rhetoric. one of the stories i would like to tell people for those who don't believe that rhetoric and policies matter, in december december 2015 donald trump sent on the campaign trail -- said on the camping trip he was going to pain medicines from entering the training. that day at peak said was found outside a mosque in philadelphia. fast-forward -- eggs head.

paid -- donald trump signed executive order banning refugees and muslims from entering the united states. that night a mosque was burned to the ground in texas. so policies matter, rhetoric matters, political appointments matter, and really so long as the president of united states wants to ban muslims and refugees, kate and separate emigrant families, rollback protections for transgender students, rollback protections for gender violence survivors and so much more, it really puts a target on our back. >> eli? >> i mean, i really agree with all that. comforting for a sometimes to think hate or extremist is something that comes from a few or a small percentage of bad villain actress. i think the reason that derek whom my book is about and of the people in white nationalism were so successful and dangers is that they figured out that with

needed to do was start speaking to a scary for large portion of the country that agrees with a lot of their ideas. almost polls consistently almost half of white people in the country believe that they suffer more from prejudice and people of color. and white white nationalist dit add a way to speak to that sense of grievance in a way of me take the country back. the country is yours, taken back. anyway there's of politics and in a really scary way. i also think this story that a a book about is a story about how still through sustained engagement into investing ourselves and trying to forge change it can happen. in derricks story goes by extreme civil -- the catchment and forced him think about thas ideas in different ways and then through really courageous outreach and conversation relationship building by people on the campus that had huge transformers results first in his life and then in this racist

movement. >> eli, a question for all of you really i was struck by so much of what i read in your book about, about that transformation that derek black experienced. it leads me to a question, you know, about what we are and what we are doing. so you know, for those of us who are committed to social change and committed to human justice,, which i think would apply to many of the people here today, what is the strongest path forward for us? what is both the moral path and the strategic path from an idea of we could take one path

perhaps but not the other, not simultaneously. and if one path is to engage with an attempt to change the hearts of people whose lives are consumed with bigotry, is that the path to take to attempt to engage with these folks of that type, or is it to gather with and organize with and he did people whose lives have been decimated by hate, such of those who turn to a spoken to? >> i think it's a great question, but i think in my experience in reporting this book what i realized is that the choice is not that binary. both of the things actually work in concert to forge change. what's crucial i think is that we invest yourself. sometimes now the country is so polarized and it seems like peeps ideas are so intractable at just the possibility that anybody can change anything

seems almost impossible and it's pretty easy sometimes or pretending to say, like i can change what this person thinks about this and just to give up. what students on this college campus did in multiple ways is a decided to invest themselves again and again and again. and it took not like a few conversations but two years. that medicine cases investing themselves in shutting the school down and making it clear to derek andrew slavitt at the school that people call did not feel safe and that having him there was not okay. and for other students in that investing themselves by inviting a white supremacist over to dinner at seeing if they could try to start beginning to build a relationship with him. and i think it needed both of those things in order for this preservation to take place, and students to use all of those tactics i think were courageous and also following the own hearts and doing it the way they knew how to do it. >> arjun, do you have thought about that? >> i i agree. there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

that said, i will tell you that i am very partial to survivors and impacted committees in this moment. there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are targets of hate crimes. many of them don't have access to health care. many of them struggle with medical bills. they need access to mental health support. and for me in this moment our top priority has to be making sure that the of the resources we need. i will also make a general observation and the method on the one to make it but if you feel comfortable saying that there are times when it seems like mainstream media is more interested in humanizing white supremacists than they are giving the floor to survivors of hate and state violence. just i think a few days ago, right come we learn the economist decide to give steve bannon platform. the new yorker did the same

thing, and for some people might be an academic discussion to a somebody like steve bannon on the stage like this but i will tell you there are people every day who are targeted by violence because of the hate he preaches. so while we do need to be doing all of this work, it's clearly a delicate balance. >> dolly, your thoughts on the especially on the media component. >> absolutely. so one of the things i offer in my book that is earned through the running of the book and this was an example, something where i fall from beginning to end, is my understanding of heat and light affronts of social change and social justice. so think of heat is work that is confrontational. it's the protest, the work that does not worry about the comfort or the evolution of the people harboring the hate at all. and it is, it can be divisive as

