network, c-span. next. the president of interest interest university talking about the impact of public policy on universities. then the islamic society of

north america's discussion of muslim american culture and community. and later treasury secretary on the business tax code. we continue with our series on the impact that public policy issues have on higher education and the role of the big 10 conference. from "washington journal" this is 45 minutes. this week we continue our month long series of interviewed with university presidents. it's in conjunction with the big 10 college tour. this morning the bus is on the campus of indiana university. on it we are joined by the president of indiana university, michael mcrobbie. thank you for joining us. >> delighted to be here and welcome to indiana university. >> thank you for the invitation. can we start, president, with your general thoughts before we talk about the details of the ho

university, but your thoughts o the greatest challenges facing those in higher education today? >> oh, i would say that probably the greatest challenge in front of us is to continue to providee a qualityng and affordable education, especially to the students within the state of e c indiana. we are a state university, after all.niversit and keeping that education botin affordable but also ensuring its quality so that our students are graduating with a very high level of skill that will enables them to prosper in the workplace is one of the greatest challenges. of course, that involves a whole range of factors to do with the sources of funding for an institution with a budget of to $3.3 billion.

>> what steps do you think d ar to take place to balance that oa affo with quality? well, i think one of the key it things that we are doing in terms of affordability is we have focused in the last couplel ofit years on the issue of studl debt. you are probably aware that this has gone -- i'm sure you're aware that has got enormous and appropriate national attention.e it has been a concern of ours.t. so last year, we introduced a comprehensive financial literaca program that involves things like modules that all entering freshmen have to complete on ve finance literacy, courses on finance literacy for credit, a variety of administrative mat others that give students better control and knowledge of their

student debt. what is and remarkable about ths that we saw an 11% drop in the amount of debt that students 11 took on this year. and that amounted to $31 stude million. what i thinknt is remarkable abt that is that if you multiply that across all the institution of higher education in the country -- there are 4,500 of r those. if you multiply that, you could see how one could have an enormous impact on the amount of student debt that students are t taking on. of course, that is a critical k component of affordability. can one find the resources to fund an education?fu so that has beennd a really maj program that we have been focusing on, aimed at an affordability of an indiana university education. >> what would you tell students who possibly are looking at y

mounting debt to get an education? whatfo if they ask you the question if college was worth il it? how would you answer? >> well, i don't think there's any doubt that college is worth it. study after studydon'he after s shows that your prospects in thy workplace in general are better with a college degree than without a college degree. are b now, it certainly is the case that there is a growing emphasis on the kinds of skills that students are graduating with. and we have put in place -- i an announced this last year, that i asked all of our schools to f comprehensively evaluate c opportunities for creative combinations of degrees, certificates, associate's, ate,a master's degrees and so on. just last week we nunls eannouna

new program between our school of business and a college of arts and sciences that will give a master's degree that will provide a bachelor's degree in a field like economics, like e mathematics and so on and then o one-year master's degree in business. so that's an accelerated eleratd process. master's degree can be completed online. you can see how students in a number of different fields can graduate, go into the workplacer and then complete another master's -- complete a master's degree online in, obviously, a very practical applied area of business, which is a skill that is always going to be marketable by our students. we're looking at initiatives like that right across the board at the institution.ooking we have a a program already tha

provides a certificate in a prog businessra on top of different a bachelor's degrees as well. we are very mindful -- i think we have a responsibility to our students to be concerned about t theiudr welfare after they graduate. we simply cannot as an institution complete a student's education and wave them good-byn and not take -- not be concerned about what happens to them then. the programs i have described to you are focused in part on responding to the need for greater schools to go along with the classic kind of liberal arts education that we provide at indiana university. and we're also mindful of the pr fact that in spite of the fact n thatd unemployment is still relatively high, though falling, there are by some estimates 2 or 3 million unfilled positions poi

because not enough graduates are graduating with the right the skills. a final part of that is a the fi comprehensive approach across the university to really improve career consulting. career advising, sorry. we're focused on ensuring all of our students have access to top quality career advising to helpp to maximize their opportunities to find employment once they graduate. >> c-span bus is doing a big 10. cllege tour. presidents are joining us on the bus to talk about issues of re higher education.bu we're joined bys the head of uo indiana university.n. he is here to take your questions on issues of higher o education. you may have gone to the school or maybe you have questions on the issue of higher education.t here is your chance to talk to him about it.dents, 02-585-3880 for college students. parents, 202-585-3881. perhaps an educator, .

