chicago. it is true again today. in the old neighborhoods it was you came to a place where people from your home town and you're cousins had moved and you found all kind of clubs and houses and insurance companies. schools and saturday schools. you probably, if you came from a backward country, you're not politically active. you did not think that your voice mattered in politics. you did not think i you could influence how you're george -- your church was organized. you came to america and you had to make that leap, they cater to

the mainstream. you first played in what we called the rules that you learned and the skills that she learned her you took them into the mainstream. we see that play out exactly again today. latinos get involved in politics because they care about immigration and that the demonstrations. the next thing you know, they are registering to vote. the gutted their home town associations -- they go to their home town as sese asians and send money back to their village. before you know it, one study in chicago shows that you belong to four organizations that have nothing to do with mexican- americans. hometown associations also lead to voting. the most interesting of these analyses are the way you start your own ethnic business in the

neighborhood, a shop where people can buy the kind of things that they miss from home, and that next thing you know, your edging over into a mainstream market. i want in on the notion of the heisman that has been the notion that defines how ethnicity works in america and how it bridges to the mainstream. teddy roosevelt raged against the hyphen, but it is the secret of how works when it comes to immigrate. we do not ask you to be jews still loyal to the old things for america. a lot of european countries say give that up. in america, be part of those organizations but the hyphen will help you bridge, it is an ad on choice.

>> the panelists painting a rosier picture than in the past. we're putting things back together and making them more human face -- unified and i will resist that a little bit. let me do that by asking a broad question, motivated by a bumper sticker that i see in the wealthy, liberal area that i live in. unity through diversity. is that tired slogan, left over from the days of hyper self- conscious diversity talks, or is there some truth to that? luis, let me start with you. >> i gave you a broad picture of what is happening with religion in public life in this country. there have been a lot of bombs along the way. it has to do with -- bumps along the way.

pushing the envelope from the standpoint of the majority of that community, one example, the experience of roman catholics. because of major migration from europe, primarily ireland and italy and poland, this was profoundly unsettling to the mainstream protestant establishment. there were not only tensions and conflicts but riots in place like philadelphia where the main campus of villanova university was torched to the ground. one of the reasons, the real reason had to do with bible reading in the public schools

and whether catholic kids could read the douay version rather than the king james version. this was such an affront to the protestant establishment that there were riots in the street and the governor had to call out the card to put down the rebellion. it is not by any means a smooth evolution, but it has been an evolution nevertheless, and catholics are now basically considered the mainstream in the united states. post-1965, immigration is predominantly from latin america and asia. the latin american immigrants are predominantly christian. the main demographic, the impact is really putting more members into the roman catholic church, unlike the native born, two-one

protestant coming into this country, they are now 2-1 catholic. they are overwhelmingly catholic as opposed to protestant. but the rest of the immigrants coming in, a large percentage of them, look at the percentage of muslim-americans, the percentage of hindus, buddhists. the latest wave of migration is producing a much greater diversity, not only christian and jewish, another story we could talk about, the abraham ic inclusion of muslims, it is now what is and hindus and so forth. there is a continuing challenge, and it seems to me is how the government and we as a society respond to diversity

and choose to accommodate it that will determine precisely where these religious identities serve to shore up the broader civic identity. >> i think you're contrast of our panel and the first panel is interesting. could it be that immigrants and the new comers, while the white people in kansas or l.a., for example, are going to fragment into different cultures? you're going to have immigrants coming together around a sense of patriotism and feeling that they belong, where that kansas and l.a. people are going to war. interesting notion. it is a nice slogan but it leaves out what is the "@ bair their" that we do all along

together. "there there"that we all do belong together. the american model has always had the lesson that we bought into, and it was not about cultural conformity as in europe, not like being german are being french. there was a lot of difference in culture, but there was a set of ideas that people bought into that made america what is. unity through diversity leaves out that "there there", that set of ideas what ever they are. when we come up with something similar, there are democratic values and opportunity and tolerance and freedom.

