disinvited from graduation ceremony office student protest. this is an hour. good afternoon, and welcome to the city club of cleveland.

my name is paul harrison. i'm pleased to introduce today's speaker, president and co-founder of the american council of trustees and alumni. as stated on its website, acta is -- >> on academic freedom, the website states that the ideas of academic freedom and free speech are at the core of academic speech. and freedom in research is essential to the advancement of truth. today's forum offers a wonderful opportunity to juxtapose freedom of speech and academic freedom and just a moment to reflect on our 102-year history at the city club of cleveland.

we proudly refer to the city club as -- in 1923, the city club invited famous labor leader, socialist and perennial presidential candidate eugene deps to speak and he accepted. asking mr. depps to speak, caused -- ultimately mr. depps determined to decline the invitation and he wrote that he was feeling disinclined to intrude whether there's any question of my being welcome in a forum devoted to free speech, end quote. in may, former secretary of state condoleezza rice declined an invitation to give the commencement address at rutgers

following student and faculty protests over the bush administration's war in iraq and the use of waterboarding to obtain to detainees. ms. rise referred to her 30 years as a professor and also to her service as provost and chief academic officer at stanford university, and stated that, quote, i am honored to have serve mid country, i have defended america's right to free speech. that also led -- smith college sand haberford college. in the haberford case the school chance leer issued a statement, quote, though we may not always agree with those in leadership, i believe that it's essential for us as members of an academic

community to reaffirm our commitment to a respectful and mindful process through which we seek to learn through inquiry and intellectual engagement, end quote. amend that brings us to ms. neil s she has appeared frequently on radio and television. cnn, fox, npr and others. she twice was appointed to the national advisory committee on institutional quality and integrity which advises the u.s. secretary of education on federal accreditation. she earned her junked graduate degree. and she practiced law in private practice as a first amendment and communications lawyer, so she's done a lot of stuff. i'm pleased to present on behalf of the city club of cleveland and american college of trustees and alumni.

>> really, i must say i like any organization that begins free speech with a gong. as i did my research on the city club, i really was so impressed and amazed to see a begone of free exchange. zbich your past history and given your principles i don't really think i need to make a statement at all, but i will in any event. i want to start the day by going back to imperial rome. laughing at the wrong joke could cost a man his life during the reign of corrupt and crazy -- let's scroll back to the year 65 or thereabouts, upon making a gastrointestinal noise, let's call it farting.

the reaction was something that only monte python could imagine and yet it actually happened. romans scrambled, put on their togas and get out of the potty, les a tattling informer find them smiling and charge them with treason. hilarious, except the executions and forced suicides were not. nowadays, inappropriate laughter may not be a problem in public latrines, but any number of politically incorrect observations can bring blacklisting, disinvitations and other punishments on our college campuses, campus sensitivities are on high alert and the topics that are potentially offensive and increasingly offlimits are growing. you have heard the term disinvitation season. this is part of that phenomenon. choosing a campus speaker used to be about hearing a distinguished person, often

someone who had taken a controversial stance. but on the politically correct campus, many students and faculty now are more interested in hearing a challenging perspective than what they are in what t"the huffington post" called freedom from unpalatable speech former secretary secretary of state condoleezza rice had to bow out after she -- human rights honoree to speak and then rescinded the invitation over student protest. there was a specific university invited charles murray to give a talk, in this case not a commence fbment address and then backed out because murray and iminnocent american social scientist was too controversial. christine lagarde, first female head of the international monetary funding, was invited to speak to the graduating class of smith, only to back out after

students protested her support of imperialist and patriarchal regimes. on the pc campus, shouting down a controversial voice is not necessarily seen as an evil, but a virtue, a small group of closed mind eed students an s faculty is all that is nedded to cut off discussions that their view, is the only view, the correct view. for those who believe our colleges and universities have an obligation to foster a robust exchange of ideas in the pursuit of truth. it wasn't always this way. back in december 1820, as he founded the university of virginia, thomas jefferson laid out the foundation of academic freedom. the university will be based on the eliminatable freedom of the human mind, he wrote.

for here we are not afraid to follow truth no matter where it may lead. again in 1859, jon stewart mill outlined the matter elkwechbtly. the peculiar evil of silencing the expressing of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation, those who desent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. if the opinion is right, they -- if wronged, they lose what is almost as great a benefit. the clear perception and lively impression of truth in come collusion with -- in 1915, the american association of university professors issued it's seminole declaration of principles as defining academic freedom as a two-way street,

fact k students fleem to learn and faculty's -- to train them to think for themselves and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. now for many years, there was fairly uniform agreement among academics, but nothing is more central to the light of the mind than the robust exchange of ideas. over the last 50 years, the concept of academic freedom has been under attack and attack from within. in its place has been an academic regime that is regularly put sensitivities and civility first and free speech second. the notions of truth and objecttivity, the very conditions that junked score the academic freedom definition of thomas jefferson are regularly

regarded today as antiquated and an obstacle to change. today it is the notion that certain areas of life and thought have only one acceptable point of view. in other words, there is no need to search for truth, because the institution has already determine what the truth is. political correctness has provided the empet tus for all too many university administrations to punish students and evening faculty members for expressing certain offensive thoughts often touching race, gender, sexual or gener gender or generalation. -find himself ridiculed or even sentenced to sensitivity training or worse. the p.c. mentality is alive and well. what we see as i will outline in just the next few minutes is the

weakening of the core curriculum, the disappearance of academic disciplines and perspectives, the emerge negligence of speech codes and trigger warnings. it shortchanges students for the future and ultimately i would submit to undermine our competitors. let's start with college curriculum, at one time faculty sachkd administrators had the courage to define what is great and what is important for students to be able to know and do. students could make some choices, but they started with a largely prescribed liberal arts curriculum leading to a major that would equip them to partation in the common conversation of well-educated people. not today, a major like english today is not so much about important writers, genres and

works, shakespeare, milton, chawser are no longer -- underrepresented cultures and ethnic or nonwestern literature are. advocacy, therapy and sensitivity training regularly supplant regular -- all of which are quite fine courses, but the question is should this be a student's only exposure. so for starters we'll look at union college. students there can substitute such courses as narratives of haunting in u.s. ethnic literature for foreign language study. at wellesley, rainbow cowboys and girls, classic sexuality in westerns will satisfy the language and literature requirement. at uc boulder, the u.s. context requirement may be satisfied by foreign films.

where the u.s. culture and civilization requirement can be met withmental illness in the media. takes jechder, power and pop culture, devoeding buffy the vampire slayer. my organization looks forward to doing a special column on halloween on these courses. while most contempt on the pc campus is peaceful. sensibilities are not. at ohio state, is desooichbed to sensitize student toss issues facing asian americans. a lab of her own at the university of colorado, colorado springs, satisfies the

natural -- science and mathematics, with an emphasis on women's contributations to these fields. this course will also offer a feminist critique of the traditional methods of science. and let me remind you that is in place or in favor of the national science requirement. at college today, one cannot assume that learning is for learning's sake either, education is often directed -- to promote a political agenda. if you enroll in the social justice minor program at the university of minnesota and register for the color of public policy, the profess sorry has already reached a conclusion for you, advisie ining students in catalog that they will be introduced to the trouble churl

and institutional conditions through which people of color have been systematically marginalized. to obtain credit, a student must also engage in 30 hours of social justice organizations. i think we can all agree that in years past, our college curricula have too often marginalized minority groups and provided a portrait that failed to outline the complex story that is our past. in the rush to expand that story, much of the old story has been left out, leaving students and citizens with only part of that sweeping narrative and one pack with a tightly controlled political agenda. the survey conducted by the american council of trustees annually of more than 1,000 liberal arts colleges around the country, finds that a mere 18% expect their graduates to take place in american history or government before graduating, a

mere 13% require knowledge of foreign languages. . >> for as little as 200,000 today, our colleges are asking students to construct their own curriculum. given the state of affairs, the alumni asks the survey organizations to assess recent college graduates feelings about their education. >> faced with the challenge of finding a job. recent college graduates in large numbers, 70%, the absence of a strong core curriculum and exposure to a broad base of foundational sublgts. as one student recounted, i took a lot of courses, i just wish

they had amounted to something. and even more pernicious by product of the p.c. campus is the disappearance of academic disprins and perspectives. casey johnson is a terrific professor at a public college. co-authored the book until proven innocent. casey stud yayed the challenge of disciplinary diversity caused by mail correctness. in the last generation, he writes, with accelerating speed, the percentage of professors trained in areas offist history, some would deem as traditional

hoz plumm has perm frat -- the result is that even students who want to encounter courses thought by those trained in u.s. political, diplomatic constitutional or military history are often unable to do so. but aim happy to say that students who go to ohio state are exceptional in there regard because osu has remained very diverse in its history. no more than harvard president larry summers has acknowledged this problem. stating that the threat is overreaching legislation in trustees than it is in the faculty orthodoxies that make it very difficult for scholars to hold certain views to advance in certain fields. pro israel scholars find a home in mideastern studying and american historians whose scholarship celebrates american past too often find themselves

as pariahs in their field. nowhere is it more found than when it comes to campus speech codes and tribunals that enforce them. each year the foundation of individual rights and education issues a spot in free speech. >> now these policies as one might imagine, gag orders on censure ship policies, at sea world, the speech comes with benign themes. respect and civility.