202-585-3882. indiana residents, 202-585-3883e 36,000 are undergraduate, 10,000 graduate students and faculty and staff of 8,300. when you talk about cost of 830. indianaspecifically for university, how much of your ecc cost is taken up by employee salary, staff salary and ties? facilities? >> personnel salaries are the largest single component of the cost in the university. it would be around 80% of the total cost of the institution are personnel related salary plus benefits, healthcare and so on. we are a personnel intensive organization like most other lo universities. we are very much focused on that

direct interaction between students and instructors in the classroom. although i think we're seeing ac greater andt greater impact of n online education, i still don't think there's an enormous amount of evidence it's going to complete the fundamental student/teacher relationship which has existed for as long as universities have existed, which is over 25 centuries. ch >> the annual budget for indiaa university, $1.4 billion. bil approximately 370,000 worldwide. you talked about personnel. what about facilities. how much do you have to pay to keep up facilities and add facilities. is my eighth year as president. this has been a major focus of our board of trustees over the

period. like many institutions, i'm t afraid we actually had a very y large deferred maintenance bill. this is the kind of stuff that'. not glamourous. it's the roads and sidewalks ans tunnels, etc. there's a rule in business thatl every dollars, that you don't s spend now you're going to have to spend $4 in the future to rectify that. so we have been putting over the last seven odd years or so an enormous amount of effort into trying to -- at that level -- r catch upam with the significant burden of deferred maintenance. more recently, we have had just excellent support from the , wev state. on top of that, we're also looking at renovating major buildings on the campus and bringing them up to the kinds oe standards and to provide the kinds of facilities that are required to support the type oft research one expects of a 21st

century university. the last seven years we have constructed or have under we construction at the moment or in planning over 50 major facilities. and we have spent about -- this is all cost about $1.5 billion. what's interesting about that s that only 30% of that has come from the state. the other 70% has come from a variety of other areas including a considerable amount of individual philanthropy. >> for educators, 202-585-3882. for residents of indiana, 2020-558-3883. let's start with ann who is a parent. >> caller: that's a beautiful e campus and town.s, a i want to talk about my tperience as a single parent with three daughters and not much economic help with my ex. i have encouraged my daughters, in their 30s now, that -- to be

excellent students and that that was their job. they did. i was middle income. they qualified for great scholarships at small, private schools. i only ended up having to pay $4,000 a year.pa then the other -- got into -- they got into private schools.ve they didn't give great mpackage. we found out after her first year -- we went into debt for first year -- that we ran into b lot of extremely wealthy kids who were lying about being in-state status at a large stas school. and then getting in-state pay, which she did get after jumping through all the hoops of living in state after her freshman year for a year. do you have that same kind of thing where wealthy kids are fr

claiming to be in-state, actually getting money from parents which has happened at university of colorado big-timel talk about small schools and giving, i believe, better scholarships and funding than large state schools. f i hope c-span goes and visits some of the small private schools. if you could address that issue. >> thank you.so i go ahead, president.host >> firstly, let me say that we take very seriously and are required to by the state the distinction between in-state an out of state students.ts. we have rigorous requirements as to what the residency requirements and other requirements are for a student to be regarded as an in-state tu student. we have committees that deal with appeals and requests to be nd q considered as in-state on a regular basis.

