>> mike. >> one thing when -- the question about stem, what we've realized in the business environment is we've been a huge proponent on stem. the majority of our businesses at deloitte need science, technology, mathematicians, but we're down into high schools now. we have to start earlier and earlier. we're talking about programs for freshmen in high school because we believe that now, you know, when you start internships in sophomore years of college it's not good enough. >> right. >> we have to start much, much younger. so we've been investing -- that was probably a big ah-ha that we've had. when you speak to the younger generation, people in their 20s that have joined us in the past five, six years they look at things totally differently than someone my generation looks at it. they believe you have to start early, you have to start getting those diverse skills embedded much earlier. we're putting in programs now looking at freshmen in high school now, totally different than when i started.

>> does anybody have questions in the audience? >> i have maybe something to add to what mike said. when we talked about skill shortages, we survey employers all over the world and also here in the u.s. around, you know, their -- their need for talent and whether they think they can find the talent in labor markets. what we see today is that 40% of the employers we survey here in the u.s. are saying they have difficulty finding talent. what's encouraging is that almost 50% of the same employers are now saying that they have investing in training for their workforce. whereas the same answer would have been 20% of employers saying they had a hard time finding people but only 12% were investing in the development and training. you know, that i think is going to be key and it comes back to the question you asked at the very beginning. organizations will have a responsibility and a self-interest in making sure that they develop training and development for the workforces

that they have, but longer term we believe that the best predicting of employability may well be something we call learn ability, so the desire and the ability to learn. because we've talked a lot about the changes that are occurring in markets through changes in globalization and how the mechanics are changing and the different forces and it's going to be very difficult for employers and educational institutions to pro difficult what the skills are going to be 18 years out that are going to be specifically on the hard skills that are going to be needed. of course stem skills are always going to be in demand in a digitized world. so the ability to have a workforce that is used to acquiring new skills as they go along will protect us and will render us and make us even more competitive through the time and we think that that's going to be a key driver of employability and we think it can be one of the biggest drivers of competitive advantage if we crack that we will have a workforce that will stay

competitive not only be, you know, in phases competitive and then having to catch up like is the case right now. >> right. doctor. >> i love what you're saying because one of the ways we talk about at universities now is we need to develop a whole generation. i love the idea earlier that competitiveness might be measured at a big metric but it only building from a lot of individuals and those individuals that develop the skills of a researcher, the synthesis, the probing, the grit, you hit a wall you turn, you have an empty canvas as an artist you build something new, those are what we used to do the best anywhere. i think that was the real surge in america. >> right. >> and if we dry up those pipelines we really do dry up that inn vventiveinventiveness. so by fueling it and doing it in such a way where we build those partnerships we start every single student, every single learner has that capacity to be that innovator. i think that's part of the good

news, too, is that the investments that it takes is actually small. nih is $30 billion, the healthcare is $3 trillion. someone said rounding errors. each company has capacity to build these partnerships with universities in ways that can be amazingly transformational for every single individual. and if we don't do that, though, we don't have a chance to really expand this at the rate and speed which want to. >> right. >> universities have a lot of real estate, for example, we're starting to share that with business partners and bring them in. we've got this capacity to do it and i think we're at this moment where a little bit, especially given the willingness to reach across the sectors, seems to be at a point that it really could escalate, you know, but it needs that intention that i think meetings like this give us when we come together and talk about it. >> jim, in terms of what you would want to see in terms of

emphasis in investment and moving forward from the private sector, from the government sector, in terms of partnerships, what do you want to see and what do you expect to see? >> well, i think rco, deborah said it earlier today, that innovation has had unequal distribution elements to it and so i think you realize when you don't pay attention to that it rears itself in surprising fashions and now everybody is grappling with that. so i think everybody sold this stuff as trickle down and everybody would get a fair shake and, in fact, it didn't work out that way within states and between states and i think that's a lot of reason why people are pulling back right now, and i'm not trying to just say, oh, let's spread everything to everybody, but i think the inattention to the investments in distribution, not just -- it's not a justice thing, but you could make it that case, i think it's a functioning society

thing and so i think that's really, really important. there's no -- there's no end of possible innovation things you can invest in, you've heard them all today and they're very, very compelling, each and every one of them. i do believe that how this is going to work in the world, you've seen how europe is pulling back, you've seen how -- you've seen the rattling with china, you've seen tpp go up and go down and people saying, come on, bring it back up again. i think -- i think that's going to gate a lot of this really good talent and this really good desire to invest and i think that the new administration is going to be overwhelmed with the things they have to do. so i would say distilling these things into clear priorities would be the thing that i would think would be the most constructive thing to do in 2017 with this new administration and

that's going to be drinking water from a fire hose and try to get to some kind of manageable way that you can move ahead on it. >> and, mike, what's your sense? >> i actually agree with what jim said. i would say, though, that from a business perspective there's a challenge between looking at innovation and not tying it to kind of a short-term p & l look at it. innovation is long-term and i think at our firm, i know, one of the challenges we have ourselves is the ability to -- you can't -- innovation isn't a yearly thing, it could take something five, six, ten years. if you get behind something you have to stick with it. there's opportunities at times, the market changes, financial changes. first thing people do is want to cut investments and really, you know, it's really the long-term investment. now, to your point, you have to be able to call something -- if it's not going to work it's not going to work and you have to be able to call that. everything that's innovative doesn't mean it's going to work.

and the ability to seed out what is going to work and what's not going to work and if it is going to work invest in it long. sometimes we're very short sighted. >> i'd love to say something about that because i think one of the ways universities have a different model than businesses is we have to invest also in the discovery-based long-term. so big examples, zika virus, we would be nowhere on zika virus right now had we not had researchers studying all sorts of things that had nothing to do with zika virus and then when it comes up those ten individuals across the country who had been working along on that were there. another example is crisper. this whole movement towards complete rethinking in transformative medicine might have started 30 years ago i was hearing by someone who was actually looking at viruses and bacteria. it didn't look like anything, but it took 30 years and suddenly we are on the cusp of the biggest invention. so i'm really glad you said that because we need to help the new

administration understand that directed research is wonderful, we love it, we can do great things with it, but it all dries up if we don't continue the basic research and i think that's what you were saying and i really appreciate that, too. >> and what about you in terms of the new administration, encouraging them to do what and focus on what exactly in terms of innovation? >> well, as we think about the areas that could drive really tremendous growth for us, investments in infrastructure, you know, a reduction of regulation and of course making the labor markets competitive and also, you know, ease of growth in terms of companies and their ability to attract talent. the key issue is going to be reskilg and upskilling individuals that are today outside of the workforce and the ones that are in the workforce upskilling them so they can continue to evolve. right now our unemployment is a

at 4.6%. we can argue about the workforce participation rate, so give 2% regardless of which we are, you know, following a number of hallmarks of a reasonably tight labor market. they're certainly slacked, some are underemployed, some are left the workforce. the ones that are underemployed and that are outside of the workforce probably at this point don't have the skills to actively and easily participate in a lot of the things that strong growth could generate. so i think that's going to be a systemic approach both -- and i know the panel after us is going to talk about education and the need for education in the long-term, but certainly in the short term, you know, to deploy a lot of people into infrastructure projects is going to be challenging because, you know, speaking to a number of the companies that are involved in big infrastructure projects, their biggest problem is finding infrastructure engineers. >> right. >> and that's -- that's going to be the reality of hitting into

this shortage of talent that can realiz so many of those things. so my hope and optimism around this would be that there is a structural and systemic approach around really rescaling the american workforce. so a skills revolution in the budding is what we're hoping for because we think that truly can drive our competitiveness to untold heights not only in the short term but also in the medium and certainly in the long term. >> any questions out there? there we go. >> hi. martha from the college of engineering at texas a & m university. i have a question for people who come from industry. as we invest resources in programs to educate engineering undergraduates for innovation and what we call the mindset of entrepreneur, what are the two

or three things that you believe are the most important things in knowledge and skills that we should be focusing on? thank you. >> who wants to take that? doctor. >> we are probably all working on that same thing. i think it is these skills of learning when you've hit a wall how do you turn and develop the synthesis for other skills but i think she wants to hear what you in the business world would tell all of us at universities. >> well, i will try. so what i would say university would be i think you use the term the inquisitive mind. what we are looking for now out of students is even if you come to a firm like ours and think you know what you want to do, have the ability to say in two years i may use that skill but do something different. i mean, the difference is coming in, you know, when i joined a firm you kind of had a career path of ten years, you knew what you wanted to do in ten years.