policies governing speakers --. s case western, kenyon, overland, shawnee state. the university of cincinnati, university of toledo. the code begins with a statement sexual harassment. but for you lawyers in the room, the succeeding definition is broad and the distinction between harassment and free speech, is anything but clear. prohibited sexual harassment improved.

little did we realize in those days that an awkward date was called for litigation. regularly and fully report sexual assaults including sexual harassment. are now at risk of rape and harassment. the tribunal speech does not have to acquire rules of due process. the age of niro.

so let's go back to the -- originalably used for the mentally ill to help prevent traumatic stress disorder. triggering now the latest rage on college campuses. recently passed a resolution urging university officials to institute mangdory trigger warnings on class syllabi. professors who oftened content that may friger the onset of post traumatic stress disorder, would be required not only to provide advanced alerts, if it upsets you can avoid the subject rather than facing it. in this world, sensitivity and civility are deemed equal to or in fact superior to academic freedom. a point recently made by the chancellor of uc berkeley to

allow disapproval. but in the words of scholar steve woodward, if we make the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility or mutual respect, primary and dominant value, then we risk sacrificing the university's central purpose. when i was first approached to give this talk, we explored a number of titles, including political correctness and it's impact on american competitiveness. in an important way, i think this title understands that what happens on college campuses does not stay on college campuses. first amendment scholar outlines the problem. administrators on campus, he writes, have been able to convince well meaning students

to accept outright sensorship by creating the impression that freedom of speech is somehow the enemy of social progress. when students begin leaving college with that lesson under their belts, it was only a matter of time until their motivation of bad intellectual habits on campus, started harming the dialogue of our entire country. what happens on our campuses profoundly influences what happens in our businesses, in our hometowns and in our policy making. and i think woe should be concerned. when students are not empowered to speak for themselves, when they're not presented the multiple perspectives and disciplines, when we are led to believe they can can be free fr all of us are being de3r50i6ed

of thoughtful -- you'll understand what i mean. they don't blame political correctness exactly. but they do say in large numbers, that they are seeing colleges graduates who cannot think critically, write clearly and who are historically illiterate. the last two surveys of college graduates conducted by the department of education, held a majority were unable to compare perspectives in two editorials. recent surveys conducted for the american council of trustees and alumni found that college graduates could not identify the terms of members of congress. they did not know that the constitution provides for the separation of powers. they thought that d-day occurred at pearl what are ambassador. -- harbor. it is true and we can all agree that knowledge is more than wrote learning, but when courses don't provide a broad squeweep

history, when speech suggests that free speech must take a back seat to sense at this times, we should not then be surprised that our college graduates are not always prepared for life after graduation. and indeed choose to impose the same principles and the same constraints that they learned on the college campus. where does social hygiene end and personal liberty and privacy begin? in research now under way, sociologist april kelly weez nevweezner tells me that she has found an increase in people graduating after college, she has found that students are accepting speech limitations and speech codes more so than in the past, including banning certain books and controversial people from teaching went have taught this generation, she wrote me in an

e-mail that protecting people's feelings is more important than the search for truth. and while speech codes and other symptoms of the politically correct university, to protect students from harmful speech, students today do not discriminate, believing that anyone who says something offensive to anyone should be restricted. in the wake of uc irvine's student effort to present the israeli ambassador to the u.s. from speaking, former assistant -- what he believed had happened, and i quote, they believed th ed thad that consti rights were nor marginalized groups not for themselves. these students took it upon themselves to define the privileged, they found that jews were among the privileged. no need to protect the free speech of jews. every reason to silence them.

in a book entitled freedom from speech, and i urge it for all of you, the national obsession with punishing jokes, rants, drunken tirades and even deeply held beliefs, he writes, shows a growing hostility toward free speech as a cultural value. people all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. on the p.c. campus, respect for the authority of ideas takes a back seat too often to the idea of authority. now i'm happy to report after all of this, that the american council of trustees and alumni is not at all glum. in late august, a group of policymakers, truc, truce tees,

factuality and others, came together to demand a different academic culture, in the report, governance for a new era, formed by ben o. schmidt was -- former governor of michigan and now president of business round table, jonathan cole, provost of columbia is bold and to the point. the signatures call upon colleges and universities to put an end to disinvitation, to insist on disciplinary dpi versity, so ensure a strong core curriculum, and to demand the integrity of the hiring process. they call on college and university leaders to make clear that a diversity of opinion is essential and that the free exchange of ideas is the bedrock of a rich education, they urge presidents, deengs and faculty to address entering students on

academic freedom and freedom of expression and we have already seen this happen in a powerful welcoming speech by the -- these leaders state boldly and i hope you will agree, that american universities must return to first principles. they recognize the predominance of political correctness of our campuses amounts to nothing short of a war on youth, endangering the empowerment of our next generation of leader, they recognize that american higher education has been long been the envy of the world and will continue to be only if true econom academic value is free.

>> we turn to our panel momentarily for a traditional city club question and answer period. please start formulating your question now and please try to keep them brief and to the point. we welcome all of you. television broadcasts of city club are made possible by cleveland state university and pnc on our live webcast and supported by the university of akron. one week from today, on october 10, city club welcomes steven vetters, ceo of the press clubs of america. today we welcome guests at the table also by western reserve partners, we thank you very much for your support and we also

welcome students from two high schools, sharden high school and maple heights high school. student participation was made possible from general gifts from the corporation. please stand up and be recognized. i'm sure you're starting to formulate your questions right now. and speaking of which, we would like to return now to our speaker for our traditional question and answer period. we welcome this from everyone here today, including guests, holding the microphones today, are marketing an outreach specialist, kristen bianca and ted teddy isenberg. >> ms. neil, thank you for your remarks. you describe an alarming situation. my question is, how did it come

about? is it generated by students? is it generated by students influenced by facultfaculty, wh to be tenured and largely one political mindness? give us some clarification of this. >> we could go on for some time, couldn't we. i think there are a number of causes. we can look in the '60s when what is known as most modernism is things that is rel vafblt and it looks at issues in terms of power, and i think many of the post-60s faculty very much prescribe to that philosophy so that philosophy increasingly became part and parcel of what we have seen on college campuses. i think that is very much the case. i think there has been within the academic hiring process, often a tendency to hire one

with whom everyone agrees, this one has come up frequently in the question of whether or not professors are all on one side of the political line. and the american council of trustees and alumni, frankly we have looked at this and i think it's fair to say that a number of studies would argue that in fact many faculty members are more of one persuasion than another. but our basic perception is that in an of itself is not important. what we get back to really is professional responsibility and professional rights. i think this gets back again to the academic freedom definition. when i told you in 1915, the aaup said that academic freedom was a two-way street. students freedom to learn and faculty's freedom to teach. one thing that has happened in the last 40 or 50 years is an increasing de-emphasis on students freedom to learn and an increasing emphasis by faculty on their rights to teach. and i think there's frankly a

fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the regular public, but actually the faculty themselves ask what are the limits and what are the frame work of academic freedom. so i think over the years we have seen a growing sense that academic freedom can be used as an excuse for irresponsible behavior in the classroom. faculty has a -- that committee was never realized and i think that has been one of the larger problems in the academy in so much as the faculty themselves have not been willing to police themselves. and that 1915 statement i think quite rightly says that we do not want to be policed and it is incumbent upon ourselves, it is incumbent upon us faculty to

police ourselves because if we do not, other also surely do that for us. and i think that is a situation where we finding ourselves now, that many are concerned, rightly so on the outside, trustees, policymakers, that we are not seeing the students' freedom to learn and the faculty's freedom to teach and it is a defining moment and they hear very legitima legitimate complaints from the outside as to whether they're properly preparing-sew. >> before the anti-harassment policies came into effect, do you think there was a problem with harassment that needed to be responded to. and now that the situation has got on where you have described it, where do you find the middle

ground, and what do trustees and alum alumni, not just your group, but trustees and alumni who may have a problem with these kinds of policies. >> there have to be distingsations made between things that are illegal and things that are not. i think with the definition of sexual harassment. these definitions have got on so broad that they are no longer getting at what is illegal, and they are actually including vast expanses of protective speech. you're right, we don't want to have a claej campus that is rude and that is engaging and intimidating. maybe rude, but we don't want a college campus that is engaged in intimidating, persistent intrusion with people. by there are -- but that is a level of persistence and intimidation that we're not finding as the line that is

drawn by most institutions, i think in an effort to respond to a desire to treat people fairly and nicely, we have gone overboard and as a consequence now find ourselves in a situation where too many things are off limits. >> professor at kent state university, i deeply appreciate your comments. but i wonder if the priority of putting political correctness ahead of reasoned discourse is that our society, that instead of it being a cause, that it's a symptom of a broader thing that our society has lost its appreciation for the well reasoned dispassionate discourse of controversial ideas, in lieu of the entertainment value of discussion of controversial issues.

jerry springer show and things like that. >> i actually do tend to point my finger at colleges and universities and i do think that they have perpetuated an atmosphere on the college campus which is not open, which is often not open to the free exchange of ideas, so that people who dare to have a different opinion, whether it's on race, class and gender, or climate change or whatever, more often than not silence themselves rather than to address these issues. so rather than complaining about entertainment, i think as we look at our public discourse, which has become increasingly sort of shouting rather than engaging, i regret to say they do think that we have led students on into believe that sensitivity and civility and not disagreeing is more important than having a robust exchange of ideas. and so, while the entertainment

may play into that, i feel that we have to really point our finger at our academic institutions and that the health of our society depends profoundly on the health of our educational institutions and this is one pathology that we need to worry about. >> what influenced you to focus on political correctness and have you ever witnessed or experienced political correctness in your lifetime. >> well, i started out as a first amendment lawyer so i have always been interested in first amendment areas and quite frankly as you heard from the head of the organization, there have been any number of recent speeches where people have been shouted down and were not allowed to speak and so this is something that deeply concerns me because i think as i arct articulated whether it's thomas jefferson or others, the ability to hear differing perspectives

can one can weigh them one side or the other is very, very important. it is just a bedrock principle of the first amendment. and i think we can look at grandice and others, what did he say? if eye have offensive speech, what's the best answer? more speech not les. i think it comes from my love of the first amendment, i was a journalist for a period of time, i grew up in a journalistic family. i think the exchange of ideas is essential. and most profoundly in the country in way we live, but our government relies on educated citizens it's something that our founding fathers were all very -- college and university trustees, they understood that our educational institutions war instrumental in obtaining an educated citizenship.