some people call it. light is more centering the people you're trying to change in their comfort and meeting them where they are and will go whatever pace that change goes. and i consider myself a light person more than a heat person personality was. i'm not super argumentative. i just rearrange the dishwasher when my husband doesn't does iy he does the idle actor telling i don't like the way he does it. so i'm definitely more of a light person. this book is more example of a light person. but by evolution researching the book was that social justice movement that are affected have both heat and light. that is absolutely essential that you both component and that you people who are focusing on the victims and that you people who are bringing the heat and jeff of the people are sort of meeting people where they are. both as radical and modern approaches to what leads to most

change according to historians who study social justice movement. that was important for me to hear because i think sometimes those of us whose yourself more as light can undermine the people bringing the heat, and vice versa, people to bring the heat can undermine the people bring the light. what we need to do is encourage both and find our own place. what we don't want to be is ist the person doing neither of those. >> how do we go about finding our own place? >> well speedy how did you go about finding your own place? >> i think there's a lot of experimentation involved in it. it's everything from, i tell a story, i start my book action with a story about meeting at my first protest, black lives matter protest, and deeply committed in believing in the work i was there to support and yet by the end of the protest being pretty sure this is not something i could sustain, the level of fear i i felt and the discomfort i felt. this was a heat based activity. it was completely nonviolent but

it was intended to provoke and it just didn't feel like the right place for me. i'm glad i went to the so that i could experience that and that i said well then, i need to find other ways. in the book i talk about everything from how do you steer a conversation, how do you confront some who tells a racist joke, how do you think about your own, the history, america was such a powerful line, america was founded on a hate crime and was built on hate crime and he underlined that when i read your book, which is a good and you really must read it. that level of looking at that kind of reality in history requires a lot of willful awareness that are part to keep looking when it hurts. and i think that's a big part of a a place we can all fight is with camilla carter innkeeper after cells at our history.

>> eli, can you speak a bit about, can you share some of your thinking about the media platforms that arjun mention that are created and offered to ku klux klan members and neo-nazi, et cetera? >> that's a great point he brought up and it's a really complicated issue. because i think in the book that i wrote, derek's father, don black, who remains an avowed white nationalist, is, i had to spend use meta- type with him for this book. there's no redemption for don black in the book because he's done all things and he continues to believe awful things. he doesn't ask for redemption nor does he deserve it what i also think sometimes like some of her biggest problems as a society to happen when we humanize people. they happened when we dehumanize people. it can be a little bit scarier to write about people as fully

rendered human beings even when they do really awful things. because it's more comforting to think of these people as car t villains but the fact is that share a lot in common with us which is much scarier. that said, in order to do that well it has to be done with nuance and with a really article i and based exactly on the foundational fax and it has to be done in addition to writing similarly nuanced big stories about the victims and the people with severed at the hands of this kind of ideology again and again. >> do you think, does the needy have a role in pushing back on those narratives while providing those types of platforms, or is it best to take a more distance detached approach, what is your thought? >> it depends on the peace and the medium but i think oftentimes, for instance, these white nationals, don black, david duke, laying out the facts

is critical enough. these people are spent their lives damaging themselves by doing irredeemable things of the most smart readers understand that and instead of writing something that feels hysterical, laying out the facts is oftentimes the most damning thing you can do as a journalist. i also think there are other venues where the thing to do is take it on directly. as the journalist general you n reports about peoples lives. that's not usually my role. >> okay. arjun, do you have any thoughts in response to that? >> nothing addition other than what i said before, which is that in some ways it's a question of parity. the survivors in my book rarely have access to national platforms to tell their stories, to tell have they been impacted by hate, impacted by hate violence. going back decades.