now we want the students to almost make two-year commitments because innovation is moving so quickly that we don't want to lock them in for something. we want two-year commitment and then in two years you might have an engineering background but we may want you to do something around analytics or something else. it's almost this multi-year commitment to continual learning. >> so really the balance between the hard skills and the soft skills, so, you know, the access -- it's going to be more about not only what the hard skills that you come out of school with, but also the soft skills that let you apply it because access to knowledge today is ubiquitous, hard knowledge can be acquired, experience can be leapfrogged bras you have access to an understanding at a much more rapid pace today. so this notion of transferability of skills between industries and between various aspects of what you do within an organization is going to be increasingly important. >> jim, do you want to jump in? >> yeah, in the innovation game

generally innovation has zero marginal production costs and you are certainly -- you're trying to insert yourself into a value chain which all has zero marginal production costs so that's an extraordinarily contended exercise. people who have sophisticated stem skills if they can marry them with the sophisticated commercialization navigation skills which are very different in the ideas economy than traditional economy that's gold. and you know the people that do that wlg because they have extraordinarily valuable tech companies. that's the dance that you do and that's -- anyone who brings those to an organization, wow, they are on the c -- they are in the c suite quicker than anybody else. >> the really exciting thing about universities, everyone knows this, is the youngest generation coming in every year are most excited about doing this. i walk down the hall and i meet students who have started their first company in their first year and they are already talking about the second, third and fourth companies they're going to start. so, again, that's another part

of the hopeful part is that when we give them just the tiniest bit they're ready to leap at it, but i think they want to know what it takes to do that and they need to have the chance to have a risk, fail, risk, fail, and be successful. so we've got the material and the opportunities, so we just have to get those double p -- what was it -- >> double t squared i squared. >> on that note which is very hopeful we are going to end and we thank you guys for your questions and your attention. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> to address the nation's skills gap and how to better prepare americans to join a 21st century workforce, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the president of northeastern university dr. joseph ayoon and the chairman, chief executive

officer of northrop grum monday corporation, mr. wes bush. >> hello, wes. good afternoon, everyone. i would like to start by thanking the council of competitiveness because you brought us together. we are all buddies now, we have been doing that for some time and last month wes was at northeastern university and we had a dialogue like that. we want to talk about the skills gap and we have tons of surveys to share with you, but the surveys are an indication and they don't provide you with the solution. so let's start by discussing some of the surveys that the business round table has been doing, actually you have been leading those. so give us a flavor, wes, of what you found out. >> so the business round table just recently did a survey of

its members and not surprising because i think the survey results were quite similar to other surveys that the chamber has done as well as other independent sort of non-business organizations. and i would say that there are some elements of the survey results that you could predict, but there were also some interesting insights. so othe more predictable survey results were the number of companies and in our case it was greater than 80% that cited a significant skill shortage in their ability to actually find the talent they need and to support the business objectives that they had. and not surprisingly as well much of that skill shortage goes to the stem disciplines and just about every survey you see you get that sort of flavor and stem is a big category, i think we all often think of the engineering shortage that we hear so much about, but interestingly in ours the mathematics part of it and the basic sciences part of it were identified as shortages as well. in addition to the disciplines,

though, some of the other feedback that we got in the survey that i thought was particularly insightful was the identification of some broader sort of applied -- general applied skills that from a business perspective we all looked for and we try and keep track of how well we're doing. things like critical thinking, the ability to tackle a problem and really dive into it and test a lot of different perspectives and come up with innovative and different perspectives. cognitive flexibility was another category that we saw identified by many, many businesses and, again, i think as a reflection of the pace of change that we have in the business environment, in fact, in the world around us. so it was for me a confirming survey of many of the things that i've seen in other surveys, but it was insightful in some areas that i don't think had quite gotten the attention -- >> so let me take the complement set. we just surveyed the college

students nationwide. we didn't do it ourselves, we commissioned a firm to do it. and what we found is that only 14% of the students feel they are ready for the new world. >> uh-huh. >> for the ai world, for intelligence systems, for the tech revolution that they know is going to hit them. and, you know, they know that the jobs are going to be redefined. so it's interesting to compare the employers and at the same time the learners. the employers keep saying, you know, colleges and universities are not doing a good job. the college students, only 14% feel that they are getting ready for that. so clearly we need to do something together about it and that's why we're here today. >> it is. >> we're here to talk about partnership, we're here to talk about what can be done. so starting with you, wes, you have been working with many universities, you have been

partnering with universities. >> i have. >> we have been partnering with universities. what do you look for in the partnership? >> so, you know, there's been a model out there for a long time that businesses utilized in working with universities that has served some of the interest of business, but i think there's been a broader awakening that we need to develop some very, very different models. the older model was sort of a combination of obviously building good partnerships with the career office because we want to make sure that we're there and are represented well and branded well when it comes to the recruiting, but also sponsoring research and development was sort of a traditional model, and oftentimes it was just straight off philanthropic giving. all those things are good, and it's important that we continue to do those things, but we've all realized it's just not enough. it's not solving the problems that we're seeing. and i have to give a lot of credit to the business higher education forum and we together

are members of bhef and have been for some time. a number of years ago through a series of discussions just like this where we continued to identify these types of problems we decided to pilot some different approaches and test what would work and what would not work and we have found some models and we have applied it now both in the fields of cyber security and in the field of data analytics in a number of university settings around the country, and to your question about, okay, what are we looking for, what works. first off, you have to have a partnership approach and it has to work both ways. the university has to be open to engaging with business on a little bit of a different manner and business has to be open to changing its model of engagement. what's been working in these new models has been a much deeper level of collaboration. it goes all the way in many cases to a co-development of curriculum where business makes an investment and the university makes an investment and faculty

comes together with employees of the business to define what some of the curriculum components need to be to better prepare the students. now, this isn't a training program and i want to be careful about that up front because oftentimes people hear this description and they think, okay, we're turning university into training. and that is not the intent at all. it has to be education and it has to be broad education because directly to the point that you were raising regarding the feedback from students. we want students not just trained for the one instant thing, we want them to come into the course of business, continue to grow and they need that broad education to start with to have that capacity to grow. that said there are basic things that they need today to get started that perhaps they did not need some years ago and this model of engaging more closely with business around the notion of developing curriculum, how we do things like internships and co-op program and northeastern

is from my perspective a world leader in defining how to have co-op programs be most effective but actually engaging in the design and development and, by the way, in the funding of those things. business has to step up and work together with the university so that these things are supportable. none of these things are inexpensive. it i think is a little bit of a broader awakening across the business community that we can't simply stab by and conduct our surveys and complain. we need to be engaged and be a part of the solution and we look for universities like northeastern that are eager to partner and are eager actually to help us learn about what works and doesn't work because universities like northeastern bring so much to that engagement. >> thank you, wes. so when i talked to my colleagues in higher education there is clearly a big unease about -- i mean, we don't want you to come and talk to us about how to shape a curriculum. >> right. >> however, at the same time,

you know, when we get together with our employers and we sit down, we have 3,000 employers working with us and it's because we send our students for six months on long-term internships called co-ops, when we sit down with them and we look at the type of person they are looking for it is clear that we have to change the way we're doing -- we're providing education. so what we are hearing from our employers is very simple. we need you to get our learners, our students, ready for the new economy. what does it mean? there is a new literacy. we all know about it. they need to know coding. coding will become like type writing. >> it is. >> they need to know about -- beyond the tech literacy, data analytics, big data. they need to know about the human interaction, what i call the human literacy.

you are here as leaders. you didn't become leaders because you were great engineers only -- >> that does help, by the way. >> especially for you, wes. but because essentially you knew how to lead people, how to motivate people, how to understand people and that's what we are not doing well enough of. the second aspect that i want to discuss with you, wes, here is that i am afraid that we in higher education are giving up an enormous opportunity. we are in the middle of an enormous revolution, there are new ideas, there are new jobs that are coming to the fore, other jobs are becoming obsolete and people have to retool. people have to refine what they do. the notion of lifelong learning is with us. now, higher education looked at lifelong learning as something very peripheral. we don't want to touch it much

because we want to focus on the 18 to 22 undergrads, we want to do research and ph.d. but don't talk to me about, you know, lifelong learning. you know, this will bring down the brand. in fact, we're becoming like the railway industry, i hope there is no one here from amtrak, you know. the railway industry missed the transportation revolution because they defined themselves as being in the railway industry and not in the transportation industry. and i think that's what's happening to us in higher education. we are not thinking of ourselves being in the lifelong learning mission. so when i talk to you, wes, i ask you, you have employees, you are recruiting employees. you cannot say to them you are set once and for all in your life. >> heavens no. >> what do you look for?