they are very hard nosed about what the criteria are. we pride ourselves on applying them consistently across the whole university, all campuses. with respect to financial aid and scholarships and so on thati you were talking about, we're a very large university. we have on this campus over 46,000 students. 36,000 undergraduates. we also pride ourselves on the that for students with average family -- in-state students with average family incomes of $50,000, they pay almost no tuition because the combination of state, federal and university-based financial aid pretty much covers the tota cost of the tuition. for students with family incomes of $100,000 or less, they pay somewhere in the vicinity of p about half the total cost of tuition because of the different

sources of aid that are available to them. in fact, on this campus, about two-thirds of our students get f some form of financial aid.et sm it was a major focus of our lasr two campaigns.st it will be a major focus of our upcoming campaign. in our last campaign for our bloomington campus, we raised ng over $200 million. if you include graduate scholarships, probably closer to $300 million in support of scholarships, fellowships and si on for undergraduate students oh both need and ability to come to indiana university of bloomington. >> president mcrobbie, what qualifications do you look at i accepting potential students? >> firstly, we look at, obviousobvious ly, the things that all institutions do. the s their gpa, class ranking, what

extracurricular activities they have engaged in. we also use what we call holistic evaluation, that is on whole, most students, a decision is easy to make yes or no. there's still a significant number of students who fall somewhere in the middle where you want tome actually take into account everything about that student. maybe the g gpa is not that gret but if you look at the gpa it started low in their freshman l year in high school but by the time they got to senior year it improved. there's to sign of maturity. maybe an extracurricular curricl activity, they have been leaders or innovators at their high school. we want to take all of that into account and ensure that as a large state public institution that we really are doing all that we can to identify and find

those students who we think doih prosperos at indiana university. >> what about students who may need remedial help once they ept the university? what kind of assistance are thee offered? >>d? in indiana, as a state, mo of the remediation is actually carried out by eied out by the e college system. on this campus, we provide very little remediation anymore.e that is actually provided externally.prov we find that our students on the whole arrive pretty well qualified for the courses of study that they are intending to undertake. if they need remediation, they take that in a community college campuses. >> how many students are taking humanities or social science versus professional and technical majors?lasses what's the v breakdown?

>> i don't have an exact figure in my head.gues i think in our college of arts and sciences, about a third.we we are a university strong in the humanities and in the social sciences with highly ranked hly departments in those areas.rankd this a is an opportunity to addo that that languages has been an area that we've been particularly strong in. we teach in one year somewhere h between 70 and 80 different foreign languages, which is probably makes us in terms of the number of languages taught one of the top institutions in the country.institut there are a few other universities that teach that many foreign languages. we teach from just about every

part of the world. we also teach the culture and politics, economics, history and so on of most parts of the world. we have a series of federally funded title 6 centers that arei cover the whole of the world asl well. we decided that we needed to bring all that together to try to increase the kinds of that educational opportunities that p we provide forro our students. two years ago, our board of trustees approved formation of a new school of global and format internationalio studies. your colleagues in the bus will see the very large building ur l we're building atle the moment that will house that new schoolt that school will house languagee programs in 70 to 80 foreign languages and associated programs in the culture of those -- those particular

regions of the country. we appointed a new dean of -- aa foundation dean for the school last year. he has commenced his position here. he's aan former u.s. ambassadore poland and has worked in the white house and elsewhere in washington. our goal in that area is to become one of the top international study schools in midwest and provide not only specialist qualifications in international[ñck?ííó studies b expand and enhance the kinds of our students. because in my view, it's been a priority of mind and the trustees, one of the most important things we have to provide as a student is interes are national literacy.ernation >> george from indiana, a

parent. >> caller: hi.lle, my question is regarding the endowment. you see it at 800-plus million dollars. what is it used for? i see date rape and alcohol use on campus.ate ra what is the university doing about that?e it o i will take it offline, thanks. >> let me deal with the second part of your question first. there is nothing more important to us as a university than the welfare of our students. welfare we are obviously deeply concerned about the welfare of all of our students. earlier this year, we announced a student welfare initiative which is a comprehensive a approach to problems of sexual s violence and the other kinds of issues that you have raised across the institution that er n

is -- that is actually managed at the very highest level in tht institution. two vice presidents co-chair an executive counsel responsible to the comprehensive evaluation of our present policies, their improvement and the implementation of new policies in this area. i should add that one of the ths things we're most proud of on this campus is the fact that our students are not just sitting os around waiting for the administration to do more to address these issues and so on.s our students aues number of yee ago completely of their own initiative forms an initiative called student care which is nit completelyiv run, managed by ou students which is focused on students helping students.