>> ms. neil, in recent years, there's been a significant number of very large contributions to american universities coming from foreign governments and from individuals who have specific agendas. sometimes these gifts have resulted in chairs being named and departments of studies being established. to what extent do you think that these kind of contributions which are important to universities continue any kind of a problem for academic freedom. >> i think you put your finger on a very serious potential threat to academic freedom and i urge you all to take a look at a booklet that we have put out called free to teach, free to learn. one of the topic that is it talks about is the influence of foreign governments on college and university campuses. i know you all have probably read recently in "the wall

street journal" talking about some of these confucius institutes about a fear that the governments were paying their way into college and university campuses to put out a particular vumt. i think colleges and universities have to be very, very careful before accepting those kinds of gifts. because again, the whole point of academic freedom is to follow truth wherever it may lead. and if a gift is so prescriptive that it means certain areas are off-limits, then it fundamentally undermines academic freedom. it raises another interesting issue as well. because we often help donors who would like to see certain areas of a field covered on a college campus. so for instance, if someone wants to introduce a free markets economic course and it's not otherwise available. we encourage donors to do that and we do it because sometimes students can not find otherwise on campus exposure to those

areas. but it does raise even enough instances of the question of academic freedom that have to be looked at very closely. and it also underscores the institution's failure itself to provide that diversity of perspective that it needs. so it's self-correcting. the institutions, if they are open to a diverse or even disciplinary and other perspectives and make those vashl available, they will have railro already have done it on college campuses. >> ms. neil, you have a broader perspective on the topic i'm going to get into than most. so i ask you, what pattern, what emerging trend to do you see in the evisioned role of three hallowed parts of our education system, high school, college and post college stud yay, advanced

study? on two metrics, one is protection of students, let's focus just on the students for a moment. protection of students from adverse things that might happen to them, and also on the metric of breadth of stud yay, broad swrrgs specialized andary owe. i see high school in a very special way, college in a different one, and advanced study different. but i would welcome your views. >> uh-huh. i think that you're right, i think in years past, and i think bloom talks about this, that you can rely on high school to provide a solid general foundation. with expose area to the foundational areas of knowledge, such as math and science and literature. and i think for better or for worse, that has not been the case. so the colleges and universities do finding themselves having to provide that foundation that some of our high schools have not been able to do. now as i indicated, what we're

finding today is what i like to call the anything goes curriculum. and this gets back to the very first question, you had the influence of post modernism that affects a lot of things that were taught. but our colleges and universities have frankly been spinning. so the university did not have to pick and choose, they could keep adding, a at one point called it education by adding machine. so again, professors have things they want to teach, schools really didn't have any limits on their resources, so it was easier just to let teachers teach more and teach moore. so now what we have are often hundreds, even thousands of courses that will meet distribution requirements rather than a prescribed liberal arts education that ensures that foundation. why is that foundation perhaps

even more important unanimous it was now? again, i think it was because you were getting so many students who come from very different preparations. and a general education curriculum that is well structured can help bring people from very differing preparations together over a certain set of common material. and this gets back into the yae earlier question, i think we worry these days about the range of civil discourse, and this t gets back to me again, for the lack of a common foundation. in thomas jefferson's day, obviously it was a little bit easier then, madison and jefferson, they were talking to each other, they could be sure that they knew what each other was talking about. they read the same things ai do

colleges and universities are missing out on using the curriculum to provide that common conversation that can help us unite. it won't mean that we all agree, but we will have a foundation on which to have a discussion. i see these kids today who love to watch the voice and other shows and i love these shows -- and i love those shows, too. one of the reasons i they find them so enjoyable is that then becomes the common conversation that they have. instead of talking about a book that they're reading in common, they're talking about "the voice" or what they saw on television. so i do feel that we are at a time where we can help that common conversation and we can help our preparation for life and for community and for civic engagement if we go back to a much more structured curriculum that will ensure that we vaul that broad exposure and that will also, i think, make us much more nimble in an economy

between the ages of 18 and 45, on average, someone will have 11 different professions. and so, having that foundation and having that breadth, i think, is what in our current economy we really need but regrettably we don't have. >> ms. neal, you've essentially made the argument for the small liberal arts president who says we need a basic liberal arts agenda for our students. my question is -- i have two questions. one is, can you give us some examples of colleges or universities that have kept the broad curriculum with standards and the other i would be interested in is people who have -- specifically programmed controversial. and the second part of the question is, are these positive examples more typical of the small liberal arts colleges, the larger public institutions and

maybe nationally known institutions or maybe the group in between? you know, the regional colleges, the sort of mid-size like cleveland state here university. >> we did an assessment of a top-rated liberal arts college, according to "u.s. news and world report." the amhersts of this world, the williams. and i must confess to you that these are probably the worst when it comes to having a prescribed liberal arts curriculum. we often hear that people no longer appreciate liberal arts education and we often hear this from the campuses. but after we did this research to see what was the framework of the curriculum that was offered to these students, we came away with the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with liberal arts. that what was wrong was the way the colleges and universities were imparting the liberal arts. it was a self-inflicted wound

where essentially, again, you could go to amherst, they pride themselves in saying we don't have anything that we require. we allow students to make their own curriculum. i'm not denying that the kids that go to amherst are those that -- highly selective institution, has many, many very smart students and i'm sure have been well prepared. but it's interesting to look at a new book, which again i commend everyone called "academically adrift" by richard and jaseppa put out by the university of chicago. what they found there is that after $200,000 of investment, students were graduating with very little cognitive gain. in the first two years they found that only 45% had had cognitive gain in the in the six years -- that's a whole different issue which we haven't gotten into, only a third showed cognitive gain. and within institutions was where they found greater

variety. that is by way of saying, so you might be well prepared coming into amherst and can do fine, but there is great variation within these highly selective institutions so that some students are being allowed to graduate without that foundation and that fundamental strength that they need and should merit coming out of a very pricey liberal arts college. now, do i have some examples of some very good places? sowani is certainly a place that we've looked at and found to be quite impressive. they have not only been attentive to their tuition, but they do have a strong curriculum. in terms of others, there are a small liberal arts public college in oklahoma that has done a beautiful job in i think it's called the college of oklahoma arts and sciences.

again, a very strong curriculum. blue field college in virginia, again, a very strong curriculum. so there are schools -- and, in fact, interestingly, there are schools now which are viewing this as a means to carve out a niche and a means to compete because they are then able to say, if you send your child to our institutions, you can be assured that that student will receive a strong core curriculum. now, this isn't to say that you can't get a good education at almost any institution. you can. you can. but you will have to do it yourself. and the american council of trustees alumni believes it really is incumbent on the adults who are in charge of these colleges and yuuniversiti to make the choices and judgments of what students needed to do. if they're not going to make those judgments thenky sit at

home and i can take ♪ s and i can do the teaching company and i can teach myself and make my own judgments because frankly that's what i would have been doing at the college campus but i'll be $200,000 wealthier. this is what we're really calling upon. it's a hard job. it's a job that faculty don't like to undertake because all faculty are in fields that they love and each one of them feels that his or her field is the most important field. but, in fact, you can't teach everything in your four years and i think that it's important for institutions to have this debate. they won't all come out with the same answer, but they will have come together as a community to try to decide what they believe and graduate of their institution should know and be able to do. that way, the marketplace will also have a signifier. if you go to place, you have got thn kind of an education. the way it is today, it is so

defuse where it is pick and choose on behalf of students. and an employer can't really know what that particular graduate will have studied or have learned because there's just really no set curriculum that can be guaranteed. [ applause ]. >> today the civic club of cleveland, we have enjoyed a friday forrum from anne neal. thank you, ms. neal, for your informative remarks. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. this forrum is now adjourned. [ applause ]. [ bell rings ]

on the next washington journal, we'll discuss the latest news from ferguson, missouri, and about the resignation of defense secretary chuck hagel. our guests include andrew tilghman. and later, bill shore will be here to talk about hunger in america. our show is live at 7:00 a.m. eastern/4:00 a.m. pacific on c-span. looking ahead to tuesday night, we'll have a look at one community in america is handling the recent influx of young, undocumented immigrants.

