the item is forced on to a few from this predictable path resigned to seek comment on such basic questions of whether licensing can ensure adherence to copy control and other rights information and adequate content protection. can it even be done? we don't know. yet somehow despite all of the open questions about who, how, where, when the majority has so much faith in the ability of outside unformed entities to save the day that the item concludes that there should be a two-year deadline for compliance with the new rules. this is regulation by pure speculation. the statutory authority on which this fantasy rests is equally farfetch farfetched. the section that discusses authority will long live a testament the level of absurdity achieved in four short paragraphs when two defenseless statutes fall down a rabbit hole into a world where words have no

meaning. while trying to enhance competition in the set-top box market, the item shoots miles beyond that narrow frame on its very first page redefining statutory terms referencing to hardware such as navigation device, interactive communication equipment and other equipment to mean hardware or software including apps. i don't know how much clearer the terms device or equipment could be in their intent to reference tangible, physical hardware. if those words don't work to restrict the commission, are there any that could? i don't think that anyone here believes for a second that stellar could have made it out of a single congressal committee if the members knew it would be interpreted to allow the fcc to force them to stream all of their content for free to any app developer willing to jump through a few hoops. getting back to the original question, why this proposal? the rational stated is to

achieve parity among competing interfaces and first glance anyone can see that the opposite would result. the free content flow mandated by the item the one way street from mvpds to otts. to have -- to ever have parity, in order for an mvpd interface to be competitive, that interrogates video of other and other services otts would need to be bound by the same rules and sending the content to mvpds for free and indeed to each other for free. in fact, i was told one of the early destack meetings this idea was brought up, quickly dismissed as outside the scope of stellar an the commission's title vi authority. no one is talking about making the one way street a two way street. or are we? you need to look through both red and blue sides of the glasses to see the whole picture. to make any sense of this item it must be viewed together with

the other half. the commission's proposal to reclassify ott as an mvpd. if both of these mprms are followed to logical conclusions the innovators bearing no identity to mvpds will be redefined and assumed into title vi. all mvpds existing or newly minted forced to provide content the each other under a fcc mandated scheme. and providing the free flows to all comers, the only beginning of new burdens of otts captured by title vi. who wins? the fcc of course. this item is about trying to super impose a 1990s concept on the current technology when the basic idea itself is no longer relevant to the innovators now available. set-top boxes or navigation

devices have been overtaken by events or obe. they want access to video on a device they own. content providers are meeting this demand of offerings including over the top and internet based apps. suspected it tells to watch video of multiple sources are all of their devices without a fcc mandated set-top box regime? they can even stream what they're watching between devices. the video marketplace seems to be doing just fine. and yet, somehow when it comes to an mvpd subscription video service we need to step in and regulate the interface. nonless. instead i argue we should embrace the future, not the past. the application economy is weakening the mvpd video package before our very own eyes. consumers are watching programming by the programmer

and shorter segments. the video industry is moving away from a box mentality and as such we should reconsider the need for regulations to maintain a competitive set-top box marketplace. change is a real challenge when the goal is to maintain control over the future using the paradigms of the past. as we have seen, the pursuit of this goal can lead to policy proposals based on or wellian statutory interpretations and thin air. but given the choice between disruptive technologies and disruptive regulations, no one should have any doubt on which side i am on. thank you, mr. chairman. >> you know, this issue really is not complex. congress has explicitly instructed us to assure that there are competitive navigation devices. be it a box or an app.

there's no -- one software, one's hardware. the functionality is the same. the issue is whether you are forced to rent that box every month after month after month or whether you are forced to rent that app every month after month after month. congress was clear. they said there should be competition. now, technology has advanced to a point where this is possible without changing the functioning of the pay tv system and its copyright protections and its security. whether an app or a box. in fact, what we're beginning to

discuss today is something that is very similar to what the cable industry itself once proposed. but let's dig down on each of those points for a second. first of all, section 629 of the communications act, here on the screen, minces no words and leaves no doubt as to our statutory responsibility. no, they didn't print shall in red in the statute. but it is clear -- >> thanks for the clarification. >> but it is clear the commission shall. now, we have heard from some folks who always keep talking about how they're strict constructionalists about what the congress told us to do or not to do. and suddenly reaching out to all

kinds of wild expansive suppositions but it's pretty clear. congress said the commission shall. now, there have been lots of wild assertions about this proposal before anybody saw it. but let's remember this is the beginning of an information gathering process. which is why, frankly, it's disappointing that my two colleagues have made up their mind before all the facts are in and efforts are made to work on issues that have been identi identified. but let's stop for a second. there's been a lot of talk. let's stop and let's look at how a set-top box works. again, on the screen. and let's be clear that there is nothing that is different in the functionality between a hardware box and a software app.

number one, the cable system sends a message to the box that says what's on. number two, the cable system tells the box what it is entitled to, what the subscriber, what kind of rights subscriber has. number three, the subscriber tells the box what they want. number four, the box relays that choice back to the cable system. and number five, the cable system delivers the programming. now, let's look at what that structure would look like under this proposal. yeah, that's a new slide that just got put up. except for the fact it looks identical to the previous slide. there is identical service delivery.

there is identical entitlement authorization. there is identical relaying of choice back to the cable system and there is identical delivery of programming. so what's the difference? these are two systems that work the same. the difference is one's closed and one is open. the consumers have no choice today. the congress mandated that consumers should have choice. so if the competitive box or app functions exactly like the box or app the cable system forces you to rent today, then the protections for copyright and

security are the same. but let's be specific about some of the red herrings that we have heard raised. nothing in this item requires a second box in the home. say it as many times as you want. try and spin it every way you want. nothing in this item requires a second box in the home. nothing in this item likewise requires consumers to stop using the system they have right now. it only create it is opportunity for them to have choice. there is no multi billion dollar reengineering of cable systems as we have heard that is required. there is nothing in here that allows third parties to disaggregate cable content, sell

advertising around it, you know. there's a misrepresentation that's been made today with the assertion that this item does allow that. assertion that it creates all kinds of opportunities for free riders. it takes the same product that goes through the cable system and the cable box today with the same structures and moves it through a different box requiring the same structures. as a result, existing copyrights and programming agreements are unaffected. consumer privacy is protected. emergency alerts are passed through. and child protection laws are unaffected. and nothing in this proposal slows down or stops cable

innovation. you know, in fact, we all know that history's been clear that innovation is a result of competition. not a result of a forced you must rent this box from me month after month after month. and nothing changes minority programmer relationships with the cable companies. but it sure does create more opportunities for minority programmers to reach consumers through the internet. finally, this is not a new topic for this agency. in 2010, the cable industry supported, and i quote, cross

industry approaches to develop a fully competitive and innovative retail video device marketplace. so the people who have said this is the end of the world actually supported a competitive video device and made seven recommendations. which are consistent with today's proposal. let me just highlight a couple of them. they're here in this letter you will see on the screen. but the option to purchase video devices other than those supplied by the cable company. that's the cable industry saying that they support that. the option to access video content on the internet. the option to search for content across multiple sources including the internet. this is what the cable industry

proposed and they have the list goes on to the next slide where there are others i won't read you all but as i say this is not inconsistent with what we're opening the discussion on and proposing today. so let's go back to where we started. this is not complex. the law mandates it. technology allows it. the industry at one time proposed something similar to it. and consumers deserve a break and a choice. so we will call for the vote on the item. all those in favor say aye. opposed? the ayes have it. the item is adopted. request for editorial privilege

is granted with the objection noted. thank you very much to the bureau. madame secretary? >> mr. chairman, commissioners, third on your agenda today the item will be presented by the consumer and governmental affairs bureau, entitled closed captioning of the video programming telecommunications for the deaf and hard of hearing, aly kutler acting chief of the bureau will give the introduction. >> thank you very much. look at this. cgb decided to change the color of the name signs. tent cards. they also what? >> also moved left. >> moved left. wait a minute. i was going to say -- all things are relative here. alison, go ahead, please. >> great. good morning, mr. chairman and commissioners. nearly 20 years ago the

commission adopted its first set of rules governing the provision of closed captioning on television engabling viewer s deaf and hard of hearing to access the television with the rest of the general public. at the time the commission stated it expected to revisit the rules as changes in technology and industry practices made it possible to improve the availability and quality of captioning. the experiences of viewers over the past several years have confirmed the need to update these rules to achieve congress's goal for all americans to have equal access to video programs particularly as they become available on the internet pursuit to the 21st century communications act. today, the consumer and governmental but rhee presents you a report and order to assign some of the responsibilities for the delivery of high quality captions to enterties that have direct control over such

captions on video programming. this item addresses certifications by video programming entities and the handling of captioning complaints. the item provides for flexibility on ways to achieve compliance and balances the benefits that fully accessible programming can achieve for people who are deaf and hard of hearing with the impact these actions would have on industry. joining me at the table today are karen, deputy chief of cgb and eliot greenwald. karen will give us context and the history of the proceeding and eliot will present the item. in addition to karen and eliot, i would like to thank greg highback, chief of the disabilities office and michelle carry, mary beth murray, maria ma lar i can and others of the media bureau, and marilyn sown

and susan aaron of the general couns counsel's office for the work to support this item. >> thank you. good morning, mr. chairman and commissioners. we have heard it say if the improvements in asenior citizen easiability in the last century closed captioning was the most significant and true for the last item presented, the obligations for closed captions came from the 1996 amendments to the communications act celebrated now by the 20th anniversary. until february 2014 problems with the quality of captions had gradually making television viewing with closed captioning increasingly difficult. in the years leading up to this order, consumers reported inconsistencies in the way that captions were being provided with many people reporting that captions were often inaccurate, incomplete and delayed behind the program's audio track. two years ago the commission took landmark steps to ensuring that tv programming contains

high quality captions that accurately reflect the dialogue and other sounds and music in the audio track, are synchronized with the audio, complete from the beginning to the end of the program, to the fullest extent possible and do not block other important information or content in the program on the screen such as character's faces, text or graphics needed to understand the program's content. however, that february 2014 order left open who would be responsible for achieving compliance with the new captioning and quality rules. back in 1997, when the commission first adopted rules gompbing tv captioning, the commission placed sole responsibility for the provision of captions on video programming distributors but it's video programmers not distributor that is are the ones that exercise the most control over captioning quality. they are the one that is work with the captioning agencies to develop and insert captions n. a

notice axeening the february 2014 order, the commission sought comment to divide the captioning responsibilities and to place some of the responsibilities addressing captioning quality and the provision of captions on video programmers. the item before you continues to place primary responsibility on the provision for the provision of closed captions on distributors and recognizes many problems dealing with quality originate in the production phase which is under the control of video programmers. for this reason, the item allocates responsibility for caption quality to both distributors and programmers making each entity sporm for the captioning issues primarily within each's control. we believe that the allocation responsibility is better compliance and make enforcement of the new quality rules easier. eliot will provide you with greater details about the item. thank you.

>> okay. good morning, mr. chairman and commissioners. we are pleased to present the second report in order in the closed captioning quality proceeding. this item extends some of the spoernltds for the quality and provision of closed captioning to other entities involved in the production and delivery of video programming, revises procedures for the handling of complaints, revises video programmer certification requirements and makes other procedural modifications. specifically, this second report and order assigns responsibility for the quality of closed captioning to video programming distributors and video programmers making each entity responsible for closed captioning issues their primarily within its control. video programmers are responsible for closed captioning problems that stem from production of the captions as well as transmission of the

captions up to the point where they're handed off to video programming distributors. video programming distributors, in turn, are responsible for the quality, problemless the result of the distributor's faulty equipment or failure to pass through the closed captioning data intact. the item also maintains current rules that place primary responsibility for the provision of closed captioning on video programming distributors but also holds video programmers responsible for the lack of captions where they have failed to provide captions on nonxempblt programs. in addition, it requires each video programmer to fol file with the commission a certification that the video programmer is in compliance with the rules requiring the inclusion of closed captions and either is in compliance with the

captioning quality standards or has adopted and following best practices or is exempt from the captioning obligations. if exempt, the video programmer must include in its certification the specific exemptions claimed. under current procedures, video programming distributors are required to make best efforts to obtain widely available certifications from video programmers. the second report and order would remove video programming distributors from this certification process and instead obligate video programmers to follow their certifications directly with the commission. this will result in having all certifications located in one place making it easier for video programming distributors and commission staff to locate the certifications. the item also revises the proceed yurls for receiving,

serving and addressing television closed captioning complaints in accordance with a broad and shift in compliance model. this model requires video programming distributors to initially address complaints but allows the video programming distributor to shift the responsibility for responding to a complaint if the video programming distributor after conducting an investigation determines that the problem was not within its control. the second report and order also establishes a compliance ladder for the commission's television closed captioning quality requirements. the compliance ladder provides video programming distributors and video programmers with opportunities to take informal and prompt corrective action to reduce the need for enforcement action by the commission. finally, the item requires each video programmer to register with the commission its contact

information for the receipt and handling of written closed captioning complaints with the commission's web form. we believe that the actions taken in the second report and order by clearly defining the responsibilities for the quality and provision of closed captioning and adopting other procedural reforms will help ensure compliance with the commission's closed captioning rules. the bureau recommends adoption of this item and requests editorial privileges. >> thank you very much to all of you and everyone in the bureau for the efforts. commissioner clyburn? >> just over 19 years ago, the commission adopted its first set of closed captioning rules. this decision marked a major first step in granted full access to video programming for deaf and hard of hearing or hearing impaired citizens. much has changed since 1997 and today it is most fitting for us

to update these rules to reflect the insights gained from the experiences by industry, advocates and the fcc. first, this item will responsibility for closed captioning quality on video programming distributors as well as video programmers. each will be held accountable, both for the provisioning and the quality of closed captioning issues that are primarily within their control. a common sense update to be sure. video programming distributors will continue to be responsible for the spro visioning of closed captioning but now video programmers will be held responsible for the absence of those captions if they fail to provide them. this item also enhances a transparency of the compliance certifications and updates compliance procedures whether those complaints are received by the commission or the video

programming distributor. it is my hope that these updates will not only help in compliance with our closed captioning rules but will assist in streamlining the resolution of closed captions come plants or problems going forward. many thanks are due for this item and as the bureau chief mentioned, those names i want to thank them but i also as always would like to acknowledge and includes thank to karen and eliot greenwald for such an excellent item. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. commissioner rosenworcel. >> earlier this month will celebrated the 20th anniversary of the telecommunications act of 1996, and though it's been said before, a lot has changed in the past two decades. including the evolution of television sets away from those that were big with fake wood panelling around them to what we have today, razor thin screens and, of course, they're not the

only game in town. we live in a world where those screens surround us and opportunities for viewing continue to multiply. all this change is terrific but we have got to make sure that we continue to honor the values that we had 20 years ago or 19 years ago when we first put in plaz our new closed captioning poll sis and it is important because there's an estimated 36 million americans who are deaf or have hearing loss and there are 40 million more over the age of 65 who experience varying degrees of hearing loss at some point in their lives. they all rely on accurate, synchronized, complete and well placed captions to enjoy video programming. now, two years ago we took significant steps to update our closed captioning policies. and today, we close an enforcement gap so that the fcc can step in when need be and we also recognize that though

programming distributors and programmers alike work hard to provide high quality closed captions. we implement strict time lines for consumers' complaints to be addressed and this is important. we implement a compliance ladder so that improvements can be made without immediate threat of enforcement. so, thank you to the consumer and governmental affairs bureab, but for your absolutely unyielding commitment to improving the quality of closed captioning. >> hear, hear. mr. pai. >> thank you, mr. chairman. video programmers and distributors each play an important role wpt to the provision and quality of closed captions and today's order at the core is an allocation of responsibility of the closed captioning quality rules. distributor will be responsible for those aspects of close caption quality over which it has primary control and a

programmer responsible for aspects of closed captioning control over which it has primary control. of course, the devil is in the details. for example, this order establishes a compliance ladder for our closed captioning quality rules which is designed to encourage parties to quickly address and remedy problems without the agency's enforcement bureau. i had concerns about language originally in the order that would have delegated vast discretion to avoid the ladder and refer matters directly to the enforcement bureau and defeated the purpose of the compliance ladder but through tough negotiations we were able to limit the possibility of evading the ladder. and compromise language may not be ideal but it's good enough for my approval. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, commissioner. commissioner o rye sfli. >> thank you, mr. chairman. our main focus is to shift the burden of quality of closed captions from the distributors

to the programmers themselves. while i can generally concur with the procedure, i can say it's punitive. i also worry that the item doesn't make a similar shift for the burden to provide closed kamgss. the same argument for the quality shift should apply to the provisioning in any event i will support. disappointingly, the item seeps into two troubling areas. the item creates a convoluted mechanism by which a consumer closed captioning quality complaint could be fourth degreed from a distributor the programmer and back again. under this construction, the information redakted could occur. but during the consideration of an item just last month, it was alleged too difficult to redakt personal information for correspondence files and the chairman agreed to move an item to eliminate the file in the entirety.

how can it be redacting the information and the identifier is easy for video distoby or thes and not for broadcasters? second, the item creates a three-tiered compliance ladder for the electronic newsroom technique procedures and then rejects it. by establishing a special and i quote rule allowing cgb to refer a quality captioning quality rule violation to the bureau or the enforcement action or the enforcement bureau to pursue an action on its own without first going through the compliance ladder for certain violations. thanks to commissioner pai we have a tighter standard of intentional and deliberate. anyone want to guess how that's going to be applied by the bureaus? why wouldn't the compliance ladder capture such a violation? no justification is given. instead the item creates a fake compliance ladder that the cgb or bureau or both will climb over any time they want.

in essence, this creates an illusion of a thoughtful and judicious regulator and preserves the right to throw out the window any questions asked whenever they feel like it. no thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> oh, okay. thanks. the -- i have a statement for the record. but, you know, in summary, this is basically about responsibility. it's a responsibility to those who hear with their eyes and it's the responsibility of those who provide closed captioning whether you create it or distribute it. so, i think the bureau has done a great job on this and i look forward to supporting it, so let's call for the votes. all in favor, say aye. opposed? the ayes have it. the item is adopted. the request for editorial privileges is granted. thank you very much.

many dam chair, will you please -- madame chair? you have a promotion. >> thank you! >> there are days you can have it. >> no, thank you. >> madame secretary, would you please announce the consent agenda. >> as mentioned today, you will consider a consent agenda of the items under consent agenda on the commission's sunshine notice. for your convenience during this vote, mr. chairman and commissioners, i have provided each of you with a copy of the sunshine notice. >> thank you, madame secretary. we'll now go to a vote on this. for the consent agenda items listed on the sunshine notice, we have received no objection from any commissioner. accordingly, i will shortly call the vote on this consent agenda. if you are voting to adopt all of the consent agenda items, please indicate by voting in favor. if you oppose the adoption of

any of these items on the consent agenda, please vote to oppose and i will call on you in turn to identify the item you are opposing according to the number assigned to it on the sunshine agenda. all in favor of adopting items listed on the consent agenda, please indicate by saying aye. opposed? >> yes. down here. >> yes, sir? >> can i have numbers 1, 2 and 3? i would like to be recorded as concurrent part and dissent in part on each. >> thank you, sir. all right. the items are adopted. consent agenda is adopted. and it is so ordered. in a moment i want to go to the commissioners and their opportunity to make other observations. but before i turn to my

colleagues, all of us lost a good friend and a bright mind, a big heart and a good laugh when dan brennar was tragedy killed on monday on a pedestrian run-down accident in los angeles. dan was a former member of the team here at the fcc, senior adviser to both commissioners ferris and fowler. he served for 17 years as the chief regulatory counsel at ncta. and in 2012, governor jerry brown of california appointed him to the los angeles supreme court where he has sat since then in a robe.

something that those of us who knew dan always thought was an interesting attire for a guy who was so quick minded and so funny. he was a mentor to many in the policy community. he was a friend to us all. he was a leader in the lgbt community. and something that a lot of folks didn't know about him. he spent a lot of time teaching math in the underprivileged community. he's truly going to be missed. he was a great person. good man. and i'm sure my colleagues share their sentiment and want to express themselves and let me just say we'll go down the bench and then the end let's just ask for a moment of silence to remember our good friend, dan. commissioner? >> mr. chairman, i did not know dan well. he came less than a handful of

times to see me representing his clients and, of course, with cable interests. but what i remember was a tall, lean, dapper individual with a good sense of humor and just deep knowledge of media policy. he will, of course, be missed by the bar, by those of us in the fcc family. our hearts are heavy. our condolences go to his family and many, many, many friends. and it's tough when a light like that is dimmed. but he will never be forgotten. his -- his wit and his depth, again, will be replicated by -- if we're smart, will be

replicated and remembered by us all. thank you. >> commissioner? >> i did know dan. co con doll senses to his friends and family and in addition to the things he is known for in these parts and elsewhere, he was a terrific stand-up comic which makes me think it must have been a blast to his courtroom and i count it among the regrets i never got a chance to see that but again condolences to his family and friends. >> mr. pai? >> i would agree with everything that was said. dan was a great lawyer, good man, a very funny man. the first and only case i had an opportunity to argue in the d.c. circuit was against dan. i told him afterward that even though i thought we were likely to win, nonetheless, if he had challenged regulations adoption many years ago, i thought off the record you had a decent chance of winning. he said, now you tell me.

like five years later. you just had to be there. what he brought to everything he did is remarkable especially in this field tending to be obscure to be the least. we thank him for the public service to the people of california and labors at the fcc and we'll remember him in the years to come. >> commissioner? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i will just say god bless dan and provide comfort to his family at this time. >> let's just take a moment to each think about our own special relationship with dan and remember him. as everybody said, he'll be greatly missed. commissioner clyburn, you have

anything you want to add for the betterment of the body? >> yes, i was going to join you and i don't know what sequence you wanted to do, we have got a couple of departures? so i don't know if -- >> far be it for me to try and preempt you from doing anything. >> see? >> commissioner, go for it. >> to the american public, this is very unusual for him to be like this. but i really wanted to say that when it was announced that roger sherman was going to be the next bureau chief i was thrilled. as acting chairman, he was the democratic chief counsel to the house committee on energy and commerce where he provided my staff with incredible support. there are a number of wireless highlights and achievements that, you know, can be credited to roger's wise counsel and leadership.

established pro-competitive spectrum reserve rules to implement, you know, this -- that we'll implement in the option. competitive bidding rules. i know this is people out there, this is putting them to sleep but it enabling incredible opportunities for you that you probably take for granted but these are important but one of the things i respect most about roger is when we wanted to ensure that more members of the wireless bureau staff received the proper credit for the contributions they made to various policy decisions, he did so. so for that and so much more, roger, i have no idea where you are. >> there he is. typical. >> typical in the back. >> you know? >> we thank you so much for your service. >> anything else? >> oh! yes. also, thank you. i am not thinking today so -- i also want to acknowledge --

>> so shook up with the thought that roger's leaving. >> i know. i know. it is just -- speaking of -- i want to acknowledge and i'll try to keep this not as interesting as it would normally be off camera to jonathan chambers. jonathan is here somewhere. i'm also used to him towering over me. >> over here. >> who has been incredible to our office and always has looked out for consumers in creative and innovative ways. he is instrumental in the video relay service reform adopted during the transition just before the chairman got here. and i just saw with him a demonstration of the ace inner operable platform to unleash significant benefits reducing the cost to the fundament some of these things go under the radar. but they are extremely important and innovative and my goodness

we thank you so much for this. his thoughtful advice on everything from, you know, again, vrs fund, to connect america fund, to e-rate. he is an out of the box thinker. he is out the box but that's another. thinker. who challenged normal expectations and policies and whenever i ask for how can we do this? how can we do this again? if i was not in sync with that, he always managed and attempted to come up with alternatives. my nickname for him for those who know him is mr. happy. if you know him, you know why. that is a joke. but i am not so happy -- [ laughter ] i am not so happy today, my friend, to see you leave this place but i am grateful to you for all of the support that you have lent to this office and given to this agency. so, the best to you always and thank you.

