who value american notions of beauty, freedom, bodily expression and independence. depictions of foreign women living under male constraints but desiring freedom of womenhood have a long history. 17 generations of burks avenger have a preference about indian women who haven't met yet their domestic potential. while scholars have identified this trend in many forms of literature, my sense is this rhetoric is especially pronounced in times of war. this intensification of imperial domesticity matters because it shapes about who is a good muslim and who is bad. they take for granted that foreign women and children desire liberation from the familial and cultural bonds that ensnare them. if they were allowed to wear

nail polish, they would. at the very least the sentiments at the heart of imperial todomesticity has shaped wars in destruction. i would warn at times these sentiments have also kept americans from recognizing certain damage that american attacks have done to foreign women and children, even if their bodies have been spared. afghan i afghani women and children have lost many things held dear. bombs have destroyed their lands. too many family members have died violently. their country has been thrown in a period of turmoil. in times of war, american domesticity causes us to focus and shifts our gaz ae away from the tragedies of war. americans can avoid reckoning with the violence women and children experience when the men, the communities and the landscapes they love are deemed legitimate targets for death and

destruction. thank you. [applause] >> my thanks to darren and matt for putting on this conference and for inviting me. i think matt actually deserves the prize for the person who has come furthest, given he's in germany this year. normally i would win that prize, special until conferences in the united states, but i think i have to gi that prize to matt. thank you for putting on this conference, and thanks to jeff and his staff for putting on so far what's a wonderful event and thanks for your hospitalality and your hard work in putting all this together. my topic today is the religious influence on foreign policy especially religion's role in providing a sense of purpose, a soul if you will for american foreign policy. so it's no surprise that two of

the major subthemes i'm going to be touching on here are religious pluralism and religious freedom. and it struck me listening to the papers so far that those two themes, religious plurals and religious freedoms, keep popping up again and again on -- that's my water, right? okay, good. thanks. keep popping up again and again not just in my paper but in a lot of the other papers. as a matter of fact, as kathleen said, i did change my title. where now i'm discussing america's mission not just faith in toebobama's foreign policy but america's mission in the world and how that's changing in the age of obama. what i argue essentially in the paper is that today we're at a key crossroads where a powerful source of ideas values and idealogy that is religion in american foreign policy is changing. obviously in making that argument i'm making myself a hostage to fortune. in the book kathleen mentioned that i wrote on religion and

u.s. foreign policy to the present, i discussed very briefly george bush and barack obama, and i didn't want to say very much about them because i didn't want to make this work of history about them. but now things i said about barack obama are hopelessly out of date but i'm going to try again and more or less argue with myself. traditionally there have been two very basic sources of the religious influence. and they're basic but they're still, in my field, my main field of diplomatic history the u.s. and the world, they're quite controversial. the first source of the religious influence on american foreign policy is top down. it should be fairly obvious just in saying top down. it's the personal faith of president's secretaries of state, secretaries of defense and others and how they bring that personal faith to bear on their foreign policy. as i'm saying that i'm sure a lot of you are instantly sort of

doing a laundry list of demonstrably very famously religious presidents and secretaries of state, people like william mckinley woodrow wilson, harry truman ronald reagan and others. but this top-down influence could also be rooted in political calculation. here i would use richard nixon as an example of someone who invoked religion quite a bit, not someone like eyesisenhower or truman or george bush, and we can tell that because they didn't match up to his political statements. that's the first to top-down influence. the second is a bottom up. obviously it's the opposite of a top down influence. it's the bottom up influence of people who i call ordinary americans who bring tremendous amount of pressure to bear on foreign policy. even when politicians and policymakers have wanted to ignore religion, they found it difficult to do so because of this relentless pressure from

below from a wide variety of religious groups and religious actors, groups that are comprised of very highly motivated people who don't wield power or hold political office but who are emphasizing the importance of values in -- hi guys, come on in. find a seat somewhere. there are lots of -- unsurprisingly, there are lots of seats towards the front. i won't bite. and i also won't single you out again. i promise. and the goals of these, you know, ordinary americans, people who actually didn't wield political power were often but not always tied to religious freedom, too, the religious freedom of their co-religiousists abroad. and what i've done a lot of work on is the fate of eastern jews, russia and the soviets, a fate that runs from the early 1880s

to 1890s. this is a pattern i can use in diplomatic circles where historians want a very clear emperically clear basis of religious foreign policy, and i can use this to promote the jews in eastern europe and russia and the soviet union. they did bring about a change in foreign policy despite what policymakers themselves wanted or did not want. so i would argue that the religious influence in american foreign policy has always been there, but its strength and pervasiveness is mostly a 20th century phenomenon. it preexisted the 20th century but as a consistent force in the world, it's really something that dates from 1988 to 1989. i would say it's not a coincidence that religion became prominent when the united states became a global power, but for the most part, was rarely itself

under threat of attack so needed a powerful moral justification or a powerful sense of moral purpose in the world for this new level of global engagement. and in this sense, it's william mckinley who is the founding father of the religious influence. i'm sure a lot of you know this very famous story about how he was undecided what to do with philippines in late 1988, and he got down on his knees and prayed to god for forgiveness in the white house and god told him to annex, i.e., colonize the philippines. i would rank george bush to one of the most diplomatic in history, harry truman, eisenhower and those religious suspects who i recognized earlier in my talk. the apogy of this influence, it seems to me came very recently in the presence of george w.e. bush. in the age of bush this was obviously true in a top-down

sense, from the white house, not just the president himself, but figures like condoleezza rice and steven hadley. all through the bush administration, religion was maybe not dominant but certainly very prevalent. this was true even in a place like the pentagon in which there weren't a lot of demonstrably religious officials presiding people like don rumsfeld who are not the most spiritual men but a lot of pentagon briefings began realistically during the bush presidency with powerpoint slides that would start with scripture or a biblical verse or some sort of -- usuallilyy christian but overtly religious invocation. this was also true in a bottom up sense epitomized in bush politics which pushed for bush

optimism. bush's foreign policy through and through maybe wasn't guided or driven by religion -- i'm not saying the united states had a certain foreign policy in pursuit of particular religious goals, but religion in a very obvious way suffused the bush administration's foreign policy. this bottom-up influence didn't start with bush he didn't create it, he didn't invent it even though he did encourage it. it's something that has been consistent throughout the 20th century but surged again in the 1990s with the most obvious example being this bottom-up pressure that led congress to pass the religious freedom act in 1998 very much over the protest of the clinton administration state department that said religion will just interfere with the work that we need to do, with the diplomatic work we need to do in the world.

so after a century of more or less continuous influence and engagement with american foreign policy is the religious influence changing in the age of obama? when i said at the beginning of my talk now that i'm basically going to be arguing with myself, at the end of my book that was published in 2012, i finished writing it toward the end of 2010, i argued that no, this isn't changing and barack obama fits very neatly and very squarely in the tradition of religion in forming and shaping american foreign policy. and now i'm not so sure, and that's really what i'd like to use the last part of my talk to discuss. in a top-down sense, there are people in this room who know a lot more about obama's religion than i do but i think we would all agree that obama himself is a man of faith to a large extent, but it's more ambivalent, it's more intellectual, it's more complex and it's more searching. i wouldn't say he's a man of certainty in any sense although

i'm sure he does have certain certainties, but he's an intellectual curious individual, and i think that applies to his religion as much as anything else. to me he seems more akin to someone like jimmy carter than george bush or bill clinton, for that matter, or hillary clinton. in his first term particularly in his first two years most obviously in the chiro speech in june of 2009, which i think most foreign policy experts would agree was the most important initiative that obama had in foreign policy terms for his entire presidency, so going up to the present. in the chiro speech he outlined a faith-based version of democratic peace theory. normally democratic peace theory says the more democracies there are, the more chance there is for peace because democracies are inherently peaceful and don't go to war with one another. that last part is i think, more

or less right. i'm not so sure about the first part, that democracies are inherently more peaceful given what's happened in the last dozen years or so. and it struck me, listening to allison's paper, of the sort of echos of fdr in the new deal that there were certain echoes of fdr in obama's chiro speech. his 1990 speech of cairo was ostensibly of george bush's speech which is the foundation of democracy which in turn is the foundation of international peace, or what he called international goodwill. obama said religion was the foundation for democratic peace, because in religious societies such as the united states or those in the middle east, tolerance and pluralism were necessary for democracy, and in return to peace both domestic and international. there are other instances of religion in obama's foreign policy. again, mostly from his first two

years. the other most famous example which i don't have time to go into is his nobel peace prize acceptance speech in oslo, which a lot of commentators nicknamed the good neighbor policy because of his intellectual debt and i would say his spiritual debt. but as time went on, the religious presence in american foreign policy began to fade and eventually, i would say, all but disappear. and the ambivalence of the oslo speech is indicative of obama's overall ambivalence, certainly when it came to application of certain principals in american foreign policy. it's in the oslo speech -- it's nicknamed the good neighbor policy because this is where he uses christian realism as a way to justify the waging of the war on terror. this is where he says martin luther king and ghandi wouldn't have an answer to hitler or bin laden, and sometimes we have to wage war in order to pursue a

