this is bryant park. this is bryant park now. it took decades to institute the necessary improvements, some of them financed by public-private partnership. in a sense these city and public caught up with jacob's white with the concept of the public realm just in time to realize help public space was -- how public space was being occupied by powerful agencies focused on security and powerfulnce and agencies exploiting the public advertisement. i would just say about the coke theater, thish $100he gift of 100 -- million from david koch.

it was called the new york state theater from the beginning. was also financing, page $65 million to create the front of the metropolitan museum, which will open soon, pretty much outside his window. to the heart of agency and authority. some of the most intriguing examples of -- there he is seen with his wife. so, the construction site. some of the most intriguing examples of lyrical action in public space are not protests the reconfiguration of public spaces by people, urban designers and architects included, who take matters into their own hands. the addition of the ring road in cairo, and made by artisans in a neighborhood bordering that highway. here you see the ring road as it winds through cairo's sprawl.

the highway is a project of thei mubarak and is part of urbanization that has insulated many of egypt's wealthy. the proliferation of gated communities is a global phenomenon. perhaps the most disturbing urban trend today. these are exploding around the world, as we all know. many of them are modeling themselves not after places like boston or new york or berlin. any are mimicking american-style gated communities, the antithesis of help the urban growth. it has become the housing complex of choice in much of the developing world. space, it ispen akin to the enclosures of agricultural land during the 17th century that did away with the commons.

the trend is accelerating, and you see it in fact in cairo. this is a place called continental heights, which i went to see. these gated residence with golf courses. that is smack in the middle of the desert. pandering,ndling -- focused on the sprawl to encourage these velvets, ignoring public transit and public space and he also created the october bridge and causeway, ahrirng to rear square -- t square with affluent centers in a country with only 14% of the population owns cars and more than 20 million people have almost no green space. versionmiddle eastern essentially of postwar america automobiles and exodus from a festering city center.

it is only natural that the bridge became the site of violent protests during the revolution. something even more important fall andfter mubarak's the purgatory of morsi's role. constructed their own public spaces. -- anmes one neighborhood area larger than manhattan -- residents formed popular committees, neighborhood coalitions, and they pooled resources to fix roads to enhance public squares and police the streets. this was actually a neighborhood committee taking over an area. an egyptian architect with whom inpoke about the urbanism cairo -- this was before the

military takeover -- told me what has definitely changed is before in cairo, someone always used to dictate where you are allowed to sit or walk, what you're allowed to do or say. this new rights to express yourself in the street is not minor or a luxury. the street was not really public space. now it is. clearlyis nowhere more illustrated than on the ring road which was built specifically to bypass and isolate an immense formal settlement. for years workers, including government workers living there, and had to wait hours every day because they could not take the roads. so, in the absence of interference by the government, residents constructed their own to the highway. they built these ramps out of dirt and trash and then they invited the police to open a

kiosk at the interchange, with the police did. it was full on, do it yourself infrastructure. a massive assertion of genuine public authority over public space. and of course, an implicit rejection of exclusionary politics. nagata c, also in egyptian architect and planner put it to me before the takeover, this is always a revolution about unjust urban restrictions on space. the bull realized they had to determine their own space. conflicterrupted a new about what space it is and who determines what the spaces. ancaracas, there is unfinished and abandon 45-story office building from the early

1990's and the former central business district of the city which has famously become the improvised home for more than 750 families. those of you who are architects in the room might know this. they have created in effect vertical squats. team, which calls itself urban think tank, have studied the tower for years and sees him nor most potential for extermination and creative reuse. i would say this is true. residents of the david tower have created essentially a mixed-use development. we electricity. water of group goldberg system -- rube goldberg water system. stores, office-supply stores, hairdressers, taylor's -- tailors, basketball courts with teams that play in local

leagues. a gym. church aroundical which the building's system of evolved.t has it has become regulated redesign. the squatters use brick and found materials to demarcate apartments and rooms really in a vernacular style of arched doorways, interior windows, all sorts of things that they have seen elsewhere, often in the barrios. modern officee, tower. reclaimingve reuse, public space, is a microscopic accor cousin of the mega city itself, as pointed out by think tank. the residents unencumbered by

,esign, a series of aesthetics builds what make sense to them. they go on to say if this is the future, a formal city writ small, urban architects face a major challenge. who and what are we to those we serve? what exactly are we designing and to what end? tank.s all urban think the group partly tries to answer that question by proposing to put a wind turbine on top of the tower and create a pulley system that would cheaply transport goods and people up and down the tall shaft in the absence of elevators. there are no working elevators in the building. i think there is an answer in of the refugee camp in southern west bank, and i will end with this example, and i'm very anxious and happy to take any questions or comments.

two architects worked with residents of the camp totwo arch residents of the camp to create a public plaza, virtually unheard of in such places, and a specially problematic among palestinian refugees for whom the creation of any permanent amenity by establishing normalcy undermines their fundamental self-image as temporary occupants with the right of return to homes in israel. we see this as a notion of eating in public is behavioral, not just a spatial condition, which nonetheless depends on certain spatial aspects. in refugee camps, public and private do not exist conceptually as they do elsewhere. property is neither public nor private in the camps. refugees do not own their homes. nor are streets municipal properties as they are in the cities, because refugees are not cities and the camp is not a city. the legal notion of the refugee

cap according to the united nations is in effect a temporary individuals,placed not a civic body. there is no municipality to care .or lights and garbage things like inside and outside are blurred. a mother may not wear the veil atthe camp, whether she is home were out on the street, but she will wear it when she leaves the camp, which is outside. so, there is a powerful sense of community. six years ago the two architects create a conversation with residents about creating a public plaza or square. residents were suspicious. not just about normalizing the camp, but creating a space for men and women might come together in public. they consulted groups of women and one described the discussion as to way, not just architects passively listening to what the women said, but they themselves

trying to envision what the women might want and what everyone could use. the question was, how to make a space that could be open so that men and women would gather together, while allowing women summing closure. -- some enclosure. they did not want to feel exposed or criticized or made uncomfortable. -- it was decided the space the size of 50 by 100 meters -- with three this used shoulders from the 1950's that needed beeral roof -- needed to removed anyway. they decided it should not be completely open. awol was devised. a wall was devised -- was devised. the surrounding wall is here. but where it meets some of the houses, each resident can say how open or closed they wanted the world to be to face them.

at a cost about $300,000 for thelition and construction, architects created this limestone plaza with stones, stone and brick walls. the cost was high and the material of stone was used because residents became very committed to doing something that really looked permanent and was unlike the rest of the camp. something that ofke to their aspirations and to their ambitions for the community. money was found and spent to create something that looks better. but in effect what was created was a house without a roof, and this was to address the women's problems. the idea of a house without a roof redefines public space as a space for collective privacy and

ownership. camp ina is akin to the making ambiguous the distinction between inside and outside. women use it without being criticized for not being home. the site has fostered meetings, activities. children play there. it is a refuge from the overcrowded streets. underestimate what it means to get off the streets of the refugee cap and find a place to gather that is not in one's on home. an older resident recalling a former life and cities were palestinian culture happened outside said, we did not have any adequate area where we could sit without feeling we were basically sitting in the streets and blocking traffic. i think the plaza is giving us the possibility of re-creating our culture by using outside spaces. thatn design public spaces represents us in our diversity. can we design spaces