yet, i find that often there is a great interest, and again giving that platform to white supremacists. and i find that deeply troubling. not that i don't think that work is important if it's done with nuance and done with care, but i just think there is a lot of bias and discrimination in terms of who gets a platform, who gets to tell their stories. and really that's one of the principal reasons i wrote this book your there are survivors across the country who feel -- on talking survivors whose houses of worship and burn to the ground, people who have lost loved ones, anything you can think of, whose stories are reduced to headlines or soundbites, which is why i met with survivors for many hours over in some cases days and work with them to create a testimonial that is in their words. and what i found and through the

rollout of the book is that they feel extraordinarily empowered to have their stories in this type of collection. i'll give you a very concrete example. so i mentioned the mosque in victoria texas that was burned to the ground in january 2017. when i went to meet with this looks person for the mosque, and asked him, you know, what are you doing to combat hate violence? how can we be of assistance to you? he told me that not a single national reporter had been to victoria, texas. not a single journalist at the time had actually asked him that question. right, this is stunning. this mosque was burned to the ground the night that donald trump signed a muslim ban. nobody cares what he said. >> can i share as a reader? i'm about halfway through his book and i am not saying anything i have told those of them in the green room. i was dreading reading the "washington post" story that led

to utilize book that's commit mexican i was reading your book because i just don't like all the darkness and expensive reading both pieces was so different than i expected. in the case of the victims that arjun describes, i didn't realize until i read their stories in their words that i thought i knew what was going on and i understood hate crimes and i wasn't willfully ignorant of hate crimes. but it wasn't until he read the stories i realize i've never read a story about the people and that there was a difference between the crime and the person, and that literally was invisible to me and telling read the story. so to completely, i think echo -- i had to actually see to know i wasn't seeing it. >> just on that point i just want everyone to know that,

survivors across this country are extraordinarily brave and resilient. it's not easy coming forward and telling your story, right? you are accused of fabrication. sometimes you are trolled online. sometimes you are targeted again. in some cases that have events across the country where we have kept private security because we are worried that people could target us at these events. so these survivors of rape,, resilient, and they are pushing back in any way you can fathom,, the entire conclusion focus on best practices, ensuring with mandatory hate crime reporting, encouraging that we have antiracism trainings, calling for the dismantling of policies that criminalize our communities, calling for state hearings in everything in the country that survivors can come forward and tell their stories and talk about how the violence of this administration has impacted them. >> at its the humidity i think

dash that's what struck me. eli talked about dehumanization and i think the humanity of one of the stories about, we like pizza. just sort of the humanity of their stories really soars when the soul in their own words. >> i actually want to come back to that, eli, but i think of what to first, , dolly, i have a follow-up question for you, is in terms of just our own, you know, if we are people of a certain drive and commitment to justice and empathy and allies perhaps have not been personally touched or scarred by his broad exposure to bigotry and hate and violence, how to reengage with

people who have? you tell a story about a young woman, i think her name is grace, who following the pulse nightclub shooting -- >> rachel. >> rachel, yeah, any number of people would come up to her. can you share that? >> sure. so this is rachel who is a former student of mine who i have stayed in touch with as it's always wonderful to do when students graduated. she identifies as a middle of the lgbtq community. she was working at a very progressive company in the san francisco area, and when the polls shooting happen in orlando and she woke to the news on a sunday morning, she merely began to dread going to work the next day. she had this pit in her stomach and was it because they would be raging homophobia in a

workplace? no, quite the opposite. many people with self identify as allies pick would it be because there would be silence and a difference and no one would've paid attention to something so deeply searing in her life? no, not at all. in fact, she expected lots of people to engage with on the topic. so what was it? what it was is she expected a lot of well-meaning colleagues and friends to be coming up to her with lots of visible emotion and their own processing of this event, this tragedy that has happened and that she would be doing the emotional labor of supporting them, that they would be cookie seeking, a term that activist sometimes use the tape would be looking for validation, unconsciously, but in a way that i as a psychologist can say is very consistent with what we study, that their self that would be high. they would want to be seen as a