that is not just the same as tolerating diversity. >> i think this is an interesting opportunity to talk about some of my work on intermarriage and multi-regional identification and how'd diversity is changing opportunity. one of the fascinating things is that it marriage has risen dramatically over the past 50 years -- intermarriage has risen dramatically over the past 50 years. it was actually quite surprising to me. even if they live in southern california, i see a number of interracial relationships, and if you look it just 2008, the marriages that took place then, one in seven marriages was interracial in 2008.

what is fascinating is that what we did, my co-author and i, we looked dead states and broke those down by metropolitan areas. states and metropolitan areas that were most racially diverse had the highest rates of interracial marriage and also the highest rates of multiracial reporting. such diversity, you would think they would be increase of groups would lead to the erection of boundary among groups. what we find is the opposite. when you have a large presence of at least three different groups, you find more interracial marriage and more multiracial reporting. so the increase diversity is actually not leading to a fragmentation. it seems to be leading to more

of a reduction of social resistance between groups. with that said, it was fascinating about the figures among asians and latinos, about 30% of asian and latino marriages are interracial. but if you break that down by u.s.-born asians and latinos, the figures jump. about 52% of u.s.-born latinas are in interracial relationships. among asians, this is startling to me, i went back and check that a number of times, 72% of u.s.-born asians are an interracial relationships. this gets to the issues of diversity and fragmenting as a society. his immigration fragmenting us? in all the research that we find and in looking at the barometers of social distance, we see that the gaps are

closing, especially for asians and latinos. especially among u.s.-born asians and latinos. i'm not here at the point the rosy picture that tomas has said we are guilty of. my work has come to the idea of exceptionalism. that distance is not bridged as closely between african- americans and whites. >> let me speak about the politics of this and the discourse surrounding it. you're all painting a picture of more unity than division, for the trend toward more unity on the ground, whether racial identity, politics, but the politics and the discourse seems

to belie all of that. whether we are afraid that sharia law will become the law of the united states, or white people have more racial discrimination than blacks, the discourse seems to belie all of this and suggest that we are in fact been torn apart by these things. the first panel pointed out how or politics are becoming increasingly fragmented. can you speak about the the coupling between what we see going on on the ground and the way that we talk about this? jennifer, let's start with you. >> oh, gosh. one of the things i will talk about, and this is puzzling to me and i do not have an answer so i would be happy to hear what my fellow panelists have to say in here from all of you in here, because i do see this incredible

divorcing of what someone in the first panel talked about political ideas and our ideas and the politicization of those ideas. and i were talking about earlier about support for immigrants. >> i was pointing out that americans are all over the place when it comes to public opinion about immigration. the look at polls taken last summer, a majority say that they would favor -- small but a majority nevertheless -- changing the 14th amendment's so that children of immigrants could not become automatic citizens. but a large majority favor a law that would create a pathway to legal residency for immigrants who are here. very paradoxical opinions about immigration. >> i cannot make sense of it.

i think the one of the fascinating things that we're finding in our work is that you give the unauthorized migrants a path to citizenship, their children have much better educational outcomes. they are often unable to, and it affects not only them but importantly it affects their children. i know i am not answering the question. i am going to kick the ball over to luis who will answer it better than i could. >> there are contentious issues there. take abortion. it has been a contentious issue, unlike the issues of gay marriage or their rights, we have seen very little movement in the country. the country is pretty much divided 50/50. it is not solidifying

denominational differences. at one point in our history, it was a protestant/catholic very unique division. if you look at our data up and analyze it, you will see that religious all lines on that question to not run along denominational lines through the run through them. -- do not run along denominational lines. they run through them. this would have been unthought of 50 years ago. take conservative catholics and evangelicals. and when you add evangelicals and catholics, you got more than 50% of the country, so these are not insignificant. for more than 150 years of our history, these groups were at each other's throats.

now they have made common cause on the question of abortion. in fact, activism around that issue has really helped to break down a lot of boundaries between white evangelicals and conservative roman catholics in ways that i have certainly found stunning. you get that orthodox jews to that mix. the fault line there is reconfiguring the way that people lined up on that. even a highly divisive issue like that, still highly divisive for our society, on the religious side has also generated some forms of unity among more conservative oriented groups, regardless of religious traditions, and more liberally oriented groups within those traditions. >> you see this where i live.

