>> welcome, folks. thanks. >> welcome to you. >> yes. a little work to do. thanks for asking me to be in this great spot here moderating a panel with dr. greenspan after the historic decision yesterday. alan greenspan needs no introduction, was the federal reserve chair from 1987-2006. he served under four presidents, was on the 1983 panel that reformed social security. i think we'll talk a little bit about entitlements this morning. also was the economic adviser to president ford and made a very, very important decision sometime in the early 1960's i think not to be a professional jazz musician. was that the 1950's, alan? >> i hate to tell you when that was. 1945. >> i was giving you the benefit of the doubt there, young man. >> you also were factually inaccurate. [laughter] >> alan, i want to turn immediately to the news from yesterday. i know you have some reluctance to talk about the fed comment on the current policy but if you would, give me your reaction

to the market reaction. the market seemed to rally on this news. why do you think that was? >> well, remember that this particular move was targeted way in advance, and the market had adjusted to it. the only question that was out there was what was going to happen subsequently that, not that you could actually make certain happen but with what the policy was. as it became apparent the fed was going to just raise the rates and then not do a whole series of rates, then basically the markets said uncertainty is gone. therefore income earning assets go straight up. this is just a classic case. i ran into it many times in the

sense that choices that we had were always, do you want the market to know exactly what the plans of the federal reserve are or not? it depended on a very, very technically difficult problem. how much risk do you want in the system? if there is too little risk, you're bubble creating. if there's too much risk, you're suppressing growth beyond what it should be. part of federal reserve policy at any particular point in time is trying to make a judgment of what type of level of risk you want in the system, and so what we often did, as you know, is change, change, change, and the markets did not respond in any of those.

of course, it knew exactly what we were doing and why we were doing it. other times, we would go up 50, 75 basis points and shock the market. why? because we wanted to change things. steven: that 2004 to 2006 period is actually criticized now as being one that created potential bubbles in that it was too regular a rate increase and something the current federal reserve has said we're not following this. was that a mistake you think to have gone in that regular fashion? alan: it depends on how you examine it, the conclusion you come to as to why the crisis occurred. remember, bubbles, per se, have not been toxic. we went into the 2000 bubble, the market crashed. the people who were essentially hurt were those who were on the way up. but what was critical about the sort of dot com boom is that

the -- the various types of financial intermediaries, which held the particular toxic assets, had very little leverage. and unless you've had debt, you cannot by definition default. if you cannot default or cannot create defaults, which is the basis of the problems that we ran into in 2008, so, for example, in 1987, we had no impact from the collapse in stock prices. in 2000 we had no impact. in 2008 and 1929, we had very significant impacts. those two had in common, which were not in common with the other two, were the degree of leverage that the particular

institutions -- broker loans for example were highly leveraged and subprime mortgages especially when they got into securities were highly leveraged. so it's more the leverage issue than it is the issue of bubbles. bubbles, per se, is not a pejorative term if i may put it that way. steven: i want to ask just one more question about the current policy and market reaction and then move on to some of these other areas that we were going to talk about. notice this morning the long end of the curve, 2.25, basically unchanged, maybe even a little lower in yield on the 10-year. it reminded me of the conundrum that you talked about. how much influence would you say now the fed has on the long end of the curve, which

obviously matters, because those are the ones that are going to determine borrowing rates out of the real economy. could you foresee a situation here where the fed raises rates on the shortened but the long end of the curve remains stable? alan: well, that's basically what happened to us in the period when i said we're raising rates and the 10-year note ought to go up. why? because it always did. but why the federal funds rate, which is the overnight rate should affect long-term rates was always the great mystery to me and still is. what is not a mystery to me is that long-term rates now in an international market are essentially arbitraged. that the effect of long-term rates amongst many other countries tend to converge, and the reason is they're arbitraged. but the impact between short and long-term rates is a whole different ball game. and so i think that the presumption you'll get in the

situation where interest on excess reserves or the federal funds rate or even the reverse repos, is going to significantly affect the long-term rate is not indicated by any historical data that i'm aware of. steven: do you care to share with us your forecast for the funds rate over the next couple years? alan: i don't follow you. steven: would you care to share with us your forecast for the federal funds rate over the next couple years? what do you expect to happen? alan: no, no. [laughter] steven: alan, you know, i get paid to ask questions people say no to, so that's okay. i'm good on that. let me turn now to a broader question, which is none of this would matter a whole lot if we had strong growth out there. and yet growth has been, at best you could say anemic. we're lucky to eek out 2%

growth. what's holding back this economy? alan: first of all, not only this economy, the globe. if you look at output per hour for example, which is the critical determine -- determinate of growth you will find the vast proportion of countries have under 1% in productivity growth over the last five years on average. this includes virtually all of the -- basically all of the euro area, united states, canada. with very few exceptions all below 1% and averaging in many cases below 0.5% and in some cases, which i think more for statistical reasons than economic reasons they're showing five-year negative productivity. the question you have to ask, well why is this? if you go deeper into the data what do you take a look at --

the united states is perfectly typical as everybody else. what we have in this country is a very unusual and, unfortunately, very unstable fiscal system. our fiscal system is driven by entitlements on the expenditure side and tax rate as always on the funds raising side. the entitlements are not affected by the level of economic activity. it's elderly, which has got nothing to do with what the economy is, how many people could become eligible for social security. and a whole series of other factors, which determine essentially what the entitlements are, i mean, for