well-meaning supportive ally they are, and how would they get that validation? how would they get that cookie? they would do by expressing their sorrow to her, talk about their donations to the trevor project or their gay women from college or the gay wedding they've been to pick in all instances would be her job to validate and sue and comfort, and she was too upset and scared and exhausted to go and do that work the next day at work. and so she openly, she can suck that night, putting a post upon i think linkedin that shares this is what i'm feeling going into work tomorrow. chemical think about how are we going to support each other? how are we going to support our lgbtq plus friends? how are they going to support our muslim friends who was sort of end up being blamed for this? how are we going to show up for each other in a way that isn't cookie seeking behavior?

>> that is, in fact, the story. just in terms of how we show up to people. >> that's what i learned from her, and my, as she is an amazing person who always at least people and committees better then she found them and this is yet another example that she shared her story to her blog and interview i did with her i was thinking to myself every behavior she said she was dreading a colleague doing, i was like checking it out, i would've done that. like it was just okay, so what exactly you want me to do? it was actually so simply obvious that it was like just show up, just be there. just allow me to feel pain without me needing to feel your pain. >> eli in your book you talk about, you talk about some of the calculation i think is the

word, involved in people on campus and engaging with derek black and attempting not to shame him or to chastise him or to pressure him, but to simply bring him into their very diverse circle, to get in an explosion that he had never had before. and through that over a period of time to attempt to open his thinking, as it were. and i guess i want to ask, you know, following up on what dolly said about how we on the one hand, how we engage with people, peoples whose lives have been changed by violence, by hate, and on the other hand, engaging with people whose lives are so now consumed with that come with those beliefs. what kinds of things should we be mindful of?

and is calculation actually a strong choice or what is your thought? >> that's a great question. i think first about with derek in particular, like it's important to note he has grown up in this very insular world surrounded by people who felt like he did. the power of suddenly bumping up against and having conversations with people whose backgrounds were totally different than him had probably and even exaggerated effect because he did not have many of those interactions before. i would say the first thing everybody who erected with derek successfully did is i think we should all do is the arm themselves with the facts. because the facts are all on the side of the antiracist. every piece of logic that derek's world was built on was built on a flawed understanding of world history, flawed racial science, total misunderstanding of privilege and the weight works. everybody on that campus who was successful in changing him first

of the knowledge of that. and then i think the other thing that everybody did was they were so patient. i think we sometimes expect change to happen very quickly or for it to be a straight line, affable the people that were resisting his presence on campus and try again and again to up with the voice of people of color on campus from mine people not terribly few point was ever people sitting at him again and again at dinner over the course of two years, there were moments of the notice frustration, like this guys never going to change. he still going to this conference in the woods in tennessee to speak on estate of david duke actually been deemed with him for a year. i think it's disingenuous to suggest that we can change the growing quickly. it requires a tremendous investment of time and energy them out of what tactic are using. >> you know, i remember seeing from the movie dead men walking

-- have people seem that? very, very powerful film. and sister -- >> helen prejean. you know, it leads me to a couple of questions. one is about, you know, eli, you know, , the story that is so powerful in american culture about the person who was transformed by some experience and then becomes a transformational figure. you know, malcolm x or bobby kennedy. and the place that such a person occupies in our cultural imagination. it leads me to a question of, is

that something that exists within many of us, or is it frankly quite rare to experience that type of transmission? that's on the one side. this is sort of a long-winded two-part question. on the other side, there's a scene in that film where the sister is confronted by -- and she has been doing this really, you know, incredible work hoping peoples minds about the moral consequence, the moral cost of the death penalty. and then she's confronted by the people who are survivors, the victims of the people who are committed those murders. and they asked her why have you never, to us, you know? all of this work to humanize come to understand but you never