i spend a lot of my time in washington with the stalemated issue. i got a focus groups and speak and try to get a sense of where the public is. it is a complete divide in ways you may not expect. i have an explanation of it. when you go out and sit with a focus group and ask them what they think about immigrants, 12 people around the country and i do them all around the country. we're talking what mostly white people and they'd come in and they are angry. they complain about the kids in the emergency rooms and the spanish and their schools. if you let them spend a whole two hours talking about today like immigrants or if immigrants are good for america or not,

they will say it is good for america but the emergency room, but, but, but. if you ask them for a solution, and i am talking about republican women in nashville, the most what we would think of as unreconstructed on this, if you ask them for their solution, they get very pragmatic. and then they are at the solution that president obama or congressman guiterriez would like. first they say, deport them all, and then they realize it is expensive and how you make that work? will than they think about making life so miserable that they go home. and they talk about that. they would have families here

and who would mow my lawn. [laughter] at about the 45 minute point, can you consider what spite, i cannot believe i am going to say this, but we have to let them become legal. we have to figure out a way to let them jump through hoops and become legal. the public is very mixed views, right? we are a nation of immigrants but we are troubled by the illegality. we've asked them to be practical, they come to the pragmatic solution. you get to d.c. and they can come to know pragmatic solution. it is pretty much democrats on reform and republicans cannot talk about it. it becomes a political football. to watch this play out over the next two years is going to be painful. we have become the wedge issue

par excellence. the question is what is the difference? what is the gap? i can we have a connection between the public that is very troubled, but want to get to a pragmatic solution, and politicians cannot, completely in a partisan standoff on it. one of the names that did not get mentioned in the first panel to is one of the interesting writers talked about this. on a lot of different issues, the public is always ambivalent. they are for motherhood but every issue coming there is ambivalence. on immigrants, we want to be a nation of immigrants but we're troubled by the illegality. it is a mixed view and there are

a lot of different values at play. and then the politicians give them choices that are either/or. when you're given an either/or choice, and will take that either/or choice. the politicians say that we have to be anti-immigrants and you agree with him on a lot of other things, you will take that choice even though you have a more mixed view. the problem here is not so much the polarization of the public, but the public wants pragmatic solutions and the politicians are offering them starkly polarized choices. it is hard for the people in the focus group to make themselves heard saying they want a practical solution that works on a lot of different dimensions. and when the choices only black or white, they choose one of the other. >> i last our panel to move a

little faster. i want to turn to the underlying assumption that some degree of cohesion is desirable. we've been talking a lot about the way their religious, racial, an immigrant and political groups might come together. what are the specific things that have the potential to bring us together? military conscription, requiring the pledge of allegiance? what are the kinds of things that it people out and feel some sense of unity toward the united states? >> i do not know if i had the answer. i might be running for president. but the one thing i would say about the conversation we have been having is that if you make cohesion your goal, it is almost liking the mechanics of the gulf as opposed to the substance. people who say i want to get

rich do not get as a rich as much as people who have a great idea for a product. people who say they want to be happy as those who said that they want to accomplish something for love the people around me. cohesion might be putting the cart before the horse. do we have some sense in the country of purpose and bad news that we share? cohesion might be good or bad. i do not have the answer to what those that use our. but when i look again at the 1960's, to see what is the difference, there was much more of a sense of a national purpose and what our shared values were. maybe cohesion is a goal might be chasing the wrong -- i am for military service, or some sort of national service, i guess.