you must have extensive training, correct -- >> absolutely. >> to have them retool, to have them get into new fields. what i have to tell you every time a company tells me that they have set up an educational program, it's a failure of higher education because higher education has to do it. so what do you look for in lifelong learning? >> let me say a couple things, once, most companies don't want to be in the education business. that's not what we do as our primary business, but most of us are. in fact, in the survey that we did in the business round table on average across the companies that we surveyed on average the companies were spending about $80 million apiece on continuous education of their employees, much of which were internal investments because they didn't have these partnerships, they didn't have this capacity to work with the universities on this continuous lifelong training. so we look for universities that have that flexibility to deal

with beyond the 22 age -- 22-year-old age point or the ph.d. age point and engage with us in the development of programs that our employees can benefit from. because despite what may fousou like a criticism of higher education let me say up front i am a strong believer in the united states we continue to have the very best higher education system that exists on the globe. >> absolutely. >> what we're talking about here is improving something that's great but we have to improve it because our needs for this, whether we're talking about the economic security of our country or from the optic of my company the national security of our country we critically fend on the quality of higher education and the engagement of higher education. >> so these partnerships really are opportunities for us to connect in a deeper way, a more meaningful way, and as a real opportunity not just at the company level, it comes down to the employee level and this means a great deal, actually, to

employees. >> when we started talking about those partnerships and those opportunities it led us to rethink our own model. so, for instance, when you work with people who are long on experience and short on time, namely the professionals who are already in the field you cannot tell them, come and spend two years with me. >> oh, no. >> you know, no one has the time. so, you know, universities have to move into the short what sometimes people call the boot camps. actually do you know what happened, you know, there are companies that started boot camps in coding. i mean, why are they doing that? they are doing that because there is an enormous need. now the need will be -- you know, will be fulfilled. but in terms of data analytics, we started a boot camp, that was a first for us at northeastern. and i think we were one of the first, maybe the first universities to have done it because we had to relearn that, you know, if you want to meet the need you have to meet it based on the terms of the

company or the people who want to learn about that. come here on for certain time, you know, whether you are in the company or whether you are with us, it doesn't matter, but you don't have time, we're going to provide it around eight weeks. similarly, you know, we have to devise new curricula. i mean, when we talk in higher education about sitting down with an employer to look at curricula, forget it. that's unacceptable. however, you know, we have to do it because we have to learn what the needs are. so, for instance, we have an enormous shortage in the nation in terms of -- we talked about data analytics. >> yes. >> cyber security you and i discussed it. >> absolutely. >> computer science. so can we create new pipelines for computer science? we sat down with companies in seattle, with amazon and others, and then we took students who finished a bs degree in the nation and they give them long-term co-ops, those

internships and then we gave them a masters in computer science over the period where they were out there. now, those students are coming with a background in physics, with a background in math, with a background in economics but they are retooling. now, for us we had to relearn. so a masters in x doesn't require a ba in the same field. so it's a learning process for higher education. i agree with you, wes, we have the best educational system in the nation but because we have it we cannot be complacent. >> i think there is another dimension to this, too, that goes to the heart of the pace of technology and the pace of business growth that we all expect to see and want to see as we go forward and that's around innovation and the way that we approach that from an educational perspective. long gone are the days when innovation was the product of

single individuals. in most enterprises today and i think this occurs in universities as well, innovation is the product of groups of people, groups of people coming together. and one thing that universities have been doing i think well for some period of time is working hard to develop that teamwork approach as students come through university, but as we see folks progress into business and into the work environment, oftentimes the discipline within which we were educated becomes the stove pipe within which they want to work. and i know in our company and many companies like ours innovation is occurring most quickly at the boundaries of the disciplines, not solely within the disciplines. and as we go forward i think that's only going to accelerate. and what better place for people to learn that opportunity and learn how to engage in that way

than in universities. and, in fact, universities, i think, are leading the way in many respects in the way they do research, but bringing with that the way they teach and the way they engage students even at the undergraduate level in the innovative ecosystem that needs to get created both within universities and within companies. i think there's another opportunity still before us. >> i agree. i mean, my colleagues in the previous session talked about the importance of fundamental research and we all believe in that. there is also an additional aspect that we have to be aware of. when we look at research in higher education the most important factor in this research is the doctoral student, the people who are going for a ph.d.. now, you know how we evaluate the programs, the ph.d. programs in higher education. we evaluate them by the number of ph.d. students who are placed in research universities.

so if i place one of my ph.d. students at your company -- >> we'd like it. >> you'll like it, but, you know, it's not viewed as a plus. >> right. >> which is insane. so we need to start thinking beyond that. we also need to -- you know, there are things -- you know, all the innovation as you said is happening at the intersection. >> it is. >> the intersection of not only disciplines but the intersection of what is happening in universities and what is happening in tech companies like yours. >> so why don't we start thinking about what we call ex peer shall ph.d. programs where we have co-directors, you have first rate researchers, we have first rate researchers, they can come together co-direct. let me go a step further. how many universities have labs embedded in knows universities? very few.

we don't even have good protocols for that. we can do it. so those partnerships that we are talking about excite us a lot, but also at the same time we need to start doing more of them in order to be comfortable with each other. >> we do. >> it's not enough to talk about the feed for partnerships. we need to find a way to make it the default case whereas now it is the exception. i want to ask you about something else. you came to northeastern, you talked to the students, you talked to the faculty, you talked to the staff, you talked to the community and you spent ten minutes talking about diversity and inclusion. >> absolutely. >> as something -- as a dimension that is very important for you and for the workforce. tell us why. >> well, it certainly is something that we've seen in action in our company. if you think about the work that we do, we are a company of about 65,000 people and about half of

our employees are degreed scientists, engineers, mathematicians, technologies gists of one form or another and the language is innovation and change and how do you look at problems through different lenses. we do best and we measure this and we can see it in our company, we do best when our teams are diverse, when those teams are operating in a very inclusive environment where all the ideas are freely put on the table and when there's a high regard not only for all of the individuals on a personal basis, but a high regard for the way in which everyone can work together and get things done. this isn't something theoretical for us, this is tangible and it is a powerful outcome for us. so there is a strong, strong focus within our company to not only talk about this from the top levels of the organization. we measure it across our enterprise and we see the tangible benefits from it. so i'm a very strong proponent for the benefit, the business

benefit, of really working to make sure that we're doing the right things on diversity and inclusion and when it comes to recruiting the graduates as we were saying are incredibly smart and we find that they tend to look for environments that are far more inclusive that give them the comfort that they are going to be able to put on the table their ideas, their views and to be who they are. >> that's another aspect of the partnerships that we didn't discuss here. >> it is. >> the pipeline is not sufficient. >> yeah. >> we have to work together to increase this pipeline in k through 12 by looking also at community colleges, by looking at historically -- historically black colleges and putting partnerships together. we haven't done enough of that. so, you know, this mandate is going to force us in higher education and in industry to work together to increase this pipeline. >> absolutely. >> and this is something that is

very exciting, frankly it hasn't been done enough yet, we have examples here and there, but that's an opportunity. now, you and i also discussed the cultural agility, you know, we need people who are culturally agile, who are at ease with not openly different cultures in the united states but also on a global scale. who you do you look at that? >> i see it just as i've talked about diversity. from our perspective understanding a more global view and being comfortable operating around the globe is a key part of the success of any modern enterprise and you might say, well, a defense company isn't that primarily domestic focused. no. actually, most of the companies in our industry are global companies of necessity. we operate with our allies around the globe. and when you're talking about national security, that's a very sovereign local perspective

oftentimes and really being comfortable operating on a global basis is critical. and that's why universities that bring that view i think have a leg up. the universities that really encourage their students to engage in that more global perspective and to learn, to have some meaningful learning in that regard, whether it's the intersections with students from other countries on the campus or the international opportunities that are afforded to them. that's the great thing about your co-op program, by the way, that you afford your co-op students not just opportunities in the u.s. but around the globe and i think it really does produce graduates who step into the workforce with a broader perspective tn they might otherwise have. >> you know, from this perspective we have over 5 million students in colleges and universities. if i tell you how many go overseas, from an overseas experience, it's less than 500,000. so we have a deficit and we have

an opportunity there. we have an opportunity to give our students -- and actually we ve an obligation to give our students a global experience we are working and competing on a global level. >> absolutely we are. >> let me give you the example of ge. if by the age of 26 at ge you don't have a global experience it's going to be very difficult for you to grow. so imagine the situation where they are coming by -- you know, they finish by the age of 24, you know, they have a masters or more, then they go to work. they don't have a global experience so what happens? that's a deficit. we need to work on that and that's why, you know, wes and i are very excited about being together and building those partnerships and those opportunities. let me go to something -- you know, i want to address one more item. when we look at talents one of the issues is obviously talent

retention. how do you mr. talent retention? >> so it is a challenge and in today's environment where there are still shortages as we've said earlier and in particular fields, you know, whether we're talking about those who are great computer scientists or data analysis or if you're talking in the world of artificial intelligence, a whole variety of fields there's extreme competition. what we have found and i think i can speak broadly for our industry is companies that are able to connect the mission of the enterprise to the work that their employees are doing are far for successful than others where it is a job. clearly in our space national security, global security is a mission that appeals to many and we generally find if we can keep our new hires the first few years they tend to stay with us for a career and sometimes staying with us means staying in our industry, people move around a little bit within the industry and that's fine, but it's that

deep connection to a video you that what you're doing is meaningful. and we find in interviewing on campus that students really want to understand that as much as they do the particulars of the job that you might be speaking to them about. they also are looking for companies that have a view of their corporate responsibility and i enjoy getting out and interviewing students on campus and have been pleasantly surprised by the number of students who have actually looked to see do you have a corporate social responsibility report and what does it say? >> yeah. >> and that's just a broader view that i think many young people are bringing to their career decisions than certainly at the time when i graduated from college. >> there is another dimension -- i agree 100% with what you said, actually, you know, when you talk to the students clearly they resonated with that. there is another dimension. is the company investing in me because i know i have to invest in the company.