example, health costs have very little to do with what the economy is doing. so if you have a situation in which the entitlements are rising at 8% to 9% a year, and i might add parenthetically that it is in both republican and democratic administrations and, in fact, if you want to be exact with the numbers, the average rate of rise in republican administrations has been greater than the democrats. but this is very critical because at this rate of growth, entitlements could be funded only if the g.d.p. growth rate is probably 3.5% to 4%. remember, these are not related

issues. in other words, basically the economy does its thing. entitlements does its thing. if they meet, all well and good. but if they don't, then you have a real problem. and what the issue is now is that the surge in entitlements is displacing gross, private savings, and the result of that is because gross domestic savings in total, which includes negative government, usually, and entitlements, have tended over the last 65 -- 50 years as a percent of g.d.p. have been remarkably stable. they go like this, which essentially comes down to the fact that a dollar increase in entitlements redeuces gross domestic savings by a dollar. but gross domestic savings is the major determinate of capital investment.

incidentally gross domestic savings plus the current account balance is equal to the borrowing from abroad is equal to gross domestic investment with a little statistical discrepancy in there. gross domestic investment is a key factor in determining productivity growth. steven: so let me recap, alan, just for a second. you're saying if we save a lot, we invest a lot, if we invest a lot, we're more productive. alan: correct. steven: but since we're not saving as much because we're putting more stuff into entitlements, we're investing less and our productivity is less. alan: perfect. awesome. [laughter] steven: and i've come back and i say we've got all this stuff around like this. people have a sense of massive

technological advancement out there. how can you say we are not more productive right now? alan: basically, because this is a different type of effect. remember when you're talking about let's say per capita income it depends basically on the number of hours worked or the number of hours -- it's a per person thing. the issue of productivity is more output per hour. the social media stuff is more direct consumption -- it does not improve productivity but it does create other values. remember, when we're in a market economy, we measure it only in terms of market values and market prices. steven: output. alan: output. basically i can go out the door without my iphone. you're getting so dependent on it.

but that actually only marginally reduces the amount of hours and it doesn't get picked up in the statistics and there is a big dispute among people who are productivity experts. how to count this, this is a different type of value. social media obviously have value and people pay money for it, but how should one measure that? steven: that was always your metric, i remember. 1996-1997 you introduced me to this notion of the earnings forecast for tech companies suggested the need was out there for these things. therefore, they must be productivity enhancing because we see the demand for it in the economy. alan: well, remember, at that time, it was information technology. steven: right, right. alan: this was not social media.

i mean, what you are looking at are very significant changes in values which do show up in output per hour. this is not. part of that is, clearly, to the extent that that it cuts down the work day and, for example, i get more work done with the new technologies than i could conceivably have gotten done with the -- 10 times as many people 20 years ago. steven: just for a measure in productivity a bit -- alan: well, it is a definitional question. you have got to distinguish between what the economy is for. if you're going to measure as material well being -- food, clothing, standards of living, the old conventional stuff -- then all of the technical analyses that were done up through the year 2000 were unchanged

over generations. this has created a very difficult measurement problem. there is no question social media obviously could create something. i don't think the iphone is just social media. there is more to it. steven: you have bob gordon whom you know from northwestern who points out, this is not a train. this is not equal to the innovation of electricity. it's not equal to the innovation of the car. it doesn't register. alan: it just -- one of the really important ones was the telegraph. i mean, it hugely altered --. steven: i want to talk broadly about the u.s. economy and global economy and perhaps get more into fixing entitlements with the q & a of the audience. overall are you pessimistic about the outlook for u.s. economic growth? do you see it as a 2% economy over the next decade? alan: unless and until we rein in the rate of growth in

entitlements, yes. because the logic which you just went through has got to be broken and the only way you break it is, remember, we added 10 percentage points -- we moved 10 percentage points in g.d.p. from financing productive capital equipment to funding benefits. you cannot do that without a very significant impact. and we're seeing it now. this is the reason everyone is looking at the data and saying we have to come to grips with entitlements, but entitlements are basically the third rail of american politics. you touch it and you're running for office, and you lose. steven: i have to go there. because this is why people hate economists, right? ultimately in the utopian world you would have more of the entitlements geared toward

productivity growth, right? that would solve some of the problems? alan: well, wait a second. no. it doesn't improve productivity growth. it is basically what -- we have to go back. steven: i'm sorry. what i meant was the growth of entitlements would be tied to the growth of productivity. alan: oh, yes, yes. steven: that would solve -- alan: it would -- well, you can be close -- just balance the budget. for example the reason a budget gets balanced back in the earlier years is 3, 4, 5% g.d.p., but remember when social security began in 1935 #, when franklin roosevelt signed on, it was a defined benefit program in which there were cash receipts scheduled to fund the benefits actuarially the same as in the private sector. we have now abandoned all pretense. you talk about the 1983 commission.