this is something that i have nothing but praise for the workh of our students to put this this program in place. it has had a significant impact. it has been widely praised and looked at by other institutionsy returning to your first part of your thquestion, the total ment endowment of the university is across all campuses is $1.8 a billion. i should notecr that we're very proud of this. this pales compared to harvard which has a total of $35 billion. the c$1.8 billion endowment th we have goes toward a variety of different purposes.owment those are w defined by the dono for example, i'm a donor to the institution. my wifeexon and i support four different graduate fellowships there. those graduate fellowships are defined by a formal legal agreement between me and our

university foundation that's er. responsible for this. that's true of tens of thousands of if not hundreds of thousands of other people. though it sounds like a large od amount of money, the great bulk of it is all identified for l specific purposes undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, funding to support research programs in the very schools within the university and some of it to support the building and infrastructu infrastructure. >> our guest is michael mcrobbie, president of indiana university. a native ofan b australia., how did you end up the president? >> how did you know i was a howi native of australia? [ laughter ] i was recruited here for -- i'm

a computer scientist. i was recruited here over 18 years ago. i came here as a vice president for information technology and computer scientist. i then became vice president for research. then i was appointed president. i never expected when i moved here that i would end up president of the university. but i'm honored and delighted to be in this position. i must say as much as i enjoy sh visiting my home country, i'm an american citizen now. i neverry, regretted the move f one second.never this is home. one indiana, bloomington, wonderfuln place. indiana university is a fabuloua university. i enjoy every minute of my life here. >> let's hear from lawrence from pennsylvania, an educator. >> caller: hi. president mcrobbie, i'd like to get into your general education program. i'd like to know, kind of a

follow-up toli an earlier comme, on what kind of humanities, kino philosophy, english -- all students are likely to get in the important first two years of college? thank you very much.get >> we have a general education > program that with some variations applies to all of thf campuses of the university, all seven campuses of the university. but on this campus in particular -- baring in mind it's a large campus. in summary, students are expected to have done a series of consecutive courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics and also to have done a number of years of a foreign language.

this was put in place by our faculty through their initiative now about eight or nine years ago. and has recently commenced. and it is a program -- the general concept of the general education is something that has my complete support. it is to me one of the real fundamentals of american higher education, that is what's called a liberal education. you get an education in the different areas of human knowledge, but you also get an education in certain areas whicd you major or minor, you get an education in some depth. that model, the american model of liberal education is, f frankly, the best in the world. i speak as somebody who has come from another part of the world r and hast seen other

education around the world. it's one of the most envied things about the education is the quality of liberal education you get at an american university. i wasatio in china five years aw meeting with m chinese universi presidents. ago they told me, we have look iveri studied your system of educatioe and we have poured money into hugher education in china. we're not getting the right kin. of graduate who is so creative and innovative as the kinds of graded as that come out of tha american universities. we believe theco key thing we'ru missing is the system of liberal education you have in the united states. you will see chinese universities have been developing that kind of an approach because of what they see as the enormous success that the system has had in the united

states. >> 202-558-3880 for students. parents, 202-585-3881. for educators, 202-585-3882. for indiana residents, 3882, 202-585-3883. i'm sure you have heard the argument that you should go to college, get an education that will guarantee you a job. >> i would go back to what i jo? said before about the fact that we're certainly aware of that concern. as i indicated and gave an rn. example of a major new initiative that we just recently announced which provides both a bachelor's degree of the classi kind that i was just describing with a one-year master's degreer in business and provides it on an accelerated basis. normally that would take six