i'm for patriotic displays and all the things we talked about those might be the mechanics rather than the substance. >> jennifer, what should we be chasing? >> when you think about working toward something else that is larger than yourself, and doing that and bringing together people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, bringing immigrants together with native- born americans, bringing different gender backgrounds, and then working toward something, then you start to forget about the things that are different between you and among you and think about working toward that goal. i thought about this a lot because some of my friends are martial artists. when they walk into a dojo, they do not care what they do what racial and ethnic background you are, what your native born --

they are working toward a skill. that is how they are judged. that is our neighborhood associations, when you are working toward the betterment of something else, they leave those characteristics behind and working toward something that is beyond yourself. >> luis? >> we take a straight non- advocacy position, so technically i am not even for coalition, and i help you understand that. [laughter] we simply report on the facts. but the facts tell us that if you look at public opinion, the country and the society is open to religious expression in a way that is equitable for all groups. they really seemed to be a winner. the biggest challenge today as it was for catholics and jews and others is the muslim

community, which without question since 9/11 has had a difficult time, quite difficult. but when we polled muslim- americans, the first national representative survey, we were surprised to the extent to which they headed toward basic american values. citizenship and language, there were far advanced as far as their incorporation into the united states. to get to the specifics, it is the sense on the religious side, and not speaking overall, that they are getting a fair shake here, that their religion is respected and from a legal framework, treated like every other religious group. >> let's take a moment to open it up to all of you. take some questions and comments and i will ask you in stating

your questions and comments to be as brief and concise as you possibly can. they will bring a microphone. we have two microphones. >> please raise your hand. >> you so that c word. conscription. as a retired military officers, we won draftees even less than we would of one the others. -- we want draftees even less than we would others. it is an experience that is an equally shared by immigrants and minorities with an officer corps that is still somewhat light --

white, but the whites that did not go to law school. >> it's interesting that you bring up the military. is an institution that when we talk about cohesion, we do not often talk about, although there are a number of countries in the world that use the military as what people call the school of the nation. if you want people to come together and feel some sense of unity about what it means to be career in or is rarely, and i do not use those examples by coincidence, then you require them to a year of military service. some thai, some connection to what it means. bill clinton proposed a national service model so that people did not have to go into military service. >> i interest in the the military does not want draftee's anymore. but why not a national service?

i am surprised -- i would think that would be a classic obama idea. but maybe the point is, not many people would want to do it. poor people might want to do it that everyone will hurry to get to law school. maybe the fear is that we would propose that no one would want to do it. which tells us about the sense of cohesion and sacrifice. we're determined to get to that good job or what ever it is. how many people would take a year out to build bridges or teach in schools? some people do, but i am not sure you get everyone. >> that might be good. >> on the right here. >> my question and then a quick comment. at any of you done any work in the arts in terms of social cohesion? i would like to suggest also that instead of cohesion, you should be talking about understanding. i interviewed 19 artistic

directors of culturally specific dance companies and found that in a startling way, all of these different ethnic companies -- we used the word culturally specific -- are becoming integrated into the mainstream of american dance and creating an understanding that is going beyond the specific communities, from working in the basement to working in the kennedy center. and i would like to avert more about the role of the arts which i think is quite important and interesting. that is the question and comment. >> a great comment. it makes my point about working into the mainstream. we did not think about that. >> you cannot be a teenager in the silicon valley unless you know about bollywood and currie

and pop. -- korean pop. how they areample getting into the mainstream. >> more on the economic side on this, people who democrat -- immigrate tend to be more entrepreneurial and take risk is, which is one of the reasons the united states has been as entrepreneurial as it has. and there been real economic reasons for both legal and illegal immigration. for along time, the illegal immigration was excepted by many people both businessmen and people needed gardner's and things like that. it has suddenly become much less acceptable but left us with a situation where we have a large

number of immigrants exploited because of their lack of legal status. how can we resolve that in a cohesive way? and the economic ups and downs of that -- thank you. >> i think he brought in an excellent example. the selectivity of immigrants. the immigrants who come here from different countries are the most entrepreneurial because they are willing to leave their country and make a new life for themselves in somewhere be the foreigner. immigrants have a high level of entrepreneur ship. and asian groups, the entrepreneurship rates are extraordinarily high. but that is because they are