we couldn't even get something as significant as lowering the retirement -- raising the retirement age because longevity has gone so extraordinarily far since 1935. the only thing we could manage in 1983 is to get it in the next century. now, politically, you got to see that that's what that was. and the pressures here are this system is so governed by getting these entitlements, once you get them, look at the word. "entitlements" used to be something which the founding fathers talked about with respect to individual rights, liberty,

freedom of the press. these are fiscal growth entitlements produced by whom? you can't answer that question very readily. unless and until we get out of this cycle -- get out of the cycle and get back to 4% g.d.p. growth, which implies significant rise in output per hour. it's the only way you can get there given the structure of our working age population and the very large population of beneficiaries. >> that's the other thing we can talk about which is the other side of the growth equation is growth in hours worked. could we enhance that by a smarter immigration policy and a smarter education policy? alan: well, yeah. i mean, my favorite problem before all of the immigration came up politically is i thought the h1b program is much too small. that is the program which enables peesm with special skills to

come -- enables people with special skills to come into the united states and get a green card and the like. every other major country looks to the quality of whom they're inviting in, and we're not doing that. we're restricting that very significantly. so the answer to your question is, yes. an increase in productivity would really -- if we want an increase in productivity would be to open that program up. anyone with a ph.d in the physical sciences in the united states should be allowed to stay. instead we kick them out. why we do this is bizarre and beyond me. steven: tell me how alan greenspan listens to the current debate in the presidential arena on economics and what do you hear? >> what makes you think i listen to it? [laughter] steven: sorry for making a bad

assumption. what you read about the presidential debate, which i'm sure you do, is there an intelligence debate going on? is there a debate that is going to lead to -- i don't get paid to ask stupid questions which i'm sure -- i suppose this is right now. alan: i'm still looking. steven: yeah. do you hear anything that gives you any sense of optimism on some of these issues you're talking about that they're going to be addressed, or do you hear the opposite? alan: i don't know -- look. just on the basis of the type of facts which i've laid out, either i am wrong in my economic analysis, which i conceivably could be -- not easily -- but the point being that theoretically i'm either wrong in my implicit structure of how the economy functions, or i'm wrong in the implications. i have not seen anything -- i wrote a book three years ago, discussing exactly these issues.

it is not something that all of a sudden has come out. i think that we need a fundamental change in culture and we did have -- i mean, franklin roosevelt created a major change in culture. margaret thatcher did in britain. in fact, what is very interesting about it, is that culture is still there. the labor party when it came in after thatcher did not change, what she changed, and obviously ronald reagan made a major impact. both thatcher and reagan failed in the end because they couldn't control the budget. i mean, both ran up against very difficult problems. i shouldn't say they failed. but they didn't reach the goals that they were trying to reach. steven: we're going to open it up in just one minute.

i have one more question here, which is the markets got very excited and concerned this summer when it looked as if chinese growth was weakening. or it finally realized chinese growth was weakening. how big a concern does china represent to you about the overall outlook for global growth and u.s. growth? alan: well, china is a very big, a major consumer of almost every major commodity you can think of. remember, china is positioned probably 50 years behind us. we went through, i remember when we -- i used to drive up the south, southern shore of lake michigan and you had one steel company after the other in the 1950's and 1960's. they're gone. you have a huge amount of commodity production and physical -- i actually went in one of my earlier books and measured the

physical weight of the g.d.p. and the weight of the g.d.p. was either stable or going up virtually year by year. until basically in the 1960's, it is starting to flatten out and the actual physical weight, in other words, we had a huge downsizing revolution. it this is not much different from what it was 20, 30 years ago. china is still in the early stages of this. the reason why you can't go to beijing without choking is this sounds like what i went through, i remember walking down the streets in the triangle in pittsburgh in 1951 and my shoes would crunch. there was coal debris and smoke stacks all over the place and i'd say, boy, this is a real measure of american industrial capability.

until the environmental movement came on and said, uh-huh. that wasn't so. but this is what china is going through. they're moving where we were. now that means that they are the key controller as we were back then of the commodity, the physical part, the biggest manufacturer, largest steel producer by far, the biggest consumer of oil and most other -- i shouldn't say -- not oil but a whole series of other commodities. and they've got a long way to go. but they're weakening now and it's caused by the fact that china is becoming a more and more if you'll excuse the expression capitalist economy. the markets are expanding dramatically.

the way they handle that stock market crash indicated to me that they had no clue what they were doing, so this is getting away from them. they are moving toward capitalism at a very rapid pace and i don't think they are acutely aware of the extent to which that's been happening. it's periodically you run into cycles. and the first sign that i saw that something very different was going on was when the price of iron ore in australia all of a sudden started to come down. that meant essentially since the major consumer of iron ore at the time was china, something was slowing in china, and it all accumulated from there and devastated a goodly part of the emerging world, not to mention indirectly the euro area and the

united states, but not as great as the impact -- steven: before they controlled growth there was an accounting identity right? they would increase spending to state enterprises and g.d.p. would rise. now you're saying much more variable and inside the capitalist and market systems. alan: yes. just remember what's happened is that 34 years ago the state council which is essentially a cabinet of china, would order a providence for example to build please 20 buildings. the purpose was to create the jobs, not to get the space that you might think they wanted. and they then said a government owned -- if you apply national income accounting to china, that's g.d.p. so they could set the level of g.d.p. as they chose by

calibrating the capital investment. what's been happening since is that they've gradually moved away, they've opened up a lot of the markets and had an extraordinary pace, which they didn't expect. i mean, they did not expect that big surge that came. they were surprised i think by it. and now we're running into the effects of, remember, that they are -- they dipped their toes in allowing creative destruction to work, meaning allowing firms to default. then they got cold feet. steven: they didn't like it. alan: they didn't like it.