years or so.ally we provide this in five years and provide the opportunity for the last year to be online. that's in direct response to that concern which i think in some cases is a legitimate one. as i also said, we are -- have looked at and are looking at expanding that across all of our schools. for example, l our school of o computing is in the process of developing the same kinds of ccelerated bachelor's degrees plus master's degrees and so ons that d provide somebody with a qualification in computing on top of a bachelor's degree of a more classic kind. as i said, we're very much awar of that. but we think that there are enormous benefits of the classic liberal education on the kind i was just describing.s but then when coupled with an

additional qualification, business and so on, really well positions and well qualifies am student to be successful in theh workplace. >> what competition does the university get from for-profit v universities? >> i don't see very much competition at all, frankly, eto from nfor-profits, very little. i see -- i think our major e. competition is from the rest ofi the big 10.or all my colleagues you are n is f visiting around theor midwest. we all compete among ourselves i think in a healthy way for besty students and the best faculty.nb the universities you are visiting are in some ways one of unheralded strengths of this country. people maybe think more of the west coast and east coast.of the but the big 10 universities tha you are visiting of which theres

are now 14 -- the big 10 g te universities you are visiting i enormous ly do an percentage of all the research, train an enormous percentage of students in the united states, something of which in the big 1c we are proud. >> what do you think about the quality of for-profit units?t >> i didn't catch that. >> what do you think about the s quality of ?for-profit universities? >> i would leave that to other. there has been controversy about that question. i think the key thing as i saidi is we see -- we see -- see -- a for-profit, you're not talking private institutions, which aree not for-profits but different to a public university. but we see very little competition from them.them. >> lou from virginia beach, a

parent. >> caller: how are you doing? >> go ahead. >> caller: i'm trying to ask th question that -- about he explained -- mr. mcrobbie explained about being a liberal education. how doesed he mean liberal?g a e what does he mean by liberal? hopefully, it's basically in english. basically he's teaching the foreign languages for basically understanding but not teaching in those foreign languages. >> we will let our guest respond. >> yes. i quite often have to say when i talk about a liberal education, i do not mean in the political sense. i mean in the classic sense of both breadth and depth in an education. that's what i mean by that. that does involve, as i said in

response to one of the other questioners, being able to have done courses in indicative areas of great breadth of human knowledges. >> mr. president, a question about academics from twitter saying -- a viewer asking, should college athletes be paid beyond a scholarship for bringing in millions to the university budget? >> i think that -- this is an area where we really have responded vigorously. i would like to think we have become a national leader. earlier this year, we announced our student athlete bill of rights. there's some very fundamental new innovations in that student athlete bill of rights.

firstly, we will cover the fulla cost of attendance for our of l our student athletes. everything that's involved in i their education is covered through the scholarships we nd provide.lars more importantly, we are now going to provide full four-year scholarships. as a student comes -- a student athlete comes to our u and te cm startses and even if for performance reasons, other fo reasons they are no longer competing in athletics, we will guarantee them a scholarship fol the four years. a sch it removes from -- the concern -- any worries about the future of their education. then on top of that, we're also mindful that for reasons sometimes the family related, 'e sometimes other reasons, a student may leav e before they graduate. we wills, guarantee that at som point in the future that that h student that we will then cover the remaining cost of that n

student's education, assuming co they're in good economic of th standing. you think about that. a student comes to our u. he or she has been a fantastic h athlete. they get recruited to go into ta thsteic professional in whateve their sport is. they don't finish their degree. they break their leg. they can never play again. a what are they left with?ga with? probably very little. we will guarantee the cost of their education back at indiana university to finish their degree so they now have a chancd to kind of re-establish so th themselves in another profession with that indiana university t qualification. there's a series of other major components to our student athlete bill of rights. stude there was are ten major components to it. it's very much focused on a really comprehensive approach th improving all aspects of our engagement with student athletes at the university. >> mr. president, what do you

see as the future of the university, not just yours, but, universities as whole? what do they face as the futuree continues? >> well, i have had a particular interest in the history of universities. i'm fond of saying that with th exception probably of the catholic church, universities are the longest lived human institutions on the face of the planet. there's a university in china that claims to have been founde in 200 b.c. so it's older than the catholic church. e history of some of atho the greatli universities in indy and so oon.f they existed for a thousand they years before they came to an end. universities really have the seeds of being very long lived within them. that doesn't mean that there edf aren't fundamental changes coming in terms of already herea in terms of the model of