specifically for protests? i don't think so. what does protest yield? i think it is too early to say tahrir did not have impact since democratic revolutions are messy, require generations to play out. it instantly contributed to the histion and victory with tale of two cities. i suspect most politicians and developers took away from the occupy movement that in future they need to work harder to design spaces that can't be occupied. i think another lesson is millions of people dream of opportunity and equality and those dreams will continue to be compacted and expressed in the public spaces we build for each other and for ourselves. thanks very much. [applause]

so, mostly, i would love to hear if you have any comments or questions. you have to come up to the microphones. >> [indiscernible] i have stunned you all into silence. we can talk about other things as well. some of you getting up. so, thank you very much. it was a pleasure. yeah question mark yeah, really? usually somebody says something about "the times." you're welcome to take a pot shot. >> it sometimes take a minute. you started out with an architect saying very gloomy things about the responsibility of architects. you ended with the missouri group saying the opposite. i'm wondering, what is the play

of the architects that stand behind the developments, particularly in new york city, being this extraordinary kind of neoliberal spectacle, these huge towers? is there any sense of these responsibilities coming home to roost in the united states? should say very clearly at the beginning, obviously architects are not responsible for everything. -- architects also, you know i didn't mean to suggest we don't need luxury apartment buildings or places for people , places of beauty or stadiums or whatever. it is a complicated problem. i think a lot of it has to do with a question that has now , particularly more acutely within the architectural community -- what is the responsibility of architects and how is their role legislated?

it is my impression that an architect in a certain sense sacrifices some of the responsibility that they had years ago, partly because there was a public reaction against certain kinds of urban plans in the 1950's, the whole reimagining of cities and that essentially limited the architect's role. they had their fee and they do their thing and for litigation reasons as well, it does not go beyond that. i think there are a lot of things going on. i think there is a conversation taking place within the world of architecture that has a lot to do with, as it should, about formal and internal responsibilities. it is incumbent upon architects to discuss the question of how they function

within the society they are helping to create. you see these buildings, these buildings, the spaces as not simply objects, but places that are affected by and effect the people who use them. i think this needs to evolve. my impression is that there is oppositiond of created, and false opposition created, between those people who want to become -- and get to design fancy big buildings like this, and those people who sort of say they want to do good works. the people who do the one kind of think the other one is not really doing architecture. and the people doing this, i think, also feel somehow they by the peopleted doing architecture. i think that is an evolving conversation. i think that will change.

some of it i see as my own small role, and that is where the spotlight turns tends to be where mighty power and interests congregate. if you only focus on one kind of architectural project, and if that happens to be the sort of towers you art describing, then those will continue to be things people think are reported. let me say one other thing about the 57th street development. questiont is a good whether architects involved in these projects -- i think the architects need to be able to answer questions like , "what is the payoff for the public at large for that building?" the building demanding of the city around it? what is it taking in return? there are different ways they

can be answered. in some ways they can be answered by the beauty of the building. but the architect can have -- should have answers to those questions. otherwise i cannot imagine taking on such a project. one of the issues that comes up in relation to that is, if you're demanding space that is very conspicuous on the skyline, then in a certain sense you're not just taking up the space that you occupy. you are even casting a shadow. but a larger space in the city itself. and there are cities like london which do consider view core doors and the ways which we protect the view. when i wrote about the us, i mentioned it is sort of like a chessboard in which the original buildings around central park south are the ponds, but now the ns, but now the giant buildings are around it.

there is a public responsibility which leaves architecture to try to answer. some architects do have answers. actuallyarchitect, i would love to continue that conversation. it is complicated. that is not my question. i do think architects tend to think they are getting the scraps, that they are not players at the table to make those choices, which is trying to make those choices. jobs.just trying to get i think we feel disempowered and have not been at the table for that kind of escutcheon. >> sure. true,rify this, this is but the projects i mentioned in west bank, and we can think of others.

there are ways in which architects can pick and get to the table by taking on an issue and taking on a project. you can't just create a project that is a 1500 story tower on 57th street. lookingally does mean for the work you want to do. >> yeah. >> the question i wanted to ask us to do with your emphasis on public spaces being our right and not a gift handed to us. and i think that lingered in the conversation about streets, such as in cairo, in some way when they took back the streets, it was not that they were taking something that had not been theirs. originally it had been theirs and it was the right to reclaim it. i'm interested in all of the beautiful places you have been, whether you feel confident to say that is a condition of streets and other spaces, or whether the particular economic,

historic, cultural conditions vary or does very -- help to modify that claim? >> i do think it varies from place to place. i guess what i was trying to suggest was even the notion of the street as public space in a place like new york is a relatively recent concept. --ean, i am not -- i was not i thought somebody might mention this. i was not quite sure of this, but i think it was true that not so long ago people did not think of the street as public space. if you look back at a photograph , what york city in 1908 you will see are very wide sidewalks and a continuum between the street and the sidewalk because the streets did not have many automobiles yet. there was a feeling that the whole space was pedestrian friendly. do people consider the street

public space as we do now? i don't know about that. i think that is a slightly different thing. i think what we are developing is this sense -- and this is what i was trying to get at -- this relationship between the space and the democracy, the formation of physical space and the declaration, the demand of democratic space. that i do not think has been the discourse for a very long time. but of course, you know, i can't is the case everywhere. what i can say though is it is probably not coincidental that when protests have happened, they continue to happen in public spaces. there is an instinctive feeling that people need to find this common ground, and whether they find it as public space or demands for public space or related to their own ambitions or not, they somehow understand

that the only place where these issues really are clarified, are somehow made physical, are in these things go public spaces. does that make sense? >> yes. thank you. >> but certainly not the way people think about it in bahrain is different than the way people think about in copenhagen. >> [indiscernible] >> right. see, i do not think there was a notion of the commons in by rain, but there were protests closest theyht the had to commons in stages there. it was not the same sort of enclosed space. it was much too easily taken back from them. there really aren't in many of the golf spaces places where women can congregate, and that is on purpose. great talk.ks for a i was really interested in your

idea about how the spaces were misused. none of these were designed for protest. i do not know that architects will ever be hired by the protesters, by the people, right? it seems like it will always be this sense of misinterpretation or misuse that is really essential. anyway, i just wanted to mention something. i was part of occupy oakland, the most militant of the occupy movements, but also the most innovative. people only heard about our riots. there were three branches going on. there were the mainstream liberals who thought we just need to tweak our democracy. the second were the writers who were the most extreme and they were very much there for another version of the claret of politics. and then there was the third group of people who are -- it seems like the city is deployed as a way of

.reating capital it was not that people were interested in writing, but coming together and sharing and creating a second economy, -- butested in rioting, coming together and sharing a creating a second economy. can you speak to that? >> thank you. that was what i was trying to get at. people instantly set up these -- they become propositional democracies. know, it became a problem because they were giving away free food and free clothing and the space essentially got taken over. but i think that is exactly what happens when people and acted these spaces as they imagined a better society to be, without really being programmed to do that. that just seems like the thing one needed to do.