higher -- sorry a greater justice. now, however, religion's role in u.s. foreign policy is basically limited to islam, the familiar mantra. islam is a symbol of peace not terror. this is something obama has repeated in various guises a few times since he became president and very recently, but it's in the wake of 9/11. after hillary clinton's departure, she gave a lot of encouragement to the notion of international freedom and how the state department would pursue international freedom -- sorry, religious freedom internationally. after hillary clinton left, it's hard to think of another high-level national security official in the obama administration who has deployed religion. the bottom-up aspect of religion in u.s. foreign policy is also changing. it's changing in ways that other people who have already presented and are going to

present are discussing and analyzing in ways much more -- much deeper and more profoundly than i am but some of the obvious ways in which this bottom-up pressure are changing are thanks to things like demographic change the rise of secularism and the nuns and greater religious diversity. however, after listening to kevin's paper, i'm more certain about that diversity, but i was furiously fixing my notes about what kevin was saying about the myth of contemporary american religious diversity. but i would say it's the appearance or the acceptance of this diversity that is certainly changing how religion is used in a political sense and obviously applies to foreign policy. not only does this remove a great deal of pressure from below, it increasingly makes it unprofitable for politicians to use religion before domestic audiences to build consensus for their policies. that's how most presidents have

used religion in american foreign policy. religion is not too controversial, too divisive to be of political use of platitudes of tolerance. this is also the case internationally where american power is ebbing relative to that of other nation states that aren't christian or judeo-christian or islam or religious in any meaningful sense. if all this is changing, and if the change is structural and enduring rather than related to obama in particular and thus temporary, i would argue it will significantly change the terms of america's idealogical engagement with the rest of the world. thanks. [applause] >> so we have some time for questions, but before that, i would like to have another round of applause for all these very intriguing panels.

there are people with microphones, i believe, so raise your hand if you have a question. right there. >> it's going to change to what? let me follow up with a more specific question. i take it what you're saying is the use -- there we go -- of explicit symbols and texts from religion is being diminished in the second half of the obama administration. what's it replaced by? is it pure pragmatism? what comes in its place, and can we not always see those things as religious in a way?

>> that's a great question. what's it going to change? i don't know. i'm an historian. i'm not very good at predicting what's going to happen in the future. i proved that. i proved my incompetence in forecasting again. i'm probably going to prove it again with the chapter in this book. i don't mean to be glib. i really don't know. the last part of your question i think, is what i would answer that it's going to be replaced not with pure pragmatism, because i don't think that's possible in a democracy. you can't have foreign policy without justifying it. even in perfect democracies you have to be able to explain it and justify it. i think what might happen in the american context is that this overtly christian judeo-christian or religious, whatever we want to call it influence is going to be replaced by a broader sort of moralism that, as you hinted at the end of your questions, has

obvious religious roots but may not be couched in overtly religious terms. i can think of the foreign policy of the country that i live in now, great britain which is as realistic now as america's foreign policy, and in some cases certainly libya in 2010, at first syria last year is more moralistic than that of the united states. but not in religious terms at all. until a sort of obvious key word sense, but in a deeper meaning it very well might but i would say in the united states that moralism would continue to have some kind of religious impetus or religious shape even if it's not explicitly couched as religion or christian or whatever. i'm kind of tying myself in knots now so i think i'll end there.

>> also for kevin. i mean andrew, sorry. >> he probably has a better answer than i do. >> i'm wondering, among 20th century presidents can you think of someone for whom religion couldn't be translated almost 100% into moreality who had some additional or transcend transcendent notion beyond morality and then i would wonder that same question from the bottom up. >> wow. so i thought you were going to -- at first i thought you were asking if i could think of 20th century u.s. presidents for whom religion wasn't a -- wasn't really a source for their foreign policy either in moral terms or pragmatic terms and

the answer is yes, there are quite a few of them. for those who religion was not a source of morality -- it's a great question, i will answer it, but you start getting into preponderables which no historian or scholar can answer with any kind of finality or even dwijsefinition, to give firm definition to it. from the top down i would certainly -- the first person i thought of was jfk, and i think that's -- again, so religion was absolutely not a part of the kennedy administration's foreign policy. in fact, the kennedy administration very explicitly tried to sideline foreign policy when it created things like the peace corps. as you create the peace corps you have a peace corps that's been created for over a century called the missionaries, and the kennedy administration said we want to have as little to do with missionaries or faith-based ngos like catholic relief services.

this is really a government arm that is going to be secular and we're not going to be promoting or even dealing with american religion, even if we have to deal with foreign religions when we're in places like africa. but your question is not that, it's how it informed his and any other president's sense of morality. >> i'm just wondering if there is any religion operative either in number 1 or number 2 of your division that is not itself collapsible into morality or moralism. >> i mean it's a great question. again, it's a difficult one. it's a highly -- it's -- you're talking about an abstraction that is difficult to think of in terms of foreign policy terms. off the top of my head, i would say no i can't. >> i have a question for allison, and i thought it was a fascinating discussion of memphis in the '20s when things were bad and the social safety net arrived and things were

better, and now we're in 2014 and we're going back to the arguments from the '20s, and i want you to tell me how this happened. for a simple question. >> this paper made me go to the present, which i don't actually do a lot of. i stop in the '40s. but i think part of the explanation is in the blending of church and state that happened beginning in the 1950s that i sort of referenced briefly the way in which religious organizations became administrators of state aid, and in that sense developed this confidence that they actually could do this and could regain the moral authority they thought they lost in the new deal. and in the process kind of forgot that they had done it really badly before. so they sort of -- won both

contests there. >> i have a question for mark since andrew wimped out and went and put on his prognosticator cap, i would like you to, if you would, tell us what you think the impact of changing demographics will have over time which we heard so much about, and the run-up to this election, and certainly after last election but didn't seem to play out in terms of shifting the political map from red to blue or at least purple. how will this play out in southern politics? will there be demographics that might change the tone or ten or in terms of how religion plays the part in terms of constructive curriculums? >> in that constructive issue, board of education politics i think it's going to continue to be very bad in terms of conflict

written for another 20 years. because i see this tension -- there have been two papers at both polls of pluralism success and resistance to pluralism we've heard both and we're going to continue to see that tension, i think, at the state board level. i think the strong emphasis on american identity as quintessentially christian -- we'll call it judeo-christian, what we mean as christian is going to continue to be very influential in the board of politics and particularly in islam. i don't see that going away. at the same time meanwhile you have a conservative board being worried about islam. they are willing to broaden their understanding of religion to include cecism, right pluralism success. you bounce back and forth.

i think it is the changing religious and, perhaps more importantly in this regard, ethnic demographics that's giving rise to this. it's the wide establishment recognizing that it's not going to be the majority in a few years. and until we see that flip i think we'll continue to have a strong reaction against multi multiculturalism in any form. eventually those demographics will express themselves in who gets elected, and that will affect what actually ends up in curriculum. but boy, i think the debates are going to continue to be very heated for a while. >> i'd like to first of all, thank kathleen and mark for trying to introduce some scholarship to this discussion with the texas board of education in regards to their arm wrestle between religion and politics. thank you very much. it's something that's outraged me personally, but you're in there actually doing it.

my question for you, mark is you talked about kind of a 99-year look back at standards. is it possible that there wasn't a lot of reference to religious standards historically because in fact, the bible was a textbook in the classroom? >> i want to be -- thank you for the question and also the kind comments about the education work. i want to be careful how i talk about public education because i think it's certainly the case that there is an assumed shared protestant christianity that permeates state education documents. so if we're going to refer to religion in a document we're going to refer to the church as the unit of religion for example. and so we don't get inclusive in that regard until just the past few decades. so that was always going on. but in texas at least, and i looked just at state documents

although the bible was read a few versus every day in many texas classrooms it was never universal practice in the 20th century. and although there were definitely bible courses beginning in the 19-teens, to my great surprise, bible courses never really took off in texas. so the bible was not as much of a classroom presence for occur lar -- occurcurricular here as it was in the 1920s. there just wasn't much religion emphasized in the state documents. america was considered to be a christian organization, yes but we didn't have specific claims about how exactly we got to this point with the direct line from the ten commandments to the

mayflower, et cetera, at least not in stated documents. it highlights how important that message is to certain constituents right now. we are at the peak, in some respects, of treatment of religion in texas social studies documents, at least, which is not necessarily the same thing as classrooms. >> thank you. >> i have a question for jennifer, too, and maybe it's pushing all you 19th century historians into the 21st century. but i thought it was fas any tagt the kind of pat-- fas sifascinating attitudes and i wonder if they made any difference whatsoever. >> i have to look closer at hillary clinton's record, because i don't know as much.