even reached out to us to ask us about our lives. and what our experience is. so, you know, i guess, i think i may be coming to the time for the last question here. so i was sort of throw that out as something for each of you to respond to and i think maybe eli, the principal part for me there is about that transformational force and culture, is a something we can actually cultivate? is that something, or is it really so rare that it almost -- >> i think we can cultivate it. to me anyway it seems that the act of transformation is essentially human. we all change and transform all the time and i think, like i hope, especially early on in life we're in the process of encountering people in thinking that ideas in new ways. i think a transformation were somebody goes from being the

future air to white supremacist movement to antiracist rising and promise fighting against his own family, that's obviously a long path to travel. but, in fact, that that can happen gives me hope that much smaller transformations which are the things that think are more commonly necessary in order to foster these kinds of improvements are very possible anything we can all help ourselves pacheco and help other people achieve them by engaging. >> arjun, eli said earlier, and i'm going to roughly paraphrase here, , that most short readers understand that these racist beliefs are heinous and what have you. i guess my question is, you know, when we look at the state of the culture right now in america, , overseas, what have you, are we talking about people who come in your opinion and from the perspective of people

you've interviewed, are we talking about, you know, we talk about the aggressors, the people are committing a perpetrating violence in bigotry, are we talking about people who are actually come who can be transformed by logic and fax or a we talk about something quite different? >> so i will give you an example straight from the book. the first testimonial in the book is from the first syrian refugee to ever be resettled in boise, idaho, and she talked about lots of micro-aggression she experienced the and observant muslim woman without a job being a syrian refugee and i hope your chelsea talks our young muslim son was walking in downtown boise, someone came up to mention are you a muslim? he said yes. he was violently punched to the ground. she talks about how later she was invited to court asked by

the judge what she thought an appropriate sentence would be. and a response, remarkably, was that i don't think the suspect should go to jail because he's not going to learn about muslims and syrians and refugees in jail. so i completely agree that we are all better that our worst act. and i can tell you that survivors across the country are open to restorative justice. they are open to reconciliation, so long as there is accountability. >> dolly, your fellow panelists here have talked about restorative justice here today if talked about redemption. what do you think we need -- how do we work towards those things,

which are aimed at different people but as eli said, perhaps we have to achieve all of this stuff? >> yeah, i don't think, i think it's a false binary. i agree that an edit has to choose what stewart to run on a given day but there's lots of ways to get stories out in the world. i took a one-year sabbatical from nyu where i'm a professor to work on this book, and i had two goals in that year. one was to write the book and the other was to teach in a prison, and so that you was really eye-opening for me because your question about did sister helen visit the victims families, if you've spent time in a prison, you come to realize

that there's a pretty wide spectrum of people and it's not so different from the wide spectrum of people you encounter in your daily life, which is kind of a mind blowing idea that there's that much similarity. and the rides home, to be a traffic would be two to three hours. the right home, my brain with just, like implode with confusion of trying to reconcile the reality of how peoples lives were affected by actions of the students i was investing in and care deeply about. and who were kind and generous and fun a protective of me. like if you're confused, just imagine my brain on those long car rides home. i don't think we can afford to dehumanize anyone. if people were not actually human, then fine, we could dehumanize them but the rails is they are not cartoonish

villains. when i read the "washington post" story i came away with a much richer understanding not just because of derek blacks transformation, but a much richer understanding of like what we as psychologist call moral identity. so i deeply do you care about being a good person and being seen as a good person? most of us on a one to seven skill, not just in brooklyn, most of us if you were on a one to seven skill of a six or seven on this. most of us see ourselves as a good person. derek black and his father and his mother i guarantee you are a six or seven on that skill before and after. so if that's true for people in prison and for white nationalists and for those of us sitting at the brooklyn law school, we've got to wrestle with our humanity. we can't choose between restorative justice and rehabilitation. >> retention. >> redemption, i'm sorry. i don't think we have another option other than humanity.