steven: let's open the floor to questions. one of the great things about these c.f.r. breakfasts. let me start right here with this young lady. >> thank you. good morning, chairman greenspan. thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> good morning. as the federal reserve changes its focus to the interest being paid on excess reserves, i was wondering if we could call on your historical perspective about the changing decision of the federal reserve over time. since the 1970's, even before your time as chairman we've seen -- as chairman we have seen a focus a focus on things like bank credit, money supply, the overnight rate, even the unemployment rate. and i'm just wondering how much

you see the changing of the federal reserve's decision models changing incentives and essentially affecting the behavior of banks and market participants and whether you expect to see potentially any positive or negative ex-ternalities or other unintended consequences as we shift to the interest on excess reserves. thank you. alan: well, this is a very good question, because i used to sit at my desk at the federal reserve and three times a week i'd get a report or a study or an article come in about the way

monetary policy works. different channels, in a sense, we don't yet have a full comprehension of exactly how the the monetary system interacts with the physical system. in other words, the models we're using have not worked. the way you know that is go back and look at the very recent history since 2008, for example. the federal reserve, o.m.b., c.b.o., most of the forecasting models all showed g.d.p. going up? uh-uh. start again. g.d.p. going up? and you begin to see we've had so many false moves in this particular period that we ought to be looking and saying, well maybe this something -- maybe something is wrong with the conceptual framework which we are using to understand how these markets are working. and, for example, the conundrum issue we discussed before was one of these types of changes. so i don't think it is settled down at the moment, but interest -- but interest on excess reserves is the key variable, because remember what it has done.

when they went to qe 1, 2, and 3, of necessity they would expand the assets side of the balance sheet and, therefore, you create a large degree of reserve balances, which by definition can only be depository institutions who have an account at the federal reserve. in other words, the markets will continue to adjust until we only -- only holders of those balances are depository institutions. so that the issue of fed policy was how do we essentially neutralize them? and the way you do it is you put the interest rate on excess reserve balances. when we put 25 basis points on for sovereign issue essentially which is what the claim on the federal reserve is, in the way him and federal reserve is, in the way of capital requirements, and

essentially a riskless asset with no cost to the individual commercial bank for example. so it was delighted to hold them and while some of that did get -- that did get out into the commercial markets, in other words, jpmorgan for example shows a large balance at the new york federal reserve, would draw on that balance and make a loan to i.b.m., that process is -- creates the money multiplier and expansion. there is very little evidence that that's going on, meaning that essentially the federal reserve largely neutralized the effect of qe 1, 2, and 3, so it didn't spill over into the money supply. because you have to get the reserves going out to lending outside of the simple system of the fed buys assets, its balance sheet goes up.

that automatically creates a reserve deposit. since reserve deposits are only legally capable of being held by federal reserve banks, that means the federal reserve could determine or could control how much in the way of those balances moved out into the market. if you move the rates all the way down, then the loans which are risky and have reserve requirements all of a sudden become more attractive. but if you keep moving the rate up, you basically neutralize the system. and the way you can tell is despite the huge increase in the -- increase in the monetary base, which moves directly with the assets side, money supply, which is the transaction balance

which creates economic activity and inflation, and all of the rest of it that goes along with that, hasn't gone up all that much. so that the money supply has got to go up, start to accelerate -- accelerate before you can see any secondary, expansionary effects coming from qe 1, 2, or 3. steve: did you just make an argument for negative interest rates? alan: what? steve: did you just make an argument for negative interest rates? alan: no. because negative interest rates shouldn't exist. you can always convert to currency if you aren't too lazy to do it. steve: at some point -- the swedish

national central bank decided it is something useful. alan: basically they find people are willing to hold deposits there. steve: negative. alan: essentially it's a tax. steve: on lending. alan: yeah. if you get stuck with a claim that has a negative yield on it what do you do? the only thing you can do is convert to currency, which has got zero. steve: right. alan: and the point of issue is the central bank of control, and -- and the aggregate happens, and it is a question of musical chairs. who gets caught with the wrong side of the liability? steve: let's get another question. let me go geographicly to the -- let me go geographically to the back to the gentleman there. you, yeah. >> hello.

dr. greenspan, the issue people are talking about a lot these days is inequality but it seems according to recent reports that economic insecurity is more important to people than economic equality. let's imagine that this room were not filled with the people it's filled with but with average middle class and working -- and working-class americans. how would you explain to those people the need to do something about entitlements and which changes would you suggest in terms of reducing entitlements given this great worry about economic insecurity in the country? alan: well, take an average low to middle income family. productivity is what determines their real incomes. productivity is basically as i mentioned a function of capital investment and if you discourage capital investment by creating -- by a -- by creating entitlements, what you're doing, essentially, is something in today's world is you are paying

a significant proportion of the g.d.p. to people who are retired. that's not where the future of the country is. the future of the country is in the younger people. it always has and always will be by definition. so the question is, if you're an average middle to low income person going out trying to go up the ladder, you're being inhibited by programs which shifts the proportion essentially to the elderly. but the issue of inequality is basically another, more interesting issue in general. that is truly a function of productivity. back in the 1950's and 1960's when productivity was really moving, especially -- the question of inequality never came up. the there was a measure of income and inequality and it was -- it was flat. the question only arises as you get into a situation where productivity slows down and it impacts middle and lower income wage earners.