we needed to occupy the space. ok, how are we going to go about that? and suddenly you begin to of all this space -- to evolve the space. much of occupy was unclear to people. i remember people constantly saying, what is it actually about? it wasn't against the poor? what was the thing? when you went to it, you realize the thing was that thing you saw there. the creation of the space. that is what occupy illustrated. i agree with that. -- creating ats space for protest, like i said, i don't think it's possible. i do not think that you can create a useful space of protest. everyone is trying to do it, by the way. they were creating a place in

the south where you could put a huge parade. it would be out of view. that is crucial as well to these places that are in the middle. >> a follow-up on the last comment and first, a couple of observations. first of all, for those of us in the room, not me, who are not architects, i want to say that what you say so modestly about shining a light in a slightly different direction really cannot be underestimated. i think we have seen result of decades of media attention to a certain way of making space and buildings that is far from a monolithic culture, but it has been presented as if it was the only culture that is valuable. i think a lot of us have been very grateful for again what you stay relatively modestly. it assumes enormous importance

and encouraging maybe not meant generation but the next generation --maybe not my generation but the next generation. on a historical note, i think there is evidence that the kind theublic space, or at least signifiers of public space that you presented today, going way, way back, at least in western history, when protesters tear up in earlyts 19th-century paris to make barricades, that is a conspicuous form of occupation and of stating the public availability of that alternate ways of compressing power. there are countless examples of that from parades to feast of fools in the middle ages, you name it. point, i think that what you have introduced or suggested to me is that space as architecture and

urbanism needs to be balanced by time. i wonder how you feel about that, having looked at these examples because most of them appear in the way that you present only after a certain period of time. of course, and architectural contracts not only has limits of liability and responsibility in space that are bounded by a legally constituted site, it starts and stops at a certain point. some of the most interesting things that happened to what we design happened well after our formal relationship with them is end.o an -- brought to an the idea that an architect it can be something like an intellectual and belong to a community and not just serve our community and that an architect can be around to look at the uses for which there are spaces are put is important. the most obvious example is the

occupation of the lower level of norman foster's bank of hong kong by domestics on their off never hong kong, which he anticipated, but which brings that building to life in a way that he is happy to take credit for. >> exactly. >> i wonder what you think about that and also about the implicit message in the last remarks that if you can in a way learn from what happened in this case and there is a feedback loop built-in so that, for example, the explosion of co-working spaces in american cities after the occupied movement which model that sort of cooperative hater is -- cooperative behavior is another example. interesting many points and you answered your own questions.

this issue is very important. and it is totally outside the general working model but it came up in, and i will get back to call working spaces. it came up when i was looking at health-care design. till have not gotten around to writing about but i want to and the reason was because i thought in what sense can you pin down in some specific way the effectiveness of design? can you quantify on some level design? is there, is that a meaningful question to ask? is there any area in which such a thing can be done by someone? i wrote about the housing logic in the south of france i wanted to change the equation of what we consider to be of value because i thought, instead of putting some aesthetic value in terms of investment in the community, which is what architectural excellence was supposed to contribute. so in the case of hospital

design, i was struck that there are people who work on such the f who look at design, effect of different kinds of designs on patient care. in princeton, there is a hospital which designing a new inility and had a model room which they tested out different designs on different patients and refined the design so that when they moved to the new building they would have what they had found to be the most effective design. what they found over the course of more than a year is that patients in the model room asked for 45 less pain medication and said that nursing care and food was 60% better than in the normal rooms. so this was an interesting question. i asked the guy who, what does this mean about the effectiveness of design?

he said, when we build hospitals i would like to have architect more involved, but i would like them to work on a contingency fee like everybody else of a follow-up -- they do certain things and they are responsible for the results. so if they built something and say it is going to be, i want to know the things that are built reduce infections, create happier hospital stays for patients and so forth. fewer mistakes by nurses and doctors. if they prove -- spreading of infections. if they can produce results that are tangible, i will pay them more money. i mentioned this to a couple of architects in the room, some of them had worked on these things, and i thought to a person architects would say, that is the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard. that actually, to a person they said to me, ok. that sounds interesting. if we really have responsibility, it is a slightly off answer, but it is a question

of the extent to which architects can find ways to become more engaged. i think they should be responsible. if you put up a building that does not work, you should be responsible. it may look beautiful but if it doesn't work -- i can give you a million using examples. then you should fix it or somebody else should fix it. wasor the coworker thing, i in san francisco. i spent a lot of time going to setups for people like twitter and yellp anp and squar. it is pretty funny. aesthetic, the things that arise out of occupied that has this kind of like, we are here to make the world better and we share stuff. so there is a barista everywhere and food and common tables. this, too, is becoming really interestingly standardized.

so everybody has edison bulbs. everybody uses reclaimed railroad ties. they all look exactly alike. yoga balls. this has become the kind of version of -- i think that is something that also is an interesting question. to really create spaces that are truly open and likable -- by the way, they are. grim -- very grim places. they have this cheery stuff with sayings on the walls about how there is community and the company is great. it is really 1984-ish. in fact it is very scary. it is an interesting option you describe that it has already been through design. regularized. yeah? >> speaking of reclaimed railroad ties, the notion that a park might be designed for protests. i am curious what your opinions

are. in my opinion is one of the great public parks created unently, the highline, how occupy a bowl or occupy a bowl is that? -- how unoccupiable or occupiable is that? one might view that as a design not to be occupied. >> so you're saying it is a space that cannot be occupied. >> perhaps in the way for protests. >> i cannot see why you would occupied it. first of all, no one would know you were there. i mean, everyone is on the ground that you are up there. new yorkers do not go to the high line. life would go on and there would be people among these plantings with great views into the hotel rooms of people and these people paid millions of dollars of they

could be seen walking around in their underpants in their apartments, but otherwise no one would know you were there. the high line is not an effective site. it's the opposite of the body -- of zuchati. it was a stage and around. but the highline is an interesting space, of course. it's a remarkable achievement. at at the same time, it really is not integrated into the city and that gets to this point. perhaps i'm saying what you're saying. >> yes. the idea that perhaps there is conscious idea there to preserve for protests.able >> i do not know if that occurred to them. i think mostly they were trying to save it from being destroyed and that was an interesting gamble. i do not know if they imagined it would be occupied. now it is so crowded you cannot get up there. who would know you are occupying if you were up there? but it's an interesting point,

yeah. yeah? >> i had a question about public spaceing which is the public space of the andnald's or starbucks people hanging out there for hours and hours upon end. awas curious is there possibility in the future for that to be sort of, i don't know encouraged or something similar --kind of like the percent percent for art. or even with plazas. >> you mean to create coffee shop or places like that which are subsidized? >> i guess. it is a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around. >> i do not think anybody is going to take it. subsidy for mcdonald's. but i do think there are public libraries in new york -- have

been think he about bringing in coffee shops. partly it is about retail, but not entirely. it is about the fact that the way people like to be now is in that kind of the space. there are studies that show people are more effective in their work if they come to work in a coffee shop then if they work at an office. these basis -- i am describing san francisco -- are trying to replicate starbucks. there is a possibility of having some public spaces incorporate cafes and maybe run him themselves. i know you are not only talking about cafes. and about a place like mcdonald's which i wrote about in queens. it was a default public space for a community of elderly people who were not given many other alternatives. and that is something i think we do not think about a lot.

think about neighborhoods, who occupies them, what are the alternatives of the people, what kind of spaces are afforded them? and what happened there was, really, for many of these people walking to the park a mile away was inconceivable. so the coffee shop is the default workspace. questioneven more the is in regards to -- you describe the difference between percent of public space. sented public space and adapted public space. i am very much interested in places where blinds bots exist. whether was that -- blind spots exist. or home made off ramps. that kind of lined sp -- blind spot. >> in the case of that macdonald, maybe some of you read about this, too. in flushing, queens, where there

is a large chinese immunity but an older korean community. there was a mcdonald's where many elderly koreans would congregate and spend all day over a cup of coffee. and the new manager of that mcdonald's told him they would have to leave. there is a sign and all the shops that you can stay for 20 minutes. but it had not really been enforced. he kicked them out. they would come back. the police were called in. they were hauling out these elderly koreans with walkers. so this became news. then there was a detente worked out, ,whereby these guys who were very sweet -- they knew what they were doing. i think what works out in a lot of these spaces happens in privately owned public spaces as ibm, like these -- at the building on 56th street and madison.