you'll hear from republican mayor jude it kennedy who describes efforts to provide undocumented children with education and health services. then on c-span2 at 8:00 p.m., a sis dis cushion on cronyism and government. steve simpson shares his thoughts from the hungry minds speaker series. and on c-span, interviews with retiring members of congress. will feature iowa democratic senator, tom har kin and howard coble. it's part of our week-long series. here are a few of the comments we recently received from our viewers. >> i just have to tell you that to see these people in person, to hear them, have the panel discussion or congressional hearing, it is so important to

understand the context and to listen to the statement in its entirety. >> i have been watching book tv for a few years and i think book tv is the greatest program on tv. i just really like, you know, how these authors pick the times not only to present some gist of what they write, but the moderator always does a great job of stimulating the conversation. yeah. it's what i look forward to on the weekends for me, to watch as much as i can. >> i watch c-span all the time when i'm home. it's the only station i have on most of the time. i think it's absolutely excellent. i watched all of the debates around the country. thank you for the book talks and for the history.

i like all of it. and i am thankful that it's there and i use it in my classroom. i teach at a community college in kentucky. thank you very much. >> and continue to let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. e-mail us at comments at c-span.org. or send us a tweet at #cspancomments. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. the national press club's journalism institute hosted a discussion on vaccine safety. experts explained why diseases like measles or mumps which has largely been eliminated generations ago are now making a comeback. this is an hour and a half.

welcome back to the national press club and its journalism institute and a special welcome to the vast audience viewing us today via c-span. i am myron belkind, the president of the press club and we are pleased to be hosting this briefing with the pbs show, nova and tangle bank studios, the coproducer on the upcoming show on vaccines. no question, from maine to ohio to california, there have been many outbreaks of preventable diseases that many in my generation thought were no longer a threat. measles, mumps, whooping cough and even polio. on a personal note, i was a foreign corespondent for the associated press for 40 years, when i am asked, what was the most important story i ever covered -- i respond, that it was covering the eradication of smallpox in india. when i went without a group of

world health organization epideemologyists to remote eastern india to report on how they isolated areas of smallpox to ensure that everyone was vak indicated. and those vaccines in india helped make the world smallpox free a few years later. and that is why it is essential not to forget the role of vaccines. no question, this issue of vaccines is being talked about by news media around the united states and the world. and i am pleased that today we will be hearing from a distinguished panel, including journalists who are on the front lines covering this issue, persons like joe lawlor, the health and human services reporter of the portland press harold main sunday telegram. who to better examine the science behind vaccination, the risk of opting out than nova, the premiere pbs show on science, health, education, and

more. i want to welcome paula offit. the executive producer here in the audience and julia kourtd, the senior producer who are based at wgbh in boston, one of the pbs flagship stations. and our moderator today is michael rosenfeld. i gather the term tankle bank was inspired by charles darwins on the origin of species and his tangle bank hypothesis. so we look to you, julia, michael and other experts on the panel to help us better understand the complicated echo systems of vaccines. thank you so much, again, for having this important discussion, this very important discussion at the national press club under the os miss sis of

its journalism institute. i'm pleased to turn over the floor to julia court. >> thank you, myron. and thank you to the press club institute for hosting this briefing and thank you all for coming this morning. we're here to talk about reporting on vaccination and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases and to share some insights we've gained while preparing our upcoming program "vaccines calling the shots." vaccination is a perfect topic for nova to cover because our primary mission is improving the public's understanding of science through accurate and engaging journalism. in fact, today nova and pbs are among a very small handful of places one can find good science journalism on television. and still, the need for science journalism has never been greater. science and technology is involved in so many public policy issues today. like vaccination, it's crucial that people not only get the

facts but get clear accessible explanations and sis of the facts so they can make informed decisions. yet, providing these can be really challenging for journalists, especially on subjects like vaccines because not only is the science very complicated but we're presenting this to readers, viewers, our audience who are not just engaging with the facts but are engaging with powerful emotions, like fear, mistrust. so this is a challenge our producer, our whole editorial team faced putting together this program as we aim to provide solid, scientific understanding in a field that's full of misinformation and misconception to an audience that includes parents who are confused who have a lot of questions but are trying very hard to do the right thing for their children. paula, senior executive producer of nova who is here today and i were very fortunate to be

working with an extremely talented team of veteran science journalists including sonya pemberton and michael rosenfeld, who took on this really difficult and complicated but extraordinarily important topic. so, we hope today's discussion is helpful to you as you report on vaccines and on these outbreaks and wrestle with some of the issues that we've been wrestling with. so, now i would like to turn things over to michael rosenfeld, head of television and film at tangled bank and executive producer of "vaccines calling the shots". >> thank you, julia, for that kind introduction and thank you, myron for the opportunity to pash tis pate in this briefing. good morning, everyone. thanks so much for coming. the subject of vaccination is on the minds of many americans right now as we send our kids back to school at a time when vaccine-preventable outbreaks are making headlines around the country. the cdc puts the numbers in perspective. measles was declared eradicated

in this country in the year 2000, but there's been almost 600 cases so far this year. that's the highest level in the u.s. in almost two decades. pertussis or whooping cough is also a problem. 2012 was an especially bad year with nearly 50,000 cases and 20 deaths in the u.s. and this year the state of california declared a pertussis epidemic. these are diseases that vaccines can and do prevent, so the numbers would make anyone but especially a journalist wonder what's going on. at tangle bank studios our mission is to shed light on complex topics so the story of vaccines in the context of these outbreaks was irry cystable to us. we've been fortunate to partner with nova and pbs to explore some of these issues. the as a result is a new documentary "vaccines calling the shots" which airs at september 10th at 9:00 p.m.

eastern. we hope the film will help the audience understand the science on these issues. at the same time, we know that this is a story that will continue to unfold over the coming weeks and months and years. i think it's safe to say that journalists will have their work cut out for therm as they cover the return of vaccine-preventable disease which is can't be fully explored from any single beat. this is not just a science story, it's a public health story, a medicine story, it's economics and policy, psychology and history as well. our panelists today reflect that breadth. you have their bios, so i won't repeat that information, but i would like to add a few things about them. as you see when you watch the film, paula offit to my left cares passionately about public health. he was a leader in the row toe virus vaccine that saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the world. he has extensive years of experience on the front line of

pediatric medicine at children's hospital. paul has a lot to say about the role of vaccines and the return of vaccine-preventable diseases. the way to make a smart film is to immerse yourself in the topic and sonya pemberton, next to paul, really goes deep. when i first discussed this film with her several years ago, i was impressed by how much she already knew about vaccines and sonya has spent the last four and a half years immersing ners this topic. in addition of acquiring a detailed understanding of the topic, she given a lot of thought on how this story should be told. her goal was to craft a film to bring claire toy a very complicated science and be accessible to the general public and to parents who as julia said have a lot of conflicts thoughts and emotions about vaccination. brian zikmund-fisher grapples

with one of the hardest things to communicate, risk. he studies how people make decisions at the university of michigan, he is great at explaining tough concepts. those subjects are especially important for vaccine conversation because how you see risk can have a big impact on whether you vaccinate your kids on schedule, delay some shots or skip their vaccination entirely. finally, i'm pleased to welcome joe lawlor to the panel. journalist covering the health beat for the portland press harold in maine. joe has first-hand experience covering vaccination. he has called attention to the rise in vaccine exemption rates and potential legislative responses. he has generated lots of discussion on the web. so that's the panel. i'm now going to ask each of the panelists to speak for roughly

five minutes about the subject of vaccines from their particular vantage point and then we'll open the floor to questions. paul? >> okay. if we could start actually there's two-minute clip about heard immunity that will lead into my five minute miss sminut. so roll it. >> the 2013 measles outbreak in new york hit hard and fast, but remained within the brooklyn area. ♪ why didn't it spread to the other 8 million people in the city? ♪ the virus was in circulation, even though it often wasn't obvious. and it was being carried by people who often had no idea they were infected.

♪ but the vast majority of people who came into contact with the virus had protection. they were vaccinated. ♪ >> there's two things that matter for whether or not i'm going to get sick. one is, if i bump into somebody who has the disease, am i protected against it or not? but the other piece and the more important piece is the chance i will bump into somebody in the first place who has this disease. and you can think of this as these sort of concentric circles of people and the less the disease exists in my circle or the next circle or the next circle, the safer i am. ♪ >> it's known as herd immunity. and it protects everyone, including young babies and people who can't be vaccinated

for medical reasons. and in new york, it worked. >> if we didn't have the high vaccination levels that we do, you know, in new york city and even in this community, i can promise you we would have had hundreds if not thousands of cases. >> but this protection is fragile. for highly-infectious diseases like measles, we need 95% of the community vaccinated for herd community to hold. if the rate drops, even just a few percent, herd immunity can collapse. >> so, we live in a country of about 300 million people. in that -- among that 300 million, there are 500,000 people who can't be vaccinated. they can't be vaccinated because they're getting chemo therapy for their cancers or getting immune suppressive therapy for their chronic disease or can't be vak nated because they're too young. they depend on those around them

to protect them. when herd immunity starts to break down, what you see is exactly what you're seeing now, which is the most contagious diseases come back first. and for example, among the most contagious diseases are measles, bumps and whooping cough. now, as michael said to introduce this, look at the current measles epidemic. i think it's instructive. the current measles epidemic has 060 cases. that's the biggest epidemic we seen since the mid 1990s. 600 cases. now, if you look at this sort of how that happened, the way that it's happened is that generally citizens from this country travel to areas where measles is endemic. meaning it occurring generally year round. for example, the philippines. in the philippines last year there were 31,000 cases of measles and 42 deaths from measles. a traveler goes to the philippines, catches measles and comes back and spreads it for the most part among a group of