remember that q.e. 1, 2, and 3 did not do all that it was supposed to do -- it was supposed to do. it was supposed to, one, lower real long-term interest rates, enhance price earnings ratios on equities and on real estate, and that actually did work very well and created a lot of capital gains, which did spill over into the economy but was also supposed to increase the general level of economic activity, which it did not. and so what we have is a very significant part of capital gains flowing to a very limited number of people. and so you'll find if you want to do metrics here you'll find the issue of stock prices vs. real wages in today's

environment says that people who are involved in holding assets, which rise as a result of the qe's, they have had capital gains and higher incomes, which will always out out match -- always out match the wage levels that are created by the standard economic activity, because, without getting into the details of it, stock prices grow at a rate of 7% a year, remarkably stably. they fluctuate all over the place. and the reason they do that is everyone is scared to hold stocks.

and that causes them to have a long-term up trend because people who are willing to hold them do well and you have to just basically buy stocks and forget about them. people that do that do very well. so there is something very unusual in the system, which means left to its own devices, the owners of capital assets will always do better than wage earners. and the result is that if you enhance your price of stocks, you'll increase inequality and there is no way to get around it. steve: a question right here? >> as you know, the taylor rule posits that the federal fund rates equals the rate of interest and inflation plus the weighted average. there is not much debate about where the gaps are but there is a lot of debate about where the rate of interest is. what are your views? is it around 2% or is it around zero right now? thank you. alan: well, let's go back and ask where does the interest rate come from? it is basically what congress would call the result of time preference. time preference is the extent to

which we discount claims to the future. for example somebody standing in line for one of these things back when there was a huge demand, the first day. what would you give to replace -- to get a position further up the line? -- further up the line? get it much sooner? that is human time preference. human time preference is -- has apparently been unchanged as far back as we can go. we have data for example going back to every single day we've got a bank of england, bank of england issues daily discount -- daily discount rates.

those rates have been absolutely flat through time. go back to ancient rome. low, middle, upper, single digit interest rates. the question is, why? and when you look at these data going all the way back, you have to conclude there is something inbred in human decision making. the amount of time preference is a relatively stable factor. and the reason you know that is not only are interest rates trendless over the generations, but the rate of return on equity or in any other type of asset risk adjustment is flat going back hundreds of years so that the question here is where is that so-called normal rate?

and the figure i would say is substantially above where it is now and i think the pressure is -- the pressures will start to emerge if not already. i am frankly surprised that rates stayed down this low this long. i don't expect that for lots of reasons, it goes against human nature and that is not a good enemy to go against. >> i think the economic historian gregory clark from university of california davis would go back into the textile revolution and 3% is the number he came up with since the industrial revolution began with a rate -- that would have to be riskless rate. yeah. steve: this lady over here please. >> thank you. good morning.

back to i.t. and productivity, is it possible that the time we spend with gadgets is really dispensable and that instead of being productive new creativity is rehashing, reliving, recreating, redoing, sharing things that actually don't take us forward? and so it is dumbing down of time actually? alan: we are reproducing the argument that is currently going on. those are the critical questions. this is human value. this has very little to do with economics. and the question basically is what do we want? i mean, if we want material well being which obviously we're back in the 18th and 19th century were still critical and people were still dying of starvation and it was unambiguous about what we were all about. but when we get to standards of living where we reach the population, a lot of leisure time and a lot of leisure money, -- leisure money, it's not to make -- it's got to make an adjustment. i don't think it is going to get

solved within the context of economics. the economics will tell you what is the material values that are produced, but those are limited to those which should basically enhance physical life. they don't stress anything about enjoyment or pleasure or other things. in other words, there is always a big dispute should we have the g.d.p. of happiness. i don't know how you're going to measure it, but have fun. but these are very important questions which go way beyond the issue of economics.

economics is essentially restricted to a very limited part of human survival in human beings. and when we go off into the many different aspects, remember there is a great deal about the technologies which really lower the hours input for work. and i find, for example, i'm in the economic consulting business. i had a firm before i went to the fed which had 50 people in it. i can do the same sort of stuff now with four people. it's basically the technology which is embodied in that. steve: is it one of the economic arguments that the economic value we get from it is at least equal to or greater than what we -- what we paid for it got go are we being wrecked -- for it? rational?ng alan: that's the question. are you being irrational or are there other criteria that you employ? you're going to find books and editorials and all -- which raise all of these questions. i have not really seen satisfactory answers frankly. steve: how about in the back left there? >> my name is andrew gallant. could we go back to the discussion of debt and

contagion? it seems to me the debt with capacity for contagion is in the sovereigns today and we've seen a couple of nonlevered funds have liquidity problems in the sense of the mismatch between the asset and the liquidity. do you see the leveraged funds such as long-term credits of the world around with the possibility for contagion and do you see the political will at the monetary authority level to