and that's where, you know, the lifelong learning is important. we worked, for instance, with ibm, we work with ibm here in india, in china, et cetera, to train their executives. what do they see? why are they doing it? it grows the fidelity to the place, you know, retention increases. so you see we are now in a situation where higher education has an enormous opportunity to move into lifelong learning and -- but once we move into lifelong learning we have to do it with you. >> absolutely. >> we cannot be oblivious of reality. we have been oblivious of reality because we have been so good, but we can't afford to remain oblivious and that's our opportunity. last word for you, sir. >> business, step up. we have a responsibility to higher education, we need to see that we are a part of the solution, we can no longer stand on the sidelines and criticize the outcomes. we have a responsibility to take

a role in creating the products that we need to make sure that our economy is going to continue to be successful. >> great. thank you very much. thank you. [ applause ] >> america's most precious resource is its people. they are the risk takers, the entrepreneurs and innovators. how can we best encourage and unleash this true american strength in order to grow the economy and create new products, services, industries and jobs? ladies and gentlemen, please welcome founder and partner revolution llc and founder and former chief executive officer america online mr. steve case. >> the president of carnegie mellon university, the honorable suresh and the chairman and ceo of manomec, mr. jim phillips. >> hello. good afternoon. we're the last guys.

>> thanks for hanging in there. >> thanks for hanging in there for us and everything. we're going to be talking about entrepreneurism and everything, i certainly have some entrepreneurs here and two very distinguished hanlists. so obviously sitting at the very end this guy is best known obviously for the careers of tom hanks and meg ryan in you've got mail and then he founded a little company called aol that did actually real well. this man right here has been the former president of the national science foundation and did a phenomenal job obviously and everybody knows that and is now president of the carnegie mellon. we have got one of the top people in i.t. in history with one of the top material scientists in the world so this is going to be a lot of fun. i want to get it started. it's a great time to be alive. it's a great time to be here with you, but, you know, we are in a very unusual time. i mean, everybody remembers back when the patent officer at the turn of the century, the guy

that said everything is going to be invented has been invented might as well close the patent office. in the '70s the guy that was running the patent office at that time said that more will be invented in the next 100 years than in the history of mankind. and now everybody says more will be invented in the next five years than the history of mankind. we've been hearing that all day because basically all this is caused by the inventions during our -- certainly our lifetime in the last 20, 30 years of four things, the chip, software, storage and internet and then all day long we've got to hear about all these incredible new things that are coming at us just at full speed like ai, you know, robots, nan know technology, big data, genomics, 3-d printing, avatar intelligent agents and things like that and a a lot of things that may at the end of the day even capture jobs. so my first question is a really tough one to kind of at the end of the day as we sum up a few

things and maybe go down a different path, too, is i want to ask the distinguished panelists with me, are humans inventing themselves out of work? >> so i think the answer to that question is going to depend on whether the kinds of jobs that are being created with ai and machine learning and big data, et cetera, when they are replaced by machines, are they going to be -- are there going to be newer jobs for people to create new robots, servicing the robots, writing software and how many of those new jobs will be created vis-a-vis the number of jobs we lose and those are going to be very different kinds of jobs. and i think that's going to be the question. so the world economic forum is right in the middle of a number

of future councils and looking at 2020 near term, 2030 midterm and 2050 as a long-term what kind of displacements will take, but i think another way to look at this would be a slightly different question than this, rather than the number of jobs, which is only a crystal ball at this point. with all the technology that we have and if you believe in the so-called -- what we are supposed to be in the middle of the early stage of the fourth industrial revolution which by definition is the convergence of the cyber world, the physical world and the biological world, what are going to be the consequences of this compared to all the innovations that we created in the 20th century. so in 2000 the national academy of engineering came up with a report on the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the

20th century. three years later nae published the 14 grand challenges of the 21st century. if you put them side-by-side you can't help but wonder why some of the grand challenges of the 21st century are a direct consequence of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. containing -- securing cyberspace, containing nuclear terror, et cetera, et cetera. so every major innovation we create there are intended benefits, unintended consequences and willful abuse of technology. so the question would be with things like artificial intelligence and machine learning and robotics, et cetera, how do we address the human condition in concert with the development of the technology? some would argue that the reason for the 14 grand challenges of

the 21st century from the 20 greatest achievements of the 20th century was because we did not pay attention to the intersection of the technology with the human condition. atten intersection of the technology with the human condition so i think one of the things we may want to look at is what did we not do in the last century that we need to do in this century with respect to the technologies that will avoid the problems we created. >> i agree with that. just add a couple of things. first, it is is inevitable new technologies will destroy us from jobs. whether it be driverless cars, what have you. how do you balance that with pushing new ideas forward. great jobs. 200 years ago. over 90% of us worked on farms. 88% didn't lose their jobs. we went from the agriculture revolution to the industrial revolution to the digital

revolution. how do continue to create new jobs? i don't believe we'll be successful in doing that. i don't believe we're the most innovative entrepreneurial nation if we keep doing what we're doing, which is only backing a few people in a few places. last year 78% of venture capital went to california, new york and massachusetts. if you look at the states that donald trump won, you add up all the states, venture capital to all 30 states, 10%. so people felt like they have been left behind and left out, they have been left behind and left out. the majority of new jobs comes from high growth startups. we're not going to have an evenly dispersed economy. we're not going a lot of shots on goal. some will will surprise us.

chipotle in denver. we need to level the playing field so everyone has a shot at the american dream. that's the best way to maximum the odds that we're creating new jobs than we are destroying. it's not just about place. it is also about people. last year 90% went to men. 10% went to women. 1% to went to african-americans. 1% went to latinos. we have to move forward and make sure we are supporting entrepreneurs with ideas in a lot of different sectors. not just tech sectors. a lot of different sectors and places. that will maximize the odds of getting this right and in the process lift up communities that are strugglingnd are feeling kind of left behind. >> steve, sticking with you because you have this new book out, "the third wave." that captured a little bit of it. you know, are we doing the right

things to get the technology to the entrepreneurs, or is there just a gross shortage like we have heard of entrepreneurs? and maybe even a third question to add to that since you are very involved in this, can you teach entrepreneurs, can you create entrepreneurs? there seems to be an abundance of technology right now. >> i think there is a lot of ideas out there. but opportunity has not been broadly dispersed. it goes back to this issue to try to level the playing field. i'm 58 years old. it took me a while to get around to a book. i realized i was working less years, including visiting cities like pittsburgh. understanding what's happening in their start-up communities. something fundamentally different was happening. and innovation, technology, internet was shifting.