education that be provide. i'm an information technologist. i have seen the impact for 40-odd years of my career. information technology is having a major affect. but it has had a major affect m for the last 40 years. to me, that affect is more increme incremental. i'm not somebody that believes it's going to collapse tomorrow and become a new model. i think it'selic v going to cha. i think it's going to keep changing. the chairman of our board says that all university administrators should make up scared every day about where the changes might go. but i think so far what we're seeing is incremental but constant change as opposed to complete paradigm change withins theta institution.mplete >> if you had to look at one thing you would say universities have to do to say competitive, what would that be?

>> well, i think clearly where we started the interview, they have to remain affordable. i give an example of that the fact that we, last year, had our lowest ever -- at least for 40 years -- tuition increase. we're focused on keeping an education affordable. the other thing is is that we also at the same time have to be able to compete for the very best intellectual talent out there. if by universities you mean american universities, it's a ac white hot competition for the w very best intellectual talent out there. we compete now -- i have seen we this happen in recent years.rect very good faculty from asia,

urope who probably would not have considered going back to yl theird home countries ten year ago who have returned to their h home countries because they have got better offers there. -- that's the very best faculty doing the best research and the great teachers.gogists, it's these people who are really fundamental to our institution in both retaining them and recruiting them to us is a critical part what have we do. >> let's hear from kathy, an indiana resident. if you can jump right in with your question, go ahead.the >> caller: yes, sir. i'm a cosigner for all of my daughter's student loans. she's a graduate from iu. it's crippling to our family >> what's happening to us. i've been served over seven . times from the sheriff's office, we have been late on student loans. what can be o done about this? we signed up for the

scholarship. we did everything that was supposed to be done. when it was time to go to clem, it fell gthrough. her american dream is not realistic. she will never get married, by a home. we are so far in debt. the job she has now has nothing. to do with her college degree. she doesn't even need i agree for it. we're sunk. >> i think that the kind of story you tell is, i'm afraid, all too common. we have very much focused on trying to reduce that kind of problem in the future. kind that was, i think earlier in the interview, what i described was a comprehensive approach to financial literacy at indiana a university. an approach thatpp both educate students in personal financial

management. it actually educates them in the consequences of taking loans. it helps to educate them in eda understanding what they really need money for as opposed to as just being given what's the equivalent of a credit card wit a big limit on it.with we are aware of the fact that a lot of student are getting loan beyonda what they need for thed education. getting a. handle on and managi student debt again is one of the most important things that we'rt doing as an institution. i think the impact of this, as indicated before, 11% reduction in the amount of -- the amount of money borrowed by indiana university students last year, $31 million reduction is at ity least the beginning of a way of reducing the kinds of problems that you have just described.he

all of what i described is in place or continued to be in place. we will enhance and build it. i expect us to see a continued decrease in the amount of a con student debtti at the universit combined with an increasing amount of funding for scholarships, fellowships, student financial aid, coming through things like campaigns in the institution.pa it will beig a major focus of o next campaign whichour wie'll announcing shortly. >> how often do you meet with e the student body directly? >> i spent -- i spent probably l three hours last -- just last friday afternoon with a group of student advisers to the president. we have had this group now for nearly 100 years.s near i meet with them on a regular w

basis. it's oneit group i meet with. later today, i have lunch with all of the student leaders on this campus. stude so i'mnt probably interacting oa weekly basis with student leadership in some form.udent i have a number of student interns who work in my office. but i should add that, we are a very large institution. we have seven campuses across p the state.across with 115,000 students in total for indiana university. comprehensively keeping in touch all of them is obviously touch going towi be difficult.obvi but i certainly think i get a good sense of the feel from the student body. feel fo i have to say that the kind of work that has come out of our students -- i mentioned the culture of care initiative of u