laura bush actually made lots of statements about women so i didn't look so much at hillary clinton. but my guess would be just from her wider work is that she might have pushed education, the issue of education in a way that might actually parallel what some women in afghanistan are actually calling for. i mean, this to me was one of those interesting parts of this research, was that many things that were assumed about what muslim women would want, they often had to do with kind of western notions of beauty and vocation. whereas many advocates we have coming out of afghanistan for women and girls talk about education. so in that sense i wouldn't be surprised if hillary clinton really was a little bit more in line with things that afghani women say that they want, which is for their girls to go to school. but i would have to confirm that for the source of this. my guess would be that hillary

clinton would not talk about nail polish. >> this doesn't answer the question, but just off the top of my head thinking about it the three female secretaries of state we had madeline albright, condoleezza rice and hillary clinton, have all three been religious when it comes to secretaries of state, which are not particularly religious excepting people like john foster dulles. but it occurs to me the three of them have been much more open than you normally would get from the nation's top diplomat. >> interesting point. >> thanks for a great panel. my question is for alison. it's just sort of a nerdy fill in the blank history question which is this. you made a comment and went over it really quickly about how when social services, when religious

institutions can no longer afford to pay for social services and the federal government comes over, and then you talked a little about some of the changing dynamics that happened within churches. like all of a sudden lower class people don't need to go to the middle class church because they don't need them for basic human sustenance. i wondered if you could talk a little bit about what happens to the churches once they're no longer seen as providers of material sucker, and thinking of context of the great religious depression as it's called historically graphically. >> well, let me start with the end first. the great religious depression was a great religious concern at this particular moment, and more a concern than a reality that i can find at all. but what happens to the churches sort of depends on the church. so a lot of churches found ways to work around the new deal. there was still plenty left for them to do and the institutions

that they had built and that they had maintained for so long still stood, and most of them didn't overlap with them at all. so a lot of churches that were -- those whose clergy and whose members were happy to embrace the new deal and felt in part that they could take credit for it, they kept at that work. and they did so happily and they also took credit for the expansion of that work in the new deal. on the flip side of the churches, for the most part, the churches that hadn't done much of that work to be done with and really didn't want it to be done, anyway, became critics of the new deal, and that sort of became their thing. and so they -- there are actually not very many of them in this part of the deep south, which is one of the reasons i looked there because people sort of thought there would be

but there aren't. they do start to emerge especially in arkansas in the late '30s, and that becomes their thing. they become evangelical critics of the new deal. they say this expansion of services has, in fact, taken away the authority that they had to take care of people. in reality, the people who went to which church changed very little because those middle-class churches were louz lousy, helping the poor, anyway, and maybe wanting to go to church but not theirs. so the very wealthiest churches tended to be in that opponent's category, and the very poorest churches tended to be very divided whereas the middle class churches were a little more in favor of the new deal. >> we should probably end this session. thank you all for your questions and contributions and the contributions of our excellent panel. [applause]

coming up speeches from energy secretary ernest moniz and aol co-founder steve case. then hillary clinton participates in a forum on women's role in the global economy. live coverage coming up today. a conservative summit host bid the heritage foundation including ted cruz of texas and members of congress. that starts at noon eastern.

and later a house rules committee meeting. on their agenda, homeland security spending for the president's executive order on immigration, and a possible delay to part of the volker rule on certain speculative investments. that gets under way live at 5:00 p.m. eastern. coming up, energy secretary ernest moniz and the ceo of southern energy, thomas fanning. they were interviewed as part of the atlantic washington ideas forum. this is 25 minutes. welcome, mr. secretary. you have a tough act to follow there with secretary kerry, but i'm sure we can do it. let me start with what i think are questions you probably get a lot, and secretary kerry i think gets a lot, which is what's the harm in doing keystone?

>> as secretary kerry as said as the responsible oyfficial, he is hoping to decide that question soon. >> fair enough. something else i wanted to get into with you a little bit is tax reform the question of corporate tax reform. i know this is something you probably don't deal with or think about a whole lot, but there are a lot of incentives in the energy market the energy world that are affected by that question of whether corporate tax rates should come down and benefits breaks, targeted breaks, should be given up. you promoted so many energy credits. what's the cost, is there a cost to not using tax credits, the tax policy as an incentive for behavior? >> well, let me broaden it a little bit from tax policy to in general incentives that we have to accelerate the transformation to a low carbon future.

the president is committed to going that direction. let me give you a couple examples. first of all this is not in the tax world, but the department of energy has enormous loan guaranty authorities. we have $40 billion left in play. we intend to continue the great success with that portfolio over the last years across the energy spectrum, from fossil to renewable to efficiency. on the tax side, senator widen for example, now chairs the finance committee, is really hoping to advance significant tax reform, but specifically in the energy arena. let me give you a good example. master limited partnerships are an area where there is an enormous amount of equity in the market. but for historical reasons, it's restricted to fossil energy. if we could just broaden that out to across the board including renewables for

example, these would provide excellent new vehicles, we think, for attracting more capital into a clean energy future. >> so would you oppose getting rid of the tax incentives that exist for renewable energy? >> we clearly support extension of the current tax credits. we especially support having predictable incentives. as you know, for example, with wind, with the production tax credit it's oss oscillations over time directly impact firms and customers, for that matter to make investments. i do believe we need to extend those renewable tax credits. we need to do it in a way where there is predictability on all sides. >> you have a quadrennial energy review coming out in january.

i guess the departments have its own quadrennial energy review. what have you learned about the corporate structure in putting that together? >> i should say what it is since it's a little inside, but what we're doing it's very different in execution, i might say, to the quadrennial defense review, in that it's a whole government exercise because the equities in energy are so broadly distributed. we are working across the administration. that's an important point. secondly, the first year's focus is specifically as you said jonathan, on energy infrastructure. we have seen enormous challenges to our energy infrastructure over the last years mainly a set of regional challenges. for example, new england the absence of a natural gas infrastructure has led to enormous spikes. we have the issues of the polar vortex and propane in the midwest. we have the issue of oil by rail

for lack of infrastructure. so that's what we are looking at. what we are finding is a little bit of-- a little bit of a preview. what we are finding is the level of investment of the in infrastructure we need going forward is not out of line with what's happening already it's the issue of how do we direct it in a way? how do we help guide it to a way that supports the kind of clean energy future that we are looking for. how do we introduce the right information technology into the electric grid, for example? so those are are the kinds of policy recommendations that we'll be coming out with but in some sense what we're seeing already is it's not an issue of the level of investment because that has come up dramatically already in the last years, especially in response to our new energy situation. >> it's just the direction. >> yeah. it's how do we guide it towards

having the transactional capacity to support a clean energy infrastructure, which may include distributed generation, for example? how do we guide it to be resilient against what we expect to be increasing bouts of extreme weather against cyberattacks against physical attacks, against geomagnetic storms. there's a whole set of risks. so we need to invest in this 20th century infrastructure in a way that both supports clean energy and provides resilience against a broad threat spectrum. >> your aidses told me you're an above all energy guy. i want to ask you about that because i think there is a promotion of natural gas. republicans attack democrats and say there is a war on coal, certainly the traditional infrastructure. is that true? >> there is no war on coal.

there is -- make no bones about it there is a fundamental commitment, it starts with the president, on moving to a low carbon future. what we mean by all of the above is that within that constraint we walk the talk. we make major investments in developing the technology and lowering the costs for using all fuels in that low carbon world. so coal. what does that mean for coal? it means we have deployed $6 billion to advance the kinds of integrated coal projects that involve capturing the carbon dioxide. most of them, the six of the eight involved using that carbon dioxide to enhance oil recovery so it makes a product that lowers the capture. we have a solicitation right now for our loan program, $8 billion for supporting fossil fuel

technologies including coal that reduce emissions. so we are working really hard to get those technologies developed, deployed, demonstrated so that everybody understands what the path forward is for coal in a low carbon economy. maybe i should add one other thing, and that is we also in the carbon context we also have to keep in mind that this requires a global solution. we all know we use somewhat shy of a billion tons a year of coal in the united states. the chinese are at or near to 4 million tons. india is building up. so we need to have these technology solutions that are going to be applied globally. >> u.s. ban on crude oil exports, where do you stand with that -- with regard to that right now? do you think that's something that would be lifted? >> well there are a number of

arguments, obviously, as you well know on that. and we've made it very clear that within the administration it involves multiple agencies, again, commerce, department of energy et cetera, that first of all, there has been no policy change. we do export products, of course, oil products and we are examining the whole issues around the increase in oil production in the united states, how the refineries match up et cetera, which will influence the response on exports. but again, i want to create -- i want to emphasize the context. this discussion, generally speaking, is happening without the context of we still import 7.5 million barrels a day of crude oil. we are, on the other hand, an --