>> commissioner rosenworcel? >> first of all, i want to call out wireless bureau chief roger sherman sitting in the back row today like the former congressional staffer he is dutifully trying to avoid the limelight but the truth is roger was never very successful of that. he was always a go-to person here and every role i have add in policy dialogues around this town because he is so savvy, so smart, and so knowledgeable. and rather than bid him well i'll stay in denial he is departing. just seems easier. best wishes to jonathan chambers. circle of life. i'm going to bring someone in. okay. i want to introduce mark paul. mark paul's joining my office taking on the role of media and legal adviser. mark is an old hand. he has been at law firms lucas nas and also at stepto and

johnson and did sometime on capitol hill early on serving for the home state senator and then senator joe biden. and more recently and where i got to know him, he served as senior counsel to former senator the deceased senator frank lautenberg from new jersey. so mark is a terrific political mind. he is a first rate lawyer and a friend and i am thrilled to have him join my office and the agency. >> wonderful. welcome, mark. commissioner pai? >> just two sad notes and two bittersweet notes. first diane douglas recently passed away. diane joined in 1985 as a clerk typist. in 1986, she moved to omb and then spent 18 years in the finance department. and in 2004, went to cgb first in the reference information

center and then to the consumer inquiries and complaints division. according to her supervisor eric, he always told me that she wanted to make sure that she had work to do, didn't want to be sitting around with nothing to do. that was the mark she left for over three decades at this agency and all of us are grateful for her work both as a co-worker and american citizens. secondly, i wanted to note the passing of a supreme court justice antonin scalia. he was obviously a giant in the history of the supreme court. his opinions and constitutional cases are well-known and an impact on this agency. with respect to the telecom act, for example, authored the 1999 opinion in at&t versus iowa utilities board, a first major case of which the supreme court blessed the regulation following the '96 act. and 2004, he authored the court of supreme court versustrinco. a pretty hot issue back then.

even recently he authored the add min strayive law opinion critical for those of us who think about the nuances of whether agencies should have the jurisdiction to decide whether or not they have jurisdiction. for me personally, my affinity for him came in law school. whether you agree with him or not and his opinions, he was a delight to read. reading tons of cases and just some of them are exceptionally boring, to read a scalia opinion, especially dissent made you sit up and think and why i became an anti-trust lawyer and became in the department of justice anti-trust division is 1992 dissent in kodak versus image technical services. exceedingly complex and basically of section 2 duties and whether interbrand, the market power con strayed for another market. one of the great joys in my life was being able to meet a few

years ago with the judge i clerked in new orleans when he was up here in washington and sid wsh degot together and said i have a surprise for you. it's going to be justice scalia. yeah, right. come enough, the justice arrived. to borrow from him, the wolf came as a wolf. he was funny. he was smart. i had a chance to tell him about kodak. he launched into recapping the dissent. it was incredible. i asked him how it was for a yankees fan to be married to a red sox fan. he managed to bridge that divide as well. i will certainly miss justice scalia and appreciate his service to our country. next i want to echo what everyone said about roger and john. roger has been a terrific chief of wtb. i had the chance to meet him when he was on the hill. as chief here, he really was at the center of so many critical issues we handled.

it's hard to think of anything we have done that you haven't been able to contribute to. i appreciate his work on the aws-3 aftermath. that was one area where it was exceedingly difficult but i appreciate roger's good faith efforts to reach out to our office. john chambers, what a distinguished career in public service you have had. going back to the years you spent with senator danforth, the member of the senate from missouri, all the way to here, where you have been a leader in some of the more difficult and challenging issues that we have confronted. i want to echo with respect to your work on the video relay service proposal. it has languished. the fact that you took the initiative to seize it, to put it on solid footing and to get costs under control for the benefit of consumers and taxpayers is something that deserves everybody's applaud. you have mine. it's significant that you have an affinity for kansas city sports teams.

that's something i hope you continue to exhibit. with that, i am done. >> thank you. i will do these in a slightly different order. to roger, i want to thank you for representing your bosses over the years very well. i didn't always agree. but i did respect it. i do respect it. i enjoyed my time working with you on capitol hill. i have enjoyed my time work you with you at the commission. i wish you best in future. to jonathan chambers, i want to thank you for the spirited debates we have had on a number of issues. i enjoyed that hour we would have to talk through different policy issues and think of it. i want to thank you for your interest in saving consumers and the commission money and the offering of disability technolo technology. i want to join my colleague in acknowledging the work of justice scalia. i met him once. but i wish -- i extend my best and say god bless.

thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, commissioner. let's pile on roger here. i agree entirely. it's typical, you are hiding back there in the back, roger. when i found i was going to get this job, i began looking around. knowing that we were going to raid the wireless bureau chief and make her chief of staff here, who could fill those rather large shoes? she will be offended by that because she has petite feet. but large shoes. and i started casting around. roger and i had lunch one day. we talked some opportunities that might exist at the commission. and i remember when he said,

yes, he was interested. i'm going, wow. this is great news. so, you negotiatiknow, when rog in, it was a wonderful day for this agency. i mean, we have heard a recounting of the things he was involved in. aws-3, how we deal with innovative approach to 3.5, updating the competitive bidding rules, how you worry about cellular service licensing and changing the rules, how you worry about making sure infrastructure is out there for the wireless wonder to exist on. but the thing that always impressed me and that we will miss the most about you, roger, is that you were incredibly selfless. you were incredibly focused.

and you, my friend, are a great leader who will be missed. so thank you very, very much, roger. to jon chambers, i will challenge anybody up here for who has known jon the longest. it's approaching 30 years that we have known each other. he has been the head of osp since 2013. as everybody said, he helped modernizing of usf. his leadership on the issues for the disability community have been legion, have been repeated up here and make a difference, which is about all anybody can ever ask for. j jon, we will always be grateful to you for your service. we look forward to the nextrw@r% mountain that you are going to climb.

now having talked about all these downer things, some good news. fortunately, john wilkins, our current managing director, has agreed to step in to roger's shoes and become the new chief of the wireless bureau. are you here, john? where is he? okay. we all know what a great job he has done as managing director. he led the charge on e-rate. he has been playing a similar role in the life line reform which we will take up shortly. when there was early issues with regard to software and some of the functionality of the incentive auction, john stepped in bringing his experience and. he per tease to address some of those issues.

he is just simply a superb manager. and creative. and so the ability to have him step in behind roger and pick up -- because there's a few things that are going to be going on in the wireless -- i don't know if anybody is counting, but it's 41 days until the auction starts. and it's great to have a guy like john in the wireless bureau who has been involved in the process leading up. and then john leaves a void. mark stevens, who has been our cfo, is stepping in to that as acting managing director. we have all grown to appreciate and respect mark and the great

skills that he brings. and so we're looking forward to him continuing that path that john put us on. so if there are no other things, i would have request one privilege of the chair to ask the secretary where she was yesterday and to tell us about the story of that great american who happens to be your grandfather. >> i had the honor and privilege of attending the premiere in new york city of "race." the incredible and true story of my grandfather, jesse owens. and i look forward to everyone going this weekend. opening weekend. it truly is a wonderful movie. about a wonderful man.

just very honored to be a part of that legacy. and look forward to another generation just being inspired by his story and the person that he was. >> well, it's just fabulous that that story is getting told. as you know, i was privileged to know your grandfather. >> the buckeye bullet. >> are you kidding? and he was a great, warm, humble man. and i look forward to seeing the movie. but i think it's fabulous that you were on the red carpet yesterday. >> it's even better for my 14-year-old son. >> okay. madam secretary, why don't you walk us -- what happens next? >> the next agenda meeting of the federal communications commission is thursday, march

31, 2016. >> until then, we stand adjourned. thank you. coming up next on c-span3, governors meet in washington for their annual winter conference. that's followed by a discussion on women in the military. later, representative sander levin talks about trade policy. the national governors association closed out its annual winter meeting today with a discussion that included senators mark warner, lamar alexander and joe mansion, all former governors. they talked about the relationship between states and the federal government. this is an hour 20 minutes.

>> governors, i think we're ready to begin. welcome, one and all. it's good to see you here this morning. we had a great opportunity to gather at the white house last night and be hosted by the president and the vice president and the first and second ladies. it was great to see you all. i think we all enjoyed ourselves and had a good chance to just kind of be in a casual environment. although, we were in black tie. and associate one with another. good to see you this morning. we enjoyed last evening. as i call the meeting to order, we welcome you all. one thing that we need to make note of is the passing of governor enos who passed away december 29th of this past year. so if you would join with me as

we pay tribute to the governor and his service with a moment of silence in his passing. thank you. as we get started here, let me just make a little bit of a reminder. i know we have some slides that have been going on. we have talked about this in our opening session. but my initiative really on states finding solution s improving people's lives is an opportunity for us to really highlight the successes of the respective states. i know in this town, we seem to be concerned and see observation of some dysfunctionalty and a propensity to kick the can down the road and not solve problems. and yet the states are having great success in dealing with the respective issues of their states and regions. and with innovation and

creativity, bringing people together from the private and public sector and finding significant solutions. so we plan to highlight that. we have 83 recommendations so far. we would like to have more. want to make sure that every state is recognized with two or three different issues. and we will compile that and it will be presented to each and every one of you and others at our summer meetings in iowa. and i know on behalf of governor terry branstedt, we want to put that on your calendar. we will have this opportunity to have this broooklet which will highlight the successes of your state. there's a lot of them going on. it's quite encouraging as i have had these come in, as we have tried to spotlight your successes. the great successes that are taking place. for example, in mississippi,

phil bryant has led an effort to reform the state's criminal justice system, something that is being taken up and talked about here in washington, d.c. by our congress. and rather than just warehousing inmates, there's a significant effort to do rehabilitation and see if we can address the causes of their issues and see if we can't help them transition back into society. so phil is doing a great job there in mississippi. governor bentley in alabama has announced a plan to reform the state's medicaid system by increasing the efficiency and improving the patient care. and again, the medicaid system has been something we have had since the late 1960s. the ability for us as states to modify and improve and find more efficiencies, he is doing what he calls regional care organizations, which rewards providers for deliver heing

quality healthcare outcomes instead of just reimbursing them for the services that they complete. virginia, terry mccaulif, launched initiative to protest people's rights when it comes to digital identity and prosecute cyber crime. they have more cyber security companies in virginia than any state east of the rockies. so it will be fitting that the governor and his state would help to lead in that effort. in my home state of utah, i'm proud of the fact that on a very difficult and emotional issue, whether when it comes to balancing lgbt rights with those of religious rights, finding the ability to do that and bring people together is a unique situation that we have had in utah. and we created legislation that respects both sides' rights and concerns and put it in one bill. we said that if you bring one

bill up, i will veto it. if you bring another bill up on the other side, we will veto it. so we forced people -- they were willingly to work together and come up weaponith a piece of legislation. utah is a very religious state. if we can get it right in utah, it's an example for how we can get it right on this and other issues around the country. i'm proud of the work of the states and you and what you are doing to in fact find solutions, be innovative. and at the end of the day, it's about people. it's about what we do with the people we represent. what we can do to help improve their lives. congratulations. we look forward to the compilation of your successes. we will display that to the country. part of the effort, too, i think is as we have talked about with my initiative is really to bring back and restore if it's out of balance -- i think that it is --

the balance of power between the states and federal government. again, part of the challenges i see is that we the people are asking our federal delegations to do more than was envisioned by our founding fathers. it's not that there's not good, competent people. even what we look at some of the hyperpartisanship. i think we just are used to asking. our congressional delegations is wanting to accommodate. so they're doing more and more. when i believe that the states ought to be the ones that are probably the first line of defense and the people of american should be asking local people. that's really where we have i think more efficiency and more effective use of the taxpayers' dollars and can deal closer with the people as opposed to the remoteness we find in washington, d.c. so i think what we're talking about today is not only highlighting the solutions that come from the states but also

making sure we have federal partisanship of the states that's working and probably working better if we put our minds to it better than it is today. the concept of federalism and reinvigorating that concept as envisioned by most of us here is one we can improve people's lines by finding solutions at the state level. today as i focus on that, as we together focus on this, we have some very special guests here with us. all former governors. and now working here in washington, d.c. or have worked in washington, d.c. in different capacities. we're honored to have them here. first i'm going to call upon governor bill hasmond to introduce lamar alexander. then senator joe mansion. then we will call on the vice

chair to introduce senator mark warner and then i will come back and introduce the former governor of idaho, former senator and member of the cabinet, dirk kempthorn. >> as we know, being the governor of your home state is a great honor and privilege. one of the things that makes my job wonderful is to have our senior senator be someone who was a governor himself. i never have to call to washington to explain the state's perspective on something because lamar alexander knows the perspective better than i do. he has an advocate for the state's role in the government. i thinkificant pieces legislati. it gives me honor to introduce the senior -- not senior

citizen. i just about got in big trouble. i just about ruined all that. the senior senator from tennessee, lamar alexander. will hear about that later. >> it's my pleasure to introduce my senior citizen -- i do like that. it's really my honor to introduce a longtime friend of mine, senator joe mansion. we worked together as state senators and were able to do a lot of good things that we're still continuing to work on today and making west virginia a better place. during his time as governor, i was the president and lieutenant governor and we had a great working relationship. i'm very proud of the things that we have been able to do together. joe was always one of those people as governor who always would reach across the aisle to both parties. it was very successful in our

state. i know he continues to try to do that in the united states senate today. so, ladies and gentlemen, it's my plush easure to introduce ou senior senator, senator joe mansion. [ applause ] >> it's my honor to introduce our senior senator mark warner. mark was a spectacular governor of the commonwealth of virginia. has been in the senate, first elected in 2008. re-elected in 2014. mark comes with a strong business background. was one of the pioneers of the cell phone industry in this country. has gone on in the senate finance and budget and banking committee as well as the inte l intelligence committee. we are blessed in virginia to have him as our senior senator. it's my honor and i will include patrick henry and thomas jefferson, the greatest governor in the history of the

commonwealth of virginia, mark warner. [ applause ] >> this is an esteemed group here. it's my opportunity and privilege to introduce governor dirk kempthorn. so it's probably befitting me because we refer to idaho as northern utah anyway. so governor, we're honored to have you here. president and ceo of the american council of life insurers. he started his public service as a mayor in boise, idaho. comes from local government, which i have a great affection for. elected to the senate in 1993 where he authored the unfunded mandates reform act. after one term in the senate, he returned to idaho to run for governor. was elected there. in 2006, he was appointed secretary of the interior by president george w. bush where he served with great distinction.

it's honor to have with us governor dirk kempthorn. [ applause ] four former governors who have worked in the federal branch of government ors finished giving r state of the state addresses and talking about what has taken place and recognizing successes and challenges and looking to the visions of the future. so i'm going to pose the question and get us started here of asking you, as our panel, the question, what is the state of our state federal relationships? what do you see today, and what do you see as a way for us to go forward and improve them? so we will start with senator lamar alexander and we will kind of go down the list here. >> thank you. thanks for the invitation. terry's comment reminded me of when former senator howard baker

was introducing me. he said lamar alexander was the greatest governor the state has ever had. he looked down the row and there was former governor winfield dunn. he said the greatest since governor dunn. thank you for having us. congratulations to the governors for improving the state of relations governor herbert mentioned. you led the charge and are organizing to lead the charge to see that it's implemented properly. during this next year by forming a coalition with all of the organizations that support it, which create a unique opportunity for the nea and aft and the governors and chief state school officers, everybody who ghot fed up with washington telling everybody what to do. you improved the relationships. second thing you could do to improve it better -- we talked about this yesterday. number one, implement the law. it's not worth the paper it is

written on unless it's implemented, we get all the power out of washington back to you. second, the marketplace fairness act. how could you make it better? let me use an example. we will pick on congressman fincher since he is retiring it. the way to -- this is the act that causes tennessee not to be able to collect $700 million, texas can't collect $1.8 billion because congress won't allow a state to collect the sales tax from everybody who owes it, including people from -- who buy from out of state sellers. so the question is, how do you persuade people to vote for that? here is what i would recommend. governor haslam has a meeting in tennessee, which is senator fincher's district, not here at home. second, he invites 50 small business people in the district

to meet with him. then let them answer for congressman fincher the question, why would you prefer out of state businesses to us? why would you put us at a disadvantage? because as i told a group yesterday, dean russ said a govern floor in his home state outranks everybody except the then-president of the united states and outside of his home state, he outranks almost nobody or she. so at home, you are the big dog. have a meeting there. invite 50 business people and you will get some votes for that. i think the state of relations is improving. if you will focus on a couple of big things like implement the education law and pass marketplace fairness. the last thing i will say is -- speaker ryan has said there will be a vote in the house on marketplace fairness. there will be a vote. i would recommend the chaffitz

bill. implement the fix on no child left behind. >> governor mansion. >> it's an honor to be here. i look around and it's probably the best time of our life being a part of this organization. we were all four chairs. that really says a lot for the organization or maybe not. i'm not sure. anyway, it brings back fond memories to be back and sitting here with my colleagues right now. lamar touched on marketplace fairness. west virginia was one of the first to be part of that. we need it desperately. you need that revenue desperately. it's a fairness -- just a basic fairness we're trying to make sure happens. i appreciate that. also the no child left behind bringing the states basically more authority over that and giving direction. i think it's tremendous and

lamar shepherded that through. let me talk about addiction. addiction basically -- 80% of all the crimes in our states, each one, minimum of 80% of the crimes are committed because of drug addiction of some sort. your prisons are overfilled. budgets are being strained. you are being challenged every way possible. we have a hard time -- i was guilty 20 years ago of saying it. anyone who abuses drugs is a criminal. what we found out, that hasn't worked. 20 years later we haven't cured anybody, we haven't fixed anything. sentencing guidelines have to be changed. you can help us tremendously. we're a little tepid as far as stepping over that line. we need to do that. we have now dialogue going on on addictions. we're trying to get the fda to have a complete cultural change to look at how they are putting all the drugs on the market, the more powerful drugs that aren't really needed. all this has to be done.