unvaccinated children. the reason those children are unvaccinated is because the parents had chosen not to vaccinate them. now, although it is the biggest epidemic we've seen in two decades, i mean, it's worthwhile looking at what this -- this disease was before we had a measles vaccine when the first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. before the first measles vaccine, every year there were 3 to 4 million cases of measles. 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths. everybody saw measles. i mean, measles was a scourge. today all though there are 600 cases, i would bet few people if anyone in this room has actually seen a case of measles. in fact, when measles -- when suspicion of measles case comes into our hospital, a child who has fever, rash and there's a question of measles, they generally bring old people like me down into the emergency department to see whether or not it really is a measles case because people don't remember what measles looks like. for example, when a recent larry king live show, generalmy

mccarthy, who is my personal go-to person for health care advice, i don't know if she's yours. she said, when asked -- when sort of addressing the issue of whether the combination of measles, mumps, mmr could cause autism, she said and i will quote, i'll take the freaken measles every time. what that tells you is that not only has she hasn't seen measles, she doesn't appreciate how sick it can make you but she has no recollection of measles. we've forgotten what measles looks like which is remarkable. i remember when i was a attending at children's hospital of philadelphia in 1991, we were in the midst of a massive measles epidemic. it centered on two fundamentalist churches in our city. this was 1991. this is 30 years into the development of a measles vaccine. we had nine deaths. five deaths in a ten-day period in february of 1991. i mean, our city was in a panic. and so, there's certainly those

of us who understand the power of measles. for example, about 50% of children with measles will have an abnormal chest x-ray. so i would like to think that what we experienced in 1991 in philadelphia is a lesson from the past and not a prologue to the future. thanks. >> sonya? >> hi. i'm sonya pemberton. i'm a film maker and a science journalist. and like many people in this room, i see myself as a conduit between the experts and the public. translating science for the public is kind of what i do and what i focus on. i'm initially started thinking about this film way back in 2009 actually after i made a different film called catching cancer. that was about how viruses can trigger cancers and how in a funny way that's good news because if you can find a virus causing a cancer then you have a

chance of creating a vaccine to stop it. and the film went to air and it got lots of nice reviews and things happened, but then i received a rather large proportion of nasty mail and what many people might call hate mail and abuse. i was actually shocked because i spent most of my life growing up in a medical family. i make medical-based films. i started to study medicine. this was my area. i was surprised. so i decided that i wanted to understand why people could be so upset and so angry about vaccines that they would take the time to write me these letters. so i began a process really four and a half years of digging really deep. i really wanted to understand why people would be really frightened of vaccines. for me, this was alien. i saw it as a life-saving medicine. i didn't understand it. so, i had to really confront my own bias, my own pro-vaccination

stance and try to understand what it felt like to be someone who was fearful of vaccines. and that is what led to the film. i thought today what i would try to contribute was five things i have learned about talking to people with hesitancy around vaccines and about communicating vaccination issues. so, from one journalist to many others, here are my five tips at the moment. first of all, never forget that vaccination is a good news story. we get so used to hearing it pitched as an us versus them debate and argument and fight. less than one -- around about 1% of people in this country don't vak nate at all. it's a really small number. can we all just get a grip to start off with? 90% on average vaccinate most of the time or all of the time on the schedule. it's around about -- depends on where you are -- 10% might skip or delay a shot.

that group is important. this can affect herd immunity. it's not an ig significant number. it's an important number. but it's really important that we all put it in context that it is the norm to vaccinate and we could re-enforce good behavior in a sense, positive stuff. that was one of the first lessons i learned to think about this as a good news story, not a bad news story. the second and really important thing is that people who have concerns around vaccines are not necessarily anti-vaccine. the number of people who came toward to me -- i'm talking about hundreds of people that i've spoken around the year, i have concerns about vaccines. i'm scared of this or that vaccine. once i was open to having a conversation with them and didn't shut them down with my kind of personal bias about you should just have a vaccine because it's good for you, when i stopped and actually listened to them, i would discover that most of them were not against

vaccines. they just wanted to ask questions. and i think we forget that because the group that are strongly against vaccines are so vocal that we can lose sight of this very large group of people who just have concerns. we did the first national survey vaccines in our country n australia and discovered around -- exactly 53% of the parents have some concerns around vaccines. now, the vast majority, 47% go on to fully vaccinate any way. but what was interesting is they had enough concerns to make them question. and i thought the most useful thing i could do as a film maker was try to speak to those parents. so the film in nova is trying to speak to parents who have vaccine concerns and to do that respectfully and acknowledging that people are not necessarily outright refusals, they're simply concerned. and also i think the thing that we need to remember is that the internet has changed the

vaccination landscape and it's a force to be reckoned with and people go to dr. google for all sorts of things, including vaccination. so try to counter that with some calm, sensible and hopefully impartial in a sense in the sense that we're just looking at the science and trying to follow what the science has to say. i think that's vitally important. my third point is it's okay to talk about concerns and fear. you don't need to be frightened of allowing people or encouraging people to talk about their concerns. in fact, as brian can atist, there's many, many studies that show acknowledging fear helps people deal with fear. that's how we all process it. when you don't talk about things or try to push them away or don't allow people to talk about this sort of thing, then i think we make the problem worse. so, for me, one of the goals of the film was to help reduce fear. so in order to do that, we took a very brave step to actually acknowledge fear and let people in the film talk about their fears and concerns.

and i think that is the fundamental point of difference of this film and hopefully the reason why it will speak to many people. the fourth thing i wanted to add was there are a spectrum of views around vaccines. it is not a debate. and it is not us versus them. that's shore handed, that's lazy, that's not the way we should be thinking about this. there are people with a spectrum of views around vaccines. one really interesting study that i like to think of and it came out of australia originally was a spectrum of five groups. there's the unquestioning accepter, the questioning accepter, the hesitant, the delayer or cherry picker and the outright refuser. now, this is just one way of grouping people. but i found it useful. to try and think of where people sit on this spectrum and remembering the outright refuser is around 1%. so, and there's a very big group in the middle and trying to speak to that group and not --

treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say was really, really important. and again, it's worth remembering the vast majority do choose to vaccinate so re-enforcing that. and finally, number five, it's something that paul offit says very eloquently in the film, and he says, we're all in this together. and when ever i struggled with people hitting me with their opinions about vaccines or their fears around vaccines or saying things that i knew were scientific inaccurate, i had to find a place in myself where i could listen to them and think, look, we're all in this together. we're all united by the need and the desire to try to protect the ones we love, all of us, no matter what your position. and if you come from that position, then i think we can find a basis at which we can have a good conversation. the australian broadcast last year or the original version many, many, many parents, hundreds of parents came forward to say that the film helped,

that it opened a new conversation, that allowed those that just had questions to come forward and speak. there was very sane and nice conversation on the internet for about a week, which was really good fun. and people said please and thank you and would you mind answering this question and it was all terribly polite for a little while and that was wonderful to see. the people who would normally have to hit hard had to be quiet because the people who had hesitancy and questions came forward. and also, what was really interesting that came out of it was the australian immuniization specialists started training pediatricians in how to speak to vaccine hesitant parents so they can be equipped with the skills to have these conversations. so, finally, i want to say that i think i'm really optimistic that there is a way to have this conversation and that we can all do it and we can all help the situation and help people to talk to one another and i hope you find the film interesting in that regard. thanks. >> thank you, sonya.

so for a perspective on risk and where that fits into this story, brian? >> thank you all. i'm a decision psychologist. my academic field is trying to think about how people gather information, make sense of data, make sense of risk. and in many ways, we ask parents to go through journey much like the one that sonya have gone through to gather information and figure out how -- what they need to think about vaccines what they need to feel about vaccines, and then ultimately what they need to do about vaccines. and so i would like to start with rolling a second clip from the nova episode and then i'll talk about the implications of it. >> wants to vak nate her two children, but she's chosen not to follow the recommended vaccine schedule. >> so the plan is to be fully vaccinated as soon as possible but we're doing one vaccine at a time.

i don't know if that's the right way. you know -- >> i don't know where i came up with that? >> yeah, i don't know. >> this woman has a 4-year-old and is expecting another child soon. she delayed vaccinating her oldest until she was 3. >> i was concerned that her immune system couldn't handle it. we just waited. >> my son and her -- they're not vaccinated yet and my older ones don't have boosters. >> mariana has four children. she vaccinated first but then one child had a seizure. >> just really worried about reactions. and i am worried about the diseases, so kind of confused really. >> in america, children must be vaccinated before they start kindergarten, but the required shots vary from state to state and most allow for exemptions based on personal or religious beliefs. here in california, almost 3% of children are exempt and in some schools it's more than 30%. >> i have a lot of friends that

don't vaccinate at all. if you say vaccine around them, they look at you like you are -- well, you know, like you are poisoning your child. >> on the other hand, you have parents that they can't even understand why this is even a question. >> nobody is willing to really have a conversation with you and discuss what's a severe reaction, is it okay to have a seizure? i would really like to know what the real risks are. >> so, one of the things that you'll notice in that clip is that there's a lot of discussion of risk and not a whole lot of discussion about benefit. and that's the first thing i want to highlight in the conversation, which is that dr. offit is right. we are facing a point in time in which the benefits of vaccines are just much harder for parents to understand, precisely because it is not part of their

experience. 70 years ago every parent, every grandparent, knew personally cases of the kinds of diseases that we now prevent with vaccines. you didn't have to sell vaccines to them. they wanted vaccines because they didn't want to have their children grow up in a world in which those diseases were the threat that they were. today, as dr. offit pointed out, people don't know that. they don't know it in that intuitive sense. i can have the words that measles is circulating, but unless i have the experience of knowing someone with the disease, it doesn't have the same impact. our risk perceptions are fundamentally as much about experience and emotion as they are about thoughts and facts. and so the challenge that we all face is how do we help people understand the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases in a world in which their narrow circle, the people close around them, are not, in fact, likely to include somebody who is

affected by whooping cough, polio or measles. but, of course, the challenge here is that in the modern world we are -- our society is mobile, right? the person who is standing behind me in starbucks could have been in russia, could have been in india, could have been in africa yesterday. we do not know what that person is bringing with them. and precisely because of the mobility of modern society, the intuitive understanding of the people around me sick? well, if not, then maybe i'm safe, no longer is an accurate representation of the risk we potentially face. and so somehow we have to have the conversation on a public level to help people recognize, to tell this possibility story and help them understand that it's that benefit of vaccines that we need to get back in touch with. now, we do need to talk about safety and we do need to talk about the questions that parents have.