we have become, just in a few years, a substantial exporter of oil products. so we are exporting a lot of product and we are still major importers of crude oil. i think that's -- those are very important considerations in addressing the question you raised. those facts also emphasize something else very important. we remain linked to the global oil market and global oil prices both through imports and exports. >> to clarify, it sounds to me you're not excited about the idea of lifting that ban? >> let's just say we're evaluating all the factors and i think when, you know, perhaps the arguments are a little bit overventilated at the moment. >> it sounds like a keystone answer. >> you decided to go there. >> you said earlier, you mentioned the loan guaranty

program. i think if we were writing a book the first chapter would probably be the first word. bring us up to date on what that loan guaranty program has done? >> so the loan guaranty program has already deployed $30 billion, roughly speaking. and again across the energy spectrum, including, by the way, i believe the next speaker in terms of nuclear project for a southern company, but fossil renewables efficiency. the portfolio has been a major success. let me give you one good example in solar. in 2009, the united states had zero utility scale projects. by the way n 2009in 2009, going back to the financial discussion, debt financing was not exactly easily available. the loan program stepped in and provided that support for five

projects. successful. today there are 17 projects greater than 100 megawatts completely with private financing. that's the model of what we want to do. get this kickstarted accelerate deployment and then have the private sector take over. now, have there been failures? yes. cylindra is a default. the portfolio has had a 2% default rate. i don't know of other investment portfolios that have this kind of success rate. so it's very easy to find the 1-2-3 projects that have defaulted. it's a 2% default rate. we have $40 billion left to go in authorities. we're planning to -- assuming we find and we have a great pipeline of very interesting projects. we intend to deploy that. >> i'm going to wrap up in a

minute but i do have one last question for you, which is, is there anything you can get done? is there any target of activity if you're dealing with the chairman on the senate energy committee next year as opposed landrieu? >> first of all when it comes to the kind of action plan, which is our main guide for what we are doing in the energy space, supplemented by energy security concerns, and obviously driving the economy through new manufacturing programs, et cetera. we are exercising all of those programs through existing executive authority. we will continue to do that. >> so you don't want to deal with senator murkowski? there's nowhere -- >> it's well-known we have a very good relationship with senator landrieu, with senator murkowski. i think it's well-known that we have worked very well across the aisle and across both chambers. that will continue and we have

will continue to aggressively pursue our programs with our executive authorities. >> thank you, mr. secretary. it's a pleasure speaking with you. [ applause ] next up we have thomas fanning, the chairman, president and ceo of southern company. next spring a new coal-fired power plant is being erected in the pine woods of rural mississippi. tom fanning the chairman and ceo of southern has called the money $5.5 billion and counting a bitter pill to swallow. but with these high costs come high returns. most of the plan's carbon dioxide will be captured and carried underground where it won't impact the client -- the climate, not the client. tom fanning is here to talk with the atlantic steve clemons of the painful and costly road he's traveled to build the first-ever u.s. power plant designed to include commercial carbon capture technology. thanks tom for coming.

>> thank you so much margaret. tom, thanks for joining us today. we don't have a lot of time we've got to get right to work. >> yes sir. yes, sir. >> i guess the big question i have is ernie moniz is up here. do you like ernie moniz? >> i think he's fabulous. i think ernie is great. >> is that -- if he wasn't fabulous would you say that? >> absoluteryly. secretary moniz is great. he's an action oriented guy, smart, comes from a great background i think he's a dynamite choice. doing a great job. >> the reason i want to interview you here is i heard you give a talk in aspen a couple of years ago in which you talked about carbon, and you talked about ways to constrain carbon and how to deploy that. you just opened this mississippi plant that margaret just mentioned but beyond that you're taking things to china. >> you bet. and eastern europe. >> i'm interested, you're one of the big power guys. >> right. >> and you also deploy your energy to, among the lowest

socioeconomic constituency in the united states. so folks that don't have a lot of money, to have to pay for energy. i'm interested in how you get smart energy choices when the economics are not necessarily there. >> you hit a lot of issues there. >> we have seven minutes. so -- >> it is so foundational. the point you make when i think about it, and i talk about national energy security i work in the business round table and co-chair that effort. when i think about the challenges in the economy we see right now, 46%, to think about the constituents i serve, 46% of the families we are privileged to serve make less than $40,000 a year. and their energy budget is relatively inflexible. when you think about all the other challenges we face our ability to balance clean, safe, reliable affordable energy for their benefit is enormous. what we've been able to do, we're the only company -- >> so the strategy for those

people typically is coal? because coal is super cheap. >> well, when you say, what is the strategy, clean safe, reliable affordable, we've got to balance those things. as ceo of one of the largest -- we're a little bit smaller, but similar in size to the nation of australia. this is a big company. but we have to do is figure out ways to make all those work. it is not just clean. it is not just affordable. we've got to put ands in there. and we've been able to do that. we are the only company in america doing proprietary robust research and development. we developed our own technology to essentially consume low-grade coal with a carbon footprint less than natural gas. and we take the co2 which is not a waste strain in this case we use it to produce more domestic oil. >> is that what you have in kemper project? >> that's what we're working on right now. >> how do you turn everything into a kemper project? >> well you don't. you don't. >> and why don't we pay for that

to have china absorb 1,000 kemper projects? >> well, in fact, what we have to do is build the full portfolio. i've got this on youtube, you want to see the whole thing. the whole kind of pitch. but the idea is we need nuclear. dominant solution in a carbon constrained world. 21st century coal where we manage the could 2. natural gas, renewables energy efficiency. the technology that we're talking about at kemper county mississippi, which has had its challenges we have signed two agreements in china. china could use probably 30,000 mega watts of this technology themselves. it is impractical to believe that the rest of the world will not continue to consume coal. we've got to do is find ways for those folks to consume it in a responsible way. eastern europe, when you think about a nation like poland, which probably has the vast majority of their energy produced by low-grade coal, they're at the end of gazprom not only is it high gas prices here in the united states we have these sub-$4 gas prices right now.

china, poland, $15 gas prices. and geopolitics, being on the wrong side of gazprom. holy spokes, these ideas can make a lot of sense. >> yesterday boone pickens was here, and boone pickens used to be seen as the oil guy. now he's the natural gas guy. when i told people i was going to be interviewing you they said he's the nuclear guy. they look to you as the big nuclear power. after fukushima and you talked about nuclear a little bit. how do you deal with the public and what are you doing internally after fukushima to sort of deal with this constant concern that nuclear, while it may help with carbon in the air, and climate, nonetheless is creating other spinoffs that just undermine our health, our safety? >> well let me say this. let me say this. the nuclear guy. >> are you the nuclear guy? >> i'm the full portfolio guy. southern company is the only company in america leading the renaissance of new nuclear. building responsible coal. made a huge shift to natural

gas. we're the third largest consumer in the united states of natural gas. one of the largest players in solar in america. one of the leaders in energy efficiency. no other company in america is doing that full portfolio. when people say all the above, most of that is rhetoric. southern does action not rhetoric. now with respect to nuclear. it has taken a great deal shall we say, vision and courage. to continue the path of new nuclear in spite of fukushima. one of the things you must know is that the technology that we are deploying in georgia is the safest, most reliable nuclear technology on the planet today. further, the circumstances around fukushima -- >> i'm going to interject there. how do you know that? >> because the design is completely different. >> who tells you this is a really safe blant? >> piece of cake. when you look at what happened at fukushima, they had an earthquake. and the plant started tripping off, as they should have. but where things got bad is when they had the tsunami that took

out all the external power sources and they couldn't get the water where it needed to be in the time of an emergency. the major design difference in that was relatively old technology. the new technology. westinghouse ap 1000 essentially has the water right above the reactor. and you don't even need an external power source in the time of an emergency to get the water where it needs to be. the power of gravity. newton's law is what will deliver the water where it needs to be. so it is much more resilient. 70% less pipes. it's a great technology we believe. it's also, we're not on a coastline. we're not in a seismic sensitive area. there's a lot of reasons why we need to go forward. one more thing -- >> so secretary moniz great guy. >> if you believe that carbon is important to this nation's future, nuclear is a dominant solution. there's only three kinds of -- there's only -- a company that must go forward nuclear in america has three

characteristics. it's got to have scale. this project we're building in georgia, $14 billion over ten years. you better have scale because you can't bet the company. you got to have the highest level of financial integrity. it's going to take ten years, that amount of money, you know you will go through the vagaries of the world's financial markets. you better have staying power. third, you better credible operations, nuclear is no business for beginners. >> you know, there's -- we've covered a lot of terrain in seven minutes. but one of the areas i sort of step back and look at the washington ideas forum that i would have liked to have a whole other component on is china. you're dealing with china. when you think about climate change and various efforts you might put forward to really make an impact, nothing works unless you get china and india in in a big way. in your dealings with china, i just want to ask, how does it work? in just a snapshot? and is there the capacity to absorb a killer app, a technology, something that fundamentally changes their