it took me a little while to it out. the first wave was building the internet and getting everyone connect canned. we started 31 years ago, 3% of people were online. and they were on one hour a week. we had to build the foundational technologies. in the '80s no one knew about the internet or frankly cared about it. by 2000, everyone was connected and couldn't live without it. the wave, facebook, twitter, snap chat. the first wave was pcs. the second wave was to smartphones. it is is about software and viral adoption of software. the third wave, which is just now beginning to accelerate is integrating the internet in seamless, pervasive and

invisible ways throughout our lives. change how we care about health care, learning, food, moving around, energy and other kind of things. and these sectors change a little bit in the first wave, a little bit more in the second wave. not that much. but they will change a lot in the third wave. but that is going to happen in different the places than most people. i think it will require a different mind-set for the entrepreneurs and the ceos of large companies. partnerships will become more important. much more engaged with governments. policies are going to become more important. and also these are hard problems. perseverance is going to become more important. partnerships are not that big a deal in the second wave. facebook didn't need partners. until you got big and had this global platform, it was not that big a factorment facebook and snap chat were overnight successes. i think it is is going to shift. and big companies partnering

with the smaller companies will be a defining characteristic of the third wave. when they decide to get that right, it will be the leaders in the communities that get that right will rise up. not saying silicon valley will fall. i think it is perfectly positioned to do well. but we will see the rest drive. we will see innovation were dispersed across the country. we have too many eggs in a few baskets. it's risky. >> you're talking corporate, private, public and all that, relationships and everything. we have the best laboratories, the best universities in the world. that leads us into as far as entrepreneurialship goes. you weren't a university president. now you are. one of the challenges is to do

the tech transfer commercialization. what we are starting to see come out of carnegie mellon is unique models, including one with uber and several others. could you speak to us about that? is that going to be really good and start to see more models and some of those great ideas? >> i will start with a data point. when i was a career i was young assistant professor at an ivy league school for 10 years. during those 10 years i published quite a bit. during those 10 years i did not have a second patent. then the next 10 years, after the first 10 years i moved to another well-known university during those years, i had 21 patents. were were licensed. there was a company that came out of it. i wasn't any different. i wasn't any smarter.

the scientific work did not chain. just the opportunities that were available to me were really different. at carnegie mellon about 10 years ago there was a change in policy for faculty to publish disclose conventions. internally we call it 5% and go in peace. within two years, that led to a four fold increase in the number of disclosures. when the brookings institution recently talked about can case studies of why some cities that went through a serious economic decline were able to come up when other cities would suffer a similar fate could not reinvent themselves, they chose pittsburgh an example of a city. and they attributed one factor, this is according to brookings institution. bruce katz did the study on

this. and the factor they said was if major research universities exist in a city they have an opportunity to contribute to the economic survival of the city. in the case of pittsburgh they attributed this to carnegie mellon and to pittsburgh. just in the last seven, eight years, google set up shop in pittsburgh. and employee number one was computer science. he went and started this operation. now it is one of the largest revenue makers for anyone in the world. they have several hundred employees. we actually got this faculty member who spent years at google. joked at google. the only reason he is coming back to the university is because we can pay him more than google can. so i think it is a two-way

process. is same with companies like microsoft, uber and others. i think it is a brain circulation of a different kind. other than you're using faculty members from one university to another university, now we lose them to industry. >> this is going to go to both of. long lines you're talk building right now. we hear a lot about the immigration issue. i know in my company all of my scientists are immigrants. it's been really tough with the visa program and everything else. talk about that a little bit, steve. you're investing in a lot of companies. how serious an issue is is it, and is there any way to get it fixed quick so we don't accepted away our einsteins right after getting their degree which we pretty well subsidized. >> i wanted to follow up on pittsburgh. it is a perfect example. the companies that are being formed there partly because of

the expertise carnegie mellon has and a lot of technologies is really quite impressive. and the fact that uber, one of the most eye coopnic silicon valley is companies, is looking at pittsburgh. there is a company called magically in the augmented reality, rated $1.4 billion of capital from google in silicon valley from ali baba in china. they're in fort lauderdale, florida you are starting to see this. i'm very concerned about this. i work on some of these issues. president obama asked me to be on miss jobs council. i led the effort around

leadership. we came up with a number of policies. some move forward. jobs act. proud funding. the number one recommendation was taking steps to win what is now a global battle for talent. i testified in favor of the senate immigration bill. sadly, it didn't get moved forward. it is is obviously not going to move forward in that current construct. we have to figure out some way to move some components for it. it is particularly things like the start-up. one example the company was starting to show momentum. he couldn't extend his visa he was forced to leave. he happened to be from india. now that company has 5,000 employees in india. he wanted to stay here. >> and i hear those stories every single day i think we need

to focus on new ways to think about k-12 education, encouraging people to be more creative, teaching them to do things. that obviously needs to happen. we need to win this battle. immigration is not just a problem to solve. it is also an that we need to seize. >> obviously you have run into this many times. we're running a little bit fast on time. >> so is let me give an economic argument on euimmigration. i'm biased. because i came with half a suitcase nearly 40 years ago. >> thanks for staying. >> where did you hang out? >> ames, iowa. here is the economic argument i would like to give which is off overlooked. studies show if a child is born today in the u.s., it costs the

parents on average to raise the child from birth to age 22 through college approximately half a million u.s. dollars. $400,000 half a million dollars. public school, private school, it doesn't matter. half a million a child. say 100,000 students who come here, graduate students come here to get an advanced degree. if we make it easier for them to stay here, some other tax payer has already paid half a million dollars each to those 100,000 students. these are the best and the brightest. if we can attract them to keep them here, 100,000 times half a million dollars is $50 billion. that is seven times the national science foundation. the u.s. has been undisputed innovation leader because all the other countries in the world have been subsidizing the eco

system much more than we pay through u.s. tax payer money to the u.s. science foundation. there is no substitute for cultivating domestic talent if you can cherry pick anywhere you want to come here you can beat anybody in innovation. that's what we have been doing. if we lose that, we will lose the game. last point, six americans won the nobel prize. all got their first degree abro abroad. all six. >> that's pretty convincing for sure. >> i just want to say one thing. we both obviously are passionate about the issue. i don't think we all collectively have done a good job framing the issue. i think the election is a good example. a lot of people in a lot of places feel left out and left behind. d part of the reason globalization, digitalization they view as a negative, not a

net positive. immigration he they feel is a net negative. because they feel people are coming and taking their job. we need to have more people coming here and taking -- some of those will be the big companies of tomorrow. we have to tell the story. this is about getting people who will help create the jobs that lift up the communities. but then we need to spread the wealth so it does reach more people in more place. they are in pittsburgh, des moines, atlanta. >> all across the united states. this is titled the next wave of american entrepreneurs and everything. so you two will have an incredible perspective on this. and it will be probably different. what do you see? we all grew up through the digital revolution. now we have material science. what do you see as the next big

targets of disruption? if you want to get down to the companies, what we went through with the kodaks of the world oren siencyclopedia britannica. >> all this week the wall street journal has been running a series on innovation. and they have interviewed a number of different people. i spent some time with the reporter for the wall street journal just a few weeks ago looking at different perspectives. i think the pace of innovation has never been stronger. the kind of students that we get today of the universities and colleges, they are much more entrepreneurial. and they are not only entrepreneurial. there are many more opportunities than a generation ago. equally, they are eager to

connect that spirit, which their parents and grandparents did not do, which is wonderful for entrepreneurialship. part of our challenge is university leader to make sure we are not just training somebody in how to solve immigration, month you to end a experiment, how to act and think differently in a complex situation. i think adopting the -- teaching how to learn is more important than teaching a particular subject. >> this is very good. >> you mentioned kodak. the story there is -- the general view is kodak is caught sleeping. the digital photography came out of nowhere. eventually went bankrupt and tried to reposition. actually what happened is kodak engineers invented digital photography. it was invented at kodak.

but the future leaders were focusing on what was happening. business was pretty profitable. you have to lead the future. you have to focus on where things are going. the best way is to partner with entrepreneurs, not try to do everything in house. guess what, more people work somewhere else. how do you create a network so you are not left behind? you are playing offense, not defense. the companies get larger. i saw with aol. we did shift from offense to playing defense. you can't do that. figuring out how to continue to be nimble and flexible and more acknowledge i'll in a world that's being up, figure out how to execute will be one of the big challenges in the third wave. and the answer is back to partnerships. companies that do partnerships will will success. the ones that go alone will be left behind.

>> they make up 95% of the new jobs need to partner. is that what you're saying to that extent? >> yes. >> the 90s are gone. you just up and sell. >> i know you ran that play a bunch of times. >> it worked out for both of us. >> take health care, for example, if you want to revolutionize health care, of course technology software will be part of it. it is not like dropping an app in the app store. you have to work with doctors. that will require a partnership. if you want to do something around rethinking learning you have to work with teachers, professors or or carnegie mellon. it is all about the software. it has to move into this world where it is about integrating important aspects of the life and partnering with some of the players with that. unless you do that as a small company you may not get traction. unless you do that, you may not

stay relevant. >> we have a minute left. this is a great group here i wanted to open it up for just a couple of questions while we're here. anybody? i can't see. yes, sir, in the back.