sentencing guidelines need to be changed so that we can. treatment centers, how we take care of the treatment centers. we don't have enough treatment centers. how do we handle that, help you fund them, what direction do we go there? overregulation, i don't need to tell you, we're all fighting that. the overreach, if you will, of federal government has been very difficult. as former governors, we fight about the 10th amendment. we understand that and we remind our colleagues the 10th amendment is sacred to a lot of us. i think our founding fathers never intended for this place called america to be run out of washington. we need you all to do the job that you should be doing and can do and let you do it and try to give you the overview. also the national guard. we look at our national guard. finally, we have national guard to a status of joint chiefs of staff. i think it's important to -- it has taken a while to acclimate that. the army hasn't come on as agreeable as they should. they are coming.

air force is transitioning wonderful. army will come. we have changes going on there. i think it will give you tremendous -- when you look at the reserve component, national guard, how we do that more effectively and efficiently. it's a wonderful experience. the hardest thing is in transition is the patience. my friend mark over here, he was my recruiter, if you would say that. the patience is basically as governor you get up anxious to do something because you know you can do something. at night you go to bed fulfilled that did you something to help somebody. you can't wait until the next morning to do it again. that doesn't always happen in the senate. or in congress. you take every little small step. will give you one. we were able to change from a schedule 3 to schedule 2 all opiates. they were flooding the market like m & ms. we took that to schedule 2, took us three years. we took a billion pills off the market. we saved some lives.

there's so much more that we can do. in the sense, you have to learn to grab one piece and claim that as a victory and move on. we can, with your help, change this country and lead the world. i was honored to be a part of this group. i keep -- i would encourage you all, please, keep the non-partisan participation as much as you can. you are the last ones that we have hope that can work together to get something accomplished. so thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> mr. chairman, mr. vice chairman and governors all, this is an impressive setting. because we are still the united states of america, not the federal government of america. i want to commend you for your initiative, federal-state relations. let me remind you of the pedigree that governors have. when welfare reform occurred in

the united states of america, it was not by congress. it was when the governors led the reform effort. no question. when you look at the issues that you have before you -- when i was in the senate and bob dole the majority leader named our efforts to reform unfunded federal mandates, senate bill number 1, my partner in that was a wonderful american, john glen. we celebrated an anniversary when he was in space. i will tell you once again, it was the governors. it was mayors. i remember distinctly senator john brew of louisiana calling me and saying, i don't know all the details of your legislation to stop these unfunded federal mandates. i will say this. i have had a stream of mayors and governors here. put me down as a co-sponsor. please, please, governors do not underestimate the power of the

governors of the united states of america. i remember when i was governor standing before my legislature -- i took out a $1 bill. i said if this is the budget of our state, this $1 bill -- i held up a nickle. i said five cents is the discretion we have. everything else is set. i would imagine your discretion continues to decline. i had a nice lunch friday with governor branstead. as he pointed out in iowa, the $200 million of new revenue that they generated, if they don'txd ég -- if the states do have more control over medicaid, then all of that $200 million will be consumed. when you think of the baby boomers that are retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day for the next 15 years, many of whom are

not ready for retirement, longevity is a blessing. but many people will live longer than they thought. those that hit age 65, 70% will need long-term care. that care on average is 2.5 years. who will pay for that? the states will. with medicaid. when i was chair, mr. chairman, my initiative was long-term care. at that time, 104 companies provided long-term care policies. today it's 13. we need a solution. we need a solution on infrastructure. i'm proud to be part of the american council of life insurers. because after 23 years public service, to be able to join an industry that i believe exists to help people -- i think that's our motivation for being in public service. we're the number one u.s. investor in corporate bonds. we hold them 17 years on average. we look for great opportunities for investment.

but normally, about 1% to 2% of the corporations portfolios have municipal state bonds. when the build american bonds were released, the industry bought 35%. they can put the pedal to the medal. as you look for sources for capital for infrastructure to stop these aging bridges and the collapse that can be another calamity that's on the horizon, working together with the private sector -- i'm not an advocate of the build america flaw bonds. you have the capability, ladies and gentlemen, as leaders of the states to come forward and to be the leaders, the points of the speer of reform that i think members of congress will appreciate and support if you give them that opportunity. so thanks for this occasion. >> thank you. [ applause ] senator warner. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

let me also reacti-acknowledge terry. if we can get him to come out of his shell. he may have a future. 36 years he and i have been friends. it's great to see him in this role as vice chair. we all here are in the recovering governor's club. one of my fondest memories when i was chair following dirk, actually. 50 of us came together and set a common high school graduation rate standard. there was no common definition for high school graduation. you think that shouldn't be a big thing. if you compare, which we do need to do, you have to have that common definition. i'm going to make two points. probably my single biggest echoing of what joe said, single biggest disappointment i have

had since i've been in the senate -- because we were able to wrestle this this the gound wh ground when i was in virginia. we got it done in terms of getting our finances fixed. i thought the overwhelming logic of the challenges around our national debt would generate an opportunity to do that at the national level. i was leader of the so-called gang of six. i make the comment that i work on the only place in america where being a gang member sometimes is a good thing. we put together the plan. it was not perfect by any means. it sure as heck would have gotten us better than where we are right now. while neither party talks about it, we are at $19 trillion in debt. it's going up on a daily basis. i point this out. joe and lamar and i -- there was a moment in time, due to lamar's

leadership, where we could have pushed this through. we were not unsuccessful. a couple of quick facts. mention has been made by dirk of medicare, social security. go to a college campus today. i was at a number of them last week in virginia. ask any group of younger people how many of them expect to see medicare or social security. you will find virtually zero take that. at the same time, fun fact, we have the world's most complicated tax code by far. yet -- some of you may want to throw stuff at me. when you add together state, local and federal tax on a per cap i ta basis out of the 34 industrial nations in the world, we are 31st. we are the bottom in terms of collection.

at $19 trillion in debt where we are right now, interest rate goes up 1%, which they will. that alone adds $130 billion a year in interest rate payments. that's a straight line. that's more than we spend on homeland security and federal doe combined. this notion because our deficits have gone down for a couple years that we are out of woods, this is a blip. it's going to come rushing back. you are going to bear the burden of it. so any ability to continue to urge us in washington -- i think a few years back we could have had 70 votes on the floor of the senate on a comprehensive tax reform and entitlement reform plan. we need your help. second point, this goes to

federal-state relations but it's an opportunity to get ahead on an issue that hasn't yet been polluted into democrat-republican. i have spent ten months looking a lot at the one component of our economy that is in many ways the fastest growing sector job growth wise. that's the area that doesn't have a full name at this point. you know you are in the right spot. the on-demand economy or sharing economy. we all saw the tragedy with the uber driver. but this is uber and lyft and the ability to monitize their car or apartment or things. it's unprecedented. the up side of this is that it gives people enormous flexibility that they have never been able to have before. in a traditional work sense. the down side is if create a

world where 60%, 70%, 80% of the work force is in effect an independent contractor, we have absolutely no social contracts. things are going well until they don't go well. they will then fall back upon the basic government subsiding. you are either a w-2 or 1099. honestly, the social con traffic that was created that worked well for the 20th century, i'm not sure is going to work as well in the 21st century. we have the ability -- whether it's done at the federal level or local and state level, to almost reimagine what a social contract would look like. we have a chance to think about portability of benefits that might be carried with the individual, because more and more people will work at a

single job. they are going to receive a series of revenue streams that right now we have no ability to kind of bring together and travel with that person. an issue that is not democrat-republican or liberal-conservative and has federal and state implications, but a lot in terms of experim t experimentation, could be done at the state or local level is getting this right that i will make you as somebody -- terry mentioned the fact that back in the early '80s, i was smart enough to get into -- lucky enough to get into cell phones when everybody thought i was crazy. this sector as we think about work being transformed -- i will close with this. kind of a full-fledged job into a series of tasks. i spent an hour with lindsey graham on this subject. he can put things in terms better than i can. he said, what you are describing is you are saying basically a

job is like your old cable package. you had to buy the whole package to get espn and a couple of other channels. now you can buy a la carte. you will be able to buy a skill. we will go to that. good side and bad side of that. trying to get out of the binary choice of 1099 and w-2 as the only two options. love to talk to you if you have interest in this. is an area where we can think about not as democrat and republican but as future and past. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] thank you all for your presentations. we have 20 minutes now for questions. i'm sure that our panel can give us some great insights and answers to questions. my question really would be this. you have all kind of been there,

done that as governors. what tip, what piece of advice would you give to us all as governors that would help us become more effective in our jobs in our respective states? let's start reverse order. senator warner, we will start with you and go that way. will that be okay? >> i think one of the things that is never going to get you very much attention but if you can keep pounding at home, i think the kind of argument we have between big government and small government is false choice. people want effective government in trying to -- jack markel did a great job when he was treasurer of delaware and helped teach me. finding ways where you can deliver more efficient government and squeeze out efficiencies whether purchasing power, whether it's better management of your real estate portfolio. there's a hole of thing u.s. can do as governor.

it may not get you a lot of attention. you keep pounding that home for a long time and i think you can earn a lot of the respect of your voters that you are actually going to be better stewards of their tax dollars. >> mr. chairman, the fact that you are at the same table is strength. you may have different political parties. i'm seated here with three friends of mine. i will tell you, while two of us are of one party and two of us of the other party, that doesn't enter into it. when there's good public policy that somehow is going to advance for the greater cause, these friends -- we have stood united. we will continue to do so. on those issues that you choose as your priority, work it out here. make this your locker room. if you gotta throw punches throw them in here.

bleed in here. when you go out, be united. the team is together. i mention that how you get some of these things done -- on the safe drinking water act, which is the law on the books, my partner there was bob kerry in nebraska. because in the senate until one party has 60 senators, you have a 60-point rule that you will not be able to overcome. unless you somehow figure out how do this together. also, members of congress appreciate cover. so that if they have to take a tough vote, if they can point to the fact that the national governors have made this the issue, that the national governors have stood united, you give them cover and that's significant. you know the world of politics. when we think about all of these

issues that we have -- in the state of washington, for example, 17 states have been dealing with this issue of state-run retirement plans to try to be a solution. the state of washington -- the industry worked with aarp. we came up with a workable solution. whether when new jersey passed legislation that was not favorable, i suggested to governor christie, if somehow they could adopt the language of the state of washington, it would be very successful. in the state of new jersey, they have an interesting tool. the conditional veto. you notify you will veto unless these conditions are met. to the credit of governor christie, he provided the language of the state of washington to the new jersey legislature and it was adopted. so, mr. chairman, what i would say on state relations, federal relations, please realize what

you can accomplish together if you come out of the locker room on an issue, two issues that are your priority and you stand united. you will be successful. >> thank you. >> over the years in the political arena, i have learned there's two things you don't waste as a leader. that's crisis and a mandate. it's going to happen in your state. you have a crisis or you have a mandate to do something. you should be evaluating your strength and weaknesses. what would you like do in a perfect setting, if that evolves to where there's a crisis, god forbid, you better be ready to make a change. if there's a mandate where the people are demanding they want change, be ready to take it and run with it. i think that would be the thing that i would recommend. i often said back when there was i think ten of us as former governors -- i wasn't there at that time. but i think there was still ten. when president obama got

elected. he got elected with a tremendous mandate and he had a financial crisis. i think if he could have huddled with the governors and said, what would you do, we would do is look at budget. what can you do? it might have helped a little bit bring the country in a different direction, bringing us together rather than splitting us apart. i would say to all of you, take the opportunity of the relationships you have built. i remember i used to call jeb and say, jeb, i see you did something with education. i would call mitch, my good friend mitch and say, what's going on? i see you are doing something. how come you sold your road? he said, let me tell you, i think it's going to work out for me. i think -- we had a great rapport with them. i cherish that so much. i hope you all take advantage and use it. find out -- you will hit rough spots. also, you have done some things that's probably innovative and creative that your friends would like for you to share with them.

i think you should do that. don't waste a crisis or a mandate. god forbid either one of them. the mandate is great. the crisis will hit you at the least expected time. be ready to move quickly on it. i had to do it with changes in mine safety. i think i worked with john huntsman and when he hit the same thing in utah, we tried to help with that. it's a great opportunity. i hope you all continue to expand upon that. >> thank you, senator. senator alexander? >> thanks, governor. the best tip i ever got came from an unexpected place. the question was, i think, what tip about being governor. a newspaper publisher in tennessee gave me a book written by george reedy who was lyndon johnson's press secretary. i found a definition for what a president does. when i read it, i thought, that might be what a governor does. i think the most important thing about being governor is figuring out what the job is.

people do it different ways. commander in chief of the national guard, chief ceremonial person, all sorts of things you can do. here is what it said. three things. one, see an urgent need. two, develop a strategy to meet the need. three, persuade at least half the people you are right. see a need, develop a strategy to meet the need, persuade at least half the people you are right. sort of the governor's moses. i think that's -- i think that's right. i think the best governors i have known have been capable of doing those three things. the only thing i would add to it based upon experience is once you find that urgent need and you develop a strategy that seems to be working and you have persuaded half the people you are right, double down. don't start looking around for something else to do. if you do one thing while you are there, that's pretty good. that's more than a lot of people do. you might do two.

i watch governor haslam on higher education. he did a good job on k through 12. he got into higher education which is a hard nut to crack. my sense of it is, he got in and successfully built on the former governor's proposal to reward -- to pass out the state money to universities who are graduating students more rapidly. then he came up with a plan for free community college, which doesn't cost that much. he figured that out. the state does it. not the federal government. became the first state to do it. now he is giving the regional universities, those that used to be the teachers colleges, more independence by having their own boards. i think there's a chance when he finishes, he will look back and say i did more about higher education and adult education than anything else. i think it's because he saw a knee, developed a strategy, persuaded half the people he was right and he doubled down on it. >> thank you, senator.

we will open up for questions. governor haslam. >> we're working on the persuading half the people i'm right deal. after listening to the four of you, i think the next constitutional amendment would be to serve in washington, you have to have been in state government. if all the members were like, we would be in great shape. a little related to gary's question. what you have learned in washington that you wished you had known when you were governor about how to be more effective in washington? as governor. >> still working on that one. >> what did you learn in washington that you thought, if you had known this when i was governor, i could have been a better govern floor as ior as io my issues with washington? >> i will give you a short answer so there will be time for the others. i would have all my meetings with members of congress in my

home state with other constituents. i wouldn't even bother to come to washington to see a member of congress. i would do it at home, because you can have more impact. and as a member of the national -- second thing is as a member of the national governors association, i would limit my objectives to maybe one or two a year and throw the whole garbage can at it. the whole cloud of this operation hit on one thing. we did that '85 and six. did you it in '89 on education. when terry was there. president h.w. bush had the national education goals. you did it in '96 as others mentioned on welfare reform. if you do it this year on implementing the no child left behind fix and on passing marketplace fairness, which you can do, i wouldn't have known that as well when i was

governor. i would have all my meetings at home with congressmen and i would limit what i did here to one or two great big things and just throw everything you have at those two things. >> very quickly, i just -- i never realized how many congress people, 535, did not have any idea how states operated. i never realized that. unless you were a state legislator, a governor, you wouldn't have the idea -- or the knowledge of the workings of the states and what the responsibilities states have. with that, i would have worked, i think, in forming -- we formed -- i will never forget when the affordable care act was coming, stimulus money was coming, i'm thinking in ways as a governor and i was going in as chairman and we were all talking. we were on calls with senators. and i said, let me make sure i understand. you are going to give us money.

and we have to find ways -- remember all the things going on at that time. i said, why don't you -- i was in good shape at that time. i had to create a hole in order to get the money. i kept telling them, i said, why don't you create a loan program, let us who need it -- arnold schwarzenegger, he said, i need $40 billion. who was going to tell arnold you are not going to get $40 million? it wasn't me. the bottom line was that is that -- the federal government doesn't understand we have to use them as the boogieman. i can't get the changes that need to be changed because unless i use the federal government. so i said, let us borrow the money that we need to borrow with favorable rates and we will make the changes that we will in order to change the direction of our state. it puts it in a better financial position when the bottom fell out. i don't think that they

understood -- washington didn't. i would explain to washington and let the states do what states can do best. they can lead much better than we can. we can follow as the federal government by allowing them to do the job in finding the success that works. sometimes we strap you with one size fits all and it doesn't work. i would have been able to push, i think, a little harder in working through the organization to get a better voice on the hill. those of us who have been here, we reach down to you and call and say, what's going on, what's the highest priority, whether it's marketplace fairness, whatever it may be now with the new highway bill that we had? took us ten year torz gs to get highway bill. look at how you will invest the money. things like that. i just -- i just have felt that i was surprised to find out how many people did not understand and don't understand basically that all states have balanced budgets or most states did. they were mandated to look at resources they had to pay for

what they thought was a priority. >> governor, i would note, you have the territories here. governor taurus, a graduate of boise state university, proud of that. american samoa, the chief, the efforts that we have had in the virgin islands. i will tell you that as a united states senator, when a ceo was on the schedule, we prepared. you are ceos. you are the governors. and so if you make the case to your citizens back home, you share those constituents with those members of congress that represent your state, if you talk about the discretion, if you talk about what is happening to your budgets, the burgeoning situation of the budgets, the people then, when they go and

call on the members of congress, you may be the ones that provide them the appropriate message, the echo chamber. have your data together. know what you are doing. know what the game plan is. the national governors association, you have a work group now on infrastructure. i would encourage you to really push them. let's come up with a solution. because we have identified aid source of capital. i would add, too, i think it's difficult for anybody in public office to really think in terms of aten-year plan or 20-year plan, because we are in two or four-year election cycles. i will say this. january of this year, i was invited in idaho to come back and to have appreciation expressed to me that ten years ago when i was the governor i put in place a billion dollar road and bridges program. the last of the projects were completed. they wanted me to come back.

members that were there in the audience said, governor, you may recall we didn't support you at the time. but you were right. so i would ask you to horizons election cycle and look at the ten year plans and the 20 for the well-being of your states and combined for the united states. >> governor, i guess what i would say, two things i wish i would have known and i have never been a legislator. i have been a business guy before i was govern or so this may be an overall comment about legislators. i didn't fully appreciate how much when a member of congress actually gets a bill passed, they think okay, i'm done, job's over. when i think as a governor you realize getting legislation passed is just the first step, because how that legislation is

actually implemented is how it affects people's lives. the second thing echoing a little bit about lamar's comments on marketplace fairness and others, never underestimate the willingness of members of congress of both political parties to show great political courage by taking away a revenue source from the state. >> yeah, that's a concern, all right. any other questions we have for our panel? let me just ask one last question. that is, as past members of this organization and past governors, could you again just tell us what do you think in hindsight we should do and what can we do to elevate the national governors association and in fact, have more impact on policy

here in this city? we sometimes feel like that although we should be co-equal partners, we are sometimes an afterthought, and sometimes we are not being paid attention to, and yet we see historically that there's many times when the states have led and the congress has responded and listened. we kind of feel sometimes that that's waning so what recommendations would you give to us to elevate the nga, national governors association, where it can be more effective as a voice for state rights? we will go with you, governor thorne, first, then maybe senator manchin and senator warner and senator alexander. >> my compliments to you for pushing this issue. when 9/11 hit, the terrorist attack on american soil, the role that governors played was incredible.