fix it in the same way you did when it became a contagious problem? alan: it seems to me that the whole issue is debt. i, for example, just recently wrote an editorial for the financial times -- not recently. a couple months ago. in which i reraised the issue of what i thought ought to be involved in resolving the issue of debt and banking and all of that. and i concluded as indeed i did in earlier books that every single problem that occurred in 2008, crisis that occurred, would not have occurred if capital was high enough, where

the collateral requirements were high enough, and the issue of enforcement of basically all the statutes against criminality had been enforced, we would never have had anything like the 2008 crisis. so i concluded that instead of something like dodd frank, which a shortage creating of paper, just so much volume of detail and every single regulation, which i don't know how you do it. just parenthetically, small banking is going down very sharply. they can't afford it. so the question is, what have we done wrong? well, had we had, for example, a mandated capital requirement in commercial banks of 30%, the rate of return on equity would not have changed because what the data show going back to 1869

when the control of the currency first collected it is that the rate of return on equity capital in commercial banking ranged between 5% and 10% throughout that period with very rare exceptions. and that particular set of data shows that even during the period, during the most of the second half of the 19th century, capital -- equity capital as a

percent of assets went from 30% to even higher all the way down to 7% or 8% in the early post world war ii period. through all of that period of ups and downs the rate of return on equity did not change. now, i think that this is where this time preference issue comes in, as well. i think that implies that if we go, gradually allow the rates of capital -- equity capital requirements to rise until we get to 30% within a reasonable period of time, we can get rid of virtually all of the dodd/frank, all of the regulatory stuff, all of that is trying to prevent people from doing something. but if you have capital high enough, it's the shareholders of the institution, not the taxpayers that are involved. if they want to go out and waste the shareholders' money, that's the issue between the shareholders and management. but taxpayers are not involved. and get rid of all the huge complexities that we're now involved with. i don't know how we're going to

get around -- because it feels like half the population is employed in enforcing the dodd/frank regulations. steve: now, the question raises the issue of the high yield market which recently had i think a pretty major hiccup as a result of perhaps the fed interest rates. do you have a concern about the high yield market, itself, and are there other markets out there that you believe could be in this balance -- disbalance and would unwind as a result of fed rate hikes? alan: well, i think that the yield went up to 20% on some of that stuff. this is usually not a good sign. this is the way signals occur when oh, for example the first sign of the subprime mortgage problem occurs when bnp ends up saying they were having funds which are losing money, french bank is holding funds in the american market in subprimes? i mean, what in the world was going on? that was the first sign that something was askew. and i'm a little concerned. when i saw those reports, this is nervous making. i must admit the markets are still moving ahead in the usual wonderful form. steve: we have time for one more question.

right here? maybe another one. ask kate. she's the boss. >> my question is about liquidity determination, chairman greenspan. there are two confirmed changes in the markets in the last 10 years that have created concern. one is the reduction in the number of market participants with heterogeneous preferences or by corollary the increase in the concentration of market power in fewer market participants. the second is the unwillingness of the broker dealers and intermediaries to hold inventory because of the higher costs of -- costs of capital. have we created -- planted the seeds for the next major market dislocation as a result of this change in market dynamics? alan: that's a very good

question. let me say that, first of all, let's define what we're talking about in a certain sense. no, as far as i can judge, no economic crisis, whether economic or financial occurs in the nonfinancial sector of the economy. you can tell by, frankly, the federal reserve has got an economic model which actually does very well for the nonfinancial part of the economy, and it did so right up to 2008. our problems are all in finance, which spill over. and the types of issues you are raising really are essentially what individuals are mainly concerned about. financial imbalances and the like.

and if there's enough capital in the system, you can take a lot -- take a lot of defaults a lot , of changes, a lot of structural issues, which go way beyond what you're raising, but i am concerned about a number of different things. as a central banker i was always concerned. my job was, what do i worry about tomorrow? anybody who thinks central banking especially, head of a central bank, is a delightful activity, let me disabuse you. [laughter] it's torture. [laughter] steve: folks, i'm sorry. i've gotten the hard rap, what we call in television the hard rap from the organizers. i could do this another hour. please join me in thanking chairman alan greenspan. [applause]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] cliques cbs news and the 60 minutes correspondent, laura logan joins us. that is next on c-span. andnversation on women foreign policy. scientists and journalists examine the legitimacy of the challenges made about science. >> on the next washington journal, jennifer of the washington post -- of the huffington post. the president's role in the 2016 campaign. democratic consultant and republican strategist examine

the political year ahead. what to expect from the presidential race. calls, facebook comments and tweets. washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. click's this weekend, american history tv on c-span3 has three days of featured programming. 3:10, editoroon at of pioneer girl discusses the wilder,laura ingalls comparing the book series to the real-life. quest she chose to write about people, places and memories that were not only important to her personally but what resnick with adult readers in the early neck team 30's. as we porters have waited out, the pioneer girl contains the

mystic abuse -- contains domestic abuse. all of that is there. >> on saturday at 6:00, james swanson compares the assassination of president's abraham lincoln and john f. kennedy, highlighting similarities and differences. at 10:00, the meet the press interview with daniel moynihan who authored a report on the causes of the black poverty. >> i believe what president johnson said, you cannot keep a man in chains and take the and say you are free to win the race of life with anybody else. people have to be given the opportunity to compete. i believe that we make a special effort. visitday night at 9:30, a

to washington, dc, to hear about the design of a new world war i memorial for its upcoming 100 anniversary. for our holiday schedule, go to c-span.org. >> now a discussion on the dangers of reporting from middle east. we will hear from laura logan and heard national freelance journalists. the event was hosted by the council on foreign relations in the new york city.