right, gabrielle in the film ends that little clip there with two sentences that i want to highlight. she asks, you know, what's a severe reaction? is it okay to have a seizure? i want to point out two things about that. the first is this -- she knows that vaccines are not perfect. she knows that she has to at least think about the possibility of a reaction. and that is true. vaccines are not perfect. she wants more information. and as a result, the simple statement of vaccines are safe is not going to feel satisfying to her. from a public health standpoint, vaccines are one of the safest things that medicine has to offer and that's part of the reason why we offer it to people because we know at a population level the benefits vastly outweigh the risks. but on a personal level, that's different. and so, the challenge is we have to acknowledge the complicated

story in order to gain the trust of parents like gabrielle. if we simply say, vaccines are safe, why should she trust that? she knows it's more complicated. we have to be willing to go a little bit deeper. now, when she asks, is it okay to have a seizure? what she's really asking is, is it okay that this thing that i hear has benefits, also has risk? how am i supposed to, as a parent, put my child at risk? and so the last thing i want to talk about is the parental experience of risk. parents always want to do what's right for their children and to keep children safe. but part of us always knows that risk is everywhere. i'm a parent. my daughter just turned 16 and i handed her the keys to the car. unquestionably, the most dangerous risky thing i will ever expose her to. and i did it any way because i

knew that the benefits to her, to her development were worth putting her at risk. now, that doesn't mean i ignore risk, right? we want to be safe. i give her a safe car. make sure she trains, she learns how to drive well, et cetera. just like it is appropriate for parents to say, how can we minimize risk in the context of vaccination? but we also have to engage with a point that part of what being a parent is sometimes dealing with risk because risk is everywhere. and, you know, vaccines are incredibly safe. most children who are vaccinate have had the most trivial symptoms if anything. but severe reactions do occasionally occur. those tend to be very temperature rare but they can be scary. there's a duality of risk that i need to end with. at a population level, public

health can say, look, this is a one in a million risk, we don't need to worry about it if it has huge benefits. it will outweigh whatever the risks are. from a society standpoint, from a policy standpoint, that's all right. i have no problem with that. as a parental standpoint, parents don't care about probability, they care about possibility. and it's possible that their child might have something scary happen to them, they're going to worry about that. we have to acknowledge that reality in order to be heard by them and to be trusted by them. so, the conversation of vaccines for me is one of respecting the emotions of parents and helping them realize that, yes, this may not be the easiest thing to do to watch your child get a shot. but it may well be the thing that you need to do for all the benefits that it will provide. >> thank you, brian. so now for a perspective from a journalist who has been actively covering this story, joe lawlor. >> hi. thank you for having me here. i guess i just first wanted to

point out that the folks on this panel here are all -- have lived or studied this issue for their entire careers, many years, and, you know, myself, i started looking into this in july. you know, but i dare say, you know, many journalists will be approaching this like myself from completely an outside perspective or learning things on the fly. you know, i'm the health reporter at the press herald in portland, maine. i've only been the health reporter for a year. i would say, you know, there would be a lot of general assignment reporters or city hall-type reporters who may end up covering these kinds of stories based upon, you know the dwindling resources in the media unfortunately in this day and

age. and the other thing i wanted to -- so i want to talk a little bit about how i came upon this story and, you know, it's really not a very obvious story. in 2012, there was a pertussis whooping cough outbreak in maine. and so, you know, i started at the newspaper last year. so i wrote about just kind of a straight story about, oh, there was this outbreak and isn't that -- shouldn't besomewhat concerned and then just kind of moved on. but then this year it was pointed out to me that maine had one of the highest voluntary opt out rates for parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. the opt-out rate -- this is for children entering kindergarten. the opt-out rate is 3.9%. as a journalist, when you see a number like that, you're like, is that really that bad?

but as the documentary, the excellent documentary points out so well, is even with small numbers, people opting out, herd immunity, what protects all of us, breaks down even at 95% or less vaccination coverage depending upon the disease. so, the more i looked into this story, the more i realized this is really could be a pretty big deal. i mean, it would be better to write about it before than after. if there was some really tremendous, terrible outbreak like what happened in philadelphia in 1991, i mean that would be a tragedy. i thought it would be better to write about this before. so, any way, spent a lot of time -- so the other thing that really struck me about this topic, unlike a lot of things, if people -- say 5 or 10% of the

population believes something that's not true, for the most part that doesn't affect me, down, affect us. so if you're at your family reunion and your second cousin talks about area 51 or the aliens in roswell, you know, you might just kind of nod your head and move on to the next conversation and it doesn't really affect you. 5% of the population believes that, so be it. but with vaccines, in order for them to work properly, you really need everybody buying in or almost everybody buying in. and so, you know, that really struck me. so, we did a pretty comprehensive story about this. you know, talking to all different types of parties, including somebody who had contracted polio as a child and people -- we got the side of the people who were -- didn't believe in vaccination. but i do have to say, we also made the decision that for this

particular story, you know, and as a documentary points out very well, the science is settled. there is no debate amongst scientists, whether vaccines work and there's no proof -- it's been debungt about the connection between autism -- there is no connection between autisms and vaccines. so, from -- when approaching this story, you have to look at it like, okay, these people have concerns but it's not a scientific debate. they're having a debate which they believe to be scientific but it's not scientific. so you can't do the whole, you know, well, this side believes this and this side believes this and let the readers decide. it's really not that kind of story. you really, i believe, are doing a disservice to the readers if you approach it like that because the science, as i said, is settled. so any way, so we put the story

together and it ran and the reaction to it was really -- even though i had been researching this topic for about a month and kind of got a sense of how much depth and breadth there is to this topic, it's really -- if you read about it, it's really quite amazing. but the reaction to the story still floored me because we had over 600 comments on our website and, for us, that's probably 10 times the normal amount of comments that we would receive on a story. and, you know, i was really interested in what types of people were commenting on the story. you know, it was fascinating. it wasn't just the 1% that sonya was talking about, the veer lant, absolute anti-vaccination people who were commenting. there was a lot of people who i believe were just misinformed, who were -- you know, they

weren't militant about it but they were just misinformed and didn't believe that they felt like the cdc was hiding something maybe or that there was just the scientists were covering up information. but -- and then there was a healthy debate and a lot of people who were patiently debunking the claims that people were making, which i thought was a good service. so, you know, we're going to continue following this story very closely. we did some followup stories and there's more to come. i think there's a big topic -- this is a huge topic. and the other -- the point i want to make is that there's also an element of -- it's not just a science story but it's also a political story in a way because this gets to the issue of should the government be telling me what to do? should the government be forcing me to have vaccines?

and there's a clear correlation between states that are -- for instance, washington state used to be one of the highest -- had one of the highest opt-out rates of children entering kindergarten in the country. and they made it harder -- they didn't make it impossible, but they made it harder for parents to opt out. and then upon doing that, within just a couple years they've seen a reduction in the percentage of people opting out and also a corresponding reduction in outbreaks. but this is not an easy -- you know, in maine, just last year, they -- it made it through the house a bill that would have i don't want to get into too much detail here, but it was an anti-vaccination bill and it passed the house and it was killed in the senate but it passed the house so our legislatures were playing pro vaccination legislatures were playing defense in a way. in vermont, they just -- the

governor of vermont, you know, has gone on the record to say that he believes parents should have a choice and it should not make it harder to opt out. vermont has one of the highest rates of children -- of parents opting out of the vaccine. and so, you know, i suppose if you don't really think about it in detail and really get into the heart of why vaccinations work, it does sound logical that government should not force me to do something. but, you know, this is one of those cases where the 5 to 10% of the people, you know, it really does matter. so, thanks a lot. >> thanks, everyone. i think that probably gave you all a good sense of the complexity of this subject and also of how personal it is for people, both parents and doctors on the front lines who care most

about protecting their parents through vaccination. so, with that i'm going to turn this over to all of you for questions. there are microphones available that will be coming around in the aisles. and if you wouldn't mind just telling us your name and your affiliation. thanks so much. yeah. right up here. >> hi. is it on? >> yes. >> this is penny star with cns news. some of the people i had mentioned to sonya before this event that there are -- you mentioned the internet and there are sites that people i know go to it's called the informed parent. one of the main things they do is use cdc stats to make their arguments, anti-vaccine arguments. i wondered if you could address that issue as to -- in other words, is the government doing enough to actually communicate