we were the first tsas. governors called out the national guard and put them in the airports. we didn't know what was going to take place. and so governors were front and center in that effort. if you have katrina, governors are the ones that delivered. i can tell you, i could show you the charts of how many c-130s by the federal government flew versus the c-130s of the national guard, the air guard. it's like 80%. when i called kathleen blanco, when i called rick perry, when i called haley barbour that were being hit by katrina and i said what can i do for you, he said you won't believe this. we're out of fuel. our first responders do not have fuel. i said is it so critical that it is worthy of a convoy from idaho to mississippi? he said without question. i said then please, at some point in the future, make sure

the paperwork catches up because governors know how to make things happen. you're pragmatic. i think you need to look at the history of when governors have taken the spotlight and have shone because you will shine. you are going to the white house. i believe after this. you are going to have good discussions but know that in that wonderful, historic setting, in addition to speaking, do the president of the united states, you have many staff members there making a lot of notes, issues such as a proposed fiduciary rule that we really believe as well intentioned as it was, really will have a dampening effect on middle and low income americans on getting the advice they need as they prepare for the retirement security, because if you have an advice gap, and therefore more people will then

ultimately in end use medicaid, you pay the consequences. i would just encourage you to realize there have been significant moments in the history of this country that the country had to turn to the governors and governors are pragmatists. the fact that you sit here, it does not denote republican or democrat. i think when joe was saying he would call different governors, probably of the different party, we're not in competition. governor sandoval, if i were still governor and you had a program that was working, i would call you and you would gladly share with me because we're not in competition. maybe later we'll be, if we go to congress. but right now, you are the ceos. you are the leaders. of these 50 states and the territories. so seize that moment. >> governor, again, thank you for allowing us to come before you. it's always good to come back home. it's the best memories i have of being in public service. i want to thank my good friend

who really made my job as governor one of the most pleasant jobs i could to have a good partner. i know highway important thow i. i would tell people i went around my state, government should be your partner. i'm not your provider. but i'll be the best partner you ever had if you want to join into a partnership. i always looked at government at partnerships. people have relied to us to where we're going to cure all their problems. we can't. jay, we served and really enjoyed that but i have said that, you know, i'm going to help those who want to help themselves. i'm going to take care of those the good lord gave me that couldn't take care of themselves. with that i formed that partnership. i think we need to do that again. the united states of america is the hope of the world. i sit on armed services and i get a lot of meetings and hear a lot of things and see a lot of things sometimes i wish i didn't have to, but i do. with that being said, we are still the hope of the world. i was asked many times and i know you are all asked as you go

around whether it's schools or town hall meeting, mostly in schools, how do you become a leader, what does it take to be a leader. they look at all of us as leaders. you have been elected to the highest position in your states and i had a little girl one time, i will never forget, sixth grader, little school in west virginia. she says mr. governor, i just think a leader should be a dealer in hope. a leader is a dealer in hope. if you can't give the people of your state hope that it's going to be better no matter how tough and how difficult and how challenging it may be, then they have lost all confidence. you are a leader because you are a dealer in hope. if you never forget that, no matter what faces you, no matter how tough that day is, you are the hope of your state. they're looking at you for that leadership. thank you. >> thank you, senator. let me also thank you for the opportunity to be here, reacknowledge my good friend terry mcauliffe who i know will

be a great nga governor as well or nga chairman as well. i want to echo a little about what joe said. at this moment, at least in time, where we work isn't exactly hitting the ball out of the park in terms of getting stuff done. i say a lot of times to folks around the state i'm as frustrated as you. you want to throw stuff at the tv, i'm inside the tv and i feel that way. so echoing a little bit of what joe xdsaid, the notion that at e state level, you can still put points on the board, again, we can argue about how big or small government should be but the notion that you are still getting things done in a way that is moving the ball forward, i think in terms of a macro approach is probably more important than ever. lord willing, we'll see whoever is elected after this year, there may be a reset opportunity

come 2017, but in the interim, continuing to put points on the board is really important from the nga specifically, i would say i was very honored to be invited back. this is the first time i have been back since i've been governor. lamar, god bless him, was coming, speaking to the nga when i was chair and all the years we were here. i actually think though you ought to invite more senators at least, particularly the governors only sessions or maybe to some of the dinners, when you have to build more of these relationships, this is a great setting, but some of my fondest memories were governor only settings when you could really have a little more candid conversation with no press, no staff and invite four or five, six senators of both parties. there's a lot more people of good will in both parties in the united states senate who want to do the right thing. they just need a little oomph

behind them. i think you can help provide that oomph and obviously we can help i think better develop some of these federal/state relations. thank you. >> thank you. senator alexander? >> well, the question was how can the nga be more effective, and governor bentley would probably know the story of bear bryant, who recruited this punter from california to come to the university of alabama and play football, and the kid could kick it 70 yards every time, and the first week of practice, the bear stood over at the side and watched him and never said a word to the kicker. finally, the punter went over to the coach and said coach, i came all the way from california to alabama to play football for you, and you haven't said a word to me. and bear bryant said son, i'm watching you. when you kick it less than 70 yards, i'm going to remind you of what you were doing when you did. and i think the best way to ask the question about what could thenga do to be the most

effective is ask what were you when you were most effective and do more of that. that was '85-'86 with results on education, it was the national governors summit in '89, it was the time you put all your horse power in welfare reform in 1996 and i think it was last year when you led the charge to pass the fix to no child left behind. that's a big deal. we talk a lot about what hasn't gotten done in washington. that's the biggest evolution of power from state to local governments in 25 years. if that's the case and you helped do it, then follow the advice of one of the other governors and double down on it. spend all next year making sure it's implemented right so you get the power. i would remember the kicker story. then the only other thing i would say is when you pick your one or two things, which i hope are implementing no child left behind fix and passing marketplace fairness, do it yourself. don't delegate it. if you sit down with a member of

congress or call him, we will all pay a lot of attention to you. if you just write a letter or something, that's just another letter. >> thank you. we will give our vice chairman the last question. >> thank you, gentlemen. appreciate you coming today. you have given us good advice of how we think we can make ourselves a better organization. i would like to turn the tables for a second with your wisdom, because as you know, with congress, you are in action on a lot of issues, really causes us problems. i do want to thank you for the two year sequestration push-off. i want to thank you for the transportation, now we have five years with governors, we can begin to make some decisions i got to tell you for years it was very problematic at the state level and gary and i have been visiting the senate leadership and have asked what we can expect out of the congress this year. so far we have heard really not much. we keep hearing it's an election year. these types of inaction really cause us a problem. we do compete on a global economy and inaction is not good for us. sometimes what congress does is very hurtful to the governors.

you will be getting a letter from all 50 governors from the armed services committee where on the national guard you are taking some of our folks and trying to convert them to civilian that are under the guard command today. that is a big, big problem for us. i would just ask before you go, there's dysfunction in congress. how do you make yourselves more an efficient operating organization? you have all thought about this. we have heard about the problems that we have in congress. we all work together, we all get along here. how do we do the same thing in the united states congress? >> i will take a stab at that first. >> we only have five minutes. >> first of all, when i got to congress they expect me to make a phone call every day to raise money for the dse. i expect my republican colleagues to make phone calls. they expect me the campaign against my friends on the other side. i said day one i won't do it. i said where i come from, if i

try to -- if i'm working with you, i try to get you fired every day, you are going to kick my butt sooner or later. i said that's now how we act in west virginia so i'm not going to do it. now, how do we change it? i look at my friend lamar and said can we work on something. he said sure, let's go ahead. he doesn't look at me as a threat. he's not going to look at me i'm going to campaign against him. there used to be an unwritten rule. now, how many governors try to defeat when you're up for election? i don't see that happening in the governors' rank. i hope it never happens. it's expected to happen in the senate, expected to happen in congress. unless we have an ethical change to where it's an ethical violation to go out and visibly campaign against a sitting colleague, you are not going to change that type of demeanor in the senate. >> any other comments? lamar? >> i'm going to be a little politically incorrect here and

say more's getting done than you think. and i really don't like to be a member of congress who goes around saying we can't do anything. if i thought that, i would stay home. why should i be a member of congress if i couldn't get anything done. i don't think it's that hard. i mean, we said, i'm chairman of the committee that is in charge of about a third of the jurisdiction of the senate. we set out to fix no child left behind and we got it done in a year. we set out to pass the 21st century cures bill as the house has passed. i told president obama i would like to include his precision medicine and his more recent cancer moonshot fix in that because this is a tremendously exciting time in biomedical research, and third, we are well on our way to a whole series of reforms in higher education which would take the 108 question that 120 million families fill out each other and reduce it to 10 or 12 questions and we have bipartisan support

for that, for simplifying the way you pay your student loans back, for year-round pell grants. we are working on all those things. i think it's not that hard to do and the skills that it takes to do it are skills i learned as governor, which are basically, i don't even need to tell you what they are. n you know what they are. you don't put people in a corner. you give them a chance to succeed. you listen, you consult, you be happy if you get 70% or 80% of what you want. those are the things. but just so you don't go away thinking we don't do anything, there was fixing no child left behind done. the bipartisan budget agreement law. multi-year highway bill, law. trade authority work with the president done. permanent fex, done. quality fee for services for doctors, done. the usa freedom act on terrorists, done. this was all last year. cybersecurity, done. defense authorization, done. trafficking victims, done. terrorism risk insurance done.

iran nuclear review act, done. veterans suicide prevention, done. chemical safety, done. so in one year, we passed the appropriations bills, we would have had a very good year. we are a long way from where we ought to be but the skills we learned as governor help us succeed and i haven't given up on trying to succeed. >> thank you. senator warner? >> i don't think any of us have given up or we wouldn't be going back to our paid job. i do think we have a bit of a structural challenge in that i think the genius of the founding fathers was they set up a slightly dysfunctional federal government on purpose. the house had to work with the senate, the senate had to work with the house, they both had to work with the president. that was the only way you got stuff done. there are other systems of government. there are parliamentary systems of government that work pretty well. you win and you run the show until you're kicked out.

my fear and i agree that we have, there are things that we have gotten done but lord knows there are still a number of others and ticking time bombs like our debt and deficit that it's going to explode in a moment and we will be a national government with a social insurance program and an army and nothing else, and you all will bear the burden of that, but my fear from kind of a governmental standpoint is we have had this checks and balances brilliantly formed government but the last 10 or 12 years, in both parties, when they win control of the congress, they run it like a parliamentary system. you start with 100% of your team and you go kind of peel off a few of the others. or you say we're only going to pass a bill in the house, if we only pass it with our team. whereas that may be the case in some [ inaudible ] i think for the most part in states that have worked well, you still find a way, you may be a democrat or republican but you still find a

way where you try to pick up a slug of the other side. that is less able to do in washington at this point. i think candidly, that's what we have to improve upon. and the notion that every bill, again, lamar made mention, i think there was a pretty good record last year but the idea that every bill has to become armageddon and that everything then gets loaded on or train's getting out of the station and you're going to try to load as much on as you possibly can ends up making small to midsized bills harder to do. if they're running this notion that you got to start with 100% of your team on every bill, you end up with legislation unfortunately that ends up starting way far to the left or way far to the right, and again, just personal belief, i think more good policy gets done with some level of compromise in the middle. >> governor? >> what i would say, terry, is

when i was secretary of the interior, we would have a town hall meeting around the country, i remember one particular setting, i think san francisco, i'm sitting there, hundreds of people and i'm sitting there listening, and a citizen was really giving heat. he said you feds, you're nothing but command and control and he really was going, and i started to smile and he said what are you smiling about? i said i happen to agree with you. and i said that's why i voluntarily left the united states senate to go be governor because i believe in tenth amendment rights, i believe in states' rights. the audience, suddenly i was a friend. i appreciated what you said about the national guard proposed rule. when the 116th cavalry brigade was deployed to iraq and had the entire province of kirkuk, the role of governors, title ten, et cetera, but it's the families

back home. i would mention that i was told early on do not become captive of a never missed a vote situation, because some members of congress for years have never missed a vote. so the first vote that i intentionally missed was back to school night for my kids. pretty hard to rail on that. when paul ryan took some time appropriately to evaluate if, in fact, he would have his name placed forward as speaker of the house and again, think of that moment, where everyone held their fire, the different factions within the republican house members and the democrats, they held their fire because there was civility to let a man think about this. when paul ryan talked about the fact that he had to evaluate what effect this has on his family life, work, family balance, and there were those in the media that took out after

him. so i would just say too often, i think candidates who campaign on family values, once elected, do not feel that they are allowed to practice family values. so create an atmosphere so that we elect citizens who not only preach family values but are allowed to live family values. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. we are so honored to have some of our own here with us today. we appreciate your leadership and your service. we know there are others, governors are serving in the congress and we appreciate them, too. let's give our guests a round of applause again for their service. [ applause ]

we respect you and we honor you. in that vein, we are starting this year a new recognition award calls ted the james madis award designed to honor somebody in congress that has really xem exemplified the spirit of -- not just somebody that talks about it but somebody who $the work and epitomizes what we have been talking about today. i would like to invite senator lamar alexander to come forward as our first recipient of the james madison father of our constitution award. mrlz mrlz [ applause ]

>> as you know, he listed off a long list of things that have been done this past year but specifically for us here, the transportation reauthorization, the every student succeeds which again is a great devolution of power and authority back from the federal government to the states when it comes to education. i think we all appreciate his involvement with the work force investment opportunity act, his championing for market street fairness which is an issue we will be taking on this year hopefully with the help of our special guests here and others, we can get that piece of legislation passed this year, too. so former governor, lamar alexander, senator lamar alexander, former secretary of education, good friend of the nga, we offer this to you as a small token of our appreciation, the james madison award. >> thank you very much. >> thank you.

i think i have already had my say today and yesterday, but thank you. the best job in america is being governor of your home state. the second best job is being able to represent your home state in the united states senate and remind all the other senators that the best job in america is being governor of your home state and you need to remember that when you are trying to be governor of the united states. leave that responsibility to the governors and focus purely on the federal issues that the congress and the president are supposed to deal with. thank you very much. >> we will get a picture in just a minute. we are on a tight schedule. we thank everybody. we certainly want to thank our nga staff for helping us organize this event. it's been a very productive weekend. we thank you for your participation. we had great participation from the governors. thank our esteemed vice chairman

terry mcauliffe. we want to thank the nga staff for the work. again, reminder, we will reach out to you to get your recommendations of what we want to highlight in the book on states' success and spotlights some of the great things you're doing in the respective states and territories across the land. again, nga summer meeting in iowa, and with that, we -- >> it's been a great meeting. i think we ought to give our chair a great round of applause. [ applause ] >> well, again, what a great team. my acronym team is something i would hear from lamar alexander. team, together, everyone, achieves, more. that's the nga. thank you very much. hustle to the buses. see you at the white house. we are adjourned.

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editor of the blog law fare susan hennessey will apple's fight over encryption. then we discuss china's placement of air-to-surface missiles and the state of china's economy. watch at 7:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow. join the discussion. how can we best get people to pay attention to wasteful spending? so we tend to find things that are interesting, little different, easy to understand, because the government is so large, an organization like this has to cut through a lot of the noise and cut through a lot of the other things that are going on, members of congress talking about wonderful things that they are doing, and try to get people to be more involved and make it a little more personal so that they understand the impact on them and their families and their children and grandchildren. >> sunday night on q & a, thomas

schaatz, president of citizens against government waste talks about his organization's efforts to bring attention to wasteful federal spending. citizens against government waste also publishes the pig book which compiles a list of unauthorized government programs. >> we worked with a bipartisan coalition of members of congress which then was called the congressional pork busters coalition, and they came up with us with the definition of what was then called pork barrel spending and really still is. eventually became the term earmarks. and we went through all the appropriations bills and started the pig book. i believe the first year was about $3 billion and it went all the way up to $29 billion in 2006 and every year that we can find earmarks in the appropriations bills, we release the congressional pig book sometime around april or may. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q & a. >> next, a look at efforts to integrate women into military combat roles. current and former service women

discuss how the move might affect unit cohesion and holding females to the same standard as their male counterparts. this was hosted by the national defense university. >> ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. we will be starting momentarily. at this time i welcome dr. michael bell, the chancellor of the college of international security affairs to begin with opening remarks. >> welcome to the college of international security affairs. for those that are new to the college, it is the newest of the five colleges. the five colleges that comprise the university. our mission is to educate and prepare officers and national security professionals from the united states and partner countries for the security challenges of the contemporary security environment. we are the department of defense flagship for education and

building partner capacity in irregular warfare and combatting terrorism at the policy and strategy level. today, a great opportunity, a workshop on women's integration into the u.s. military. the basis for this came from the white house's national action plan and from that, a series of tasks to raise greater awareness, greater inclusion, greater sensitivity to a range of issues to include gender and house it affects either resolg contemporary security challenges, the integration of those, of gender perspectives into our plans and strategies. so as you know, the secretary of defense recently announced that all military occupations in the u.s. military be open to women. this decision will certainly shape the way the u.s. engages in current and continuing conflicts and the ones that we will face in the future. our students are fellows here at

ndu. how's the thesis research and writing coming? everybody okay? great opportunity to take some time out, engage on this important topic with scholars and practitioners in the women peace and security field. selected practitioners and scholars have been chosen to present a range of perspectives. for many of you, this will take you out of your intellectual comfort zone. it will expose you to some different perspectives that you are not aware of. now, we should also think about why is this important. certainly from a number of perspectives, you will see these in the panels today, what we are going to have here are issues of organizational culture, we'll have issues of institutional change and underlying it all, you will see the role of leaders in managing and leading through transitions and ultimately trying to find the best way to master challenges in the contemporary security environment. whether you are a u.s. military officer, u.s. government civilian or one of our

international partners our governments, we welcome you to this conversation today. so what we have is two panels set up today. pretty straightforward workshop. the first will focus on the practical challenges and opportunities that the secretary of defense, ash carter's announcement poses for the u.s. military for gender integration and how we will move forward on that. interestingly enough, 40 years ago is when women first entered the united states military academy. 25 years ago, we faced some big challenges with desert storm, where women actually served roles that had never been contemplated under our policies at the time down at brigade level, in the case that i know quite well, in mechanized infantry brigades where they were looking for the most talented people rather than the most available male soldier to fill those positions.

so certainly new challenges out there and then the second panel will look at how gender integration actually can shape the battlefield in a regular warfare context. some really amazing topics here today. one thing we will do, there will be an opportunity for each of our panelists to present. for the fellows end, there will be an opportunity for questions and answers. i would ask you if you have a question, identify yourself, please give your first name and whether you are a fellow or an outside guest, let us know that you are outside, just so the panelists know who's the students and who's not. with that, again, welcome. we look forward to a great interaction. thank you. doctor? >> good morning. my name is dr. kirkland baitman, the associate dean of curriculum at the college of international security affairs. before we get started i would like to remind the audience that c-span is filming the entirety of this symposium today and is broadcasting live on the c-span network. we are also broadcasting through

the ndu television network and also on livestream. so a little scheme of maneuver for the two panels. the first one we will present, each panelist will present for about ten minutes on their respective topic and at the conclusion of their presentations, we will open the floor for about 40 minutes of q & a at the conclusion, we will then take a 20-minute break. so our first panel, these ladies are all four individuals have blazed numerous trails in gender integration within the armed forces. all four are veterans and all four have written extensively on the issue of gender integration into the military. i know that their bios are in your program but for the benefit of our television audience, starting right here on stage right, i will work down the table. the first panelist is miss kylie hunter, a doctoral candidate at the school of international studies at the university of denver and research fellow at

the center for international security and diplomacy. her research focuses on the intersection of cultural and structural forces on political participation, in particular she is focused on how gender roles and military service shape political participation. miss hunter is a u.s. marine corps combat veteran and former liaison officer to the house of representatives. she is the co-founder and director of the think broader foundation, a nonprofit focused on eliminating gender-based media bias. she will present on the changing nature of citizenship and the integration of women into the military. our next panelist is dr. kate hendrix thomas. she is an assistant professor of health promotion at charleston southern university, a speaker and the co-founder of just roll with it wellness. she is also a u.s. marine corps veteran and helps businesses and military veterans improve their holistic health and quality of life. she will present on the physical

and mental health concerns of women in the military or building a resilient force. our next panelist is colonel ellen harding, u.s. army retired. she's a senior fellow with women and international security, where she directs the combat integration initiative project. her research and work focuses on women and gender in the military. the colonel is a graduate much the u.s. military academy and a distinguished visiting professor at the u.s. army war college. presently she is completing a ph.d. at george mason university's school for conflict analysis and resolution. she will present on unit cohesion and the performance of mixed gender units. finally, our last panelist for the first panel is miss sue fulton, a 1980 graduate of the united states military academy, a member of the academy's first class to admit women. she commissioned in the army as a signal officer, serving as both platoon leader and company commander in germany before receiving an honorable discharge

at the rank of captain. during her ensuing years in the private sector, ms. fulton worked briefly with the campaign for military service, supporting bill clinton's efforts to overturn the military ban on gay service. in 2011, president obama pointed her to the west point board of visitors and in 2015, she was selected chairperson of the board of visitors at west point making her the first woman graduate to hold that position. she will present on the role of high standards, training and leadership and successfully integrating women into all military jobs. with that, we will get started with kylie ann. i have some time cards. if we get close to our ten minute limit i will kind of move close to you and flash a card at you. otherwise, please begin with your presentation. >> great. thank you very much for that great introduction. thank you all for coming and our purpose here today is really to open discussion and to open dialogue, because with the nature of the audience being

leaders in your respective fields and respective countries there's a lot we can really learn from one another that's going to both shape our research and advocacy efforts as well as help with the integration that is now on its way. i'm going to speak at a very high level about the issue of women's integration into the u.s. forces. the other panelists are going to be speaking a little more kind of nuts and bolts about some of the mechanics and some of the actual challenges, but to sort of kick off this conversation, i think it's very important to discuss what is the relationship between being a citizen and being a soldier. and understanding how some of that -- the theoretical ways that we think about citizenship and soldiering has really shaped this integration conversation, and what opportunities are now presented for coming generations with full combat integration. so the idea of the citizen soldier goes back to ancient

greek times when you really think about these democracies in particular and what it means to be a good citizen, and really reach the highest of citizenship is soldiering, is the ability to go lay your life down for your country, and that -- this idea has been used by several minority groups, by out groups to really gain full citizenship rights. there's a scholar by the name of ronald crebs who developed this theory of what he calls re torqual coercion. this is the way in which individuals who had previously been excluded from full citizenship rights and whether it is formal, i.e. they didn't have the right to vote or the right to participate, or more informal in the way that they reviewed by their fellow citizens as sort of lesser citizens. they were treated with whether it was treated with less pay or their vote just didn't count as much, military service has the