>> welcome to today's council on foreign relations meeting on the dangers of reporting from the middle east. i'd also like to welcome the cfr members around the nation and around the world who are watching this on the live stream. i also wanted to mention that this particular meeting is held in cooperation with the livingston awards for young journalists, which are a really prestigious honor for young journalists under the age of 35. they have three categories, i thinklocal, national, and international reporting. and if you go back and look at the list of winners in the international category, historically it's, you know, people like david remnick and steve coll and christiane amanpour and evan osnos and a lot of others; kind of a who's who of contemporary journalism. the awards are supported by the university of michigan, the knight foundation, and the indian trail foundation. and we have patti kenner here today from the indian trail foundation. so thanks very much. and we're lucky to have the winner of the 2015 livingston award in the international category, matthew aikins, with us today. and he went for a story called "whoever saves a

life," which is a really tremendous story about first responders in aleppo, syria that you did last year. and i really recommend that you read it if you get a chance, if you haven't. it was in matter. and it's a tragic story. i mean, it's a storythese people are on the receiving end of barrel bombs from the assad regime, and it's a tragic story. but matthieu does a really great job of capturing the humanity of

these first responders. and it's kind of-it's a funny story in some sense. i mean, i laughed a little bit, because there's-you kind of capture the gallows humor of the people who are living through some of this. he also did an amazing story for rolling stone this year from yemen. i'm going to ask him a little bit about that later. but yemen is under blockade right now. he took a 24-foot speedboat

across the bab-el-mandeb strait from djibouti 130 miles to sneak into yemen to do this story. it's an amazing story. and so we'll talk a little bit more about that. he also won the polk award in 2013 for "the a-team killings," which is a story about war crimes in afghanistan; survived an ambush getting to nerkh, south of kabul, to interview some of these witnesses; won the medill medal of courage for that story; was also a finalist for the national magazine award in 2011 for another war crimes story from afghanistan. and he's now a schell fellow at the nation institute, and he writes for all kinds of different places -- rolling stone, the atlantic, gq, and those kinds of places. so thanks for being with us. sebastian junger, at the end, is the author of "the perfect storm," which was on the bestseller list for, like, five years, i think; a very long time; movie with george clooney. and even before 9/11, i think you were saying 1996, you were going to afghanistan and reporting from there; did a profile of ahmad shah massoud in 2000 that became a national geographic documentary; more recently embedded himself kind of on and off for a year in the korengal valley of afghanistan with a unit from the 173 airborne brigade combat team-embedded along with the photojournalist, late photojournalist tim hetherington, who was killed in libya in 2011. and you used some of the material from those-you know, from that reporting for your book, "war," and a documentary called "restrepo," which won the 2010 grand jury prize at sundance. sebastian is also -- he's had an interest in dangerous jobs for a long time.

one of his early jobs was he was the guy who climbed the trees at the tree-removal companies and cut the branches off the trees. so he's been doing this sort of thing for a while. he's also the author of "death in belmont," "fire." you've said you've sworn off war reporting. i want to ask you a little bit about that. and he's also doing some really interesting things to improve the safety of foreign correspondents. so we'll talk a bit about that later. lara logan you know. she's the chief foreign affairs correspondent at "60 minutes" and cbs news. she's originally from south africa. she's reported from all over the world-from the middle east, from zimbabwe; reported on ebola. she was the only journalist from an american network in baghdad during the american invasion in in 2003. spent nearly five years in iraq after that; took some various-very dangerous assignments in afghanistan. you were in a vehicle that was struck by an antitank mine in 2005, and five years later were in another ambush during-in a convoy along the afghanistan-pakistan border. that report won a dupont-columbia university silver baton. she's also won an emmy, an edward r. murrow award, an overseas press club award. and in 2011, covering the

egyptian revolution, she was sexually assaulted by a mob in tahrir square, and she talked about that on "60 minutes." and she's since returned to middle east war zones. and this autumn, just in september, i guess, right, you reported from the front lines against isis in iraq, near fallujah, right, for "60 minutes" also. so thanks very much. let me start by asking maybe just what motivates you to do this job? i mean, it seems like there are some people who do it are adrenaline junkies. there are other people who are motivated by humanitarian considerations. matthew, you said your goal as a foreign correspondent was to be a radical obituary writer. said your goal as a foreign correspondent was to be a radical obituary writer. matthew: that is sort of a

that ace to a term phosphor uses about breathability. whose lives matter and whose deaths matter. an instrument by which breathability is publicly distributed. you can look at the obituary i think writing about the deaths and suffering. of the ordinary people who are overwhelmingly the victims of these conflicts is a way of trying to offer that reality. you said that that is a cause worth dying for. as a journalist are they really causes worth dying for? i think the idea of that is at the heart of our profession.