before. the group -- theents adviser gri talked about. they provide me with annual reports on different areas that we agree on. the quality of work that comes s out of our students is good as t as in i work coming out of any faculty. >> we will have to leave this conversation with you. michael mcrobbie of indiana university, the president joining us. thank you. friday the arkansas governor congress for 12 years in arkansas. mr. hutchinson is a former congressman. he served as the administrator of the u.s. drug enforcement administration. here is a look at some of the ads in the campaign. >> the democrat gazette said the attacks on mike ross are not true and a smear on his family business. there was never a justice

department investigation and the house ethics committee approved the sale. why is ross' family being attacked for building their business into a success? to cover up the fact he got caught cheating on his taxes. he has a record putting millionaires before the middle class. sorry, asa, this coverup won't work. >> he voted to cut college loans. >> he opposed mike ross' plan to expand pre-k. >> it's the wrong direction. >> mike ross says education must be a priority. >> a pre-k plan. >> career tech training and college tuopportunities. >> teachers have endorsed mike ross. >> on education, mike has a record i can trust. >> you have seen this later smear piece paid by for allies of barak obama? here is what they don't want you

to know. asa found a mistake in his tachs. he reported the mistake and paid his bill in full. many of us have made mistakes on taxes. asa was honest enough to admit it. that doesn't stop team obama. they know lies got him re-elected. they hope it works for mike ross as well. fortunately, arkansas knows better. >> it's a $16 billion industry. arkansas' largest. with 97% of our farms family owned, our next governor must fight on their side. when some criticize free trade, it only hurts our farmers. whether it's rice, wheat or poultry, i want to keep arkansas business open to the world. it's the best way to grow our economy and create jobs. i'm asa. as governor, we will hit the ground running and never look back. >> the debate live from little

rock friday 8:00 eastern on c-span. the islamic society of north america recently held their annual convention in detroit, michigan. one session addressed various aspects and influences of muslim american culture. this is an hour and 45 minutes. thank you so much. thank you so much for coming out tonight. we have a wonderful panel of speakers. we're hoping that this is going to be an informal discussion but one in which we can really be open with each other and really explore not only culture but where we as muslim americans are headed in the future. first of all, we're going to begin -- each of our panelists

has been given a question. they prepared a brief sort of response to that. after they are done talking, we're going to do follow-up questions. in addition, if you have your cell phones, please if you have twitter, we're use ing #isnaculture. if you have any comments or questions while you're listening, please post those. we'll go through those and address them as well throughout the conversation. we're going to start over here to my left. she's an activist scholar artist whose work explores the intersection of race, religion and popular culture. currently she's assistant professor of anthropology and african-american studies at purdue university. she received her ph.d. in cultural anthropology from princeton university and is a graduate from the school of foreign service at georgetown university. she has published numerous writings and has also worked on artistic endeavors including as

a consultant for a documentary and as a published poet. you can also find her on the cover of a magazine this month where the focus is on discussions about race in the muslim community. a brooklyn native, she's unashamedly black, and unapologetically muslim. please welcome her. >> i want to first thank you for the great introduction. also everyone for the invitation to participate in this conversation tonight. so should i read the question? here, read the question. >> i forgot to ask the question.

what i wanted to know is what is the basic premise of culture. not just sort of the basic premise of culture, but jumping into our present day and exploring what we're currently seeing with the next wave of american muslims. it seems as though they are testing boundaries and expressing themselves in ways that 20 years would have been controversial. what's going on? >> so i like to begin to answer that question by really addressing a fundamental misconception that dominates the ways american muslims talk about culture. this misconception is this idea that we're in dire need of an american-muslim culture. we don't need it, we already have it. we are already doing american-muslim culture. this is because culture is about meaning making.

right? it's the way human beings make the world make sense. so culture is made in the values we attach to those things that we can see, touch, taste, hear, feel and also those abstract and symbolic things like ideas and concepts to be developed. so culture is made by living. and so the minute people live in this place that we call america as muslims, that is the moment in which we begin having american muslim culture. at the same time, however, i think we also want to think about this notion of american-muslim culture in two ways. first, we want to think about sort of american-muslim culture with a capital c on culture. right? these are the cultural things that we share across our different classes of race gender, class and so on. and then there's this second level of american-muslim culture.