this is a privately owned public space. an indoor, an atrium where you can sit and a café. these places are, they are more or less accessible depending on the quality of the manager and their ability to keep them license where people can seek refuge, homeless people, but also places that do not become homeless squatter communities. a very delicate thing. it is done on the human level. not legislative will. islatable. the best places tend to be run with a sense of just understanding. that is ultimately what the result is for mcdonald's. it is not quite a direct answer, but it can come down to this. it does come down to this very compensated space. is is publit -- is it public? who negotiates the space?

i think mcdonald's has benefited a lot by allowing these koreans to come back in. yeah? >> i lived like to start off with a quick historical thud. the thud is that -- it's not on union square. it was east end next to t he academy of music. >> what was the name of the restaurant? anere was another germ restaurant on union square. >> i do not recall. >> thank you for that. though, is that architects to learn and architects are paid and are often the agents of people who build buildings. if architects learn and they are the ages of people who pay for them, don't you think the knowledge that has been gathered about the use of public spaces gatherings ofr the sort we have been talking about, which i think are great, don't you think they would

commission architects if they do have public spaces to design of to prevent these kinds of gatherings in the new spaces? is that an understandable question? >> i think that in the beginning of publicly owned, these plazas that were created. by the way, i think we need to check on lu chao's. it moved around. >> my dad propose to my mother there. it?could i forget >> 20 fe4et off union square. >> we will argue later, ok, come on. >> i tmoved -- it moved a bit. >> quickly if i can, if that -- is that future public spaces designed by architects for private interest, will they use the knowledge of what is happened in the past to design

public spaces that prevent or make it more difficult -- >> yeah, but why do those public spaces exist? they exist because the people who are developing these properties were given bonuses by the public. this is a public gift. we are saying we are allowing you to get an exception from a zoning rule and to add square footage to your building from which you will accrue millions of extra dollars, in return for this, give something back to the public. fine. we give you a plaza. the public needs to have some say over the quality, maintenance, use of that space. t,t no matter what the clien no matter what the developer says. so yes, i mean, this about public oversight. i guess i wanted to say in general that one of the reasons i focus on public spaces i think for architects it's such a ripe

in a lot ofagement different kinds of projects which are quite different than taking commissions for single buildings. i think it is an area that is ripe for really interesting design and for new models essentially of engagement with the public and with client. yeah? >> i was wondering very locally if you had any thoughts about the new haven green and occupying new haven? technicallyknow, the green is not owned by the city but by the ancient proprietors. we had an occupied new haven. i do not know if they benefited. on some level they might have benefited. >> sorry, i do not know the answer. i think there was an occupation and harvard yard. i think very few people knew about it because they yard was close off.

the green has the advantage of being open. how busy was the occupation of new haven? >> it was intensely busy. but it was could find to the north and the west corner of the green. so -- >> i think that is a problem, too. as i said, you need those concentrations. >> it was free but it was not free. >> i am sorry i did not see it. i am reluctant to say. >> join me and thanking -- [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> next is a discussion of the aftermath of the arab spring.

after that, the 60th anniversary of brown versus board of education. >> on "newsmakers" mel watt and director of the federal housing finance agency. he talks by the agency and fannie mae and freddie mac heard "newsmakers" on sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. eastern. >> c-span's newest book "sundays at eight" thick collection of interviews with the nation's best storytellers. .> we are sitting here today there's a french engineer and architect. the great symbolic work sculpture is the gateway to that country of new york, the statue

of liberty, a gift from france by a french sculptor. and towns andrs universities and colleges all over the country with french names. we do not pronounce the way they do. they influence of france of this country is far greater than most americans appreciate. >> read interview with david mccullough along with other storytellers from 25 years of our book notes and q&a conversations in "sundays at nowt" that is available at your favorite bookseller. >> veteran foreign correspondent charles sennott reflects on the political movement known as the arab spring. he reported on the rise of al qaeda in the 1990's and the arab-israel conflict. he was one of the first reporters on the ground in afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. he is now the editor at large of

an online international news publication called "the global post." this event took place at new york university and was hosted by the foreign policy association. it is just over an hour. [applause] >> thank you. i want to thank new york university and the foreign policy association for having me. and thank you all for coming. i think one of the hardest things in talking about the egyptian revolution is where to begin. how do you being to frame something that i believe is 100 years old? i think the significance of the arab awakening has that level of historical importance. i was trying to think very hard about where do you begin to unpack history in motion?

how do you begin to take that apart? so i thought i would begin where i want to end this conversation, and that is to say it is very easy to feel cynical about what is happening, particularly in egypt right now. it's very easy and i hear very often for my friends in egypt that they are disheartened, that they feel that all of the excitement of tahrir square, the incredible emotion of seeing young people organized to facebook, come together in the streets and take down a dictatorship, a police state was an amazing event but where are they now? you can feel as if we have gone all the way back to where this whole thing began, where we have a military junta in charge. again, a country that is yearning for democracy and struggling to get there.

and it can seem like not much has happened, but i want to end with a sense of optimism. and a sense of hope, because that is what i hear from the streets of egypt when i am there. i was there for most of the summer. i was just speaking downstairs to the security guards, the guy at the front desk who let you all in. he's egyptian. he feels that sense of hope. many, many young journalists i have gotten to know in the last few years stay in very close touch with me and they definitely have their moments of despair, but they also are holding onto this promise of what egypt can be. and i think it is exciting. so i'm going to let you know that is where i want to end up. but where we start could be anywhere in the last 100 years.

you could go back at least to october 6, 1981. the assassination of sadat. you've seen the video clip. a military parade, sadat is viewing the parade. islamists break from the military, come apart, and kill the president. and there is his vice president, mubarak, ducking under the stands. survives. sadat is killed. mubarak becomes president. that is not a bad starting point because this event in tahrir square really was about mubarak

and a police state and it was about a corrupt government that ruled for 30 years with united states support with very significant financial aid for all those years. i do not think that is a bad starting point. for me as a journalist my starting point really is february 1993. it was in february 1993 that i was a police reporter in new york city working for the new york daily news. i covered the streets of new york. i loved that job. i love the city. there was a very loud bang in lower manhattan. it was 1993. and there was smoke pouring out of the world trade center parking garage. and i was one of the very first reporters there. and i did what you do, you confident nod with your yellow legal pad and you walk past the police line. we saw that this was a six-story crater. the cars caved in, water spraying everywhere, smoke, fire.

no one on the outside was thinking that was a bomb, that the police or firemen. they were thinking it was a subway crash or a generator that exploded. there were all kinds of explanations but no one said it is terrorism, which says a lot about that time, 1993. i had covered medellin, colombia, and northern ireland and i knew what a bombing looks like. when i saw the parking garage i knew this was a bombing. and i was shocked. it took about 12 hours to get confirmed, but there was no question this was a bombing. that led me reporting out who where the suspects? who wanted to take down the world trade center in 1993? as we began to do our reporting, it led us to brooklyn and it led us to jersey city and that led us to the spiritual head of this group of new yorkers, many of the taxi drivers and working people, immigrants from

different parts of the muslim world who wanted to blow up the world trade center. it led back an egyptian, this is the blind egyptian cleric who was based in brooklyn and jersey city mosques. he was a militant. he was a militant who was in he was a militant who was in league with al-zawhari. who had broken away and splintered from egyptian factions and had teamed up with this guy in 1993 no one had heard of. he was known as the amir. i kept hearing about him, that he may have been the guy who financed this world trade center bombing, 1993. my editor said, you should go, man. you should do the story. so i did. i went to egypt and sudan. it was a police story.