>> one way is to do an apprenticeship. it will accelerate the next decade. >> we see that all the time. the number of companies that come to attract students to go work for them. companies like pricewaterhouse cooper is hiring engineers. connection cans you would not have thought of as trainees. it gives an opportunity to give offers when they graduate. try them out in different locations. some of the students at the end of the freshman year in some of our programs, they have multiple offers. right at the end of their

freshman year purchase now on a global scale. companies from around the world coming here attracting students. >> so before we go, maybe as a wrap up, what would you like to say or recommend to entrepreneurs? there's thousands, millions perhaps of those out there. you both have incredible experience in this area? how would you, in just a minute, say? i will be very brief. innovation is a contact sport. come in contact with as many people, like steve, who have succeeded. and as many people as you can find who have failed. >> i would say two things. entrepreneuri entrepreneurialship is a team sport. recognize in the third wave the game is changing. and the rules that worked -- or the playbook that worked in the second wave will not work as well in the third.

things like partnership. they are hard. it is hard to structure win-win partnerships. policy is hard. it's frustrating. of course you don't want to deal with government regulators. of course that will slow you down. we will have discussions about medical device safety and drones in skies and driverless cars. we're just going to. understand that and leaning into that is important. perseverance is important. be more open-minded about place. 50 years ago if you wanted to be in the entertainment business you had to go to hollywood. that's not true anymore. to be on wall street you had to go to new york. that's not true anymore. music, movies, countries all around the world, people are running mutual funds from all around the country, all around the world. entrepreneurialship is regionalized, globalized. and trying to figure out where you should start the company because a partner is there, they

are building things, robotics. the kind of things of other you want to care about. st. louis months of monsanto. the opportunities in the third wave are unbelievable. these are actually the most important things in terms of our lives. some of the biggest sectors of our economy. so it is game on you have to adopt the different mind-set. >> thank you. thank you for being here. thank you for putting this on. >> happy 30th anniversary. >> thank you. [ applause ]. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back the president and ceo of the u.s. council on competitiveness, the honorable deborah wynn-smith.

>> wow, what a great day. and thank you all for being with us on behalf of the council can executive committee, i want to formally think all the council members, our speakers, our sponsors, the fantastic council staff that have worked very, very hard to put on our gala dinner last night and this very special national competitiveness forum as we celebrate our 30th anniversary. but very importantly, begin today. the journey started today to craft the next chapter in the counsel's journey to make america more prosperous and competitive. i think we heard throughout the day there is no crystal ball where our country is going to be in the years ahead. but a few powerful themes really emerged through the discussions. and i just thought i would capture a few that we talked a

lot about change, but we also talked about continuity. we talked about the collision and convergence of the technological revolutions and how they will transform our lives and create service and tremendous value. we talked about connecting, collaborating, competing and coalescing around big initiatives to do big, important things for our country. we talked about how to co create and construct and capture the value of our innovation capacity in america. and very importantly, all of our speakers, in one way or the other, really came down to addressing this challenge of how we can create together a new connected community of caring, concerned citizens who are all

part of this can competitive journey. our clarion call for competitiveness will be our strategy for the new president-elect and the administration and congress. we urge all of you to take it back to your states, cities and regions and promulgate this and welcome you back to be the next chapter in our competitiveness journey. thank you so much for being with us. [ applause ].

more meetings today the at trump tower in new york city as president-elect donald trump is on his way west continuing his tour of key swing states. he will be in grand rapids, michigan this evening for a rally. c-span will have live coverage at 7:00 eastern. all day saturday, american history tv on c-span3 is featuring programs about the 75th anniversary of the jab is niece attacks on pearl harbor.

beginning a.m. eastern, describing events on on ships that were under attack in pearl harbor, followed by the pearl harbor casualty burial at arlington national cemetery aboard the usss oklahoma. his remains were recently identified, 75 years after the attack. then at 9:00, tour pearl harbor attack the sites on the island of oahu with site historian daniel martinez. 9:30, president franklin d. roosevelt's speech to congress asking for a declaration to war. and the 75th anniversary ceremony at pearl harbor. and from 11:00 to 1:00 p.m., we're taking your calls and tweets live. ian oll on "pacific crucible" discussing the u.s. victory over the japanese at the battle of

midway. noon eastern, author of "eyewitness to infamy" giving a behind the scenes account for more than his 200 interviews with pearl harbor veterans. and the 75th anniversary ceremony from a national world war ii memorial with key note on remarks by senator john mccain. saturday on c-span3. >> a discussion now on anti-muslim bullying and ways lawyers can better advocate for students affected by is such bullying. the panelists include lawyers and advocates for the muslim american community hosted by the capital area muslim bar association and the american bar association is an hour and a half.

>> hello, everyone. we're going to get started. feel free to grab a seat. so good evening. thank you for joining us for the capital area muslim bar association's program this evening anti-muslim bullying, emerging issues and pro bono opportunities. i'm one of the board members of the capital area muslim bar association. i'm fortunate to serve as associate professor of law at the university of district of columbia school of law, public interest law school committed to the eradicating social justice inequities is such as we are addressing today. i want to thank our hosts for tonight's event. the firm has provided the space and responsible or sored the

reception for us. we are honored to have the american bar association for civil rights and social justice bully proof cosponsor. courtney dunn, we thank you for making this cosponsorship happen. the sbgz developed its bully proof initiative as a way to do programs at schools and youth centers and bringing together students, parents, teachers, administrators, members of the community to address is and collaborate on solutions to the bullying epidemic. tonight's program is part of campus initiative to amplify our voice so that we are, in fact, working as a collaborative to identify issues that are impacting the muslim community i believe this collaboration is moving us closer to fulfilling that mission. on our panel this evening consists of social justice advocates who are addressing some of the disparities through

direct client representation, through policy work, and through systemic reform. directly to my left is jonathan smith, executive director of the washington lawyers community for civil rights and urban affairs. next to jonathan is eye aoe that, muslim lawyers for human rights. we have susan greenfield, director of the city wide view bullying prevention view at the d.c. of course human rights. and the director of the program to strengthen muslim charities. so appropriately october is national bully prevention month. it is a month to educate and to the raise awareness of bully prevention. this week is also national pro bono week. that initiative is designed to increase access to justice by recruiting volunteers who will assist in representing people who are low income and those who

are often vulnerable. tonight's program is really about addressing an issue that impacts the most vulnerable members of our community, our children and our youth. so when we're looking at muslim children in particular, we're going to kind of focus this panel on issues impacting them as children, which i think that part of the conversation is often overlooked. and i think it's fair to say there is an assertive campaign to create this otherness, if you will, when we talk about muslims. as foreigners, as terrorists, as extremists. just for the record, i'm muslim. i was born in boston, massachusetts. for those questioning i have a birth certificate to prove that. but this image of muslims as foreigners and terrorists helps to perpetuate that narrative if you will that makes it acceptable for our legislators,

for our courts also to somehow justify discriminatory practices under the umbrella of national security. so i think the first question i'd like to pose to the panel as we initiate and start this conversation is has this prevalent anti-muslim climate created school cultures where schools are actually able to demonstrate indifference to harassment against muslim students? eye that, maybe you can start us off. what is the rhetoric that we hear and bullying. >> thank you for that. thank you all for being here this morning. unfortunately, there is a direct correlation between the rhetoric that is all too common now in our society that is anti-muslin, that is very screen phobic, and

that is unfortunately infiltrating not only amongst adults, not only on social media, but pervading our mass media screens. and the most vulnerable of our population, our children are being exposed to that rhetoric. and it's becoming almost the norm i would say. it's very troubling for me as selena said, i am the director of a nonprofit based here in d.c. we get calls from mothers and fathers on a daily basis it seems on how to deal with their young children being asked about very harrowing issues. anti-muslim issues. and about what's happening overseas and a lot of different kinds of things. and i thought i would share a quick story to illustrate this point, and i think this is

really -- this really broke my heart i was invited to speak at a local school in maryland. and some students came up to me afterwards, two young women came to me afterwards and said, you know, we're not out as muslims at school. and i said okay. i asked them to tell me more. and they said, well, we just don't feel comfortable not only amongst their peers but also have the administration, from teachers, from the principal. they didn't feel comfortable owning their identity as muslim women. i think that there had been some incidents. and i'm smiling because i'm not aware of all the different social media platforms but i was informed of certain social platform where you can anonymously post to that one school. so only people at that school

can post about that school. and so there had been some very troubling remarks about muslims, about women on this platform. and that had made these young women, these two young women hide their identity publicly. and they felt they needed to come and, to use their terms, out themselves to meet, so they could talk about what they were going through. i think that's really an example. this has happened to me multiple times where people started to say they go by a different name in school. they wear different clothes at school. so i think there is a direct correlation. i can go into statistics a little bit later of hate speech and the rhetoric that is in our public spaces and how it is is impacting muslim identity and bullying in schools. >> thank you. i know you're doing a lot of this work on the ground as well.