power to be able to be leveraged to gain more rights, and examples, you can see of this being used with the case of african-americans in the united states, where their service particularly during world war ii really served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement and for them becoming more included in the actual formal as well as informal trappings of citizenship. as well, you see this with -- in israel where their -- when they were brought into the idf as a compulsory service, they were able to leverage that to gain equal citizenship rights that they previously had been denied. so why i talk about this a little bit is to think about really the role of women in this country, and when you think about women in america, like you think a lot about equal rights and oh, they're equal citizens,

there's no real barriers to their political participation, no barriers to their economic participation. however, if you kind of pull back the lens and you look a little more big picture, the inability for women to serve in an equal capacity to men provides an intangible barrier to citizenship. it provides a more or less second class citizenry where you have even those women who have chosen to serve, their service is somehow looked at as a little less, not as you weren't a real soldier or a real marine because you didn't go into combat, you didn't have ground combat, and now you're seeing it with this legal restriction being in place that it has really denied a lot of the service that women have actually done. so you see i think that some of us from the panel up here and i know many of you probably have

peers where they have done the same thing their male counterparts have done in combat and yet received disequal recognition for it. and so this is really the impetus for why there has been a big push for integration and for equal integration. and you're seeing this played out now in particular with the selective service arguments in that why women should be involved in the selective service or not be involved in selective service. for those of you who are foreign students here, the selective service is frequently also called the draft. i think it's important to take away some of that -- the misnomer here. it doesn't necessarily mean compulsory service that when you register you have to go and serve in the military but it is the list of available people to be called up in case of military conflict. and opening this is really i think the next step for our future coming generations of full inclusive citizenship,

because what opening something like the secret service or allowing for full military integration is going to do is give women that same citizenship leverage. it's going to give the next generation of women coming up behind us the ability to say we have the same rights and the same ability to go and sacrifice for our country as anybody else. we have the same possibility of being called up if our country is being involved in a high level conflict. this symbolic power is very important for citizenship claims and it's very important as you're seeing women become more involved in the political arena, it's involved in the economic arena, to make a pure level playing field. i think that i will conclude here with just some high level comments and pass it over to

kate to get down to some more of the nuts and bolts. >> well, thank you. we are going to test my acumen with the microphone here. thank you so much for having me today. i want to talk a little bit about something, those of you who have command or have held command in the past probably speak about frequently and that's the question of mental fitness and mental health as a readiness issue. interestingly, i want to go over the issue background, talk about how it relates to service women. i will share some pieces of some relevant studies with you, but i'm a public health professional and i'm not interested in talking about problem scope and prevalence without solution sets so that's where we'll conclude today. again, the issues of mental health, i'm going to speak about them a little bit interchangeably, specifically because stress injury, depression, anxiety conditions are all predictors of suicide

which has become a problem for our force increasingly. that wasn't the case 15 years ago. the military had much lower rates than the general population. but interestingly, the conditions often co-occur and because the symptoms are different, highly individualized, they are often misdiagnosed. we have some serious cultural stigma issues, those of you in the audience are probably well aware of the treatment recalcitrance of our military population. i like to say you can keep your couch and that's how a lot of our service members who are suffering with conditions feel. we have misunderstood the problem for a long time. we have talked about it as being combat stress, combat stress, combat stress, when really, service separation is a much more likely predictor or feelings of alienation and low levels of social support.

so i have worked with a team of researchers to explore that red range on the slide for the last couple of years. we're trying to look for variables both demographic and behavioral to predict whether somebody will have a mental health condition. understanding that mental health conditions become readiness issues at the unit level. much of the secondary analyses that we have run have been -- have had really large sample sizes and i will share pieces of those with you. again, because we are interested in upstreaming, we are really looking for these data to inform our prevention efforts so again, it's not just about problem scope and prevalence and who's likely to have these issues, but it's about how do we target intervention programming and what should the content of said programming look like.

so i'm going to share some results with you today that use data from the centers for disease control and this particular set of regression analyses had a large sample size, over 54,000 respondents, and we had over 4,000 women that we used in our breakouts. so any time we're talking about a large cross-sectional survey, i know a lot of you are aware this is a pinpoint in time so these data are correlational, not black and white causation. but it was interesting because we were looking specifically for who has a diagnosis of depression, stress injury, some kind of mental health problem, and then who's walking around demonstrating or displaying symptoms of an undiagnosed condition, because if we can predict that, we can really target our programming, we can figure out where some of our issues are. and the data, doing a little ra chur review, we expected to see

somewhere around 15% with the diagnosis and that is what we saw. but interestingly, almost 8% of our sample were self-reporting symptoms that indicate an undiagnosed condition so those undiagnosed conditions can become a problem. we did a breakout of our female service members and we found that you're more likely to have these issues with the female service members. so if -- i will direct your attention to the odds ratio, the second odds ratio there. women were more than twice as likely to have an existing diagnosis. they were also more than 1.7 times more likely to be displ displaying symptoms of an undiagnosed condition. we also looked at the variable of service era because this was not just active duty members, this was a veteran population, and interestingly, you will notice that the people most

likely to have a diagnosis are your gulf war era and you're much more likely to be displaying undiagnosed symptoms if you're from my generation, that post-9/11 oif, oef era. so the question for any public health professional at this point is okay, there's an issue but why, why is there an issue. i know colonel herring will go into detail on this. but for female service members specifically, there are issues with social support and unit cohesion that make it much more likely that they are going to have poor mental health outcomes. and for all service members, for men and women specifically, you have got practical, we talk about practical and statistical significance. statistical significance matters on a chart. practical significance matters to the c.o. and matters at the unit level. we have such significance when

we break out the variable by people who report not having a lot of social support in their life so if you have a lower level of social support, you are much more likely to have these issues. quite frankly, the system as its currently structured has not been ideal for military service women. it has not been ideally cohesive and supportive for service women. one of my favorite researchers is dr. brown out of the university of houston and she said stories are data with a soul. there has been a lot of really important qualitative research that have collected these stories from service women and they tell us that we have got some institutional issues, we have got some leadership issues, we have got some trauma experience issues that are creating mental health issues for our service members. so in addition to structural and

leadership change, we have to be talking about targeting our behavioral health interventions and this is where when we start talking about mental fitness training in our force, i get really engaged and excited and interested, because we're doing a terrible job right now. we can be doing this better. resilient traits are those traits that allow you to take a punch in the teeth, allow you to weather stress, and those can be trained, cultivated and tested for. they are extremely specific and they involve a lot of agentic down regulation of an individual's nervous system, programming to teach people to do this sort of thing is really best done in a peer-led environment. it need to be kind of tailored to sub-populations and we can could all of that. we know how to. but i think what's key in the

military population as we move forward and we see integration moving forward, it's key to understand that you have to have a performance metric attached to such things. it cannot be, you know, more power point heavy annual training that people sit in an auditorium and do. mental fitness training can be assessed in the same scaleable way that we assess physical fitness training. and i believe that is an important component for our future as behavioral health professionals working with the military population. so i know colonel herring is going to go into more detail on this predictive variables. thank you very much. >> thank you, kate. yeah, i will get more specific to unit cohesion, what does it look like, how do women impact it but i'm not going to talk directly to how are women

impacted by good cohesion. you have made some really good points and i think your research is fascinating. so let's talk about unit cohesion. so there's been extensive research on unit cohesion over the years. what we know ercurrently dates back to post world war ii era studies. today it's generally accepted cohesion is categorized as both vertical and horizontal cohesion. vertical cohesion exists between leaders and followers and the connection between -- the connection that a leader establishes with his or her subordinates and the relationship of the leader with his superiors and peers is an important mechanism for all participants to engage with the larger institution and significantly impacts the overall cohesiveness of units. vertical cohesion influences horizontal cohesion and underscores the importance of leadership in creating cohesive units. horizontal cohesion, the type of cohesion that we typically think

about, is characterized by both social cohesion and task cohesion, and these are important distinctions. that ises clear in the literature but people often fail to separate the two in discussions. horizontal cohesion exists across peer groups within an organization. social cohesion describes how well group members like each other. it's their emotional connection and typically develops between people with common backgrounds and similar experiences. while task cohesion, on the other hand, describes the bonds that arise among individuals cooperating to achieve common goals. the relationship between task cohesion and social cohesion and performance is complicated, but generally task cohesion is believed to be -- more positively influence performance than social cohesion. social cohesion is not reliably associated with improved performance and can have a

negative impact on units. high social cohesion is known to lead to group think or situations in which groups may adopt attitudes and values that differ from that of an organization, while some level of social cohesion appears necessary, too much is often problematic. there are no scientific studies of gender integrated u.s. combat units because there haven't been any. however, considerable research has been done of gender integrated military groups in non-combat roles, and the research has found no negative impact on cohesion. there are a number of factors that affect team dynamics including gender sex conflation, leadership, working conditions, attitudes of team members towards gender integration, and organizational and cultural pressures. however, the existing data does not support the contention that mixed gender teams cannot effectively accomplish mission

objectives. so what -- this was kind of a summary of a joint special operations university report recently published where they looked at how does -- how do women impact cohesions of potentially the teams. that was their finding from their research. interestingly, surprisingly, to me, the research team that conducted this research on cohesion failed to interview the women who participated in the cultural support team program, or their male counterparts from the teams where the women were imbedded. oddly, they did interview other communities including smoke jumpers and s.w.a.t. team members but not the csts. the csts would have been a rich resource from which to gather cohesion data on gender integrated combat teams. last summer, as an independent researcher, i interviewed -- i convened and interviewed and conducted focus group

discussions with 25 of the women who served on special forces and ranger teams as part of these cultural support team program. what i learned is that the women do believe that they impacted team dynamics. and this was a surprise to me. i would say it was universally felt by the women that we interviewed, and it was a pretty big population. but their impact they thought was two-fold. all of them reported that their presence did introduce an element of sexual tension. that was their words, to the team. but they also reported that their presence improved mission outcomes. one of the women who was responsible for collecting the metrics for the ranger teams on which csts served said that over time, a clear picture developed. teams that included women were on average 20% more mission effective than the teams where there were no women present. all of the women said that while sexual tension did exist, at the

outset, they were easily managed if team members and leadership acted appropriately. anecdotally, it's interesting to me to hear oftentimes, in fact, our research was criticized as being anecdotal, even though there were 25 women in the research. so i'm going to give you a couple of and ek doek doets but and ek dots over time present a pretty significant picture. here's one anecdote. a senior warrant officer said that several male team members kind of probed for sexual favors when she was first introduced to the team, but when she made it clear that it was never going to happen, the problem seemed to evaporate from her perspective. she said we became friends, the sexual tensions issues melted away, and she said she still communicates with some of those same men today and that she is very close friends with the entire team.

this was a common thread that they discussed in this sexual tension discussion that as long as people acted appropriately, these issues seemed to melt away and all of the csts said that the bifgt contributing factor tt contributing factor to cohesion and being accepted on their teams was job competence. if they were competence and proved themselves quickly, the team was generally accepting and supportive. they believed the cst selection and screening program had done a good job identifying women who could successfully operate on these teams. what they felt was lacking was they hadn't trained with their teams before deployment. they said they shouldability have to prove their capabilities on the ground while bullets are flying. women should be trained with the teams they support and deploy with so that there's no doubt in anyone's mind about who's going to do what and how well they're able to do it. all of the women said that none of them ever had a teammate --

had ever had a teammate try to shield them from fire or take a protective stand on their behalf. they find this myth to be both amusing and insulting to the men that they operated with. besides providing properly screened and trained team members, leadership was the most important factor where team dynamics and unit cohesion was concerned. their presence impacted overall team dynamics and mission success. leadership, not women, is the senior most important element to team co-heeg. i would also argue that capabilities, gender neutral standards where everybody meets the same standards is the second most important element to team cohesion. and with that, i'll segue over to brenda.

>> thanks, ellen. i always learn something when i hear you speak. in gymnastics we were talked how to negotiate west point's obstacle course, a test we would be graded on every year. one on tackle is an eight-foot wall. we were coached in the approved solution, jump up, grab the top of the wall, do a pullup to get your shoulders above the top of the wall and then flip your body over. a solution that violates the laws of physics for nonmale people whose center of gravity is somewhere below their shoulders. in short order, we figured out for ourselves, if you grab the top of the wall and hook your anal kl, you can use your leg to get over the top. instructors eventually taught that as an alternate solution and soon women were conquering the obstacle at the same speed of men. times change. that was 40 years ago.

the changing socialization of young girls in athletics mean that women cadets got faster and stronger by leaps and bounds. over the years, the little girls who grew up on the monkey bars were soon able to get over the wall with upper body strength like the men did. but the lesson i learned was it matters less how you do it. what matters is getting over the wall. i think that's instructive in war fighting and instruckive as we look at what women bring to the fight. because if women in ground combat roles don't make us stronger, we've screwed it up. the good news is i have no doubt that they will. there are hundreds of on-leinart kls fretting over whether or not we can deal with the fact that in general, the bell curve of women's upper body strength and speed falls short of the curve of men's.

questions answered, by the i what, by simply setting the standards rite and holding to one standard. but if we all could stop wringing our hands over pullups long enough to think as leaders, we would focus on what do women bring to the fight? not just the ability to talk to local women in muslim communities, but where do women outperform men on the curve of ability? flexibility? maturity? counseling soldiers? creative problem solving? i have dozens of stories. the only one in my class who passed a particular recondo patrol because instead of sighting the squad on the precise grid cord pennaordinant

middle of a swamp, she moved them over a little. none of the men thought to do that. the only women in a three-star staff call who asked, well, why don't you do it this way? after a long silence, the commander said well, we've been doing it the other way for a year, we just never thought of it. the ranger patrol that trusted their best navigator to plot their next point. when they arrived, the ranger instructor demanded who plotted this solution, i did, suggested kristen gray. you did a good job but you're 90 minutes early. what am i going to do with you all now? which brings me to another lesson. i've gotten to now chris greist

pretty well since she graduated from ranger school. when people ask her why she succeeded, one thing comes up more than anything else. expectations. as a cadet, she asked to join the infantry mentorship program. sure, he said. no problem. you'll just need to meet the exact same standards that everybody else in the program meets. and he expected her to do it. so she did. he remains one of her mentors. she talks about a key moment in ranger school in the florida swamps. like the other women, she frequently carried the saw. she's going through the swamp, she's shorter than the other rangers and she feels herself slowing down. she feels like shes slowing down the team. the patrol leader is going to no-go because of me, she thinks. for the first time in over 100 days in ranger school, she asked someone else to carry the weapon and he does.

the ri pulls her aside immediately and said you're getting a major minus. you didn't need to do that because you could have carried it. now, i heard that story and i thought she was being a little unfair. and chris said no, i thanked him. that ri did me a favor because i realized he was right, reminding me that he expected me to succeed and i needed to expect that from myself. we've heard a lot about a marine corps study in which women -- there's a lot of issues with that study. but when there is an expectation that women are not going to perform as well as men, when they're not expected to perform as well on the rifle range, then chances are over time that those numbers are going to be low. and for any of you who want scholarship on this, i decided

not to get into it today, but you can research what's called the pigmaliam effect, or its reverse, the golum effect. but expectations matter. you already expect high standards. you demand your soldiers meet those high standards. but taking that extra step, expecting that they will succeed, that's a way to supercharge your leadership. and finally, i haven't talked a lot about being in the first class of women at west point. there was more bullshit than was necessary and i won't bore you with all of that. but if i have any credibility on that count, let me use it to ask you all as leaders to do a couple of things. the women who will come into your units, especially the combat arms units are not there to make a statement.

they're there for the same reason as the guys. to do a jb, to challenge themselves, to learn those skills, to blow stuff up, to serve their country. some of them will struggle. don't coddle them. your job is to maintain high standards and expect that they meet them, but something pems having a laugh at their expense is easy. and it's tempting because your guys, the ones close to you, they're going to laugh. and you laugh at a comment made by one of your troops they're like oh, the old man is cool. if you're a woman making fun of another woman, that's gold. nothing endeers you to the guys more than throwing another woman under the bus. you can make fun of the shortest guy in the unit if he's in on

the joke. you can make fun of the black guy who struggles to swim if he's in on the joke. you can make fun of the gay guy if he's your battle buddy. but if they're not in on the joke, if you're halving at them, and not with them, you're setting fire to the bonds that bring your unit together. because cheap laughs are expensive. they'll cost you. they'll tell your soldiers instantly some soldiers deserve respect and others don't. it forces people to take sides. you can preach respect all day long and make one time of the month joke at the club, guess which one is more powerful? instead, you want this to work, you want your unit to succeed, tell stories. i heard general milley, general

mark milley, the chief staff of the army, talk about coming under fire in iraq one vehicle blown by an i ed and watching a young woman soldier 120 pounds soaking wet lifting a guy twice her size out of the vehicle. just a clean and jerk. he says adrenaline, strength, whatever. but if i had doubts before then that there are women capable of more than we think they're capable of, i didn't afterwards. you have a story. it could be a woman in gym last week that smoked you in crossfit. it could be a cadet from 30 years ago. it could be a woman who surprised you down range. it could be a story that you've heard in class here. you could remember your stories. less preaches, more story telling. you don't have to tell everyone

the moral of the story, they'll get it. you are not asking them to make allowances for the women. you're demanding that every soldier who serves under you gets a fair shake. it may not be easy, but it's simple. thank you. >> comments on integration and challenges and the opportunities that that presents us with. before we open it up to question and answers, i just want to remind everyone that we're still on live television. for those of you that have questions, please wait for one of the mike runners. our interns have mikes. again, state your first name and your affiliation with whatever organization. only one question per person, please. and of course, our students have this well deserved reputation of always asking thoughtful and considered questions. and i know they'll do the same thing today. any questions, please?

here in front. if you go ahead and stand up, get a baring on you? i'm i'm. >> i'm an infantry officer and a graduate of west point. i have a couple -- well, not a couple of questions. one question. we understand this is going to happen. as an infantry leader, now let's execute. but how do we execute? is it standards? maintain standards? is it also part when women show up to the unit, which happened when i was an battalion x.o. the first females that show up, everyone is fighting to get them in the unit. one of them in particular did not cut the standards from the

very beginning. when that thing happens, a unit, it automatically validate what is a lot of people are thinking. i think it's a two-way street. i remember when i went to west point, the female was trying to get into the citadel at the same time. and kind of the same thing happened. also on the female side, do they come in knowing they have to succeed? thank you. >> i'll start, but i'm pretty sure we're all going to say the same thing. it's standards. you have to maintain the standards. you have to hold women to those standards. the women who did succeed and did meet the standards are going to suffer if you don't hold the one who didn't meet the standards accountable. that's got to happen. and i know that there are going to be women who fail. we recognize that. but you have to -- you can't let someone slide because that's

going to hurt the women who succeed. do you want to add something? >> i'll jump in. to speak to some of sue's things here. it's not just holding them to standards once they arrive at a unit. and i think this speaks to a cultural change that is starting to happen but needs to happen a little more robustly, especially from the marine corps side. but it's holding them to standards from day one. and right now, leadership in the military is in a very unique position that they have that influence. that, you know, as an infantry officer and especially here in d.c., you have the ear of some high-level people of saying hey, we're going to be integrating. we're going to have these women showing up to our units. we need them held to high standards from the day they enter boot camp or recruit training. or their first day at the academy. and they need the opportunity not only to meet these high

standards and excel at these high standards. but the training from day one to meet them. something else when we're talking about studies and data here is that if you look at the physicality aspect, and i think the physicality standards are the ones that always get brought up. women don't run as fast, they don't do as many pullups. they don't do as many sit-ups. if you look at the actual training, one, is if you give men and women from an early age, from that 18 to 22-year-old, the critical point, the same tools to meet physical benchmarks, they'll do it. and especially if you know, this is where the benchmark is and you get -- pullups are always the big thing. you give them the tools they're able to do it. there's also the same studies that this lag effect of not expecting women and not giving them the tools from an early age to perform physically, it's really hard to make it up later. and this is one the marine corps study has been referenced a few times.

one of the thing that has finally come out is they tried to train up these women to the same physical standards, basically giving them what men would have received in two years of physical training in three months. all you're going to do is break people. they're not going to meet the standard. is these self-fulfilling prof ffi -- prophesies of we don't think women will make it and they won't make it. we need to be vocal about holding women to high standards from day one. and being a leader in a position where you're receiving women, that voice is needed. and there's a lot of us who are preaching that over and over and over again, but i think that the public is sort of hearing like, oh, it's those crazy women talking about it again. what do they know?