as we followed that trail, we came to sudan and there was this emir. 6'3," big long beard described as the scion of a construction family in saudi arabia and his name was osama bin laden. bid laden in 1993 was in the sudan and we were looking at nascent al qaeda. myself as a reporter just like all the fbi and the cia did not see it. you could not see the photograph developing. but it was definitely developing. i think about these connections keep coming back to egypt. there was in the sudan around osama bin laden egyptian protectors. and one of them was almost certainly al-zawhri. they were together then.

i have this image of bin laden, seeing him in person and reading a clip by walter pincus a great journalist. the only thing i could find on him pre-google, but you used to have to go down to what we call the morgue where they had the clips. and these were guys that would wear those visors and roll up their sleeves and ripped the clips from the newspapers. i opened up a packet. and there was a packet that said that walter pincus reported that bin laden, indeed, they think he may have financed the guys that may have blown up the world trade center. indeed, they think he may have financed the guys that may have blown up the world trade center. the cia said it was impossible because he was our ally in the war against the soviets in afghanistan. he was part of the freedom fighters, and as president reagan saw them, who hcame from

to fight arab world against the soviet union. if he was on the cia payroll and he was with the saudi's, how could he bought the world trade center? 1993. you could then go forward to a time where my reporting there as a police reporter, it really led to me being very interested in the middle east. i became a foreign correspondent. i went to "the boston globe.' i became much more interested in the middle east and eventually they decide me to become the bureau chief. kind of an exaggerated title only had oneglobe" correspondent and the entire middle east. as my wife reminded me, i was the bureau chief and the entire bureau. in this perch, i began to look around the region. this was the mid-1990's. i would freak go to egypt and

you would see the incredible crackdown on the islamists. muslim brotherhood pushed underground. and militants are going peeling away, going to the sudan and going to afghanistan. coalescing around what would become known as al qaeda by 1998. ize"et the first "laden epistle where they proclaim themselves at war with the u.s. remember the african embassy bombings? when we first began to see what their intent was was to attack the u.s. swirling andis is taking shape, and i keep going back to egypt. i had an office there. i kept thinking, what does the united states support in egypt? are we supporting stability over democracy or are we just foreverng like mubarak and we will never let him hold elections and the elections are a sham?

and any opposition would be jailed. muslim brotherhood is an illegal party but they have huge popular support because they are doing something the egyptian government is not doing -- they are actually going out and helping people with health clinics and schools. i think of them less as islamists, although they certainly are in their beliefs, but i think of them as our equivalent to the ethnic pals of big cities, the irish and italians who ruled the big citi es. they also have that ward boss element to them that you cannot forget in egypt. the whole time they began to reject violence and really say they believed in democracy and secretly run party candidates, -azari, who would say, those muslim brotherhood are.

they say they believe in democracy but if they ever get a chance to really run and they win, the west will never allow them to roll. i heard this all to the 1990's. 2000. it is just a constant theme. then of course the expression of al qaeda reaches its most dark a most unexpected on september 11, two thousand one, attacks on the united states. and set of that all of that picture comes into focus. i remember calling my desk and thinking they did it. i could not believe they did it. they try to take down the world trade center in 1993. and eight years later they succeeded. in that eight years of intervening time, i cap going through egypt and seeing how far down the islamists were pushed,

how the expressions were popping out on the sides with people awarhi.-z these things are connected. i think maybe a jumping off point could also be fast forward. we know about the wars of september 11, afghanistan and the ill-fated war in iraq. after president bush, after mission accomplished, after the many mistakes that were made in the aftermath of september 11, it was in 2009 we launched global post as a new online international organization. in the same month that president obama took office. and had his famous inaugural speech. then go go forward to june, 2009. his first major foreign-policy speech. airooes to ci university and he speaks asquently of democracy

universal ideal. worlds to the muslim after these many years post-9/11, of violence, of us confronting the threat to our country, experiencing war, he goes forward and says we reach out to you with open hands. and that was a very famous phrase. the open hands. the united states reaches with open hands to the muslim world. we want to have a new start. we believe in democracy. now, i think the arab world heard that. and i think they began to organize right around that time. and that is when a lot of the facebook pages and the opposition against mubarak, against the autocrats of the middle east, really began. i do not think they are disconnected. you do not hear the white house claim very often that it was responsible for the arab spring. they do not take credit for that.

it is political dynamite to take credit for that. but if you go back and we look as historians back at this time, you would have to say that is an important turning point. if you fast-forward now to the events of tunisia in the end of 2010 when a fruit peddler stands up and says he is tired of the corruption and tunisia suddenly demonstration and calls for democracy. before you know it, the autocrat there is toppled. and eyes turn toward egypt. ahriruddenly tell -- t square begins to fill up with demonstrators. i was in afghanistan when this was happening and had this big interview with general petraeus, pre-scandal. i had followed him greatly and that huge respect and still have so much respect for so many of the ways he has thought about post-9/11 world. and there is nothing like being

on a big assignment like that and knowing you are in exactly the wrong place. i'm arriving in afghanistan smallng tunisia and demonstrations beginning in egypt and i was thinking, this could go. .this could be exciting i go to see jennifer trias and he looks at me and says, what are you doing here? to see general petraeus and he looks at me and says come a what are you doing here? the next day, we got a call from "frontline." they wanted us to go there. so we did. i got their day three of the street demonstrations and never left tahrir square. how many of you follow that? ok. that was an amazing thing to wa tch. it was more amazing to be there on the streets inside the tents, with all the mud in the garbage and the smells on the plastic sheeting and the rain in the demonstrations and the

incredible sense of hope. what an expression that was. i have been a journalist for 30 years. that is the single most surprising and hopeful thing i had ever covered in my career. , and a lot of war -- covered a war, a lot of big stories, but that one was the most unpredictable. tom friedman feels that way. of the journalists who have got a lot of experience covering the middle east would say that moment was extraordinary in a way that no weather was before it. it.o other was before maybe egypt will have a democracy. but we know what happened. it began to unfold. suddenly mubarak steps down. the protesters rejoiced. very soon after that, the military sort of begins to take hold and it says, ok will would be an interim government for now. an interimbe

government for now. the committee of generals said we're going to have a decent transition to democracy. they were seen as heroes because they came to the side of the protesters and they said, we embrace this call for change. so they were seen as heroic, and they are still to this day considered the most trusted institution in egypt, which can be very surprising if you're watching on the streets the way in which they are acting so brutally amd putting down the demonstrations. how the egyptians cling to this. if you talk to the egyptians, they hold out a lot of hope for their military to be part of the transition. on the streets, that was very hard to see. i wanted to go to the real starting point for this conversation which is a clip from a documentary that we did last summer. this is the second documentary we did with "frontline.

the first one chronicled the fall of mubarak, the way in which tahrir square was performed. part two, the second hour documentary, was broadcast in september. it really was about the fall of morsi, and how that happened. i am going to show you a clip from that film as a way to get us going right into the conversation here. if i do thi properlys. which i did not. so i got to close that then. and then do this. i think i got it. [video clip] >> later that night, my boss and i were caught up in a pro-morsi protest. the march was blocked by police. throwing, tear gas, and shots followed.