choices in a systemic way. or do we just all sink as the water rises? >> this is why i am the portfolio guy, i think. when you look at china, the demographics are so overwhelming, the numbers are so big, no single killer app will solve the problem. and they have an enormous issue to deal with. they have growth. and they have environmental issue that if you've ever been to beijing you've seen it on some clear days you have trouble seeing several blocks away. >> and usually eating it. >> maybe. >> eating or breathing. >> so the point is, the chinese with all their scale and growth have to think about ways to balance this clean, safe, reliable, affordable obligation. and i think there is a very clear place for this kind of technology solutions -- solutions, not rhetoric -- to have a place in the chinese energy future. and i think we can help. >> just to wrap up, we're pretty much out of time. you have been someone who's been

bold out there saying, take away all my -- my goodies, and benefits from the government. i mean you guys -- you've gotten billions of dollars of taxpayer money. >> yep. >> for some of your company. you said you'd give all that up for lower tax rate. what do you need to be -- to make it work to really invest in r&d? you said president obama take this stuff away. >> here's my point. we don't want tax policy deciding good business practice. clean, safe, reliable affordable. i think i know how to deploy that. i don't need signals from the irs on how best to do that. here's what i would propose. get rid of essentially all tax preference items. probably aside from accelerated appreciation, which has been around for i guess since the '80s. >> give us short form. >> what it would be is get rid of all that stuff no investment tax credit, production tax credit, all the fuels credit, get rid of all that stuff, give me a 25% tax rate.

still some accelerated appreciation. i'm in. >> there you are tom fanning southern company. thank you so much. >> thanks steve. great being here. that was fun. another discussion from the atlantic washington ideas forum now with aol co-founder steve case and steve crocker, ceo of research and development company called shinkuro. they're interviewed by author and aspen institute president walter isaacson. this is 20 minutes. >> steve crocker, steve case. when i was writing about the birth of the internet we did have al gore here last year so we can get rid of that joke real fast. so really two people who made it happen. i've worked for steve case but i didn't quite realize the importance of that september when aol opens to the internet and lets real people in. and certainly did not know the importance of steve crocker.

i am going to start with steve because the open net which is woven into the internet starts with steve crocker who is a graduate student at the university of california santa barbara -- >> ucla. >> and they were the first to get those sort of routers or message processors. were going to be part of the internet and they thought that the u.s. government and the pentagon and all these people who were creating it would tell them how to do it. but they expected the research universities to do it themselves. being research universities, they just delegated to the graduate students, and you became the lead graduate student. tell me the story. >> your opening. i didn't know i was going to be important, either. so as you said, the arpanet project which was the seedling for what became the internet started out as a project to

connect the research sites that the defense advance research projects agency was already supporting research at and so it was sort of imposed on this existing set of sites. and it was something that they couldn't turn down because that's where their money was coming from. and so the first four sites were chosen, as you said, and each of those sites already had a research agenda. had a principal investigator, a professor usually, who was leading the research, and this side project was kind of imposed, so it got delegated down to grad students. the hard core part of it. the router and the wires, the lon lines connecting the routers to each other was done through formal contracting process. but left quite open and quite undefined was what to do with this thing. how to connect the computers to the imps, they were called, the initial routers, and what they should say to each other. handful of graduate students

from each of the four sites got together and started having free-wheeling discussions, and we knew that we didn't know basically. we knew there were some simple things that we wanted to be able to do. we wanted to move a file from one place to another, logon to remote machines we also understood there were a vast number of other possibilities and there was no chance we were going to be able to completely define all that. so we kicked around a handful of ideas. some of which were prescient we anticipated downloading software the way active-x and java worked by about 25 years. we didn't get to implement it right away. but we could see it coming. and we also decided that we better leave a lot of room for other people to build on whatever we did. and after several months of intermittent meetings we started to write down some notes, and i was very concerned that the act of writing these nights might cause some recrimination. that there might be some adult -- we were all on the west coast, and some authority figure

from the east. i don't know whether it was washington or boston, but some authority figure was going to show up and ask some hard questions. who are you guys? who gave you authority to do anything? and in a -- after a couple of weeks of procrastination, and fussing about this, one very late night session i said look, here's the rules for these notes. they mean nothing. they can be incomplete. you don't have to take the finished product just put your name and the date and title and institution and in order to emphasize that these were not asserting any kind of final authority, i hit upon this silly little linguistic device and labeled every one of them as a matter of form, request for comments. i thought this was a temporary thing that would last a few months until we had some formal documentation. that was in april 1969, when i was asked to wrote the introduction to the 1,000th rfc. i was genuinely surprised felt

like a sorcerer's apprentice kind of phenomena, you can't turn it off. and sometime later the term got adopted by the oxford english dictionary and it's one of these small little things on the side that grows and grows and becomes important. >> but it's not small because by calling it request for comment you made everybody feel they could be a part of it. so it's collaboratively designed. do you think that's ingrained in the genetic code of the inster net? that it's not a top-down system but a collaborative system? >> yeah it worked out quite well that way. it was part of a culture in which neighbor could participate. we had open meetings open documentation, no cost to anything. in 1994 i made my first trip to india and i gave a talk at institute of science in bangalore and i was introduced to a graduate student who had built some very exotic software with a lot of different pieces of technology in it. i asked him how he did that. he said well i downloaded the rfcs read them and put all the

pieces together. i got quite choked up about it because the impact was huge. and it's been quite amazing. today the internet engineering task force operates in that way. it's an open system. >> you're still the chair of icam. >> but not of the -- but it's part of a culture. a lot of interlocking institutions that promote this, make it open, and i heard an interesting little anecdote, ex-dupety director of nsa talking about interacting in the fisa court, and saying well it's hundreds of protocols. and explaining what the complexity was and the judge said give me the precise number. so he said okay we'll go figure out the precise number. came back a couple of weeks later, he's back in court and quotes a different number. the judge said why is the number different from the one you told me? he said well there's 15 new protocols in the time since then. and the judge said who let that happen? >> good. we did.

>> and you know, i burst out laughing. because that just -- it's so accurately portrayed the distance from what actually goes on versus what the images are for people who've grown up in a much more structured top-down environment. >> steve case when you and i first started working together in the early 1990s and you were growing aol, the online services were the only way that normal people like us could go online and you made it first of all into a community service. explain why the community was important. >> i always believed that people were the kind of the killer app. it was sort of the sole medium. now we call it social media. before we called it chat rooms and instant messaging were core to that. we were able to build on the work of steve and others. innovation is about collaboration and ways of innovation over to build on each other and actually we started aol in 1985 so 29 years ago, it

was still illegal to connect a commercial service to the internet. it was still for educational use, military use, things like that. it wasn't until i think 1991, early 1992 that the internet opened up. so there was the decade, the first decade of online services with aol. but compuserve others were really building almost a parallel universe off on the side. only in the early '90s that we could bring those worlds together. but we always believed in the power of the idea of the internet and society would be better if everybody could connect to the internet. it would kind of level the playing field. so our focus was how do you make it easy to use and useful and fun and affordable. as i said the core of that was really around people connecting with each other. both people they already new e-mail and things like that, as well as people they don't know didn't know, but would benefit from knowing because of some shared interest. >> and you said that up until 1992 or so, it was illegal for you to allow people to go directly on the internet. that's where we do give the al

gore shout-out because it was the gore bill of '92 that opens up the internet to everybody. so if he hadn't misspoken slightly he would be getting a lot of credit for it. what happens is that aol actually does -- i remember this so vividly, suddenly it's called the eternal september. because all of a sudden everybody can come on, and you go on aol. did you have trouble deciding to open that garden gate and allow people not just onto your services but -- >> no. we wanted-we tried to position aol, particularly in the early to mid '90s, as the best on ramp to the internet for most people. as well as adding some things that were unique and exclusive to aol. which is why when we first met, may not know it, walter 20-plus years ago, was in charge of all the digital initiatives. he was one of the pioneers that we need to get into this new world. so we did some things in the early 1990s and for awhile those things were exclusive to aol. the only way you could read "time" was to be an aol

subscriber. it wasn't just the access on-ramp side it was a set of services that were exclusive. that really propelled the growth, particularly in the 1990s. the peak in the late 1990s, over half of all the internet traffic in the united states consumer traffic, was through aol. >> speaking of which, the business model for the content providers goes south when everything gets put on the web for free. how do you see a business model that would have or could work better for content providers? >> i think it is evolving. and i think, because there's now -- the good news is the playing field did get leveled. everybody has essentially a printing press. everybody has the opportunity to have their voice heard. that's great news. the bad news is there are a lot of voices and it can be a little bit noisy. the real of curation is important and the role of trusted brands and journalists is important. and you're seeing that. people migrate to that. usually it's a mix of things that they choose to rely on as well as things they want to be exposed to whether through

twitter or facebook or other kinds of social platforms. so that continues to evolve in a pretty interesting way. >> steve, dr. crocker, you were involved after all the things you did in something that included payment systems and whatever. what do you see the future of the internet being, and how would that relate to things like like bitcoin that might change the business models? >> so in the mid '90s i was involved in a start-up. which tried to make it possible to make payments over the internet. and the big success of that venture was credit card payments moved over the internet, but then into the existing, classic banking system, of visa and mastercard and so forth. things that we tried to build, but weren't successful were micropayments and checks, and other things. and those evolved, paypal became very successful sometime later. so there's an awful lot of buzz about bitcoin.