closed out of jobs because they are qualified for because they do not speak english well, because they do not understand the cultural norms of native- born culture. then you also talked about what are we to do with this group of on authorized migrants coming here for opportunities. the fact that we are hiring them, there was a joke about who would mow your lawn, who would be serving you in restaurants, who would be doing the back service work and cleaning your hotel rooms? who would be harvesting crops -- exactly. in southern california, i drive past them all the time. so we have this strange pair of acts -- paradox in that they are here, they are undocumented, they are doing labor, if for

some reason we do not feel that they belong. it seems like bringing together what was said earlier about the focus group interviews, most americans are after tasting for a path to legalization for people who are here, especially their children who may have been born outside the country but raised here most of their lives. that seems the only humane way to go about it. and also their own opportunities and make sure that they are not exploited in the process. >> there's no question that immigrants are drawn here for economic opportunities. that is what they come for. they're not here to get social security. americans are more and more educated, and half of the american men in the work force were high-school dropouts one to do unskilled work in the 1960's.

now, less than 5% are. we also do not educate enough engineers. so we need people and people come for that. you see how it is market-driven, because they'd done in turn, that inflow from mexico has been cut in half. we do not need as many workers in kitchens and hotels and construction. it is very market-sensitive. and this is where public opinion is so complicated, but the public does not understand that. the american public thinks that it did pay more, my cousin would do it. the problem is that the american public does not get the economic drivers. and the american public likes

the european -- even when they understand that, their cultural fears compete. it is very hard to have our rational conversation about immigration. people would be all for the policies. it takes a long time to get to that rational conversation because of the polarized choices. >> that is precisely the attitude we find when we polled most americans. i never said that if you work hard, you're going to get far in this society -- a high percentage say that if you're working hard, you're going to get far in this society. the muslim community in this country tends to be much more highly educated. the middle class, when you look at the educational levels and income levels, and there's some

immigrant communities with a higher percentage of immigrants into american and even higher levels. the educational levels and this country, those levels are held by hindu americans. it's quite extraordinary. it depends on what end of the immigrants and spectrum you're talking about. >> i wanted to bring in the status of gender with the immigration population and immigration. i've done some research in my school and within germany and canada that females integrated more quickly than males. there was more cultural tension between men in the society, and there's some dialogue almost let

the western feminism in bringing the men. do we see something similar with in the united states in the sense that they make you are saying, different societies. as we see integration in the society between latino groups, do we see this integration between the family itself? >> i think the study of gender is something people need to pay more attention to comment gender differences and immigrant emigres -- integration. one of the things is that oftentimes, highly educated men have a harder time integrating into the united states because

they experience a severe status drop. if you are working as a professor in your country of origin and you come to the united states and you're not able to get an equivalent job, and you have to open up a small business at a low-income neighborhood to make a living, there is a status inconsistency. in women, the status drop is not as severe. that is one thing i would say for the second thing i was thinking of his patterns of intermarriage. as in females are twice as likely to intermarry as asian males. that has implications for integration. gender is working its way in complicated ways, but it seems that e-mails for reasons of pre-migration status and also the reception, if i were to make

a generalization, have an easier time integrating in some regards. >> the only thing i would add is that there is some evidence among the children of low skilled immigrants, women are doing better than men. part of it is because women are being raised according to various traditional gender norms of child-rearing. in big cities, that means that the boys are allowed to roam free after-school and the women have to come home and help out in the household. and then they develop a set of skills that are somewhat transferable to the labor force and they stay out of trouble more. you see them getting better grades, getting better jobs, more likely to go to college. there are certain gender patterns of integration. >> on the iranians in particular? >> that is fairly consistent

with what you mentioned. the best ass high long as we're on the muslim issue, the relief comes from every place around the world. there is no country of origin that accounts for more than 8% of american muslims, another huge difference with europe. the iranians in particular, given the historical and political circumstances, they have tended to be more westernize. they are the least religious moslem group in this country. on the latino side, a cuban- americans tended to be quite middle class, fairly educated, and among latinos, the most secularized of the group. >> we will be taking our last question on the left. >> all factoid for you, luis.