>> tear gas landing. [sirens] >> by the end of the evening, another seven protesters were dead. these confrontations were quickly becoming almost daily affairs. >> both sides appeared to be allowing this violence to go on. way this allows the military to say the brotherhood are criminals and they all need to be locked up. at the same time, i do not understand why the brotherhood leaders are ordering march is putting the lives of their own at risk. >> the next day, at the mosque, the muslim brotherhood held a press conference. they had wheeled out the wounded and praised their martyrs to a roomful of reporters. [speaking arabic]

leader about the criticism they were intentionally putting their supporters at risk. >> there are people on the military side who say that this is a strategy by the muslim brotherhood to create martyrs, to create martyrs for the movement. you are strange that saying that a peaceful protester benefits from being killed, but you do not address who is doing the killing. who else in the world can attack peaceful protesters? home andnt me to go surrender and tell myself that our reality is a military coup? i have a right to protest peacefully and reject this military coup. [speaking arabic]

>> the united states did not call it a military coup, they could not because the second they call it that, they have to cut off aid to the egyptian military. if you were there, that summer and you saw the events transpire, it is very difficult to call it anything but that. if you look at the dictionary coup it would fit. we sat on the streets of egypt watching all of this unfold. the demonstrations of june 30 were extraordinaire in the way that they were huge outpouring just as powerful if not more powerful in terms of numbers on the street against president morsi who had been democratically elected. he came out of the muslim brotherhood. he win the election. parliaments in elections before the presidential election, the muslim brotherhood party, the freedom and justice party had done well. they had won 40% of the seats in parliament and other islamist

groups had 120%. -- had won 20%. morsi who is elected. he stays in office for less than a year. in late june 2013, the decide they are fed up with the government of morsi. they feel that it has failed. and had done a very poor job. it may be good at organizing people, good at organizing different pockets of party in ro but the people of egypt felt they were doing a terrible job. people i know called it peach mint from the street. they say it is no different than what we took down mubarak. him fromoing to impeach the street because he has rammed for the constitution that does not respect the rights of minorities, christians here it does not respect women. and it does not have any of the secular ideals that so many egyptians want that country to have, particularly those who made tahrir square happen.

so we ended up with massive demonstrations. july 3, that fourth of july weekend, while the president is on vacation, and the secretary of state is on vacation, there is a very quiet move to give mor a clear ultimatumsi. ither you step down willingly and call for new elections or we're going to take you into custody. i do not think arrest is a fair word. he will not step down. the military steps in and arrest the president and puts them at an undisclosed location. he is not able to talk to his family and they began a crackdown on the muslim brotherhood. that is that scene that you just watched. arrive on thewe scene and begin to see what is really happening with the muslim brotherhood. there was incredible force shown by the military to the muslim brotherhood protesters.

there were hundreds of muslim brotherhood protesters who were gunned down. these were civilians. they were shot in the street. there was a lot of indiscriminate fire. it isis one day where estimated hundreds were killed, over 400. these are big numbers that have never really been accounted for. maybe you can help me with this next clip. the thing that is hard to re is this now is whe going to head? prison andw in facing charges. he is going on trial for the charges against him. most of the people we interviewed in the film, including one of the muslim brotherhood leaders, are all in prison. there have been hundreds and hundreds of opposition locked up your 25 journalist.

three al jazeera journalists. most of the people i interviewed who were part of the opposition, both secular and islamists from the muslim brotherhood, are locking up. they are locking up the opposition and they are pushing forward with the may 25: 26 elections and proclaiming it a democracy. the united states really did not say anything on to lie third when morsijuly 3 was locked up. there was a stunning silence. i had a chance to talk to a senior-level state department official who was involved in the process who said to me, these are fair observations but there was a lot going on behind the scenes you do not know about. but behind the scenes does not work. united states had called out this president of the united cario,had said in democracy is a universal right.

it did very little when the military moved in and took over. now the muslim brotherhood failed governance. muslim brotherhood, not with the united states would want. muslim brotherhood has a lot to answer for. themuslim brotherhood in end of the day may not embrace democracy. that has its own peril. biceps all of that. but i think we lost an opportunity to try to hold up institutions of democracy -- i accept all of that. you elected this guy, and now you need to find a way to legally remove him. instead of became the street rules and i think we have undercut that message that president obama eloquently 2009, which iune, think that a lot of this in motion. so we end up now with the e do not knowre w where it is going to go. appointed asmorsi

secretary defense of very popular general, young general for egyptians. he's 59. sisi.al seal he step down and said he is going to run for president. that is no surprise. he will almost inevitably be elected in these elections. there was no one predicting anyone else. alsisi does take office, one of the things that will inevitably happen is the deep state will get deeper. the deep state is a phrase you hear all the time in egypt. i want to share one more clip so you can get a sense of what is the deep state, and then i am going to conclude and we will go right to questions. [video clip] arabic]king >> revolutionaries and liberals who voted for morsi hope the new

president and a new constitution would restrain egypt's deep state. one of the big demands of the revolution was to say we did not want torture or security services or civilians being tried in military court. >> we wanted to have something in the constitution against torture. we wanted to have something in the constitution against police brutality. we wanted to have something in the constitution that would limit the power of the military. the power than curb of the military, the constitution gave the military everything they want. >> what the constitution guarantee for the military was safe passage so none of them are held accountable for their violations of our rights during the scuffle. left the budget untouched and left any civilian oversight of that budget and allowed civilians to put civilians

before military tribunals. which are all things we wanted to fix. >> the fatal mistake is that the muslim brotherhood could have turned to us. the revolutionaries. hrir.ould have turned to tar and tell them we need you to write a constitution that would limit the power of the military. we need you to curb and cleanse the very corrupt judiciary. we would have come to his rescue. and instead, he tried to flirt with the police and the military against us. for any leader, curbing the military would have been hard. in egypt, the military is more than an army. it is big business thomas controlling as much as 40% of controlling as much as 40% of the economy. they make cars, chemicals, and

bread. the full extent of their empire is unknown. >> the military is one of the top landowners in the country. you cannot even really get a proper list of military associated industries. in the military wants to preserve its perks, and privileges, its significance, private sector economic empire. and they want to escape civilian oversight. momente are left in this with the military back in charge, a general ascendant back into power, and it is easy to say egypt is right back where we started. mubarak was a general. we have a new general. there is no possibility for civilian democracy in egypt. maybe egypt is not ready for democracy. that is one of my favorite phrases. or maybe we are not ready for egypt's democracy. the elected a leadery. we did not support any of the

democratic institutions that could have been upheld when that leader was imprisoned, locked up, put on trial on trumped up charges. so if we are going to lay a role in the world where we are going to encourage democracy, you have to live up to it and believe in it and you have to support it home a whether you like it or not cared whether you like who has been in power or not. maybe this is to editorial, but i do not like the muslim brotherhood. i would not want to live under the leadership. but i think egypt deserves better than a choice between a military junta and a theocracy. square sound of tahrir is the sound of people saying, we want democracy. that sound that toppled embark was the same sound -- toppledt mubarak was the same sound that echoed when they shouted

down morsi. and they said, we do no want a theocracy. the general is does that we saw arriving next to morsi. it was his secretary of defense. he is the general on the right-hand shoulder. isi hear thatls sounds? did he hear how much hope there was in the voice of egypt in the streets? did he hear the sound of democracy? because if he did not, history is going to roll over him as well. i think there is an inevitable. now in the middle east which is exciting, but it is going to greatly challenge american foreign-policy, that balance between stability and democracy is right on the line. which to we believe in? because if you really believe in democracy, you might have

instability. as we have learned, going for stability, if it leads to tyranny, and separate instability and volatility. so that is a false sense of stability. so i do not envy those in the world, both the egyptian leadership and ou own state departmentr and all of the other leaders in the world who have to figure this out or help egypt figure it out, because these are really hard questions. it is a very difficult equation, but i think there is a lot at stake and you need to watch this one. you have to watch what happens right now in egypt. and the operative question i would like you to keep in mind hear theeneral alsisi sound of democracy and does the united states hear the sound of democracy right now in the middle east? thank you. [applause]