and i actually have some concern. not that i want to say something negative about the bitcoin, but something cautionary about the idea of exotic new payment systems. we depend, entirely the whole society, depends upon the stability of the monetary system. and if there is something that disrupted that, if a dollar bill taken out of your pocket suddenly became worthless when there was a big inflation, the level of havoc that we would have to be -- would dwarf anything we've seen. the meltdown in 2008 would be nothing compared to what we've seen. so there is a lot to be protected there and one has to proceed -- the country has to proceed, and the world has to proceed quite carefully. the other thing is that there are some very interesting payment systems. in kenya, for example, you can

make mobile payments easily. you have a lot of unbanked people. underneath that, it turns out that the cost of those payments is enormous. i am not sure i know precisely, but i have in mind it costs like 30% to make a payment. that is not the kind of percentages that we're used to here. you write a check and the cost to writing the check at least the cost you're charged is very very much less than that. so there's going to be an exploratory process and there's going to be a settleing out process. and i think we need to be very, very cautious about all of this. >> steve do you think payments would be disrupted? >> oh, sure. payments would be disrupted. i think we're seeing the first wave of the internet kind of aol and others were part of it, beyond infrastructure i'm talking about consumer access to the internet. '85 to 2000 that really came of age and got everybody connected and kind of built the core infrastructure. the last 15 years or so sort of the second wave, has been building on top of the internet,

apps, facebook twitter and so forth have been the phenomenon there. i think the third wave is integrateing the internet seamlessly in almost every aspect of our lives. disrupting payments and education and health care and transportation and energy and food, a lot of parts of our lives that are actually pretty important and a lot of sectors of our economy that are pretty significant that haven't been disrupted. >> like health. >> health is a part of it. and what's going to be different and it builds on what you said in your book is two things that are going to be maybe three things that are going to be different than the second wave. first, is you're going to have to have partnerships. you can't go it alone if you're really trying to change the health care system. you have to partner. and that's a skill set that some entrepreneurs, especially in the second wave, won't necessarily be as successful in this third wave. second is policy. you have to engage with governments. both as regulators and in many cases customers. the government actually is the largest customer in this country of health care for example. so even though there's this libertarian bias in the entrepreneur world, particularly in silicon valley, we don't like governments. too bad. you've got to engage with them

if you want to revolutionize some of these sectors. the third is going to be perseverance. there have been some products services, that have, you know, essentially been overnight successes in this last wave snapjet being the most recent example. it was next wave is going to require more perseverance. if you really want to revolutionize some of these sectors, education, health care it's going to require more partnerships more engagement on the policy level and more perseverance. i think it creates enormous opportunities because these things really do matter to us. they're central parts of our lives and those sectors, health care alone is one-sixth of our economy. so it's a big opportunity for change there. a big opportunity for entrepreneurs to create great iconic companies that's going to require a little bit different skill set. >> reminds me of a line that i attribute to you which is that vision without execution is hallucination. you always attribute it to edison. i spent like three days searching. i don't think edison ever said that. >> for 25 years i've said thomas edison said it. so i'm sticking with that.

but the other one that i'd say that really will be a key -- key idea that really kind of drives this third wave is an african proverb that if you want to go quickly, you can go alone. but if you want to go far you must go together. that idea of going together, in partnerships, driving collaborations, cross sectors different competitors working with governments working with nonprofit, that's going to drive this next wave. i think it's very exciting, but as i said it's going to require a little bit different act. >> we only have a few minutes left. let me ask you as you sit on the board of icam and look at the internet what gives you the most excitement about what may happen or the most worry about what may happen to the internet over the next five years? >> so one of the excitement is the dramatic expansion. by some measures half the people in the world, billions, are using the internet in one form or another. and so it feels a little weird, but you can actually have a conversation about how to get the other half of the people on

the net. in some sense that is like looking at completion. there are a lot of hurdles. things are always difficult when you are dealing with the non early adopters and the digital divide and so forth, but nonetheless, you are talking about the possibility of a world that is pretty well connected globally. the difficulties are that the internet has become so important that and sort of apropos of wars, too important to be left to generals you have politicians and big money interests concerned about control. concerned about power. corporate and government. >> corporate and government. each with their own interests. and those interests are different around the world. so that in some cases you want -- some governments want to have a lot of surveillance. in other cases they want to keep a lot of content out.

and we're going to have a very difficult period. we're in the middle of a very difficult period sorting all that out. and there's a lot of downsides that are possible. and if we're lucky we'll steer away from that and have good communication. that is going to -- the other thing i want to say just quickly is that, an interesting marker will be when we stop talking about the internet. when the internet is so pervasive that it's inside. that typically, in most developed countries, one doesn't ask the question are you on the electric grid. >> right. >> and the same thing, i think, will eventually happen, that just won't be a subject for, are you on the internet? of course you're on the internet. the question will be what apps do you have? and what businesses and so forth. it will be a whole different thing. >> i know that commerce secretary gave a really good talk to this group but also spoke to you all at ican and put a finger on that very problem of too many other interests try to take over the governance of the internet. >> yes.

she graced our meeting we had one of our major meetings in los angeles a couple of weeks ago, and she gave a rock 'em sock 'em talk. >> i love that talk. people go on line. so the talk to ican and to you. steve, we woke up this morning and you were in ohio on tv talking about the rise of the rest at ohio state. explain that whole thing and this will be our last question. tell us what you're doing now with rival -- >> just try to do what i can to make sure we remain the most innovative entrepreneurial nation. that isn't fuelling ideas of entrepreneurs in a few places like silicon valley or new york city or boston. it's recognizing there are great entrepreneurs with great ideas all over the country. right now 76% of venture capital will go to three states, california, massachusetts and new york. yet 76% of fortune 500 companies are in the other 47 states. so there is an imbalance. i think we need to get capital spread more evenly across the country, build up the start-up

communities, and some of these cities, create, you know, a lot of different things that make it possible to start companies there. a lot of structural things that are making it easier. but we need to do what keycan to build up those communities. i did this summer with the atlantic visited nine cities on a bus tour, detroit pittsburgh cincinnati, nashville, madison, minneapolis, des moines, kansas city, st. louis, all great american cities but not just great cities in the past, great cities in the future because what's happening in those start-up communities. we just need to recognize that and celebrate it and remember, this is not to be negative about sol convalley because i'm a big fan, and proud of silicon valley. but 50, 60 years ago detroit was silicon valley. that was the most innovative you know city of the time by 56 years ago, silicon valley was actually like orchards. 100 years ago, pittsburgh was silicon valley. because pittsburgh was the steel capital powering the whole industrial revolution. so we've seen these waves of innovation in our country, worth remembering 250 years ago america itself was a start-up. it was just an idea but we led

the way in the agricultural revolution. we led the way in the industrial revolution. more recently we led the way in this digital revolution. that's why we're now the leader of the world with the leading economy. where we're going to continue to be the leader of the world we need to have the leading economy. we need to be the most innovative entrepreneurial nation supporting local communities also trying on a policy level to get things like immigration reform passed so we actually can win what's now a global battle for talent. so i guess it's really important that we all do whatever we can to embrace the next generation of entrepreneurs wherever they might be, and provide the capital, make it easier for them to track the talent and shine a spotlight on what they're doing so we have a more broadly dispersed innovation economy and it maximizes our chances of remaining the, you know, leader of the world. it's pretty important. >> steve case, steve crocker. thank you. >> thanks. >> that was really good. good ending. >> thank you. next on c-span3 hillary clinton takes part in a forum on the role of women in the global economy.

then live coverage of the conservative summit hosted by the heritage foundation. later, the house rules committee meets to consider homeland security spending on immigration, and a possible delay in implementing the volcker rule on certain kinds of speculative investment. former secretary of state hillary clinton talks about empowering women, and their role in the global economy at this forum hosted by george doun university. it's a little over an hour and a half. good afternoon everyone. it's a pleasure to welcome all of you for joining us for this very special event. today we celebrate the international council on women's business leadership previously

established at the state department, and now relaunched here at georgetown's institute for women, peace and security. now on this occasion we have the great privilege of hearing reflections on the power of women's economic participation from the founder of the council the honorable hillary rodham clinton. it's always a pleasure welcoming secretary clinton to our campus and i'll have the honor of introducing here in just a moment. but first i wish to say just a few words about the council. the international council on women's business leadership was founded by secretary clinton during her tenure as the 67th united states secretary of state. the mission of the council is to examine the most pressing issues, as they pertain to women's economic participation. members of the council include prominent global women leaders from the private sector, government, and civil society.