i used to teach in kuwait and one of my students can the florida for spring break. they traveled in florida and europe. he said that he was surprised. he faced no discrimination, no racism in florida, not like europe. we likea sense in which to talk about these things and as americans we get wrapped in bunches over some of the stock, whereas it is not as bad as it seems. to the point about loyalty, i really think this is where we need to be focused on this question of what are these the core values that we hold. that transcends things. that is one of the reasons that if you look at abortion, you have two varied deeply held

values of defending the right of the person that cannot defend themselves, something deep within the american psyche. we jump to the defense of someone that we see cannot defend themselves. so you get two sides tried to define what that would be. and then the question of life. what are we doing to actually try to get to this level -- that is where we get there, how we find these values that transcend everything and bring us together. >> if we could answer that... >> we have defined americanness as adherence to agreed. certain propositions like

equality in the rule of law and so forth. what is not present in that creed is religion. part of the reason why people of different religious backgrounds feel like they can be fully american is because they do not have to give up their minority fade in order to accept the american creed. i think it is a very significant thing. it also happens on the racial side folks in europe have a lot tougher time come to terms with that. what does it mean to be german were to be friends? many of these other things that we take for granted are not part of the american creed. they have historically been part of those creeps. -- creeds. that makes their situation more challenging than ours. >> that brings up what you said

earlier on, the difference between this panel and the panel before. we're talking about people who are at the moment loyal to one group and are thinking had a transfer that loyalty to a different or larger group. which is different from what the first panel was talking about, more about the individualism on doing us at the broader level. if you look at these people who do not feel they are part of something in the same way that people in earlier generations felt they were part of, so when we're talking about immigration and at this and they, they are loyal to a group. that is an easier problem when you're talking about what the various individuals focused on their own materialistic thing, what did they come together around?

>> i really appreciated the story about your student who came to florida and said that he did not see racism. when we talk about these issues with our students, one of the things that gives me enormous hope said things that i see an tomas might see as the huge barriers for students, they're just so blase about these things. things that i get worked up about and they want to talk about, they are almost passed it. i am not sure because we are in california where there is an enormous amount of racial and ethnic diversity and immigration is not something new or different. but it gives me hope that this time of -- type of anecdote that you mentioned is not new and is not original to this particular person, but that for the younger generation, the idea of

diversity is not as big a deal as it is for our generation, what ever we are. >> this is precisely your point. if you talk to religious leaders, their main concern is that there block is not patriotic but what they see as a corrosive individualism distancing them from religious institutions, and other institutions as well. >> on that note, we will have to close. i want to thank our panel and all of you for weighing in. >> justice o'connor is not feeling very well so she has asked me to perform a wrapup which i will do for those of you

who were not here in the beginning. from arizona state university. the central question was meant to stimulate the discourse and interaction. to get a glimpse from leading scholars and writers and thinkers about the complexity of a question as strange says "can the united states remain united ?" that is probably for many reasons and objected -- an objective that we can bring to it as possible. and thinking about what panelist had to say today, what i was hearing in this discussion was this dichotomy, this notion of the ideals of the united states, individualism, individualized liberty, freedom of logar --

freedom of religion, all those things making us who we are, driving us to the point to where people who are right here, for once here, able to find themselves really expressive, they are able to do what they want to do, and that is the way the system is designed. given that, you have this stress of being cohesive when everyone is free on an individual basis to be to the one or to do what they would like to do. at the same time, how you find ways to connect? it is the case that the stresses are particularly acute at the moment for reasons like we heard from our panelists. i think michael in the first panel talked about technology and its ability to create ones own world. if you can create your own world and you live where your own world is credible, chances are you'll be highly motivated to do that.

the notion that bill talked about of scale, where you can actually identify and create your own identity, move to a place where that identity can be maximized, and then live your life within that space, that physical place, why would you not want to do that? jim talked about this notion what i call partisanship convergence and culture, the notion of cultural partisanship. partisanship itself is changing and evolving, and again, why not? here we have this manifestation of this very stark dilemma that the american design is such that it drives us to accentuate our differences, but the unifying factor is in fact the mechanism under which we are empowered to be able to do that.