i think if -- especially the male contingent becomes very vocal about this, and becomes very proactive in saying i need well-trained women coming to me, because this is happening, it's going to have a really big impact. >> could i make one comment. everyone is talking standards, but i would throw this one back to you and say what are your infantry standards? are they clear? do we know what they are? and we keep talking about women meeting standards, but the truth of the last three years is we've tried to revisit and figure out what are the standards. don't try to hold women to standards we don't really know what they are. and they're trying to reach or to achieve a nebulous, invisible standard that -- so that's my first thing. what are the standards? and are they clear in the first place? and is everybody having to meet them the same way. so yeah, we all agree on standards, or meeting the standards are important. but clear standards are even more important and holding women to those standards in the same way that men are held is really

critical. >> and my hopes are for leaders today is that everything -- integration becoming formalized makes your job easier. because the answer absolutely is same standards. i recall being part of the generation that needed women on the ground overseas. and it put c.o.s in an absolutely uncomfortable position because of the exclusion ban. i was a military police officer in fallujah. two of my military working dog assets were handled by females. now yes, they were tire-flipping amazons and they could handle themselves anywhere, but it put a lot of the units to which we attached assets in an uncomfortable position. do they want to that i can take these females on patrol when i might not come back with that american and might be in violation. we had units that went out

without explosive working dogs because they weren't comfortable with the fact that they might have to use the female handler. i recall very personally and poignantly that when we needed -- we were training the women to go work the ecped, but i had cos that were uncomfortable with the women sleeping out at the ecps. and we would expose them to contact by convoying them back and forth to the fob twice a day. so you as leaders now have the -- there's less gray area for you. and my hope is with one standard and fewer emotional question marks, it actually makes your jobs easier. >> okay, good. other questions? >> i have one. so i've listened to many of the presentations you had. sort of had the same theme a

little bit that it's very similar to african-american integration, similarities with openly serving gay service members integration, and from those two perspectives, there is often a generational distinction, that younger generations had no problem with fully integrating african-americans in 1948. younger service members had little problem with fully integrating openly serving gay service members. is there a generational distinction where younger service members are onboard and it's more those that are in their 15, 20-plus-year service that aren't? or something else? >> i would like to make a quick comment on this. i don't think we're done with integrating african-americans, frankly, or gays. i still think we've got a long ways to go on both counts. and the motion that the younger are -- don't have bias across

the board is -- that's simply not true. are they a little more open and accepting? i say maybe when they come in, but leadership influences their attitudes over time. and those senior leaders have a huge impact on those junior members who are joining the military. to me it's got to start with senior leaders. but certainly, i would say the entry level are more pliable and more willing to accept whatever leadership tells them. >> i also think there is a difference. the thing about repealing don't ask don't tell is those folks were already in the unit. it's like it was the person serving next to you that you did not know was gay. and so that's different from both the example of african-american integration and integrating women into combat arms. i do think there is not so much -- it's generational, but not because of society. i think more generational because of experience. i think there sf a difference --

i see a difference in the senior officers today -- you know, i'm going to brag a little bit about my class of '80. it has a number of three and four-star generals right now. and even if they've spent their career in the infantry, they spent four years training next to women. there are other services where we have senior generals who have never fired a weapon down range next to a female marine. oh, excuse me, female service member. or done a combat confidence course with a woman on their team. they didn't grow up with the women next to them. and i do think that makes a difference in terms of leadership. that, yes, you know, you would argue that if this was a really bad idea, the men who had had more experience training with women would be more opposed to it than the men who had no experience. so just that fact that the men who've had experience, the men

in the mps who have fought next to women, who have been under fire down range next to women are not saying women don't belong in these roles. so that tells me something. so i think the experience factor, which does tie generationally because this has grown over time, is really relevant in terms of acceptance. >> i think just to piggy back off of that last comment, you know, being in the service that has been segregated the most from this, from anywhere that we train women initially to i think just a harder delineation of, yo know, combat roles for men versus noncombat roles for women. more than generational, i think it's socialization. and i think why generationally, the younger generations come in, don't see it as a big of a deal. just socially, they've been doing more with women from day one. i think you can say the same

with don't ask don't tell, sort of two-fold. one, these were people already serving. they were able just to serve openly. it's a lot harder to -- you know, somebody you've deployed with multiple times that you have, you know, been in combat with, it's a lot harder to say oh, well, now that i know this about you, you don't belong anymore. there's no way to also really hide the fact that you are a woman ever. and i think even with -- and i agree with ellen that we still have a long way to go with both african-american integration -- not just african-american, but minority in general -- integration, and full acceptance of don't ask don't tell. even in the case of african-americans and the thing that if you look at -- especially rhetorical studies of how groups are able to really recognitio. and you saw this not just with citizen rights outside the

military, but full integration. it was a lot harder to tell in the world war ii era that it was a black soldier or white soldier fighting because they were doing the exact same thing. there has been much more now qualification of women's jobs and women's roles. and even as a cobra pilot, there was, i think -- i got both goods and bads. goods in that i got thrown into a deploying situation right away. it was just very much about job performance. but whenever it would come back to garrison, there was a lot of qualification skills. oh well, you know, it was the female cobra pilot who did this. so maybe things were different. maybe standards were different. because you stand out a lot more. the physical differences, you can tell women tend to be built differently and look differently. there's a physical ability to stand out that i think has

hindered some of the integrations in the way that racial and sexual orientation integration hasn't been hindered. >> thank you. other questions? back in the back and then to the front. dr. burnett and professor davidson. >> i would like to -- i'm ari burnett, associate dean and professor of sisa. i was very impressed with sue fulton's comments about how being better in this dimension makes us a more powerful fighting force. i'm curious about your thoughts in terms of how this makes us a more powerful fighting force, maybe a more dominating force in a comparative sense against our competitor nations who we're likely to go up against, the russians and the chinese in terms of how they're moving or not moving in this direction.

>> the research as the least academic member of the panel. one interesting thing i saw was homogenius groups get lazy in their thinking because they think others in the group are going to agree with them. when you add people from racial differences or gender differences or other differences, they think they get -- they work harder because they feel like oh, i need to defend my idea, my point of view. they work harder to prove themselves because there's not that same sense of oh, these are my people in a sense.

i deally, when you have a diverse group, including gender diversity, you're going to bring different strengths to the battle, you're all going to get smarter. you're all going to get better. there's going to be an aspect of proving yourself on both sides that should make the unit perform better. should make the unit make better decisions. it gets more come peculiar. i heard general kazan say it used to be about amassing fire power on the enemy. now it's much more complex. you're making decisions down to the small unit on a regular basis about who the enemy combatant is and isn't. in more complex battlefields. if you're making better decisions in the unit, if if you have a broader diversity of skills in that unit, it should make you stronger. now, that's. >> howie: thet call. but it seems to me that as we

move forward, the smart leaders are going to say okay, what does she bring to the fight? you know, realizing that our, you know, chris greist wasn't a brilliant land navigator, but she made herself a great land navigator. could a guy have done that? yes. but it turns out the best person for that particular job was a woman. so that's the second piece as you're broadening the pool. so you should be able to put the best person, the best job regardless. and i think that's true whenever we take it another step forward. one of the things we said about don't ask don't tell is it's not about equality, it's about readiness. it's about -- if your best arabic linguist is gay, who cares? you need a really good arabic linguist. if your best person for the job -- and we're going to have this discussion again. if your best person for the job is transgender, who cares, do the job. so in those respects, we should

expect that this makes us stronger. and that our enemies who are more invested in traditional ways of -- these are the people who traditionally will fight in our infantry, and those people aren't eligible, they're missing out on talent. so that should put us ahead. any other thought? >> to take it to a higher level, a little more theoretically -- sue touched on the good, practical points. but what it also brings -- especially the russian and chinese model, where it's a very top-down directed military. you have essentially a military class. you're almost born into that. it becomes a -- not just a profession or a citizen soldier type idea, but a class of people that do this job. you do whatever the leader tep teles you to do.

yes, we need strategic planners and we need military professionals who that is what they do for a living, but part of being in a democracy is citizen buy-in, citizen response. this idea of the citizen soldier that's both an enabling force. like sue said, you can draw from a really, really diverse talent pool. the biggest that pool gets, the more you're going to guarantee you get the right person for the job. but on the flip side of that is that it's going to force military leaders and political leaders to be very deliberate and very measured in their military decisions. you know, if you have the entire citizenship pool, it's very easy to support going to war when you know there's no way you're ever going to have to fight it. if you're saying well, it's just

this class of people over here, i'm not part of the military establishment, i'm not part of the military class, sure, i'll support the war. russia is really good at doing this. they're really good at drumming up this really strong military that's its own class and they can sell military action to their public very well, whether or not it's actually the best thing to do. and having a money -- a wider pool from which the military is drawn makes both military and civilian leaders have to be very measured and very deliberate. and hopefully also forces citizens to be much more informed about what's actually happening and what actually is going on, that military decisions are made when it's actually in the best interest of the country for a military action to be taken. and that, i think, is a very important delineation between democracies and the idea of a citizen soldier and having this very wide citizen pool and nondemocracies who just create a really big military that they drum up to try to show military

might. >> i missed one other very practical point, which is some of our military enemies come from traditional societies and their soldiers are terrified of being killed by a woman. that's a simple fact, that facing it might be honorable to be killed by a man, but to be killed by a woman is dishonorable. there's another factor there that's practical. >> i think where i struggle with this debate at the macro level is that the reason we're discussing integration is that we've been using, needing, women on the ground operationally for the last decade. i trained mail clerks and attached them at the squad level to infantry units.

this isn't the choice for the niceties of citizenship, it's a choice because operationally we are, have been, and in the future we'll need to use these female service members. so it becomes difficult, because absolutely we will be stronger if we train them and equip them at the entry level, if we allow them to cohesively bond with units that we're going to operationally employ them with. so i do think that theoretical perspective is really important. but looking at the realities on the grown the last decade for me is where the rubber meets the road. >> professor davidson has a question. >> i'm caroline davidson. i'm a professor, i worked at fort bragg. you'll imagine some of our questions come from -- or my students' questions who i'm channelling today come about the distinction or whether there is a distinction -- and many seem

more willing because they've had woman on the most elite units working alongside them already. actually, many of the comments you just made spoke to a few other points i wanted to emphasize, one of which, i'm teaching this course this year that emphasizes the use of natural sciences in terms of thinking about strategy. and, of course, one of the main points that really struck our students was this idea of variation, being absolutely key towards evolving and improving. and everything you're seeing heterogeneity helps us with that so much. in terms of csts, one of the things that really struck me -- and it's an anecdote, but i thought it was pointed -- i live outside of fort bragg. there was a group of csts who came down for a book talk. they were not invited on to fort bragg. that book talk happened at the small independent bookstore in southern pines. and my impression, just from talking to a few of them over

dinner, one of them was an injured veteran, was that they feel like they're not -- no one is paying attention to what they have to say about their experience, which is really alarming to me. i don't know whether you can explain that just because there were very few of them, and whether it is just relegated to anecdotal. it's horrendous to me they didn't take more information from them and interview them more seriously. and then ms. hunter, thor thing that i think we had a presentation on that i thought was very striking, there's a very clear myth out there that the public don't like this idea. and from what i understand the polling actually demonstrates that the public do expect and want women to be serving, that they're fine with that. so why does that myth perpetuate? and do any of you have any more information on how that has shifted and how that affects what we're discussing as well? thank you.

>> so i have a theory about the csts and why they haven't been included in this research, and here's my theory. i proposed this research, i was on the staff of the army war college. i wanted to do it through the war college. and they thought it was a great idea. and then we engaged with general lotell. he was onboard, thought it would be great research. then we got into his staff and suddenly we began to get some pushback. initially they provided large scale support backing the research. literally four days before these women were supposed to show up here in d.c., we had 33 registered, ten of them dropped out that weekend because they were told by their leadership at fort bragg that they were not -- this was not officially sanctioned and that they were not allowed to participate in the research. so i think there's a disconnect between what senior leaders -- some senior leaders, at least in this case, socom, is saying and then there's mid level pushback

from leadership that says oh, we don't want to participate. it's really about organizational change and resistance to this type of change. and you're going to see it throughout every organization. you're going to see mid level leaders who don't agree with it and they become spoilers. they make every effort to stop the forward progress or the full integration of women. i think that's what happened with the csds. after we did our research in august -- or in july, august socom actually did have a little small conference with the csts. they invited them to come to madil where they spent a short weekend with them. but the csts reported back to me that it was very much backward-looking and not forward-looking. they wanted to capture what they had done. they weren't asking them about how can you inform us about how we should move forward with this. so they were disappointed with that. i've heard from the csts that

there's going to be another research conference with the csts down at madill. remember, this isn't fort bragg. different leadership. i do think you're seeing internal resistance at different levels. >> so this actually, i think, leads a lot to your question as to why there's still this perception that it's not wanted. if you look at the public in general, they're like yeah, fine, great. if it makes everything better, it's better. so a lot of it is this mid level area. and i think there's something of this sort of mid level leaders that they feel like it's almost their way to get noticed and make their mark. if they can oppose this, people will know who they are. and on the -- as someone who has written quite a bit openly and publicly about why this is important, and i know jeanette can speak to the same thing, the comments and the responses that come back to it is like you'll

get one or two kind of mid level males or one very notorious in particular retired senior level male who will publicly make these big statements about how i was in combat and this is all wrong. that gets a lot of attention. because they attach their accolades to it. whereas those of us who have been very vocal about why it matters have really taken the road that, you know, passion needs to come out of this, emotion needs to come out of it. let's just look at the facts. let's look at what women have done. as kate really brings up, it has been an operational necessity. so now, how do we ensure that there is success in this continued operational necessity. and facts and dispassionate discourse isn't as sexy as some guy running up screaming, but

all of the dead women! it plays again to this spoiler. again, this is sort of my theory of being involved with it, is that it's a way they feel they can make a mark and get known. now they're the guy who fought the change and was taken over by the social experiment. and they use all this really emotional passioned language that doesn't reflect reality of what's actually happening. >> in front? >> i'm david, a fellow here. my question is about that emotional aspect of it. from personal experience and from listening to this ed bait in public, there seems to be a growing acceptance or realization that this is a good idea. being in the air force myself and having fought alongside female fighter pilots, it seems

very natural from my perspective. but from where i see pushback is this idea of opportunity versus response bability. -- responsibility. everybody i speak to agrees that women should have the opportunity to do this. but when you use the selective service, and when you flip it and say responsibility, then the answers tend to change. so i'm wondering your opinion. is that a societal thing that we need to get past? when you ask a father, do you want your daughter to be able to serve in combat if she wants to? s he says yes. but should she have to if the nation reinstitutes a draft. often times they say no. >> i think you're talking in general about people who haven't served. i have yet to meet a woman yet who says women shouldn't register for selective service. i think that's just unanimous. i think the women who are looking for the opportunity

themselves also think that there's a responsibility. you know, in terms of society, the selective service argument is, i think, a smokescreen. i'm -- my two cents, i don't think we're going to have a draft again in this country until the aliens attack. at which point, all hands on deck, i'm just saying. i don't think there's anyone who's asking for opportunity who wouldn't also say i would take on the responsibility. for me, i do agree with a lot of things kai says. i think that there's a bias among those of us who have served to say, we think that universal service is really important to citizenship. we think that everybody should have an equal stake in that. but i get that there are people, you know, if you do a broad

opinion poll, should women be drafted, it's a different answer. i just don't know how relevant it is to reality that's just me. >> when we're talking about emotion. society has to change. if you're saying like -- it's really a three-part question there. do you want your daughter forced to go fight in combat? so a is like the way that question is even asked. it's just wrong. over the past 15 years where we have been in sustained combat operations, the longest time that the u.s. has ever been involved in a continuous militarized dispute, how many 18 to 26-year-old males who did not volunteer for the force lie awake at night fretting over getting called to afghanistan the next day? it just didn't -- it didn't happen. it's not like -- it's not a thing. never once if you ask that father who has a son, do they think their son is going to go off and die in a war if he doesn't join the military. it's not even a thought.

but we can again wrap all this emotion around like -- oh, well, our daughter is getting drawn off to war. registering for selective service is not getting drug off to war the next day. second i think tied to the first, just the way we frame the questions that we're asking. the way that we are expecting difference from men and women. and third, with the cultural change that yes, there absolutely needs to be one. if there is, it's this idea of equal opportunity is equal responsibility. and it should be. you know, the same side of the debate, not to get too much into cultural society and gender, but you're seeing a big push more in the social sphere of equality in parenting. there needs to be equal parenting responsibilities. i think it's almost the opposite side of the same coin there, that we're kind of engaging in a

society -- and this goes a lot to your questions of generation where gender roles and equality in gender roles in society is becoming something that's being talked about a lot more. i would hope, and i think everybody here on the panel would hope that this responsibility really gets wrapped up into that conversation. and that it's reframed in a way that registering for the selective service isn't getting drug off to war and you're not going to die the next day. and even if you are called up in a draft, it's not guaranteed -- nobody is putting a rifle in your hand and sending you off to fight in a trench. that's not the way warfare is fought anymore. so we also -- with this this conversation need to evaluate what selected service is. hopefully this debate will bring up a lot of these citizenship questions again. what is your responsibility? >> i really enjoyed an article

kai wrote on this recently. one of the sub headings is it's time to take the emotion out of the debate. the especially depidemiologist excited. i'm the mother of a boy. i don't frame that selective service any different for him than i would for a daughter. by my bias is from having served and feeling strongly about the responsen't of service for men and for women. but it's an emotional debate that we're ten years past it being emotional anymore. >> all right. well, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately we're out of time. we need to take a break. but please, i bet the panelists will probably stay around. if you have a question, please ask them. if you're looking for refreshments, there's a cafeteria down that hall way. with that, please give a round of applause.

>> welcome back. our second panel will hopefully have a little more practical application for many of the students as its focus is on fighting irregular warfare with an integrated force. the focus here is on how gender integration actually shapes the

battlefield. with an ever changing threat environment, the integration of women into all military occupations provides the potential for unique skill sets to be leveraged and must be considered in future strategic planning. fighting irregular warfare with an integrated force. we have three panelists for this panel. our first one immediately on stage right is dr. mandy moore -- excuse me, mandy don hoe. she earned her doctorate at the university of denver. she specializes in international relations comparative politics, conflict resolution and peace studies in gender. mandy is an adjunct professor and internship coordinator for the bachelor of arts program of international studies at the e joseph koble school. she will speak on women as stakeholders, the value of participation. >> our next panelist, back with us again is ms. kayleigh ann

hunter. she's replacing dr. howard clark who wasn't able to be here. kai volunteered to come onboard. speaking about the same topic he was planning on, the role of the military in combatting domestic terrorist threats. and then finally -- oh, okay. sorry. our last panelist is lieutenant colonel jeanette haney. she is in the marine corps forces reserve, a cobra pilot and a combat veteran. she's a ph.d. candidate at george washington university studying domestic terrorism and inequality. with that, ladies, please begin.

i eelt be talking today about women as stakeholders. particularly from the lens of post conflict and peace building, or formal peace processes. the women of liberia mass action for peace which is a group of women both muslim and christian who are organized to end the violence in the second liberian civil war. they called for peace talks. in fact, they practically forced president charles taylor to sit down with rebel groups. and then led by a delegation of these women, they sat in on -- or rather staged a sit-in at the peace process in acrogahna, the process that would lead to the acra comprehensive peace

agreement signed august 18, 2003. . the women were not part of any formal delegation. they did not formally participate in the peace process. their role in that moment was to enforce the process itself. in fact, at one point, the women lined up around the building to keep the men from the rebel groups from climbing out of a when doe to escape participating in the process. so you begin to see the role of women in formal processes, why their attention -- why their participation is necessary. they're stake hollers. they have a vested interest of resolution of conflict in their lives. but they don't sit at the peace table very often. another case i'll get to is in northern ireland in which women did sit at the peace table. the report of the secretary

general on women, peace and security states that often women are excluded because they're not military leaders or political decision makers, or because they did not participate in the conflict as combatants. women are assumed to lack the appropriate expertise to negotiate, or they are left out owing to discrimination and stereotypical thinking. katherine o'rourke writes a peace called "walking the halls of power -- understanding women's participation in international peace and security" and she talks about five distinctive types of participation. the first is the role model argument in which women participate as role models. hey, look, we can do it, too. the second is the justice argument. participation as representation in which it's simply argued that it is fair and just that as 50% of the population, women have a role, have a right to

participate in these processes. the third is the larger dream argument. participations as deliberation in which it is argued that women's participation is process oriented, that women contribute differently to the process of peace negotiations. fourth is the expertise argument. participation as expertise. in which we need the expertise on issues that affect women's lives, the way that the conflict has been gendered roles or issues that don't generally get brought into peace processes otherwise. i'm sorry, i skipped number four. the different agenda argument. participation as inclusion. so securing the women -- or excuse me, securing the participation of women as beneficiaries of the policies inacted in the agreements. o'rourke argues these points of

participation fit on a spectrum, ranging from descriptive participation, that is representation by women in which women are physically a part of the process, and on the other end, substantive representation, or the representation of what we broadly characterize as women's issues, women's interests, on the other hand. o'rourke argues that more and more, we see the women peace and security agenda as focused on women's interests. so substantive participation, rather than on women's descriptive participation, which women are actively participating in these roles. so i would like to introduce sort of my second case study, the northern ireland women's coalition. in 1996, elections were announced to the northern ireland peace forum. the formal peace talks that would end the three decades of violence in northern ireland known as the troubles.