what are you seen, if you had you wanted to add on on that that. >> yeah. thank you again for having me here. i always say that anti-muslim bullying does not happen in a vacuum. we are seeing a direct correlation between the climate of anti-muslim policies and how that impacts schoolchildren. and more than any other time in the history of our organization we have trapped many, many instances of anticipate-muslim bullying. even in instances where families where their children vice president been bullied, it is the number one concern we hear across the board from parents all the tie. i'm a parent myself. i am always worried that somebody is going to say something to one of my children at school. you raise your kids to be proud of who they are. and, you know, i fear similar to what aisha just said, they may want to not share that part of their identity as they get older

and become more aware of the rhetoric that surrounds them. but, you know, one thing that i will add to that is, you know, it happens in multilayers. there is certainly what we call peer-to-peer bullying that happens between a student and another student. however, we see a significant number of instances where administrators school are the ones perpetuating the anti-muslim climb at the school. they trust their teacher. they go to their teacher when they have a problem. this is the person they're learning from. and that teacher is perpetuating stereotypes. saying your dad is part of the taliban. oh, go sit down. these types of derogatory comments that come from teachers also play a role in how students feel at school. it may also come from the

administrator. i just wanted to add the extra layer. >> do we have any data or statistics showing whether muslims are being disproportionately targeted. looking at suzanne, we used to cross paths representing students with disabilities. and students with disabilities are vulnerable and targeted. i'm wondering if we have any data or statistics about muslims being disproportionately targeted. if we don't, quite hon lift, why don't we have it? does anyone know? >> i can speak from the local level. we are correcting that data the. we have a law in the district of columbia which defines bullying in a lot of different ways. it is is not an easy definition. but a part of it is is we very much want to know if the bullying is based on a particular trait. we have covered the list of traits, 19 traits all covered by the d.c. human rights act.

so we are definitely collecting that. i have in fact, put out the call for all of our schools to report their incidents from last year on this. and we will be reporting on it i have to tell you anecdotally i have had many parents call me not about specific incidents but about fears. i feel like we have triggered on our adults if we haven't triggered our kids into this equation yet. and the strict is somewhat different in terms of our popution. so i'm hearing it a lot from our immigrant communities in general. certainly on our latina community is hearing all kinds of things on the playground that wasn't said before, you know, this last year quite to that level. so we are hearing it anecdotally. i don't know that we have the numbers yet. but we have definitely triggered the adult thes. >> so let me step outside my

normal advocacy role and walk on the dark side. why is this bullying? why isn't it the normal power dynamic and the way kids are on the playground? you talked about the identifying factors that the t. human rights act. why isn't it just that power dynamics how kids are on the playground? how are we distinguishing the two? >> we have 200 different school streubgts building in the district. half in charter schools and half are d.c. public schools. i would say building by building it looks very different depend on the demographics, the leadership, how they set a tone, who is welcome, how welcome they are. who is acknowledged. if we have a lot of eupl tkprapbts and you don't see any signage in other languages

there's a real recognition of who is in that building. and i can promise you going across the city there are schools two blocks from each other that the climate and culture looks different in terms of who is recognized. it it. >> i think that part of why i say it has now become the norm to have this rhetoric is i was reading a an article, and many of you may have read it i can give you the citation later. but she was talking about how she was speaking to a group of young muslim woman and asked a question, have you ever been bullied? and nobody really responded. and then she said, well, have any of you been called a terrorist. and almost every hand went up. it's a very troubling -- i use

that anecdote or story to say because it is so normal to feel dispair acknowledged in such horrible way, people and children oftentimes i don't think they are defining that bullying. so kind of to your point of, well, kids will be kids and they are saying things, rough housing each other on the playground, they are saying weird things to one another, it is is more that the parents are sort of hearing it and saying, wait a second. that's not okay. it is is not okay for my kid to hear that. we had an intern, my cousin, who was very casually last summer telling me, oh, yeah, i've been called a terrorist in school. and i said, oh, really, did the that make you upset? and he said, oh, no, i'm muslim. everyone calls everyone terrorist muslim. and i think there is a bit of -- and i know your question was about data collection. there is a reporting issue of

whether children have the right tools to say -- use that language that this is bullying, i'm feeling harassed enough to report it to a school administrator or even to your parents. >> i think maybe that circles back to the point brenda was making that i at least initially started this conversation talking about student-on-student bullying and something that i think brenda raised to an important point is we have school administrators that are perpetuating and feeding into the anti-muslim rhetoric. that's rewind. >> i do want to jump in. we have a very specific definition, as i said, in the city. one of the parts of the definition, which is the part that throws even, is it does have to cause harm. and i want to just caution our notes. i honestly don't want any child to be called a terrorist for any reason. but we have learned that the effect of bullying on kids is really the important issue.

and some kids really are affected differently. we have learned this with other populations the same way. kids will walk into a room and be called names and they don't think anything of the other kids and they don't care. and they move through their life just fine. and their resiliency is built. they feel a part of the community. other kids who don't tell us also when they are being targeted and it undermines their sense of self, safety, and their ability to learn in that classroom. but just trying to figure out just because kids are hearing, we learned with kids with disabilities and our gay kids, bullying is about the psychological harm. i think it is is a really important question. it doesn't mean they shouldn't be accepts active and we shoo-in any way normalize that language, but how we address it is is a little bit more complicated. >> perhaps that is part of the challenge. i actually have a personal

reflection growing up in boston when mandatory bussing. trigger warning, trigger warning here. did i become used to the language? yes. did it have an impact on me? we're not aware of the impact it has as a child. here i am some 40 something years later and realizing it did have an impact on me. so i'm wondering if it's because it has become so much the norm to call muslim students terrorists that we said, eh, what's a big deal, he was just called a terrorist. maybe we can rewind and look at the legal stand. it would be great if we look at the subjective stand. can we rewiped for a minute? i don't know if this is a section 1983 claim. but what are some of the -- >> sure. >> what are we seeing in the courts as far as what courts are requiring? we have this great statute in

d.c. on a national level we are probably ahead of the curve in terms of what your office is doing and suzanne. >> i spent a little time perusing the internet. there are a fair number of people who looked at this in terms of how many kids have experienced some form of discrimination. there is no national prohibition on bullying. there's no statute that says you can't discriminate. it is how we interpret this conduct. and the care in california did a study, they interviewed 600 kids. muslim kids. and 55% had been by other students. and 20% by teachers. it is very prevalent as was just noted. it really set the tone. and the kids do follow the tone of the institutions in which

they live n. to some extent, the tone of their home and the national media and all of these other characteristics. to some extent the fact that that you have such a high percentage of teachers engaged in discriminatory conduct is reflective what's going on inside those schools. as i said, there is national statute that prohibits bullying. there are a number of laws that provide that students who go to school have free from discriminatory conduct. so the school itself can't especially gauge in conduct through the educational program or what have you. so what is said and done in the classroom by the teacher is critical to whether you create a climate where each student doesn't have equal access to an education. if you are bullied and you can't get the benefit, of the education in a way that a student who wasn't subjected

could get education that is prohibited by federal law. equally so, the school is responsible to make sure there is a climate different to the conduct of other students to that student and to prevent that conduct from interfering with the student's ability the get an education on equal terms with everyone el. that's the extent to which the law provides the kind of protection. there are private litigation -- excuse me. some of the most potent work is being done by the department of justice and the department of education. and there are a range of statutes that they applied. the department of education, as it turns out, has no statutory authority to look at discrimination based on religion. under the federal law, there is an enormous hole that prevents -- that goes to race, national origin, gender, color

but doesn't protect against religious speech. but the department of education has promulgated regulations and offered guidance when the discrimination based on religion is such that it goes to actual perceived an vest seftry or ethnicity is prohibited under the statutes. under title 6 and 9 and 4, jurisdiction the ability to deis segregated schools, title 6 prevents discrimination based on national origin in any grant -- federally funded program, which is every school in this country. title 9 requires a free and equal education for everyone. the department of justice can get directly at religious based discrimination. the problem is it's a very tricky kind of area under the law. because you have to balance -- you have to first get to this more complicated question we were discussing, which is what

is the impact? when does it cross the line between discourse on a public policy question to become discrimination that prevent equal terms to being able to get an education and how do you balance the first amendment and of the students engaged in expressive conduct. the courts have been delicate around this issue. they have been reluctant to deal with cyber bullying. the courts have provided very little guidance there and what guidance they provided is they give wide latitude to speakers on social media. less so in the school building, in the school house. but they have left some room for there to be negative, hurtful kinds of comments that don't go as far as those kinds of comments that would prevent children to get an education on equal terms. >> so what are we seeing?