with parents about the benefits or the risks. >> paul, do you want to take that? >> thank you. so, for example, if you look at the impact of vaccines on diseases like the theory of measles, et cetera, and you go back far enough, late 1800s and late 1900s you can actually see the measles or bumps or diphtheria decline even before vaccines were introduced. when vaccines were introduced -- that's because we changed things like sanitation in this country, hygiene in the home, that had an impact on these diseases, obviously purifying the drinking water had an impact on reduction in diseases. you see that there's a dramatic reduction because of the introduction of vaccines. that particular cdc statistic will be used by those who oppose vaccines, saying, see, we didn't

need vaccines because the rate was going down any way. but certainly these diseases would still exist if we didn't have vaccines. and we have abundant evidence of that. for example, when the soviet union was dissolving, and there was tremendous upheaval, the incident of diphtheria declined in a series of countries that didn't really see much diphtheria and then it rose. we saw 50,000 and then there was the introduction of diphtheria vaccine and then the rate dropped again. the same thing can be said with japan and the pertussis. there's no reason to believe anything other than what the data show which is that vaccines clearly make a difference. don't use them, and the disease goes up. use them and the disease goes down. so that's one example. in terms of how the cdc or others try and communicate that, i think a lot of groups, the american academy of pediatrics, there was a vaccine education children's hospital of philadelphia, every child by 2, there's a lot of groups out

there that really try to communicate good science to the public. i think they do it compellingly and passionately and i think it's made a difference. if you look at the way this story is covered now as compared to 15 years ago, it's much better. will there be those groups who consistently hold on to the notion that vaccines are doing more harm than good? yes. i don't think they're ever going to go away completely. i think we're making a difference. lot of people are trying to communicate good science to the public. >> brian, do you have thoughts on this one about science communication point of view? >> the one thing i would add to this is to acknowledge the character of the internet and the role it plays in the discussion of vaccines. right? the internet is not just making information more easily available to people. it's enabling us to share stories, to share individual cases. of course, the cases that someone wants to share are the cases that have emotional power, right? if you believe rightly or

wrongly, if you believe your child was harmed by a vaccine, that's the kind of story we want to share. that's the kind of story others share. the store rirs that don't get shared as much is the story that's the most common story. i went. i got my child vaccinated. i hurt a little bit. it didn't bother them that much. nothing happened. he doesn't get sick. this is boring. but it is the fundamental story of vaccines. it is the story that's the most common story of vaccines. and precisely because in a web 2.0 environment, the shared content comes from users, what we tend to see when we go looking is a disproportionate share of the people who want to share information. and that's not a fair representation -- it's not even close to a proportionate representation of the lived experience of vaccines. and so that's the challenge we face is how do we help people understand that what gets shared

is not a fair representation. it's the people who want to be sharing their story. and to give voice to the other story. right? the story of the mother whose child is in a classroom where there is measles and what is she feeling at the moment she realized, yes, she did vaccinate and does that make vaccinate and did that make her feel safe? that emotion is also important here, but it's hard to find, and somehow i wish we would be able to make that story more common. >> you're probably going to talk about what i was going to suggest. there is a story in the film that really gets to this, which is the pervae story. >> this issue of telling the boring story is really interesting. one of the scientists i talked to early on said, sonia, if you're going to make a story about this, just point the camera at a normal family eating dinner and run it for an hour. and i went, what? he said, because nobody is

getting sick. they're eating dinner and going on about their lives. they're not getting sick, they're not taking temperatures. that's the story of vaccination. i'm going, sure, i can't turn that into an hour of television. it is interesting how we as communicators tell the story effectively and accurately. we took a bit of a gamble in this film, and i say gamble because it was definitely story to tell a classic story that you see on the internet of my child was a healthy, beautiful, fabulous little baby, and six months of age, everything was fine, and hours after the vaccine, everything went terribly wrong. you can find those stories on the internet. i chased a lot of those stories. i tried to talk to a lot of parents. it was very hard to verify those stories. but i found one family who were willing to speak, i had their medical records and they were in the film. they were a very interesting story because their child, 17

hours after vaccines at six months of age, started to have seizures, and those seizures were ongoing and devastating and resulted in this child having brain damage over time. and for the first year of that child's life, they believed it was the vaccines. but then testing was done and they found that their child had a form of epilepsy triggered by a fever. and in this kind of epilepsy, jarvais syndrome, the seizures start at six months of age. the little girl in the interview that wasn't in the film, hers was caused by the flu. she was six months, she was luke's little friend, actually, she got it from the flu and he got it from a spike in fever from the vaccines.

the vaccines were not a cause. the vaccines were a trigger, like jumping on the trampoline is now a trigger for him or getting upset is a trigger for him, because he has epilepsy. but it was a journey his parents went on because they truly believed the vaccines had caused this to their child. so it is usually the story of some child getting sick and trying to put a face to it and put science to it. one thing i did want to say is that if we can try and tell the stories where nothing goes wrong, it's really helpful. it's really, really helpful, because it is the norm for all of us and we don't question it because we're living in this wonderful, relatively safe world. so i think we have an obligation to try and share that safe story as much as we can. >> just briefly, to follow up on one thing that sonia said in terms of sort of the relationship between causal and temporal associations, my wife

is a private, practicing pediatrician, and she came in the office on a weekend and she was helping the nurse give vaccines. there was a four-month-old sitting on her mother's lap along the wall, and while my wife was drawing one of the vaccines into the syringe, the four-month-old had a seizure, and then went on to have a permanent seizure disorder epilepsy. if she had given that vaccine five minutes earlier, i think there was no statistical data in the world that would have convinced her anything but the vaccine caused it. my child comes in here, she's fine sherks ge fine, she gets the vaccine, five minutes later she has epilepsy and the vaccine didn't do it? so i think you have the emotion of the verdict rather than the statistics, which is a hard fight. >> if i can make one quick point, i think also a lot of the fears and opposition comes about, at least in maine and probably some other places. oregon might be another good

example of people taking a movement, for instance, like the organic food, natural movement, which it's good to eat your vegetables and things that come out of the ground or other processed food, but then for whatever reason, i believe vaccines and maybe other forms of western medicine have been labeled as being artificial, and, therefore, bad for you. and so, you know, i'm sure people could talk about why that's not true, but i believe that sentiment is out there, and there's trace amounts of things like formaldehyde that would absolutely not make you sick, but people see that and they get scared, and that was actually the bill that was introduced in the main legislature last year that passed the house, got killed in the senate and was just informing parents of every single ingredient that was in each vaccine without any context behind it.

a scare tactic, essentially. but yeah, i just wanted to point that out. >> just a quick point. formaldehyde is natural. vk seasons a vaccines are natural. they're derooiived from parts o nature. we've been making formaldehyde ever since we crawled out of the ocean and went to land. what goes into your bodies is r rhythmically coming out of your bodies. they were able to get 3,000 people in california. hydroxy monoxide, they were able to get people to take because they never lied. they said it's in our tears, it's in our streams and we've

got to get rid of this. and that worked. so chemical names always sound bad. >> context is everything. >> i want to say that one of the things we have in the film is we show vaccines go back at least a thousand years, and it was a traditional form of therapy that people used to do, and we explain where that comes from. i found that astounding. i didn't know that. if you're into things that have traditional focus on things, i think that's interesting. but i also think there is a false -- again, another false positi polarity here that if you are into organic food and all this other stuff, you don't vaccinate. it's an artificial divide. it doesn't really exist and we shouldn't buy into that. there is a group in australia called immunize, and they put signs around saying, i do yoga,

i meditate, i eat organic foods. they have posters that basically say you don't have to be either or. that's not the conversation. we're artificially making that a divide. >> i'm alan kotok with science and enterprise. related to this discussion we just had, do you see any correlation between the fears of genetically modified -- genetically modified organisms in food with some of the engineered molecules you find in

vaccines? >> i think that's a great point. yes is the answer. you know, it's just -- so, for example, the human papilloma virus vaccine and the hepatitis b vaccine are both used using common technology. i think these are great vaccines for that reason. you take a single protein from the virus. you basically use the yeast cell to serve as a factory to make that protein, then you purify that protein. it's basically 100% purely o one-surface protein. it can't possibly reproduce itself. it's that one part of the virus, and it's the important part. what could be better? you're right, it's genetic engineering. first of all, foods are genetically modified all the time, they're just genetically modified in the wild. what you want to do, you want to be able to create a situation

where you're going to get the most benefit and the least harm. and that's true with vaccines. they use the term vaccine virus. for the natural virus, they actually don't say natural virus, they say wild type virus. what it says is that in the wild, it could do anything. wild type virus has reproduced themselves thousands of times or sometimes tens of thousands of times in your body. a vaccine virus usually reproduces itself 20 times. that's what you want. you want us to be able to tame nature. this sort of notion that it's man against nature and nature is all good, i don't know what planet people are living on, because mother nature can kill you. you want to make sure that doesn't happen. >> other questions? there's one over here. >> good morning. my name is ann graham and i'm a state legislator from the state of maine. and i want to first thank you.