we will have the chance to hear from four distinguished members a little later in the program. the issues that the council will focus on are deeply resonant with the mission of this university. the economic empowerment of women, the promotion of gender equality, equal access to capital and markets and the building of capacity in skills all reflect our tradition of social justice our commitment to equal opportunity, and our dedication to the common good. these issues are at the very heart of how we at georgetown conceive of our place in our global family. and i wish to express my gratitude to ambassador for her ongoing leadership of the georgetown institute for women, peace and security, and for her vision in welcoming the council to georgetown. at this moment in time, we recognize that no nation can

achieve its fullest potential, economic or otherwise, if any segment of its population is abused neglected, oppressed, or disenfranchised. if their voices and talents are ignored, their promise and possibility remain unrealized. it is in this context that we are greatly honored to house the international council on women's business leadership, and believe deeply in the impact that it can make throughout our world. in the words of secretary clinton, including more women at the top of organizations businesses, and the public sector, is not just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. it's good for business. it's good for results. so it's now my honor to introduce our speaker today for nearly four decades and in various roles, secretary clinton has championed women's issues.

she has strengthened opportunities for women's political, economic, and social engagement, and has long been a voice for the disenfranchised. in her acclaimed speech in beijing in 1995, she declared that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights. in a defining moment for the global women's rights movement. throughout her career of service and advocacy then as first lady, next as united states senator, and most recently as secretary of state, she has worked not only to highlight women's contributions but to create and institutionalize new policies. her efforts continue to ensure greater recognition of the roles of women in economic development, peace building, and political systems around the world. here at georgetown we are honored by her dedication as the

honorary founding chair of our institute for women, peace and security. and now, ladies and gentlemen, it's my deep privilege to introduce to you, and welcome to the stage, the honorable hillary rodham clinton. [ applause ] hello, georgetown. oh, my goodness. hello. thank you all very, very much, and it is always great to be back at georgetown. i want to thank president degoia

not only for those really kind remarks but for his real understanding and commitment to the issue we are here to discuss today, and that is the empowerment and participation of women and girls and in particular in the economy. before i turn to that subject, i want to express my personal feelings about the loss of dean carol lancaster. carol was a great colleague over the last years. i traveled with her, worked with her, and when i was secretary, we looked for and created a lot of partnerships with the school of foreign service, and so my thoughts and prayers are with carol's family and friends and the entire university community.

she would really love to have been here because she would have heartily approved of this gathering, and she was instrumental in the creation of the first ever anywhere in the world georgetown institute for women, peace, and security. so for me this is yet another wonderful opportunity to talk about the work that georgetown is doing in partnership with so many others. and the model that georgetown is providing through the institute, which is on the brink of being replicated in other places around the world who recognize the significance of taking the subject of women, peace, and security and integrating them within a world class academic institution like georgetown.

one of the partners, one of the new partners for the institute is the international council on women's business leadership. this is a council that i started with ambassador verveer when i served as secretary of state because we understood from the data that we were able to gather and what we saw as the challenges confronting women here at home and around the world, that economic participation needed much more attention, and i was very pleased that so many women business leaders from around the globe were willing to join this council, and the council has now moved to establish its permanent home from the state department to georgetown, and leaders have traveled from across the world,

from every hemisphere, every continent, to participate, and i want particularly to thank the co-chairs, cherie blair, who is with us today, and beth brook marciniak who is traveling in asia, and, of course, i am deeply grateful to my friend, your fellow georgetown alum, the first ambassador for global women's issues, melanne verveer, for spearheading so much of this work. when we first convened this council at the state department in january of 2012, there may have been a few, or maybe more than a few, foreign policy traditionalists thinking is it really worth a secretary of state's time to start a program on women's economic participation? is this really the kind of issue that demands sustained and high level attention? well, as i wrote about in my book "hard choices" that

described the four years i was privileged to serve as secretary, the answer for me is very clearly yes because when you're in a position in the world that we have around us today, such as secretary of state, you, of course, have to deal with the immediate crises, with the brewing crises, with the crises over the horizon, but you also have to look for ways of leveraging the kind of outcomes that you hope are achievable here in our country and more importantly around the world that will lead to greater peace, prosperity, and progress. and, of course, there's a very compelling moral case to be made, and we should never shy away from or quit saying that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights, but there's also a pragmatic economic case that undergirds that moral imperative.

i remember during the '90s, as first lady, traveling across africa, and everywhere i looked i saw women working. i saw them working in their fields, in their market stalls, carrying water, carrying firewood, selling crafts. so i asked some of the economists that we were meeting with, how do you evaluate the contributions that women make to the economy here? and i'll never forget one replied, we don't because they don't participate in the economy. now, what he meant was classic economic analysis, he meant the formal economy, the economy of the jobs one does in offices or factories. the work that sustained families, that created opportunities for these women to gather some income in the markets or to produce enough

food to feed their family with maybe a little leftover was just not counted, and that got me thinking, what would happen if women stopped working in the informal economy? well, i said to the economist, wouldn't your analysis mean that you wouldn't be counting what they were doing in the informal economy, but the economy would stop? well, yes, that is a point, he said. and it is a point that we're finally beginning to grapple with because it is true that if more women have the opportunity to participate fully in the formal economy, they, their families, and their communities will prosper. for example, we know that in india where women spend an average of six hours a day performing unpaid labor, the gross domestic product would

grow by $1.7 trillion if women participated in the formal labor force at the same level as men or even if the work they were now doing, like in those market stalls, if their activities were more respected, that they would be included in the calculation of the formal economy. now, i know there must be some economic students here, and i hope you will think about this issue. how do you evaluate the work in the so-called informal economy. we want the women to move from the informal economy to the formal economy. that's what the council is focused on. but we also want in so far as it is possible to evaluate the contributions from the informal economy. now, unfortunately, a new global report released just this week again confirmed that despite some small improvement, the

gender gap in economic participation and opportunity remains high around the world, and the consequences are significant because if we closed the gap in workforce participation between men and women around the world, gdp would grow by nearly 12% by 2030. so at the state department as we began to try to integrate women's participation opportunities and rights into our foreign policy objectives, we began to look for and ask for the creation of more data because if you present this kind of data about what it would mean for the gross domestic product of nations and regions and even of the world that is accessible and compelling, heads start nodding even among skeptical leaders in both the public and the private sectors.

that's why at the clinton foundation my daughter chelsea and i are heading up an initiative called no ceilings. we are collecting and analyzing a vast amount of data to map out the gains women and girls have made in the past 20 years since the conference in beijing but also to highlight the gaps that remain. nearly two decades after the united nations fourth world conference on women in beijing called for in the platform for action full participation in every aspect of society, a growing number of leaders have come to understand how important this is. they see we cannot afford to leave talent on the sidelines or money on the table. we began rolling out our thinking behind this agenda at the conference concerning apec,

the asian pacific economic community, that the united states was sponsoring in 2011. apec's san francisco declaration is an example of momentum that is building. it focused on the most serious obstacles facing women in business, access to capital, access to markets, skills training, capacity building, and leadership. and these challenges have guided the work of this council as well. let's look at two, access to capital and leadership. now, globally researchers estimate the financing gap for women-owned small and medium-sized businesses were the greatest acceleration of growth occurs. that's where most of the jobs not just in our country but in the world come from. that gap between financing women's businesses and men's

businesses is around $285 billion. yet, we know that if more women had access to credit, more businesses would get off the ground, more jobs would be created, more revenue generated. similarly, women still face fewer opportunities to rise up the corporate ladder and hold leadership positions. only 5% of the ceos of fortune global companies are women. this is despite the fact that it's now been very convincingly shown that when women have a seat at the corporate board table, their perspectives often improve corporate governance and performance. through our council's partnerships and our programs, we've made some encouraging progress in these areas, but we know there's more to be done. laws and regulations are still on the books in more than 100 countries that limit women's

economic participation. there's a substantial gender gap in interstate connectivity and mobile use. that limits women's abilities to take advantage of new opportunities, and as our economies evolve and more women do enter the workforce, new challenges emerge. when prime minister abe was elected in japan, he said one of the best things he could do to get the japanese economy moving again would be to get more educated, innovative women into the workforce. he called it women economics. i had a chance to sit down with the prime minister just a few weeks ago at the clinton global initiative in new york to talk with him about what he meant by this and what his government was trying to do about it. he spoke about the obstacles discouraging japanese women, educated women, in a highly

developed country from entering the workplace and the cultural shifts that are needed to break down those barriers. expanding flexibility in the workplace, access to child care and elder care would boost productivity and allow more parents, men as well as women, to work full days without stress and heartache. in japan it's especially a difficult problem because as prime minister abe explained, japanese women are primarily responsible for both child care and elder care. there are not the kind of alternatives that exist in many other societies. there's a very low rate of immigrant labor coming into the country, so there's not a workforce that can be put to work or trained to work, and so when he talks about trying to get women into the formal economy, he is opening the door to the whole debate around work/family balance and around the care that is necessary to be provided.