an sbising network of civil society women's organizations put in a phone call and said will there be women at the table? the very trite answer that they got back was sure, if they're elected. so women engaged in the process of forming a political party, the northern ire land women's coalition. now what was sfwresing about this particular peace process is that the voting for the parties that would be represented in the process occurred in sort of at two different levels. so members of political parties would run in their own districts the way we think of politics at home today. but there would also, in what we call a top up process. it's sort of comprehensive vote in which votes would be accumulated across northern ireland so that some of these smaller minority parties would also be represented. the process wasn't designed to

include women, but it certainly benefited them, as the northern ireland women's coalition ran against some of these larger well established parties, and of the ten parties that is right elected to sit at the peace talks, the northern ireland women's coalition, zsh i'll just call it the coalition for short. came in ninth out of tenth. so they had two women, a protestant woman and a catholic woman, monica mcwilliams were elected to sit at the peace talks. now, they were a challenge to what they sort of laughingingly referred to as abnormal politics. the normal politics of northern ireland, which was very divisive and focused on the vie len. -- violence. during the peace process, the chair would assign papers, homework really, for the delegates. those who had been elected to sit. now the members of the more well

established parties didn't take this homework very seriously. the women did. they met with their constituents, they met with their party members, they hired legal experts, they sought out academics in the field, they took very seriously these writing assignments. and so as a resulter the peace agreement that was signed in 1998 has a lot of the language from the coalition, because they took this process seriously earlier on this earlier stages when the rest of the parties, otherwise the men at the table, didn't. now, with the coalition, we can see all five of o'rourke's arguments for women's participation in different ways. first of all, the coalition as role models. women were proven capable of successfully organizing, managing a

women, these two elected women and their constituents in the party, became extremely news worthy. so these women not only showing themselves as role models of what women are capable of, but also became role models for what normal politics ought to look like. they showed really the childness of the aggressive and abusive behavior these men were carrying out. the second argument, the justice argument, the coalition was

representative of women, as well as a number of other constituents who really just wanted a cessation of the violence. so they weren't just being fair to representing women in this cause. they also served justice to other voices, alternative voices who had not been party to the violence, who had not been party to the conflict and who otherwise really just wanted an end to the troubles. the third argument, again from o'roark is the larger dream argument, which is participation as deliberation. women proved -- women of the coalition proved through their very process oriented, very deliberate political party style that there was an alternative to the violence of the conflict. that there was sort of this middle way in which a party could be representative, not just of one side or the other, but of a form of politics in which communities were accessed, in which local voices were

mobilized. and in which advice was sought for improving the situation of the larger community. the fourth argument, the different agenda argument, in which participation is seen as a form of inclusion, one of the proudest moments for the coalition, according to its members in the good friday agreement was the pacific forum. that was meant to be a body that would sit parallel to the new government. it will be made up of civil society members, community actors. it would serve as a media in terms of translating local community voices and needs towards policy in the new government, as well as serving as a sort of translator of new

policies and laws from the government back into the community. today, 78% of the community in voluntary sector in northern ireland is women. they make up this majority voice in a field that was developed largely as a counter-response to politics, which they saw as pure violence. so, including this civic voice was their method, their -- i was going to call it their baby, which is accurate, i think, considering how many of them really ran on issues of motherhood and wanting peace for their children. but they considered the pacific forum this access point, so it was part of a different agenda, a counter to the sort of pushing and pulling of power that was going on with the other parties. the other thing that the

coalition pushed was integrated education. in an environment today still nearly 20 years after the violence had ended in which catholic kids go to catholic schools. and protestant kids go to state-run, but otherwise protestant schools. so pushing an integrated education system was also part of this idea of a different agenda. so women's participation including alternative issues. the final argument is the expertise argument. women in the coalition were able to engage with expertise rather than having it speak for them. they engaged with expertise in terms of seeking out legal expertise, academic advice, and contributing to the peace agreement. they spoke on behalf of the expertise, rather than as o'roark sort of cautions us,

that expertise on what women's issues are, what women's interests are, has a tendency to speak for women. so the coalition flips this form of participation in giving voice to the expertise, but letting it -- speaking for it, rather than letting it speak for them. so there's still agents in that expertise. and in this process of forming a party, participating in the peace process, they became professional experts in their own right. formal peace processes bring together key stakeholders in conflict, resolving tension, trying to end violence. stakeholders are usually characterized by their capacity of decision makers, or represents of participants in combat roles or warring parties. as such, women are weg regularly left out of such processes. yet women experience and

participate in conflict differently. their participation in peace processes then, if all five of these forms are present, can be achieved and can desperately -- or excuse me. descriptively and substantively change peace processes for much more inclusive arrangements at their conclusion. so, thank you. >> thank you, mandi, and hello again. what i'm going to talk about here is to bring -- mandi very well described why you need women at the table, and what it really does to ensure a more lasting peace. and i think that's a big part of it, the goal is really to have a lasting peace. and to bring this back to the really counterinsurgency and irregular warfare context, if you look at the data from the correlative war, or the ucdp

conflict data set, which are the two biggest, if you're not data nerds in here, like collection of, formally declared wars, but military conflicts that are out there, find that the overwhelming majority of irregular warfare, which is defined as either a state fighting a non-state actor, or multiple non-state actors fighting within a state, are brought to an end by negotiated settlements. there's very rarely a formal, all-out military victory or formal surrender that is achieved in this context. a lot of people in this room have experience with trying to figure out what the end game is and we are learning more and more through the past 15 years that some sort of negotiation, and whether you call it a ceasefire, or peace process, or

state-building, whatever term you want to put on that, what you need is multiple parties with multiple stakeholders to all sit down and talk to each other, to actually get these things to finish. and if you're looking for some good analysis on this, both barbara walter and andrew kidd have some very good analysis of the data that's already out there, as to how to get different parties and disagreeing parties to actually come together. that's not as much what i'm going to focus on now, but as to what integration really means for this process and what gender integration in the actual battle space of counterinsurgency and in the battle space of irregular warfare, means for getting the right people to come to the table, and also ensuring that women are seen as viable stakeholders, that, as mandi pointed out in the northern ireland case, where women were seen as legitimate, they were

there for a legitimate reason, rather as just the a window dressing, that we brought a woman to the table. you get a much more lasting peace. and so my argument is really that bringing women into the counterinsurgency battle space matters for this process. as we briefly discussed in the q & a from the last panel, it got brought in as to really, what's the purpose of integrating women as opposed to doing what some of the other larger military powers, as in china and russia, are doing now. and i think the first thing to really highlight with this, we need to fight the wars in the battle space where the wars are being fought. if we look at what counterinsurgency and what irregular warfare looks like on the ground, as you are fighting within and among populations. you're not having infantry troops lining up on either sides of trenching and shooting each other and whoever kills more people wins and then you

surrender, any longer. you're fighting in people's towns. you're fighting in people's villages. you're fighting enemies that you're not exactly sure, you know, are enemies one day and your bread seller the next day. this is just the reality. and even if you take it outside of iraq or afghanistan and you look at conflicts that are currently going on in africa and in other parts of south asia, what you're not seeing, large infantry on infantry-type battles anymore. what you're seeing are small-scale, non-state actors, raising violence, either against the state or against another group, and ultimately you need a way to get them to the table. the most important factor in counterinsurgency, or if you're an insurgency group, is civilian buy-in, and if you look at the data from what we've been in afghanistan with cultural

support teams and ellen has probably much more antidotes on this, of them actually talking then just the raw data number that i was able to;q-ucollect. groups where women were involved, side by side with men, in the entire clear hold and build operation. so they went in, they fought alongside men to get taliban out. they then reinforced these villages and taught the women how to be stakeholders in their village. how to both ensure their own personal physical security, as well as their village's economic security. and then were very involved in the new leadership, you know, established in these communities. you have not seen a resurgence of taliban in these communities. similarly in a few case studies in sierra leone where you had norwegian peacekeepers who were involved in the entire process.

and they brought women in and they taught women how to fight physically and secure themselves economically. you did not see a resurgence of extremist violence. so what you have here is a really three-pronged phenomenon. you have one where women are setting the examples of being equals with men. where you have western forces or stabilizing forces, from a neighboring country, you have men and women fighting alongside each other from day one. you have the precedent set and the example set that there are legalitaryian expectations and that brings women into the community, into the fight, into the discussion of what does security and what does stability mean for me when you leave. and how do we ensure the stability and security when we leave. and you legitimize women as stakeholders in their own

security, as stakeholders in their economic running, and you legitimize women as political stakeholders. so that's really number one. the second thing that happens with women as integrated forces, you end up with actually violent mitigation. work done by jason lyle, who is a professor at jail university who is looking at counterinsurgency in irregular war ner in particular, shows that pure violent military tactics have an inverse strategic effect to counterinsurgency. that going into an area that you're trying to win the hearts and minds, if you go in and just start killing people, and you go in with the goal of, we're going to take over x terrain and hold it and conquer it and essentially have that more imperialistic view of military from back in world war ii days,

you end up with strategic defeats. you may get tactical victories. you may take a hill, a village, a building, however you want to say it, but you intend to enflame a population against you and against your principles. and in counter insurgency, the goal is to get the population to not support the insurgency. to do that, you need a holistic approach to your fighting tactics. you need the complex decision-making that goes beyond just, let's destroy this building because it may be used as an enemy stronghold, to, what are the long-term consequences? and what are the long-term effects of this military action?

and it has been seen in the units that had either lioness programs attached to them in iraq, or in afghanistan, that you got more of this long-term, tactical -- or this long-term thinking is brought into the tactical level. so the tactics of, how do we ensure both our own security, the security of the village, married up with the long-term strategic goals of, we need to win the hearts and minds, to simplify it, of this village. so again you see women as a constraining force for the use of excessive force and excessive violence. additionally on the side of the constraining force, to take it just out of the iraq and afghanistan context, if you look at the data on excessive use of sexual violence, and elizabeth would and reginald put together a phenomenal data set that goes back to pre-world war ii, of all

instances of rape during war, whether it was by soldiers, and again, there's documentation issues and we don't have to get into issues of data reliability, because i'm sure there tends to be more than is reported, whether it was soldiers using rape as a women during interrogation, during, you know, just when you coveranquer villa you see the presence of women in units, peacekeeping units, in rebel groups, that the use of sexual violence as a tool diminishes quite a bit. and the use of sexual violence in war is definitely outside the scope of this panel, but very briefly, it creates a lot of

cultural barriers to reintegration and most conflict settling. so i'm happy to discuss more of that in a q & a if you want, but really the bottom line, it comes down to the fact that women serve as a mitigating factor, which creates one less stumbling block to reintegration, post-combat settlement, and to re-establishing legitimate and lasting peace. and then to end on a note that dove tails off this, there's a lot of, i think, popular stories. to play off this whole idea of emotion that comes up, that is always very prevalent in this, where you'll hear reports coming out of colombia, with women in the farc, or in turkey in iraq, with women in the pkk, or even about u.s. soldiers, how the females are the most brutal. you never want to be captured by a woman because she's going to torture you far worse than any

male would, or you don't want to be killed by a woman because you're going to go to hell. and again, this really brings up a lot of cultural constructs around what men and women should do. and if you strip again and pull back some of my own research and data bringing into this, in the pkk or the farc, that women and men actually do the exact same thing. like they have a very strict, this is how you interrogate a subject, this is how you treat prisoners, and there's no evidence that women deviate from that script. however, the perception is that if a woman is doing something like this, it must be far worse. it's more insulting as a man, that a woman could do this to me. it opens up a larger cultural conversation about whether it's a pro or con, i don't have an answer to, but i want to throw

that out there, that, again, it plays to this emotion and rhetoric that you see used on both sides, that women must be so much worse because they are some sort of deviant in this role. but to pull back to the counterinsurgency side, why we see women as being so important, they are essential facilitators for bringing women as prominent stakeholders into lasting peace. and i'll turn it over to deb. >> good morning. so you have to bear with me for a minute here. as a marine officer, i felt a lot more comfortable hearing about and thinking about the info being shared on the first panel, but this is my research area. i've taken it in a slightly different direction than what was talked about on the first panel. we heard about skill sets that women bring and capabilities and how diverse groups are well equipped to handle diverse

challenges and they're all true and good things, but i'm taking it in a different direction. a little bit of background, i'm a cobra pilot. so i grew up being the only woman in my squadron and constantly hearing, i've never flown with a woman before, and it was this separation, like i was expected to be different. so in grad school, when i first started, a long time ago, i decided as a joke to look at the impacts of gender inequality on different state security questions and to my surprise, i found that there's obviously evidence out there that it exists, that women do have a different effect in leadership and gender inequality has an effect on a variety of state security issues. and a lot of you are nodding your heads. it was surprising to me, as a cobra pilot, no, i'm just like the guys. there's nothing they can do that i can't. and took some of this emotional -- not emotional, but more as a marine, with this

touchy-feely stuff out of the equation. as it turns out, i was wrong back then and i'm learning more every time. right now, what i've been looking at is the impact of gender inequality, not necessarily on face value, on its face, but the impact of gender inequality on domestic terrorism, as an enabling condition. you know, terrorism is very relevant, it has been for the last 15 years, more so than it was earlier. and we still don't fully understand the factors that cause it, what brings it about, what enables it to continue. we look at it from a supply side generally. sometimes a demand side. a lot of our programs and policies that are set to counter terrorism and violent extremism are set up from the supply side angle. so i'm going to talk a little bit about that, but what i really like to do at the end is bring it back full circle and talk about why an integrated military is uniquely suited to addressing the enabling conditions that go into domestic

terrorism, specifically in this instance, jernt inequality. talk about my initial findings in my early years of looking at this. i found valerie hudson's work to be informative. mary cappely has done great work as well. what i found later through a classmate, a naval academy -- he's made it his life's work for three specific reasons in africa. they started including women as counterterrorism agents of a form to counter terrorism, but they're doing it on a very low-grade level. and then i started learning about violent extremism and usip's program, state has some as well, that talk about using women to counter violent

extremism, and they're seeing some success. so i wanted to learn more. i found that academically there's very little support one way or the other for gender inequality for domestic terrorism threats. if you extend the security sphere, you can see where the lines get drawn, but it's far from clear. so i started looking at it, and interestingly enough, i found that, so far -- and i'm still going through the research in my dissertation, this is what my dissertation is on. but my initial results are showing a strong, significant support for the idea that women in the political sphere, the greater the impact, or the greater the allowance of women to have an impact in the spl political sphere, the lower the rate of domestic terrorism in that country. i didn't expect to see that clear of a result early on, and it makes me all the more excited to take it down the next road, which is the second half of this.

i mentioned how a lot of our counterterrorism programs rely on supply-side dynamics. they want to get at the source. what creates terrorists? what builds terrorists? how do we get women involved to stop would-be terrorists from being radicalized? and in some ways, i think we're looking at that wrong. the supply side will always exist. we'll always as women and men in this world see grievances, see people take the grievances down the path to violence and i don't know that playing whacka mole for the rest of civilization we can ever stop terrorists from being born. what we can do is create conditions that keep them from developing and keep radicalization from growing. i don't know if any of you are familiar with mark tes ler's work from the late 1990s, but he did fascinating work on the role of feminist forms and values or the acceptance of feminist norms and values among both men and

women and the impacts of those on conflict and on the use of violent conflict, and he specifically looked at the arab/israeli conflict and found that both men and women who thought women should have equal rights were less supportive of the use of violence, of the use of military force, and were more interested in finding alternative means to conflict resolution. i found that fascinatinfascinat. it's in some ways reflected my experience as a marine and i'm hoping it will influence my research into domestic terrorism. but the role of norms and outcomes in a society that is more open to equal opportunity for men and women and to the inclusion of women of every level, both the peace process and throughout the security sphere, that society has more options at its disposal for

conflict resolution. kai mentioned populace buy-in, enabling conditions of a society to foster or help prevent terrorism. chief among those in my mind and in the research i'm finding, an acceptance of violence and the normalization of violence plays a really big role in that. so by including women at a descriptive level, we also can start to effect the way cultures accept traditionally feminist norms and values, less aggression, more peaceful conflict resolution. we all know as female marines that we're not all very nurturing and we're not all universally pacific in our nature -- part of me is laughing right now. but those things become more accepted culturally on a wider scale, as the idea that women are worthy of respect and are worthy of inclusion at the highest levels and bring

something to the table as that becomes more accepted. to tie that into how an integrated military can better address the domestic terrorism threat, i have a little story from something that happened last summer. i have a 5-year-old son and two older daughters. we were at a picnic and i heard a friend of mine, who is a really good friend, been a friend for 25 years, he's got a son the same age. his son ran up and was crying about something. and he turned to his son and said, stop crying like a little girl, cut it out right now. and it took me a minute. i didn't say anything right then. i thought about it over and over again, a million times. but as his son and my son age, which one will be more open to different outcomes? and to different methods of conflict resolution? clearly there's a lot more to that, it's a simplified version of that story. but it's just an idea of how a cultural change within the military can also impact our ability to deal with other

cultures and to relate to them. in a peacekeeping environment, those factors become downright critical to success. an integrated military with women included at all levels and that affords respect to women on all levels will be a lot more accepting of traditionally feminine characteristics. whether or not all women have those characteristics and will accept different options and outcomes more. so that's kind of it in a nutshell and i look forward to your questions. >> all right, thank you. so as we open up the question and answer period again. just remind everyone that we're still on broadcast television, so when you wait for the microphone from one of the interns, state your first name and affiliation. so, questions from the audience, please. do you see one over here?

oh, i'm sorry. dr. kat fisher. >> hello. thank you. i'm dr. kat fisher. i work at ft. bragg. thank you you all very much for your comments and presentations. they're very helpful. i had one that came from the first panel, but it also came up in terms of what a lot of you spoke to, and my interest and kind of question and concern is this realm between masculinity and femininity in the military context and out of it. in the context of integration, in terms of peace process, negotiations or military combat units, how we don't inadvertently essentialize assumed constructed notions of gender in the name of equality. because you hear it in terms of how the questions are phrased, in terms of how explanations are made, in terms of just a natural, oh, that just is. and how we can kind of deal with that, and again, i think it's

not exclusive to the military role, but perhaps more pronounced in a particular kind of way. so if you can speak to that, thank you. >> i can, and i know jeanette can as well because we both spent time thinking and writing about this. and this is, i think, one of the reasons that both of us got into the course of research we did, is because in both of our personal lives where we were both the only women in our unit, like the first in our squadron to do the job that we did as cobra pilots, that we very much had this idea, that don't look at me as a woman. i'm just another pilot. treat me just like another pilot and that's the way it is. but then, on the flip side, we get out and we get really emerged in this research and we find more and more evidence that, well, a lot of these things that were culturally associated with women, whether it's nurturing or motherhood or thinking about security issues

that are more than just physical state killing security, or what are really important for lasting peace and security, so how do we really shape this tension to where it is. i think the biggest thing that integrating women does, is that it opens it up for individual worth and individuals to be looked at for what they bring to the table, rather than necessarily assuming a lot of these -- whether you want to call them essentialized or culturally constructed notions of masculinity and femininity. and where it is very true that each of us brings very unique perspectives to whatever our profession happens to be based on how we're socialized and whether that's we're socialized as a woman, we're socialized based on our religion, we're socialized based on our race, we're socialized based on our socio-economic status.

so we all, i think, carry layers of cultural socialization. and sue and ellen both spoke very well to how that actually makes forces stronger and how you need to think more diverse because of it, but i think one of the things that integrating women does here in whatever form that takes, whatever an individual, however that individual woman chooses to wrestle with her own masculinity and femininity issues and we can both speak to that very well on a personal level, but what it does, it opens the door for individual worth and individual expectations and also then individual exceptionalism. so one of the biggest things that i've looked at and a little bit of my research on cfts in afghanistan, but more working with female rebel groups in latin america, is that the presence of women in these fighting roles then empowered other women to do things outside

of the fighting roles, because they saw women fighting alongside men. so it's a very -- women fighting is a very overt break to what those gender roles actually are. if you look at the most sort of black and while essentialization of men and women, men are the protectors and women need to be protected. that's, i think, the big duality there. so when women take on that role of being the protector and do it very overtly, it's a very visual, very obvious break in that norm. and what it then does is frequently just open the door for women who felt constrained by other norms to say, no, i can be a politician. i don't have to accept -- no, i can take responsibility for my own physical security, for my own economic security, for my own stake in what happens to my family.

and so however that plays out, i think that's where this integration has its biggest effect in the long-term roles of these counterinsurgency environments where women are becoming more and more active. i don't know if you want to -- >> and i got the gist of the question, and obviously from kai, i agree with her answer, but i have a hard time hearing sometimes, so i think i got most of what you said. if i'm missing something, let me know. it's mostly this ear. anyway, i do want to add one thing. it's not just whether or not women specifically have the qualifications or the characteristics that make them uniquely women, you know, at the aggregate sense. kai and i, as she mentioned throughout our careers, you try to make yourself just the cobra pilot, not the woman. so there's such a wide variety. but the more important thing that comes from integration within the u.s. military and internationally at every level, is that you're just bringing more choices to the table. as worthy of respect, as worthy

of consideration. you're opening up that box to more options. and as the u.s. military, because of our ubiquitousness and because of how much attention is put on us in many parts of the world in our presence, we have the unique opportunity by integrating to make cultural statements as well to other countries to suffer. and that's huge. that's something we've seen in small bits in iraq and afghanistan, and i think has some fantastic potential. does that answer the question? >> yeah, thank you. >> if i can, also, we've done a really good job, i think, of explaining the value of moving away from that essentialism. it's obvious in the way you framed your question, i think. but we've also seen really fascinating cases of the essentialized roles that women are expected to play being extremely empowering on their

own. right? we've seen women as mothers be very political active -- be very politically active, participating in conflict in ways that we don't expect that are not traditional, but they're doing that by mobilizing that essential identity, that sort of prescribed role. and so i think one of the things that i sort of wrestle with in my own work is also not diminishing what those essential roles can do for us, even as we're trying to move away from them, even as we're trying to accept their -- let me say this a different way. recognizing the potential for value without being limited, maybe, is a better way of trying to get at. there's really interesting ways in which the essentialism has worked for women. the role that the coalition

played, the case i was giving earlier in northern ireland, a number of the women who participated were participating very vocally and overtly as mothers and as women acting within their traditional roles in their community. but the legacy that it left behind was really fascinating. all of these traditionally very male dominated political parties recognized there was a women's vote, that there was capacity there, and so they began bringing women into their own party leadership and getting them elected into roles following that. so even the sort of empowerment that came from working within those essentialized roles initially, enabled a sort of break from them more broadly in the generation of political leadership that followed. so i think they're also an alternative use to how we frame that tension, i think.