>> thank you very much. we open the floor for questions. i will take three questions at a time, and then give the floor to our speaker to respond. so and please limit your question to a question and not long comments, because we would like to have everyone participate. yes? >> thank you for an excellent -- >> may i ask you also to introduce yourself. i would love to know who you are. >> i am originally from egypt. i run an investment firm in manhattan. thank you very much for an excellent talk, an excellent

speech. the one puzzle to me is really outside egypt. it resides i washington, d.c.n how can the united states not declare this a military coup? when you talk to senior officials in the administration, they say we have geopolitical interest in egypt. we want to maintain our relationship. where they have lost egypt in my opinion 100%. the muslim brotherhood feels they did not support them. the military feels they did not send a strong signal supporting their movement to remove morsi. and egypt is in the russian camp for all practical purposes. how can the united states justify this sense, 80% of the aid they give egypt goes to the military. >> it is a fantastic question. supported by a great deal of fact.

>> upping, it is a fantastic question supported by a great deal of fact, and i think gives accurate insight into what we are talking about right now. remember for years i said now the head of al-qaeda said the muslim brotherhood are suckers. they believe believe in democracy. as soon as they get elected, the west will never allow them to rule. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captions performed by national captioning institute] >> they are telling all those islamists who believed in democracy that you are suckers. that's a western game. that is a fool's term. i think that is one of the great things the united states failed to recognize in not calling this a coup, and in not encouraging gypt to find some democratic

institutions through which they could remove what was very clearly a government that was failing, a government that was not delivering a good constitution. e muslim brotherhood's popularity was up in the polls, but they failed in governans. particularly in the economy. there was no plan that morrsey had to reinstitute the economy, and he wasn't brave enough, as the film points out, to take on the military, to be more transparent about what it is doing with all of that industry that it runs, all the land that it owns, all the development it is doing. it makes the military look like a joke. in egypt it is 40% of the economy. you said you are a businessman. i think the greatest hope for egypt would be if it can succeed in bringing its economy back. we talked about this before

tonight. the economy is the future. i really believe that if you can get the economy moving again, if you can get jobs, if young people who are so full of a desire for change can see some of that change come through economic progress, that has a chance to really bring egypt forward. if he actually sees egypt move forward with some speed, i know it is a long shot, but if he begins to do that, that is the only way i think he can succeed in helping egypt move toward democracy. and then he recognizes that he needs to get out of the way. that is a little bit of hope that we can hold on to. again, i come back to that sound, "never going away." i have heard it on the streets of egypt. i don't think you can have that loud of an expression for

democracy and it just goes away. it is going to keep coming. we need to get on the right side of history on this. yes? >> given how much power rides in democracy, is it possible for democracy to take hold, and if it seems to create a power crak vacuum for the religious organization to take over instead. so the people, in effect, would have two very large powerful organizations that they would have to rebell against before they had a democracy. >> you lived in saudi arabia, you said? >> that's correct. for 2 1/2 years. >> in saudi arabia, that's true.

theocracy in saudi arabia, you are right, that will continually thwart democracy. the family will never allow a democracy to come forward. you are right. we don't hear the united states complain about that. when is the last time you heard the united states call for democracy in saudi arabia? when is the last time we've actually taken our ideals so beautifully expressed, particularly by this president, in a way that resonates around the world, and for which i have drem tremendous respect, but if you don't begin to live up to it and say we're for democracy over stability, it rings hollow everywhere else. so in the middle east right now, the companies that are experiencing the post arab spring -- every country is a different story. you really can't make many general zations about the

countries right now. tunisia was moving forward. northeast elected a muslim brotherhood party. but they also got rid of them. they have also moved much toward policy.cratic so tunisia, small steps, but at least steps forward. libya, the war terrible, basket case, militia now runs the place, syria, tragedy. really the black hole of the region in terms of the number of people who are dead and displaced. it is one of the great tragedies of the middle east in our lifetime to watch what's happening in syria. egypt, they don't want to hear the united states sort of preach to them about how -- how it is possible that the islammists as a religious democracy thwarted

democracy. we have lost our moral authority there. we don't have that ability to make that argument anymore. that hypocrisy, if i can say is that, is just coming to the surface. i think it is a time for all of us, in the long aftermath of the longest war in american history, after september 11, and if we do, in deed, see the troops come ome from afghanistan, the draw down, as president obama has called for it, if we see that as the end of the long war, as it is sometimes called, it is really time to think about how we are going to live up to these ideals we proclaim. it is going to be a challenge. it is going to be a tough foreign policy equation. it is going to challenge our notion of what is democracy? and is it possible that slammists -- islammists could be democratic or not? we see it in turkey. now they are going back, and they are starting to have their own crackdown in turkey.

indonesia, we have seen one of the most successful democracies in the muslim world thrive, and the islammists play a role there. why is it we don't think islammists can be part of democracy anymore than christian fundamentalists are part of american democracy? we have to get sophisticated about the expregnants of faith in different parts of the world, and how they are going to inform overnment. there are people i know in the state department, and they are very well intentioned, and they are notting listened to back in washington. one of my favorite things to ask a political officer is they know who opened their cable. it is an internet system where they can put forward a cape cable back to washington about

the current situation, how many people open it. i can't tell you how many people open it who are bript, who really know the street, who really know what we at global post call ground troops. which is about being there, which is about speaking the language, which is about knowing the story. that ground truth as embodied in the cable they go unopened. we need a state department that has more expertise, more knowledge, more history, and a better ear for listening to the ground. we keep missing the story. i think it is a great challenge. these are not easy questions. i don't envy, as i said, those who have to figure them out. and i respect the way so many good people are trying. we have to collectively pay much loser attention. >> we have had two men. maybe we can have a lady ask a question first. is it ok?

then welcome back to you. thank you for being a gentleman. >> a lot of pressure there. >> yes. >> being weaned in the midwest with the idea of the founding fathers and a bunch of guys that had disagreements but basically they had a shared cause, when i strikes me in at all these countries is the incredible factionalism. i think in a democracy you can not just want freedom but desire tolerance. i respect the -- there's nothing to do with thinking they are wrong or whatever. it just has to do with looking at how the whole political thing goes back in history for hundreds of years. how will that inform their idea of democracy? can it? can we ever understand that idea of democracy? how does that all come together? even the taliban when they would affiliate with certain tribal

leaders then would not have them -- let them have any shared. >> yeah. >> so it goes on and on. >> don't forget. did you say you are from the midwest? >> yes. >> so, i mean, coming from the heartland of america, it is important to remember when the first people from europe arrived on the shores of this land, they driven by religion. they were looking for religious freedom. but it was also about a search for religious freedom.