right? american-muslim cultures. because this plural form is necessary because of our diversity. right? and so there are many different sort of cultural forms may look different for different communities. take an example that happened here, i think, last year. right? so last year the chaplain at northwestern university read the koran. in a mixed-gender audience. i think for this organization and the communities that's attached to it, this was a ground breaking sort of thing. yet in other communities, such as the community of mohammed, i don't think there's ever been a moment where a woman was denied the opportunity to cite the koran. in front of men and women, right? so while we celebrate the leadership on that particular choice in this particular community, we don't identify it as this new thing, but rather sort of a shift in one american-muslim culture that's

representative of an extension of a culture with a capital c. write? at the same time, we don't lose sight of the fact that gender and equity is a persistent problem with an american-muslim culture with a capital c. right? so whether it's other communities, we still have challenges in which how many women are on a panel, for example. or things that are much more harrowing like the silence around domestic violence. so gender and equality is a challenge within the culture with a capital c. right? likewise, i think you didn't mention this, but in the question that you gave, you talked about some examples of things that this new wave that muslims are doing that is sort of testing boundaries.

right? so you might have, for example, a young american woman who decides to tie her scarf in a turban-like style. it may be very true that in her particular community, she is testing a boundary. but she's not doing something that is new. write -- right? despite the fact that "the new york times" might like us to think. i think i posted on facebook. how many times can they write the same article? american-muslim women like to look nice. and every sort of quarter they are discovering this again. so there's a way in which we want to identify shifts that happen in communities. we want to understand this notion of american muslim culture and what that is as one that's something that has always been in existence and continues to exist as long as we sort of live in this place we call america as muslims and also we

want to pay attention to the fact that there's something much more powerful about a narrative of american muslim culture that is one of continuity. this muslim woman is extending a stylistic choice that may predate her from her african-american counterparts. then this narrative of, look, i woke up one day and decided to put my scarf in a turban. and more importantly, i think for me, the question that i'm interested in asking or the question that i'm interested in posing is what kind of boundaries are being tested? right? are people testing boundaries in ways that are just remixing white supremacy? so for example, does hip hop become the backdrop to their own fantasies if they are the center of the universe, right? can american muslims now clim to belong because just like everybody else we use blacks as props.

and i think i'm asking that question because in our community and across our difference, there's a lot of anxiety about representation, right? how we are being seen or featured in the media. and the anxiety is warranted, right, because everyone is tired of seeing the woman who is being beat by her tyrant husband who eats babies for lunch. people are tired of seeing that. but at the same time, we can't just sort of exchange one overly simplified narrative of who we are for another. so maybe instead of a burka-clad victim of domestic violence now

we have this kind of uber yuppy or hippy, but she's still one dimensional. and when it comes to questions of race in particular, she's still not -- she doesn't believe that black life matters. these things are still a part of the story. and so for me, i think that what i'd like us to think about, there are two points i want to make. one point is so the question of representation, right, i think muslims often articulate for these simple representation of what this one american scholar called simplified complex representations. so they look good, but if you think about them, they are not really good because they don't shift the status quo. so she says for example, there will be a muslim on a television show because she focuses on tv. right? the muslim isn't the terrorist. it isn't the person bombing the thing, but it's the one calling the fbi to say the other is the terrorist. so that's great, but it's not great because the only way we can understand or see a muslim

is in the context of this idea that they are a good muslim in comparison to the bad one. right? and so muslims, i think, we want these good representations or cultural representations that are better, but i think we have to sort of -- basically, we have to crush the pipe dream that if we act better, if we look more peaceful, that the people who don't like us will like us. and i think from that measure, we learn from the black experience. african-americans have learned that respectability politics, you can be a harvard university professor and still profiled by the police. they will still shoot you, leave you in the street, and then call your community animals because they stand up for your life. so these things will continue to happen. so it's not about sort of replacing one overly simplified notion of who we are with