that doesn't mean we don't fight tooth and nail for what's right. >> i have five minutes, okay. let me try to use this wisely. arjun, you tell a story of a young woman who, against the odds perhaps, ran for president at her college, the student union, and she was the only woman of color who was running, and she won. which she took to be a very moment of great opportunity and she was presumably not alone in thinking that. only to discover, well, to also discovered that she had been, she quickly have been singled out for a campaign of hate that was, the lid very much on storm

fronts website and elsewhere, which just proves completely traumatic for her. what is it that we could do to be supportive of people who are experiencing those kinds of, that kind of targeting? >> so he's referring to the story of taylor thompson, an african-american woman. she took a break and extraordinary step of running for student body president at american university washington, d.c. last year. this is five miles from the white house. she won if she's the first african-american woman to ever hold the position in history of the university. the day that she took office, nooses were found hanging across campus. and then days later she got to her apartment and realize she was being viciously trolled by sites like the daily stoermer. they had photoshop buckets of

kfc chicken they put on her head. all kinds which is things, analogizing her to gorillas and monkeys. so the entire book, conclusion, focuses on best practices. i'll tell you some of what taylor said. taylor talked about the importance of intersectionality, making sure that we don't engage in peaceful advocacy. making sure that whatever we push for we include our next brothers and sister, , are undocumented predecessors, muslim, queer, , trans folks pik make sure that we understand that sometimes lawful hate speech is really hurtful and in her case actually cause ptsd. that's something that's come up throughout my travel across the country. they're all lawful forms of hate in the united states that lead to such pain and trauma. literally, in places like phoenix there are armed

protesters outside mosques yelling things like that the muslims, go home. if you're a young muslim you should have to walk by that en route to friday. i think we need to be intersexual. i think we need to talk about the impact of hate speech. i think universities need to be understanding of what students of color are enduring endless moment. i think we need to treat racism and hate is public health issues and we also need to better understand vicarious. hate doesn't just impact individuals. it impacts at large. the public health and public signs now clearly shows that. >> i don't think i've time for another question so i just want to say before we turn over to q&a with the audience, eli, you tell a story in the book, and i encourage all to read all of the books here, if you have started already, eli, you tell a story about derek black's father on

that long drive to a conference like a white nationalist conference with david duke and with franklin who later became a serial killer, and that i don't know if was so much a radicalization as it was an affirmation of the things that derek black's father, don black, had been sort of coming to on his own but there's something in this notion of this affirmation and radicalization that can happen within these close circles. and just our own, just the work that we can do, you know, income and together is like an opposing force to that. i really don't have questioned her i just want to say that that

was a very powerful telling. >> thanks. i mean, the other scripting is that of course the close circles are all around us. they exist in communities, online, on facebook. this is what's driving so much. i think we engage all of us oftentimes in dew points beckon from our own more than we probably ever have. and that sort of confirmation bias is a really dangerous thing. >> i think i'm going to stop here. please give a big applause to the panel. [applause] >> and before we go to q&a with the audience, we don't have time for q&a? really? >> sorry. >> we will do one question. my goodness, all right. so sorry. okay, one question and please use the microphone. i think someone is going to bring you a microphone.

>> thank you. my name is lauren. i'm getting my masters and i'm working on a thesis -- refugee and were crime health. i'm just wondering a question for you, how often do you see, because you touch on mental health several times in your answers, i just wondering how often do you see mental health -- [inaudible] or underlying thing in everybody's life with the people you work for? >> it's absolutely a huge issue, and i have found that you do not have to be a target of hate violence to have mental health issues. you know, again, hate speech can cause it and i completely agree. i mean, it's stigmatized. we don't want to talk about it but it's real, it's growing.

i will tell you one of the long-term consequences of having a white supremacist president is that mental health, a lot of those issues i really just intensify in ways that we can't even comprehend. >> okay. i think we are done. thank you much for coming. and for those of you who are interested, the next program in my series what will be different, conversation on the changing of america, is if that is called if the company to market these are townhall forums on xenophobia. if you go to the website what will be different.com it's got all the information. inks so much. here. [applause] >> hello, the topic today is the art of the accused. when we say accused these days we are often referring to artists who have been accused of