>> can i add one thing to that too? that reminded me of something else as well. if you're envisioning the u.s. military in northern ireland helping to broker any kind of peace agreement, but let's talk about how we view, like if you send an infantry unit over there to do some peacekeeping work, and they don't have respect for women's roles and values and what women might bring to the table, but you have a northern ireland women's coalition and you have women who are primarily acting as mothers, as activists as well, the amount of respect that will be accorded to those women and the amount of attention they will receive will be very different, depending on the norms accepted and the levels of respect accepted within the unit that's over there. that's part of how an integrated military can play such a huge

role in this. >> all right, thank you. another question? over here again. >> good morning. my question has to deal'hn withe best way to implement integration of women in a traditional society. so should it be the holistic approach where we focus on education and have women teach their children, so when they grow up, it's more of a generational approach where they'll be more liberal and open, or should it be more like a transformative occupation approach where we take over a country and we say, now you need to have this certain amount of women inside your government? which way do you think would be the best way to do it? >> so, in what i've seen, evidence wise, so it sorta depends. and this is, i think, a question where it's very good to have a lot of dialogue between academic

and practitioners, because it comes down to measuring outcomes. and the evidence would point to the first case being actually the best way to do it, education and socialization, so that you learn and it becomes more organic. so that as norms become more accepted, as more liberal norms with regards to gender roles and tolerance roles become more accepted, you organically create a society in which women are viewed more as equals. however, the way that metrics are typically measured is that we say things like, this becomes a success when we have 30% of the parliament being women. and so there's a few problems with that. one is that it's a very artificial measure. you set sort of an arbitrary number and say, when this happens, then we have enough. the second is that you don't

necessarily get and i thate using this word, but for lack of a better word, but the right women in the job. if you say, i need 30 women to do this and you pick 30 women at random, there's no guarantee that you're getting women with the skill set, the desire, the experience to perform the job well. what also then frequently ends up happening, you get a lot of co-optation by political party elites and this was a big problem that you actually saw in kuwait with the introduction of a quota system. they made a big deal, we want to open this experience to women. we bought into this literature that having women matters. but what you did, you had the political parties saying, you, you, you, you, and you are going to represent us and you just represent us. and they're not representing their own experiences or any

sort of bottom-up organic desire, they're just per pet wa uating the status quo of the ruling party, because you become puppets. and rwanda speaks to this as well, the power of organic change. you had a situation in rwanda where, because of the horrific genocide, women had to be political activists, to run the military in the post genocide. so you had women having to take on these roles. and they had to figure it out because there was really no -- there wasn't this structure put in that we need this amount of women in here. but as a result, you see their children who are the generation that are coming up now and becoming the leaders, that they learn from observation, they learn from what sort of education, you know, these women

felt was important to impart, that it becomes organic. now it's not having women in for the sake of having women in. we have individuals who have seen what women had to do, and seen what sort of security concerns need to be in play and fully internalize that. and that's what's become a more security and stabilizing force. and then the other thing that it does, i think having pure gender quotas, and the respect, there are at least as many males who can speak for the benefits of respecting women's rights and respecting autonomy and individuality as there are women who can. and that's largely in part to socialization. and that really the gender integration comes down to being able to respect individual abilities and as jeanette said really well, putting more

options on the table, and seeing that there are more ways that women can act than just this sort of essentialized version. but unfortunately, whenever we go in and do anything, as a military, in particular, like, you need results, and you need to come back with these sort of metrics that you hit a, b, and c, and now we measure them. and this is, i think, perpetually going to be a problem, when you have to have actionable goals, like you have to say, we did one, two, and three, and did a good job and it's stable enough because x percent of the women are in the parliament. we had x amount of women at the negotiation. we hit the u.n. resolution obligation. we hit what we set out for count count count countersnugscy obligations, but it doesn't set out for the next election, or the next

generation, that they're being ought actual integration or expansion opportunities. >> you can see it with the millennial generation coming in and taking over the lower level to mid-level leadership levels and their attitude of don't ask, don't tell, and gender integration are pretty different than the senior leadership's views and it's been interesting to see. but it's an example of how organic change is good, but at the same time, sometimes you need a little push to remind those in charge that there is a push, that there is something else going on out there that they might not see. >> i will also say that social change has to come from within. we have goals and we have measures and policies to promote the kinds of change that we want, but we don't always respond the way people want us to. so the changes that we're hoping

for are not always the change that we get unless we have and we've talked about this language a lot -- a buy-in. the case of rwanda is a really interesting one, because the change that was forced upon the existing population in rwanda by virtue of the genocide was not a positive one. it was not something that the survivors would have chosen or would have thought. but as a result, we do have this really amazing exemplar of women in the legislature. but that didn't necessarily correlate with a -- or reflect a change in the existing social expectations, right? because what we're seeing is, yes, rwanda has this -- i mean, just fantastic number of women in the legislature, and yet at the same time, rwanda has a president that has consistently sought and taken and

re-appropriated more and more power for himself, has sought to continue his power in the presidency at the expense of any potential change or empowerment that being a part of a legisl e legislatulegislat legislature might otherwise have conferred on this generation of women who played these, you know, for the first time, very public, very official roles. and so what it means to have that change truly taking effect and to be long-lasting is -- really has to be driven from within. and it doesn't always happen the way we want or hope that it will. >> thank you. another question. all right, well, i have one. my question is about the role of women, in particular mothers, in counterradicalization and deradicalization issues. by way of context, last june,

ceasea conducts an event in iman, jordan, with over 40 alumni from the middle east, southern europe, africa, and southeast asia. one of the topics in the conference was on radicalization in particular, how that point of radicalization with foreign fighters leaving countries of those that were there to go fight with the islamic state or daesh. and in discussions, it came out that in particular, for muslim countries, that the role of the mother, more so than any other family member, influenced either the radicalization or the counter-radicalization of both young men and young women, family members. so in your own research, have you seen something similar, if so, are there ways that the united states and our partner nations can leverage that role in positive ways. >> yes. absolutely i've seen it. the mother schools that save has been developing have shown some levels of success. and those basically brought in

community-level leaders and brought in women and taught them how to recognize the signs of growing radicalization within families and what to do if they notice it, what to do if they found it. they're still very small, very low level, and only a couple different areas, but they've had some is success. the usip, women preventing extremist violence program, has also done similar work. they've involved women as mothers interacting with local police forces or security forces to recognize signs of growing extremism. i think the small successes are encouraging. i think we have yet to figure out how to harness that on a wider scale. that's where i'm looking with my research. because it's going to vary by culture in huge ways. women in northern ireland will by and large probably be -- find accesses easier or gathering together and discussing and meeting and becoming activists easier there than in other countries. we can all think of a few.

so it varies culture to culture, but there's definitely an association there, we just need to figure out how to capitalize on that. >> you can come to isa and read my paper. but so i did a little bit of work for this paper, looking at the radicalization of immigrant communities and really the role that the mother plays there, looked at microlevel familial gender roles and i was finding that there wasn't much there. but something that i have found that hasn't really been addressed, i don't think, very well in all of these anti-radicalization programs, especially when you see kids who live in the west. you see this really big in europe, in britain and france, who are leaving and going to daesh and that's where i think a lot of this work is really coming from. what i found and it's right now still very, like, rough kor larry data and i don't have a

really robust data set, so one of the reasons i want to go to isa is to try and make it better, but in communities where children saw their mothers targeted because of their culture and because of their religious beliefs, so where there was a lot of essentially very anti-islamic sentiment, especially as muslims, you saw a very high instance of radicalization of their children. and that it became almost this reverse protective mechanism where children grow up expecting like their mother to take care of them and it becomes this very natural bond that you grow up and your mother is the first person to really care for you, really take care of you. well, what happens when the culture into which you're supposed to come to get a better life. they were sold this idea as immigrants, we're moving to the west because it's going to be

better, and now you see that culture, particularly targeting your mother, the person that is supposed to be your protector, your care-taker. you know, your sort of world, when that person, and that identity becomes targeted, there becomes almost this knee-jerk radicalization response. and this is, i think, a radicalization dynamic that hasn't really been looked at very much. but needs to be addressed, i think, on a larger scale when we talk about what is integration, is it gender integration, or are we talking about increased tolerance? and there is a lot of evidence that increased gender tolerance leads to cultural tolerance and religious tolerance, but are we having the wrong response? and what breeds radicalization? is radicalization really a response to being othered so much that you don't feel like you have any other recourse to air your grievances, you know, the supply side. but i think this idea of the role of mothers and especially

when mothers are threatened, it hits at the very much supply side and demand side. you're creating an environment where children tend to feel helpless, but they have this other option and i think some of these radicalized groups have done really well at marketing themselves. like they're great at recruiting. they're really good at reaching these children who feel very isolated. so looking at that role of how, i think, not just the role of mothers, as jeanette said, how to spot the signs of radicalization and prevent radicalization, but as the west, what are we doing to assimilate familial units, and so that facilitation can happen, so women have the power and the ability to spot and prevent

radicalization, as opposed to their targeting being the catalyst for it. >> i thought of something else too. this keeps happening. and on the same note, you're talking about the u.s. military coming in and recognizing the signs of -- or recognizing communication from women in different societies about the signs of growing radicalization. an integrated military that can understand the roles of women in those societies is better equipped to relate to that as well. but also, if we don't do a better job as a country and internationally, in harnessing the role of women in more traditional societies, terrorist groups are already doing that, and they do it fairly well. they'll come into an area and pull all the women and say this is your duty as a mother, to push your son in this direction, to send this message. so if we don't counter that, if we don't offer a different narrative or some version of that out there, then we've lost part of the battle. >> thank you. other questions from the

audience? right here in front. >> thank you. i'm jen taylor, i'm one of the external guests. i work as a consultant to dod with a clearing. and i wanted to pick up on the thread you were putting out there related to mothers and the protectivism and how do you think the migration waves we're seeing throughout europe might impact that in the decades to come? and is there any intervention that we can make in the near term that will prevent sort of the trajectory going forward? >> so i think that's the million dollar question. and i wish i was more of an anthropologist now to trace it. but, so i think there's a few factors. one is that we don't have, i think, a really good harness on how big the migration, both the

migration and the refugee problem are. because i think they are two very different issues that sometimes get sort of conflated together when we're just like, oh, there's more middle easterners heading to europe or to the u.s. before. we need to separate them out. there's the migratory group that very intentionally is saying, you know, we want to go work somewhere, we want to go live in europe to have better opportunities for x, y, or z. whether it's themselves or their families, they feel that there's a better -- the whole sort of american dream or western dream narrative, you're going to come and have better opportunities, better education, and it's going to be a better life. so that's one set. and then on the other side, you have the refugee and the asylum seerks who because of the perpetual conflicts that have been going on, really honestly have nowhere else to go. it's not that they necessarily

want to leave syria or want to leave iraq, there's just physically no place -- they don't have a home any longer. it's been gone. so i think we need to look at those two separate issues and i think one is with the migration side, it really just comes from, this is a sort of different conversation with immigration and actually you accepting that immigration makes people stronger and they bring different skills and different traits and those are important. but on what i think your question is, this refugee and asylum crisis, that it's building and building and building, to the capacity where host countries aren't going to be able to handle it. and so what i think -- and whether these people don't necessarily want to leave their home, they want to be back there, they have roots they want to return to. and so what i think the bigger question needs to be is, what is the, like, role of the

international community in ensuring that you have a fruitful lasting negotiated settlement in places like syria, or that you are able to put in programs to address the radicalization issues that are going on in iraq right now, to ensure that it doesn't become worse. so how do you get them, you know, how do you get the islamic state to the table? how do you get, in africa, how do you get boko haram to come to the table and how do you negotiate those things? because that's the first question, if that can happen. and this brings in something that mandi can probably speak to a little bit better. but assuring the role of the asylum seekers in the negotiation process. i was able to see the transcripts of a meeting with a bunch of syrian women who are now in turkey. and these were all very --

they're university-educated women. they all had professional jobs in syria before they were forced to leave, because they just didn't -- they had no place to live or no place to work anymore. and they were talking about why the negotiations failed. and one of them finally brought up, nobody will talk to us, nobody will include us. we were economists and bankers and university professors and parliamentarians, like, we have skills. but they're so focused on who is actually fighting, that they're not reaching out to people who have, you know, as mandi like mentioned, this expertise in this set. so i think figuring that problem out is going to help prevent this from becoming -- because you're seeing the refugee population becoming a radicalization problem as well now. because really they have nowhere else to go. and it's the way -- and again i think this goes to how good a lot of these radical groups are at actually their propaganda and

their recruitment ability, they're saying, we'll offer you a solution, we'll offer you a place when we win. and that's something that they're doing that no other side is doing. no other side is saying, well, if you come join us, we'll ensure that you have a socio-economic role when this conflict is over. and unfortunately what the u.s. and other international militaries have been doing, they've been so focused on having the right side militarily win that they've neglected to really engage with who the key stakeholders should be when the conflict is terminated. >> all right, good, thank you. questions, anyone? all right. all right, up here in front, please. doesn't seem to be any. >> hi, ambassador jones. edward jones and i spent about

33 years in the middle east. but i think you hit on something in your question that's really important, and it gets back -- first of all, before i start on this, did everyone read debra tanner's washington post editorial on women in leadership and the essential conflict there because we like, you know, we like our leaders to be forceful, strong, and occasionally angry. we like our women to be gentle, self-deprecating and not really too angry, like our mothers. we all have mothers and we love our mothers, most of us. [ laughter ] and that leads me into what i was going to say about the middle east, though. and i think anyone who spent any amount of time here and i think the ambassador would agree with me on this, and who spent a lot of times in the houses, in the homes, and that has been the advantage of being a female officer in the foreign service, we spend a lot of time in the homes with the females as well.

the question is spheres of influence. in the home, they are tremendously powerful and they make all the decisions and often jokingly refer to the men as the donkeys who do the work and bring home the money, but the mothers make all the decisions. even more importantly, what we have to realize, in these disrupted coupultures, in libya where i served, the only sphere where the government did not intrude, was inside the home. that was the only sphere where there was comfort, and also where the family honor factor is so important. and the down side of that is the women's independence. because the women's honor is so important. we can talk later about kuwait, because i was at ambassador to qui kuwait as well. i think the kuwaiti women are the strongest, the most independent, make their choices. but nonetheless, in all these

societies, the home still remains the center of gravity for everything. so now with the refugee flows, you've created all kinds of free electrons and that's really dangerous. because these women come, they can't establish the same center of gravities for these families, for these kids and that's something we need to focus on a lot. they know when their kids are misbehaving a lot of times and they get that. but we need to help them create centers again, within their cultural norms that help them to keep an eye on and keep tabs on all these free electrons. because i agree with you about the young women, their next generation. they don't know how to cook. they were still going home. and now they're disrupted and we're not plugging into that as well. so it's really a tough situation, but it's an important one. i'm glad it came up, i'm glad you raised that question, thank you. >> i want to say one more thing on that as well. the other thing about the

refugee crisis that we're not really talking about, i'd be very interested to look into and to hear about, is, how much of an impact, if any, external cultures are having on the refugees as they go? like that would be a fascinating topic. that would teach us about how we can use the military, how we can use different countries' militaries to solve problems in the world today. we're not talking about it. and obviously the level of influence will depend on the towns, the countries and the regions we're talking about, but that's something that i wish we had discussed more. >> any other panelists want to comment? all right, i think we don't have any other questions. so let's join in a round of applause for our panelists. [ applause [ applause ] so dr. bell is going to close us out with some remarks, and if i could have the other panelists from the earlier session make

their way up, because we have a parting gift for you after his remarks. [ inaudible ] parting gift. [ laughter ] a token of our appreciation. you can come slowly. just to recap, hey, first of all, i want to thank all the panelists and all the participants who came. i found it incredibly enlightening. and some of you may not realize what you learn from this and you'll find out later when you're in some tough jobs, you'll go, wow, i really needed that insight. i think it's essential that we all assess the experiences we've had, particularly the last 15 or 20 years, understand those, but also chart a path to the future. and intellectually our own military likes to forget the lessons of -- fill in the blank -- vietnam, or the last decade of war before we're even out of it, and we haven't even grasped the way ahead. so i think even understanding

what we've done is important but the way ahead is crucial, unless somehow we're going to merge into a very lucky and peaceful world, where everyone's kind of happily living together and the challenges of irregular warfare and radicalization are gone. i'm afraid we're not going to live in that world. it would be great, but we might as well prepare for the world that we're in. hey, in the world of ceasea, our goal is to take everybody out of their intellectual comfort zone and give them the schools, the ability to succeed, meet the expectations we have, even if you don't think you can when you first come here. right, fellas? international fellas? you've achieved more than you thought possible. i thought our comments about expectations were huge and the power of diverse teams and diverse perspectives. it's important to step back, whether it's a gender question or some other question, what are the diverse perspectives that we're missing, that could give us different approaches or more

creative solutions to the problem? because frankly, in some cases, what we've been doing hasn't necessarily achieved the resounding successes that we keep claiming we've had. and so this is an important way to think about it, whether again it's gender, religion, generation, ethnicity, sub cultural groups, tribes, you name it, how do we include those in a constructive way to move forward as we build the approaches that are going to endure forever? we talked about expectations matter. that's a key thing. how do leaders set the expectations, how do they set their organizations up for success? and then how do they recognize within their organizations the official standards, the informal standards, sometimes they're different. how do they then root those out as they go forward? in the discussion of standards, which we kind of got to a little bit, but could go much deeper,

from my experience, we always talked about the standards limiting, but we never looked at the aspects in the case of women, where they may have been superior. for example, i remember a subject back in the day when i was a lieutenant, that it came out and suggested that women had superior hand-eye coordination and dexterity and would make better tank gunners than men. oh, man, we didn't like that. because it kind of fit against that. well, of course then as you do your force design, one option was, we could have an automatic loader in the tank, in which case, upper body strength wasn't that important. the other one was, oh, no, we can't have an auto loader, that's too soviet union. the technology is great. but instead you had this justification based on upper body strength, rather than the key element of the tank, i would submit, was the actual ability to put steel on target.

so did i need a better loader or a better gunner? i probably wanted a better gunner. but it was interesting there, what we called standards, we sometimes had a selective approach. so step outside of your own bias. this is an important way to think about some of these issues. the next, organizational cultures, we're all part of them, whether it's a service culture, or a community culture, or a branch culture, and then leaders may try to change those organizations, but ultimately there are spoilers at the subordinate level. people told they couldn't travel. yes, they're supportive at the policy level, at the senior level. but below that, there's some missing element. and how do you as leaders, identify that, follow through to make sure that your campaign's going to succeed? and this is all your responsibility. now, i'm reminded in this regard

in andrew j., he was the superintendent at west point. sue will remember him. ellen. came in out of retirement, was a retired four-star general, had been the supreme commander of europe. came in out of retirement as a three-star general, imagine that, to take west point through some very trying times. one was the cheating scandal, a question of professionalization oppo post irregular warfare, and the second was the integration of women in the force.