i should mention those of you who may not know my former colleague here i think he has done some great social justice work, was with the department of justice. under his direction, doj authored the ferguson report. and i actually snubbed my nose at it because it was coming from the department of justice until i read it. it was one of the most balanced, insightful, you could hear jonathan's advo case coming out in that report. it made me think about that. what are we seeing that is actually work something these are the standards. it seems like we are climbing this mountain. do we know what strategies have been most effective when we're looking at protecting children in schools? >> i think these folks may know better than i do. i do know the courts have -- there have been a -- >> deliberate indifference. >> what the court remedies, if

you look at the injunctions that have been entered, are not very effective. have a policy. collect some data. and it doesn't provide the kind of leadership inside the schools to make the behavior unacceptable. >> so if i'm correct, when we're looking at deliberate indifference, there has to be first this great policy. is that correct? there has to be a policy in place, and the school district is demonstrating indifference to the policy -- were you going to -- >> i was just going add something. one thing we did because we had so many parents ought of this fear for what can i do, we drafted a letter to 6th single state, superintendent, or behalf their title would be in varying states that is responsible for education in their state. in that letter we highlighted similar to what you just went through, the legal obligations as aublic school district in that state. and what under title 6 and

prohibiting discrimination as well as potential liability there and section 1983 as well. and what we've done is we attached to that, which a fantastic letter that went out the last day before former secretary arne duncan left and before incoming secretary king started. a dear colleague letter went out that highlights not just the obligations on of each school district for what they should do, but also highlighted some potential strategies for how to talk about these issues in school and highlighting the climate for that. and after we sent that letter out, we got so many wonderful e-mails back from the state superintendent saying thank you. you know, we're not aware if this is happening at the schools, but we're going to look into it. we're going to have these conversations with our school streubgts. and we asked parents the take that letter and share it with the local school districts as

well. we'll accepted it to your state superintendent. you take it to your local school district. particularly in that dear colleague letter were quite wonderful. i know karama had been providing support for students. if we're looking at what's working, it seems like we have a room for of lawyers and the courts aren't working ironically. we have an advocacy letter that goes out. we are getting some response to the needs of students who are bullied. what about training, workshops, be working with students, identifying some of the ways that we can actually, i don't know, changing behaviors and providing supports. >> so i think that one of the things that is really important is having kind of these know your rights type workshops and training really for parents. and some for children.

it's interesting. i did one with children and parents together for karama at a local mosque. and it was really interesting. because i think the parents were horrified because i think -- there's a couple of lawyers of problems here. one layer is that i think that there's not a lot of communication happening between parents and children about particularly about cyberbullying. i think a lot of parents are not aware of all of the social media platforms that their children are on. they want to turn a blind eye to what is being shared. i'm making generalizations but that's what i gathered. and then i think when the young people started sharing some of the things that they were sharing with one another and how they were talking with one another, i think the parents were sort of just surprised that that was even happening. so that's one layer. and then i think that the next layer is just not knowing the

laws or the standard and how to even approach an issue. so a lot of the calls that we're getting, as i referenced before from parents is really how do i go about reporting an issue. so should i go to the school principal, should i go to their teacher, should i put my child in counseling. what are the kinds of mechanisms for relief. and i do think that the courts right now are still flying blind. we're still trying to figure out what the right mechanism for relief is. many years ago when i was practicing in tennessee there was a case, it's an interesting sort of remedy, two girls -- a girl had filed a protective order against another girl for harassment and for -- actually we got it under stalking which i thought was really not so creative, but it was -- it's not a good long term -- in the end i

thought it was not a good long term solution. but in tennessee the statute was that as long as there were three or more incidents of stalking-like behavior you could file a protective order against somebody else with whom you did not have a relationship. that's a standard in protective order cases. and i remember even then, and this was several years ago, the judge just scratching his head thinking, i don't know how i feel about a child getting a protective order against another child and how would that work in the school setting. do they not stay in the same classroom? do they stay 50 feet apart from one another? how is that going to be regulated? what are the regulatory mechanisms of this happening at the school. and frankly i'm not in favor of more police officers being in schools. it was just a complicated question. so i think that certainly having -- so the "know your

rights" thing is a catch 22 because you have to know what you're going to be pitching to parents of what you should be doing. and without guidance from the courts, you know, it's a little bit difficult. but i do think, even just starting dialogue, starting conversations between parents and lawyers about feeling like you're not totally without any mechanism of relief is very important. >> there are two challenges, one for parent to know the remedies that they have for their students. but then once they determine that remedy, finding an advocate who will help you navigate the often very complicated legal system. suzanne, i know your office has some kind of -- i'm not fully familiar with. the d.c. office of human rights had some kind of complaint process. >> yes. >> could you share that with us? >> i want to echo something that was said. you're absolutely right where the kids don't share.

a big problem around the issue of bullying is that your kids don't tell us exactly what's going on but there's a really good reason why they don't tell us and that's because we usually overreact and we make it worse as far as they're concerned. and this is sort of that double edged part of this that we work in especially as our kids get older. they don't tell their parents because their parents overreact. and think feel that's going to make it harder on them in school of how to navigate it. we have a process certainly in the office of human rights. but part of the work of the bully prevention program that i run is that prevention mode and getting parents in the door to schools before an incident happens to talk about how do we illustrate an inclusive communities. how do we illustrate where people are recognized and validated. we need parents to do it.

school don't always want to do it without a little bit of pressure. that piece is very important. through my office there is a claim through a hostile educational environment based on a particular trait that you can use to address bullying in a public educational institution. we have a dual process because we want to make sure that you actually get to me first and we try to resolve the issue for the child because sometimes the court process, no offense to all of the lawyers in here, takes a long time. i can't afford to have a kid stay in that kind of environment for any length of time. so we try to work immediately with the school to shift the dynamics, provide the support to the kid so that they feel -- the most important piece is making the kid feel safe and protected again and understand that the adults can do something and do something helpful. that's the part we want to work

on first and then we'd really appreciate it if the legal folks come behind us to actually ensure that it doesn't happen over and over again in the same school. >> i think that -- you know, and the dear colleague letter is very helpful in taking on this issue because it recognizes the balancing question of people wanting to have a public debate against the need to protect students. but i also think as we think about this from the legal perspective that there's often not an understanding of what is it that one understands whether it's bullying and what deliberate indifference looks like in the context of a school. and if you've got a lot of students that are saying things that are hostile and harmful, that is probably -- that may or may not be enough. and we need to look at those things. like do muslim kids spend more time getting through the screening of the school resource officer. you know when they go to school, do teachers talk about you know,

the greatness of america? what are the permissions that are being given to students by subtly and not so subtly by the school itself. do they do things like the dear colleague letter says that it's important that people have a respectful mechanism to express these things. you know, how do they do that. or is it does the school shut people down so there isn't an outlet for people to actually understand each other. and so i think in terms of thinking about how i would build a legal case, just knowing what one student said to another, how frequently that happens itself would not be enough. the more you dug, the more you would find this is school-promoted kind of conduct. this isn't happening in isolation because the school administration sets that climate. >> i have one quick thought on that, and this is sort of related in a circuitous way. i'm thinking a lot about this issue of access to education, a

basic right for children and the idea safe from discrimination. it's interestingecause one of the pieces of advocacy that we're working on currently is the teaching of islam in public schools. so there's actually quite a large movement, it's becoming a national movement starting in tennessee and texas and colorado of just an erasure of islam from the curriculum and from textbooks. there was actually -- i don't want to get into the politics of it but there were a lot of politicians who were saying that we were indoctrinating children in islam by even teaching. so for example if you're teaching the basics of theology saying that muslims believe in five pillars, the first pillar is faith in god and there's an arabic saying that goes along

with that. it just so happens that that's the saying that people say when they convert to islam as well. that's what they're saying. there's this idea that oh my gosh muslims are designing this curricula to convert all of these children in the public schools. it's kind of funny, it's really awful. but it's really vilifying other islam and erasing islam and islamic history as if it had no significance in the context of our world. and saying that we should be, you know, taking it out of textbooks all together. it's interesting, because while we have made inroads with the departnt of education, they're sayingt is up to the schools. individual schools. there's a jurisdiction question of of what guidance can the federal government give to local schools of how to conduct the curriculum. this is a subtle way that is sort of infiltrating the overall

discourse in the schools that there's something wrong with islam, we shouldn't be talking about islam. which is also impacting how kids are feeling in schools. >> if all you hear is the crusades of 9/11. >> exactly. that's the only historical fact you need to be aware of. >> i think it's important that you mentioned the overall climate for students. and one thing that i always try to remind folks is that when we talk about anti-muslim hate crimes, what we've seen in the past year, you know, just to give it a date, since the attacks in paris we started mapping on a map hate crimes all across the country. and at one point we had 50% of those attacks were against houses of worship. what i tried to remind folks is this is where students, young children g