there's nothing more important than caring for one's family members. how is that accomplished in a way that will benefit individuals, families, and the entire country? now, we face obstacles here in the united states as well. four in ten primary bread winners are now women yet american women still make less than men for doing the same job. a lack of flexible and predictable scheduling, affordable child care, paid sick leaves and paid leave, we are one of the few countries without it, keep too many women on the sidelines. a few weeks ago while we were in the hospital waiting for our granddaughter, little charlotte, to make her grand entrance, one of the nurses came up to me and said, thank you for fighting for paid leave, and she went on to tell me she sees families every day who struggle to balance work

and parenthood. in fact, she does it herself, even while she's taking care of someone else's baby, her thoughts are with her own who is watching her child. what if her child gets sick? how is she going to be in two places at once? this is the constant interior dialogue that goes on for the vast majority of women, mothers in our country. so we know that we've made progress. the women on this council are clear evidence of that. some of the brightest minds in the world are gathered here. business leaders, diplomats, head of multilateral organizations, senior government officials, issue experts, and they're helping us think through how we solve these challenges, and i'll give you a great example we just heard about from our council. one of our council members from indonesia said she had done a

study of markets because most of the people, 90% of the people working in markets, which is still the place where most people in the world, not supermarkets but real on the ground local markets, get their food, get their other goods that they need to run their households, so she did a study. 90% of the people working in the markets are women. there are no toilets available for women in the numbers that they represent. think about it. it's such a simple thing. there are certainly no child care, so is there a safe place you can leave your child while you're bustling around trying to sell in the marketplace? and maybe your hours are going to be severely restricted because there's no place to use

a restroom. i recently met with my husband with the new prime minister of india, prime minister modi. he is very focused on basics like sanitation. girls, as they get older, cannot go to school if there is no sanitation. women can't get very far from home because there is no toilet. so we in this council are looking at everything from truly the most basic barriers that enable girls and women to go on to higher education, enable them to be in the workforce away from their homes for some period during the day, all the way to how do we get more women on corporate boards and into executive positions. we're really here today to invite the students of georgetown to help us problem solve, to think through, ideas that you might be either aware

of or thinking about, and share with the institute for women, peace, and security as we continue this work. in a few minutes there will be a panel discussion with leaders from the united kingdom, israel, indonesia, and the united states so we can get into more depth on some of these issues. but this is finally on the global agenda. we've come a long way since i had those discussions back in africa in the 1990s where it just didn't register that there was a problem. women were in the informal economy, everybody knew that, but it didn't count for anything, and there was no real effort being made to open the doors to try to help more women get into the formal economy. so we need to be looking at what has worked in communities around

the world. we need to scale and sustain past ideas, collaborate, bring more models that have a great partnership between the public and the private sector and civil society because if you look at the data that has been generated by the world bank, by the imf, by the oecd, by private sector analysts, we in a time where the global growth rate is not yet what it needs to be, it has not fully recovered from the great recession and crisis of '07, '08, '09 we have made more progress comparatively in the united states but we still have millions of americans who have not recovered their incomes, who do not have job security, who are long-term unemployed.

so why would we ignore any solution that might work? and if you look at the data, and i invite you all to do that and we're going to be producing more data through the clinton foundation no ceilings initiative, it's very clear that initiative, it's very clear that the more women we can get to participate fully and get paid equal pay for equal work, the faster our economy will recover and economies across the world likewise. the gdp projections that have been calculated, if we could get women's labor force participation to equal men's, are really staggering. in developed countries it can be 8%, 9%, 10% of an increase in gdp over the next 15, 20 years. in less developed countries it could be 30% to 40%. so this issue about how we create jobs in the global economy today for men and women,

how we really help prepare young people for the jobs that are going to be available through education and training, this is going to be one of the most significant questions for public policy and for private sector decisionmakers. as those of you who are students here graduate and go out into the world of work. we need more entrepreneurship. we need to encourage more young people to start businesses. we need more seed capital. we need more crowd funding. we need more access. we need more mentoring and teaching about business plans and how you deal with the economy and the stresses that you will face.

we have a whole menu of issues that will be relevant to men and women, but if we pay some extra attention to getting women into the formal economy, it will be good for everybody. we cannot get ahead in the united states or anywhere by doing what we used to do because that's not the world in which we live today. we have to unlock the potential of every person and grow the economies of every nation. it's the only way we're going to be able to grow together and create a middle class that is dynamic and strong and creating jobs and opportunities for generations to come. with this new grandchild of ours, you know, we spend a lot of time looking at her and a lot of time thinking about what we want to do for her, and there certainly is no doubt that her parents and her grandparents and her extended family will do all that we can to make sure she has every opportunity to fulfill her own god-given potential, but we also worry about the world that she will inherit as an adult.

what will be the opportunity available to her and to others in 20 to 25 years as they enter adulthood? here in our country we call it the american dream. others have different variations on that, but we've always believed that every generation by working hard can do better than the last. we've been confident and optimistic through hard times. we've rebounded. we've shown resilience, but we need to make some adjustments. our system has to be better prepared to deal with the realities of the world we are in today. you're getting great preparation here at georgetown, one of the

premiere places for your education. but you should not have to be someone who goes to georgetown or in our case the granddaughter of a former president who also happened to go to georgetown. to be given the tools and to have the support of your community as well as your family. bill and i talk a lot. we came from different backgrounds, but, boy, did we have extraordinary opportunities. he from arkansas. me from outside of chicago. and in addition to the public schools and the public parks and the stable economic opportunities that were patched together by our respective families over time, the hard work that went into that, we believed that there was this unlimited potential out there. that's what i want you to believe, but not just you, people your age not very far from here who maybe didn't finish high school, maybe are in

the workforce, could not dream of being in this magnificent hall, but who are part of our larger community, our web of responsibility. we will do so much better if we remember that we should find a és05ñ way to help everybody, and this council is looking specifically about how we help girls and women to fulfill their own economic potential. thank you all very much. [ applause ]

>> so now to expand on what secretary clinton said about doing what every country wants to see, grow its economies, create jobs, ensure inclusive prosperity for its people, we're going to have a conversation among four remarkable women who, as you heard, come from four different parts of the world, and they comprise the sectors that need to work together, that so-called golden triangle, the private sector, government, and the civil society philanthropy. and then we're going to open this to the students for your questions. so think about what you might want to ask them, and i'm going to ask the panelists as i

introduce you if you wouldn't please come forward and take your seats. so i want to welcome back cherie blair to georgetown. cherie heads the cherie blair foundation for women. it provides women with skills, network, and access to capital so they can better contribute to their economies. she's had a distinguished legal career and is well known for her work in human rights law. today she also chairs omni strategy, a law firm, and, of course, she is married to the former prime minister of the uk, tony blair. cherie, happy to have you. [ applause ] anne finucane is the strategy officer for bank of america. she also leads bank of america's corporate social responsibility program, which uses the capabilities of the company and its global platform to work with a range of partners.

she has repeatedly been on every list as one of the most powerful women in banking and, anne, we want to welcome you back to georgetown. [ applause ] the honorable mari pangestu is the former minister of trade and later the minister for tourism and the creative economy in indonesia. she is a powerful leader who has been called the woman behind indonesia's economic growth. she is regarded as a well known economic expert on trade, and she's also been on the faculty of economics in the university of indonesia and is widely published as a professional economist. bear in mind that indonesia is southeast asia's most populous country and its largest economy.

[ applause ] and ofra strauss is the chairperson of the board of the strauss group, an international corporation with a portfolio of five companies and thousands of employees around the world. she, too, has been ranked repeatedly as one of the top business women in the world on lists from "fortune" to "forbes" to "financial times." she is also the president of jasmine, a program that works with jewish and arab women who are engaged in small and medium-sized businesses in israel. an example of effectively combining free enterprise and social responsibility, and we welcome ofra with us today. [ applause ]

>> so thank you all for being here. cherie, we heard secretary clinton just talk a bit about the importance of women's participation in the economy and certainly the role that women entrepreneurs have in starting small businesses and growing them. their potential is largely untapped around the world. you have a foundation now that has been doing extraordinary work in training and mentoring women in entrepreneurship. give us a sense of what difference that makes and how you partner with others in a collaborative way to ensure that this work can go on. >> well, the difference, of course, it makes if you can get women, as secretary clinton has