i'm also a pediatric nurse practitioner. and i wanted to ask, particularly, to sonia. you were talking about the response you had to your film. i want to know what works as we move forward. how do we make -- how do we get to a place where we reinforce positive behavior or a way to get -- move forward from this? my hopes with this is we can jump-start getting more children vaccinated and healthy. could you comment on that and kind of give us some positive stories as you moved forward after your film? >> yeah. look, i wish i had the absolute answer to that, of course, but i think through our film being released, the australian version being released last year, and obviously the american version is next week. but the australian version told us a few things, and that was

there were many, many more people wanting to talk about this than the broadcaster realized. we had 1 million facebook posts. we had -- i can't remember now -- it was over 100,000 downloads, which in our country is enormous. we have it free on the internet. no one anticipated the level of response. so firstly, people want to know about this, people want to talk about this. secondly, opening the conversation to say it's all right to have concerns made a difference. and it was the point of differen difference, that we were not going to tell you what to do, necessarily, but we were going to invite the conversation to begin. now, that can sound like a trite statement, but it wasn't. it was very genuine. it was difficult because people came to you with stories that are difficult to hear, especially if they're scientifically not sound, you know. it's very hard not to jump down people's throats and say that's nonsense and leave it at that.

you had to actually really engage. we found having a lot of good materials, having good people on call who could answer complex questions. i'm not a medical doctor, i'm not qualified to answer the really complicated questions, so don't try and speak beyond your area of expertise was really important. and we found that, sure, we got hit by a lot of the negative stuff, and that was a bit depressing because after a few days, what happened was there was so much spamming going on, it stopped the real conversation. by spamming, people just kept dropping inaccurate information into the mix. they were actually calculating, which was interesting. that was depressing because you have to go, oh, do we have to block you, do we have to stop that? we tried not to.

we tried to keep it open for as long as we could. so i guess the only really strong thing i would say is that people are interested, the conversation is worth having. let it run. try not to control it too much in the sense if there is absolute nonsense coming into the place, you have to be careful about that, but most people just wanted to have a conversation and provide them with good information. >> i would also like to add, i think there is some important parallels in the vaccine context to the conversations that have been going on now for a decade or more in terms of patient role in medical decision making that we no longer exist in a society in which the physician is paternalistic and says, we're going to do this, we're going to do surgery and you have no choice. and that evolution has been important. and the challenge is, how do we inform patients -- patients aren't medical experts. they need enough information to get the gist of the tradeoffs

that are faced to understand the ways their values enter into this, but also the ways in which they need to respect the science, the way they need to respect the data and understand when their doctor is saying, this is really a good choice, why their doctor is saying that. that it's not just because somebody said so, that there is, in fact, a reason behind that. and to respect the fact that they might want to know, at least in some form, what that reason is before they nod their head and say, yes, this is a good idea. so engaging at that level, recognizing if we're going to give parents autonomy to make choices, we also need to give them the empowerment, the information, but also the emotional empowerment to face that process and to be a partner in that. most patients, when faced with difficult treatment decisions like what breast cancer surgery to have, they're not saying, i know everything. they're coming in with questions in mind. they're coming in knowing they're not an expert and

wanting help to figure it out. i think if we take that perspective here, we open the door for people to say, here's how much i want to know, or here's the pieces i don't understand. and then to engage with them on that and to help them move forward. >> i want to say something super quick. we were also really surprised and astounded by the amount of reaction that we got to the story, but upon reflecting about it a little bit, it does make some sense, because while maybe only 5% or so on the top end don't vaccinate their children prior to kindergarten, there is some evidence out there that shows a lot of people are delaying vaccines, spacing them out because of fears, and i think we've all run into people or many people have run into people who have at least heard from somebody who is concerned about safety of vaccines, and so i think it's a topic that many people are very interested in.

>> just following up on something brian said, this isn't going to be terribly popular, but this is sort of my point of view on this. it's, what does it really mean to be informed? we say we want to inform parents about vaccines. let's take the chicken pox vaccine. if somebody comes into your office and says, i've done my research and i've chosen not to get the chicken pox vaccine, then they haven't done the research. because if you do your research, you'll get it every time. what does doing research really mean? what parents mean is they've read opinions about the vaccine on the internet. but to really do research for that, what you need to do is you need to read the several hundred articles that have been written about that vaccine. you need to understand how that vaccine was made, what the difference is between that virus or wall type viruses.

to do that you need some background level in virology, epidemiology. i think a few doctors have that. what we do is rely on a panel of experts like those who advise the cdc or those that advise the aap to at least collectively after that expertise and then advise as to whether or not that vaccine should be given and when and why. but that's extremely hard -- i'll say it another way. that's an impossible message to sell in the 21st century. that just doesn't work. brian is right, at some level people have to know they're being informed to some extent, but what informed means, i guess, is a tough one. >> i think it's important to clarify. we talk about paternalism in the early days years ago in medicine. paternalism meant, you will have surgery.

i think we also need to acknowledge in today's world that even if we don't do that, medical professionals, public health professionals do have a responsibility to help guide someone through the process of thinking about something. it's not just, okay, it's your choice, go away, you're on your own. no, no, that's not sufficient. we do have a responsibility as people who are experts in the science or experts in the context to say, this is what you need to pay attention to. this is the piece that you may not yet understand. if you want to go back and read it, you have that right, but we can't just throw information at parents and expect they have the skills to make sense of it all. we need to draw upon our own knowledge and our own expertise to guide them through that process, even if ultimately we were going to turn around and say, yes, you have the choice at the end to decide what you're going to do. it's not just a choice to, you know, read whatever you want and think that that is a full understanding. our understanding, our

expertise, is part of that and we need to share that. >> i would also say one thing that gets forgotten is doing nothing is also a choice. so the choice not to vaccinate is a choice to do nothing. and it has its own risks. so i think one of the messages i thought people don't often get is that doing nothing is also a risky choice. and the other thing i found interesting that, by and large, one thing parents often didn't understand is if your child gets one of these diseases, for the most part there is no cure. there are treatments, and lots of interventions we can do today, but there is no cure. so some parents would say to me, oh, if my child gets measles, i'll just take them in and get the vaccine then. so there are some basic sort of things we have to deal with. but also that one medicine -- i met one family from switzerland whose 17-year-old daughter got measles, and unfortunately, they didn't agree to be in the film.

it was too raw for them. but they were quite a wealthy family in switzerland, and their daughter got severe measles. long story short, she was taken to one of the most fancy hospitals in europe, and she died at 17 from measles in 2011. and there is nothing this family could do to save her, nothing. the best medical technology in the world in one of the best swiss hospitals in the world couldn't save this 17-year-old girl. now, that's a message people don't get. it's very unlikely to get that severe measles, we know that, but it can happen. >> i have to say, though, that that understanding is something that is clearly driving the medical professionals you meet in this film, and paul actually speaks about it very eloquently in the film regarding the 1991 episode of philadelphia. i think we have time for two more questions. is there another question in the room?

>> do you see any difference in perception between adult vaccines and children's vaccines is this do you run into the same problem with shingles or influenza? >> i think as a general rule, pediatricians at family practice are much better about making vaccines part of their routine care. adult -- physicians that take care of adults are less good at that. certainly immunization rates in influenza have gotten much better over time. i think the physicians who take care of adults have gotten better than that. there is a new anticoccal

vaccination for adults over 65 and we have a single vaccine recommended for all adults over 60, but as a general rule, the uptake around adults is pretty woeful. so we're not that good about immunizing adults than we are children. for whatever reason, we're less passionate about it. >> i do think it's a fundamental problem, precisely because for an adult vaccine, you're doing it to yourself, right? if you hear information about risks, you're taking it on for yourself. we all protect our children more than we protect ourselves. and that's part of the reality here, is that we will look at our children as vulnerable, as people who need special protection for very good and appropriate reasons. but that means that information about potential concerns about vaccines, about even just the

simple side effects of, your arm is going to hurt, has a different meaning with our little infant than it does with ourselves. that makes the conversation more difficult when the tradeoff between benefits and risks has to come to the surface. >> question back there. >> hi, i'm linda cramer jenning with glamour magazine. the reaction always focuses on mothers. what do fathers think about the vaccine? >> i admit, i don't know a whole lot of data information on the gender you're talking about. we know that for child medical decision in general, it is more

often the mother who is involved, but that is to some deegan issue of availability, of generations, and i do believe that's evolving over time as more fathers become the primary caregiver of their children. the generational issues are important. the generational issues are extremely important for many reasons. the experience issue in terms of what have parents actually seen in their lived experience, but also in terms of the way in which parchts parents gather information. my generation uses the internet differently than my daughter's generation does. that's the part that we have to respect, that the conversation today is different than the conversation was 25 years ago, and it's going to be different in 20 years. because each generation gathers information in different ways, stories circulate in different ways, and we have to respect that we have to move the conversation along with the

technology and the process. >> i always like to say as an aside from a personal experience, my wife has the say over what vaccines they get, but i'm the one that has to take them in, and i would describe my youngest son as being vaccine hesitant because they tried to give him a shot, and he ran into the parking lot and i had to chase him down. a little more seriously, i just want to say from a generational standpoint, those 50 and older is really unquestioning. you know, they lived or it was close enough to their generation that they saw the effects of measles and polio, et cetera, and also, the whole thing about history, you're condemned to repeat it if you don't remember. if you look back at the media coverage from the time of, say, jonah salk, he was a conquering

hero, really. it was an ann arbor, michigan where they made the announcement, and there was a famous quote from him, you know, edward armorall, would you patent the vaccine, would you patent the son? it was viewed as heroic from people that i've interviewed. i also just want to say really quickly that i had never seen a modern video of a child with pertussis in the mental ability. it really hits home. >> back to the gender differences, my experience was it didn't impact in a negative way. when the human papilloma virus vaccine first came out in 2006, i actually spoke at my daughter's high school. she was in eighth grade at the time, so it was the most harrowing talk i've ever given. i also talked to a group of