i think when we do it right, it can be very beautiful. it wasn't be meant to shut religion out, it was meant to grow religion naturally outside the governans of the united states. islam is a different religion. islam believes a lot about how it is part of your whole life, including systems of governans. we have to encourage those streams of islam that are oking at it that way and invite them to look at it that

way. we believe in democracy but we're islammists. look what happened to them. you saw it. so the guy in the beginning of he film, when i say mohammed abbas and i rode toward the square. that guy, the kid, who was so classically like my muse in he is from a poor part of cairo. and his father died from hepatitis. you know how bad your health care system has to be to die from hepatitis? and he dies from it. the muslim brotherhood hears about this family where the father has died and left behind a boy and his two sisters who are young, and they move in and begin to help them. that muslim brotherhood helps

him at home, he goes to work in a printing press. he's like to so many egyptians. he never forgot that the muslim brotherhood helped him when his father died. so he's in the muslim brotherhood. then suddenly career square happened. is he among those leaders who brings the old guard muslim brotherhood who are just as sort of sclerotic as the military. he brings them and says, you got to be part of this revolution. so it is the muslim youth that he embodies that brings the muslim youth into the revolution. he's one of the first guys to say to the military, you need to support him. we got on to him about day five tahrir square. he is the person who leads the chants on the night that mubarak is forced to step down. the chant was "the people, the army, hand-in-hand."

"the people, the hearm army, hand-in-hand." he believes this is what is going to happen. the muslim brotherhood would move forward with the army. he quit the muslim brotherhood in disgust when he saw how they led. he began to believe in some new centrist party that he thought could lead. they got crushed in the election. he ran for the lower part of parliament. he was wiped out because the big brother -- muzz muslim brotherhood swamped him. now he no longer believes in the military. mohammed abass stands to me as this person who no longer knows where egypt is right now. he has not lost hope, but he is dispairing, and he has fled the country fearing arrest, because anyone who was part of the opposition is being arrested, and he did not want to get arrested. so he has left the country. in his travels, he came to the united states, and he spoke to

some important people in washington on an off-the-record basis. and those important people in washington, i think, listened to him. because i have talked to them. they hear in him something that doesn't get expressed. it is too in the middle, it is too knew aunsed, but it is really important. so when i hear that mohammed abbas is in washington, he has given me so much of his time. i said i want to show you around boston, where i am from. i wanted to take him to fen way, but i didn't. instead i took him to see the freedom trail and the history of the american revolution. i kept telling him, tahrir square is like the boston massacre. i took him to where the first real violent demonstration against the british crown happened. how that led to the events that would eventually become paul

refeer's ride. took him to -- revere's ride. and i took him to old north church. and i took him to lexington. and he was amazed. and his comment after we traveled through this three-hour odyssey through bostoning was, "so your revolution took almost 15 years. and we're on year three. give us some time." that's why i remain hopeful. that's why i think the people who believe that change is inevitable in egypt understand it is going to take time. i think it is incumbent upon us in the united states where we have had such a dramatic role in the middle east, both for our own use of its oil, for our own implementation of different military aid that has propped up a lot of regimes that didn't believe in democracy, while we spoke in such lofty terms about democracy. i think we all owe it to pay a

lot closer attention now to the voices of people like mohammed abbas. thank you. and you are a gentleman. thank you. >> i am the moderator of the richmond, new jersey discussions. first question -- very simple question. where would egypt be today if morrisey was still in question? >> it is a very great question, and i don't know the answer. >> speculate. >> i would say the speculation would be that the stale government that morssey was executing was so dramatic, that the people would have continued rise -- to rise up against that, and he would have been removed from power. the question is, how would he have been removed from power? i can embrace the phrase "impeachment from the street." it is genuinely felt, these are

people that believe -- they are secular and they didn't want this theocracy. they felt strongly we don't want any western correspondents coming in, like me, and saying you have to allow the muslim brotherhood under mossey to rule your country. they were, like, fed-up. but i think, to answer your question, we would have had an inevitable crisis of rising street violence from the muslim brotherhood and we would have seen them removed from power. what role can the government -- has the government played in finding a nacient democracy to do that. not with tanks and at the point of a gun, but how could we have done that within the democratic institution that is we proclaim we believe in and we want to see go forward? lost opportunity. i think we have time for one ast question, maybe.

[yes inaudible] >> that is a technical question. because when morrissey ran, he -- when morsi ran s. they ended up with he and another candidate who was called what they called the remnant of the regime under mubarak. that was harkening back to the past scomprvings they didn't want that. and there were a lot of secular people who held their nose and voted for morsi rather than have

the -- morrissey rather that have the old regime imposed. >> parliament? > parliament, yes, but not morrissey in the executive. it is a large country. egypt is the most populous nation in the arab world. it has vast tracks of rural lands that think differently than the urban pockets of alexander and cairo where correspondents go. really, we only go to aye rue -- not h tpwhri, very very often do we get to the delta or i would compare it to the south or the carolinas or the southern farm-growing states, farm states where you have rural populations that think differently. and that often have their sons and daughters -- well, their sons, in this case, their sons go into the military.

and the military becomes something that gives them a chance at learning and developing a profession, and because they control so much of the economy, getting a job. it has become something that they believe in. we don't hear that voice often enough. that's the voice that i think is supporting morrissey. a sort of silent majority, if you will, in the parts of egypt that we are not seeing or hearing enough of. and many right there in cairo who grew tired of the theocratic tyranny, as many saw it, of the muslim brotherhood. and just the chaos. one of the things that struck me in reporting in egypt is we have knees cameras with "frontline" and we would pan, and we would pan to a shot and hold on the shot. and people depr the neighborhood would swarm us, and we wouldn't know why they were suddenly so mad at us. we would have to calm them down, really work to hear what they were saying, and we would

realize it's because they thought we were filming the trash on the streets, and they didn't want the world to see just a minute as a place that has trash because during the revolution there was no trash collection. and the pride that egyptians have in their country is extraordinary. the pride they have in their sense that they are a very sophisticated part of the world that is the birth place of mankind that goes back thousands of years, that has great sophistication and great role in the world as the mother of the the mother of mankind, and they see themselves as the cradle of civilization. and they are proud. and they don't want the country to go downhill. and i think we're going to see an opportunity for egypt to regroup and to live up to that expression that you heard in square that was so

heartwarming i still get goose bumps. there were people chanting "hold your head up now. you're an egyptian." that thought is a wonderful thought to end on. that is a thought so many egyptian people feel. they want to hold their heads up and be proud to be egyptian. our country, the united states, has a huge responsibility in supporting them in that. [applause] >> thank you. >> before we go, you mentioned tunisia and the comparison between the early success, and success for the tunisian experience and the failure of the egyptian experience. i think the main difference here is that on one hand you had a middle class, large middle class, an educated country, with lodging. ownership of

about 80% of the population owns its own -- a house or apartment or whatever. the majority has been for centuries secular, with ai very pen interpretation of islam. doctrine in islam. that is something muslims held dear. the muslim brotherhood, in tune eeshia -- in tunisia they get elected with the muslim brotherhood, and instead of taking the chance of con fortunatelying the economy or confronting some of the problems that the youth have faced for a long time, et cetera, the first thing they do, and their agenda

was clear on this, was to change tunisia's identity, by introducing sharia law and changing the constitution and doing a number of things that tunisia rejected. it took two years with political assassinations. in one of the demonstrations you had almost 500,000 women saying you can not touch our rights and change the constitution, or start a constitution that will not respect the rights we have gained for so long. but that did not have any effect on them. in the end, they saw the writing on the wall. we saw the muslim brotherhood fall in