i thought randall kennedy's talk where he put down two very important concepts related to each other, the notion of attractive social cohesion and what he called decent social conceived -- social cohesion. who worries about the ceiling? we need to worry about the floor. if you have no access to a decent conceptualization of connectivity to everybody else, if you have no purpose of the tory met along the way, and then we have left 42 million people behind. i thought that he was outlining something that we need to keep in mind. one of the consequences of intense individualism is 32% of those people being children who lived in are raised in a particular environment over which they have no control. it is a flop, if you will, in the design that has not yet been resolved.

this panel, interestingly, and i think appropriately, outlined some of the research questions, almost. is this dilemma i meant to between the ideal of america and implementation of that americanism. what i was hearing was this notion of real-time forces. i thought this panel could be called real-time high-speed social change. this notion of speed. social change has never occurred at the speed at which it occurs in the united states in the early 21st century. there cannot have been a period in history where social change has occurred at the rate it has occurred here. we heard from general for the notion the validity of social

constructs. being dynamically driven by, in my mind, american values. what americans will like in the future, we are hearing about intermarriage and interconnection and enter linkages, there's probably no way to predict that other than a group driven by these american values, through highly fluid dynamically driven social constructs, and that they have changed and are changing more quickly and are likely to change. we've heard about a new immigration way, and the interesting thing -- i remember something in the presidential campaign of 2008, someone went out and polled everyone and said, who will not vote for barack obama because his father is of african descent? 80% said i didn't care for 20% said i care. that means those is that i care, they are racist, because they

were making a decision that they were unwilling to vote for someone because of the racial heritage of the father. i said to myself, great, that means we have 80% for seemingly not racist. so i said to myself, that is fantastic and to you run the numbers. in a country of 300 million people, that is a lot people. you are getting at the notion of numbers, large numbers. this sometimes have not realized that, yes, there have been waves of immigration that have come and gone. there has seldom been good time in any country's history where you had 1.5 million immigrants showing up from all over the world all at once in a single year and then of million 0.5 million the next year, and a million 0.5 the next year. -- 1.5 million next year and the

next year. this new technological world where they can link up and communicate in ways not available in the past, these impacts so-so cohesion or lack thereof. and i think you're saying this -- this notion of the cohesion that we already have as a function that in the united states you want to be the hindu or the atheist or the catholic or did you or the muslim or what ever is, be my guest. there is nothing holding you back from those directions you want to go. there is this notion that the cohesiveness their was actually around the idea of religious freedom. one of the things i wanted to put on the table, gregory, for you in the center and others involved in for the fellows and those participating, is that this is a really important set of questions. it is an important set of

issues, but it is one that the old style of approach, including academic sociology and other ways of doing things, they're not going to work -- i am not picking on the stanford sociology departments were irvine -- we did away with our sociology department. [laughter] we have evolved a tool for human evolution and social change with family dynamics and we have other structures that we're going in. all the approaches are not likely to work. likely togms' are not work. we need to look at all of these things that our panelists were able to put on the table. for those of you able to ask questions, thank you. i thought the questions were good and got people moving in the right direction. for those of you interested in this topic, this center will be continuing to advance in the form of public discourse as well as written materials and academic work. thank you for being here.

[applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> looking ahead to what is happening in congress this week, the senate was scheduled to take a week-long break for the july 4 holiday, but majority leader reed decided have centers returned today to continue conversations on the debt and the deficit. on the floor, military operations in libya starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern with a vote on moving the resolution forward at 5:00. in the house, lawmakers return

insurance program. you can see the house live here on c-span and the senate on c- span2. coming up this morning on c- span, we are live with "washington journal." at 10:00 a.m. eastern, nasa administrator charles bolden talks about the future of human spaceflight and the space shuttle program which launches its final mission on friday. later, former secretary of state henry kissinger and cnn host fareed zacaria participate in a debate on china in the 21st century. in about 45 minutes, political reporter kenneth vogel discusses a latest fund-raising efforts by 2012 candidates and the national party. national party.