a soldier dies for their country. the same could be said about journalism. what is the trick to get readers interested in subjects with names that are hard to pronounce and that are far from the united states. ? matthew: we have all had the experience of pitching a story and being told that we need an american character in this story. that is true of the western media. in one level it is understandable. western readers relate to western characters. the western press is not the local hometown paper is the

global discourse of power that affects the lives of many people. one of the ways to get people interested in the lives of non-westerners. because we get to write at interminable length, we get to tell the back stories. make them funny, make them relatable. i think that is one way to do it. one thing i personally struggle with all the time is trying to make my work more representative of the majority of the people who are the subject of the stories. lara: i just did a piece on 60

minutes where the main character spoke no english. and the rainy ambassador spoke no english. prints, are writing and you translate whatever your characters say. journalists put in a form that readers can relate to. you get to do that on the television. it is an extraordinarily difficult thing. i was heavily criticized when i went to liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic and his story .bout ebola anyone in this room want to go to it liberia at the height of the ebola epidemic? liberianswed maybe 40 and they speak with a heavily accented creole kind of english. nobody back in new york in the screening room can understand what they were saying.

is of the things that you do that universal stories are universal. stories that courage, lack of integrity, they rise above everything. they rise above culture. as an african, it was voiced my goal to find the stories that i can bring to the world that transcended the african nature of them. otherwise they would make them on television. as 60 minutes we look for that story. they will commit to the budget but they can't do it on every story. liberia was that we took the stories of those people and we put them in the hands of those americans who got over there, not because we have to have americans in the story but

because it was a very legitimate question of who as a health , these are not people who needed a break. she has been in haiti for the earthquake. she has just been asked to go to nigeria. if ever there was a person who is close to being an angel in human form it is that young girl who has been in every place of misery. she did hundreds of blood draws in a day. to try to track down ebola at its source. we use people like that who cared so much about the african people suffering through this terrible epidemic. they risked everything. in their eloquence and their passion and their sincerity we pay tribute to the people who were living and working through that. and we could do it in a way that would make americans care.

that is not necessarily imperfect system. spent fourtimes hours with an afghan man just trying to find out what exactly it was that this person was killed by the americans came in the middle of the night. the language issue is a huge thing. it is kind of frustrating when you are twisting yourself into it is frustrating that people don't recognize it. there are constraints that you have to work with. it is kind of annoying. to be criticized for that. just saying.

[laughter] youebastian, can i ask about what you said about being done with more reporting. started a war reporting in 1993 in sarajevo in bosnia. it was the most incredible career choice that i could've made. there were times i was very scared and i was very war had never cost anything personally. it was nothing that went to the very center of my life. killed that is what

happened. it might cost you your life. it finally caught up with me with tim. had i not been married i might've made a different decision. married, having done it for a decade and a half, suddenly war reporting instead for the first time in my life it seemed like a selfish thing to do. and i would not have thought that when i was younger. 50's i saw40's and that you have to put other people's welfare first ahead of euro. that meant not going off for a couple of months. got the news about

tim through phone call. i realize that if i continued war reporting every time the phone rang in her apartment in would think ite was the worst possible news about me. and i'm i come home privately -- every time but stephen she would start paying more of a price for my job. >> i think laura is the only panelist with children. lara: you are going for the jugular. and wi-fi were foreign correspondents and we have little kids. about thise talking

on 60 minutes your idea was how can i done this to my kids. what was the process that you went to get back to the front lines. how you made the decision and the process. lara: i wrestle with it all the time. i did a story about christians in iraq. my daughter asked me if she can come with me. she is five. i had to say no you cannot come with me. it is not safe for little kids. there are some bad guys there. and she said why are you going. said everywhere there are bad guys but there are also good guys. and i'm going to be with the good guys.

she said if you don't come back that means the bad guys got you. i said i'm coming back. not just going to war. try looking at your five and six-year-old when you are sterilizing every piece of clothing that you have. to go and report on ebola. had one of the most brutal civil war is in history. and they told me over and over that ebola is worse than war. i think that was teasing sebastian tonight. he is at that point that sebastian was at years ago. i feel like it is part of my dna. of syriathe beginning

because of egypt. i felt very constrained and limited by that. there are smart ways to try to do these things carefully. and then you have to be lucky. when you look runs out. tim was killed with one of my very close friends. the same day, the same attack. i was just recovering from egypt. ira poli my car over and being unable to drive when i heard about this. that was a crushing blow. we become that close and it was in egypt i was being shot at or bombs. i was just being raised by 200 men. those dangers are everywhere. , itrting on the middle east to go to turkey

today. fox news had two people taken. the local iraqi person is still held. being a journalist today is probably more dangerous than it has ever been. it for ther done adrenaline of the thrills and i find it insulting when people say that because you don't leave to doive and six-year-old something interesting. you believe passionately that someone has to do it. without some form of accountability you don't have everything that we have. >> matthew, could you walk us through our serious story -- your syria story?

how did you get into syria? isis have been driven out of that point. had a you make your way there? wa i had been in the year before. they were pushed out again. back and it iso almost an impossible situation getting into syria. you have to have the right kind of connections with people on the ground who are going to protect you and whose motivations you can understand as far as you can. groupt in with a rebel and we stood there as far as we

could. responders whot were literally living every day the kind of mass casualty event that you rarely see in the united states. pulling people out of the rubble. they came back and hit the same site 15 minutes later because they were trying to hit the responders. it was very intense. they were doing such amazing work. it rubbed off on you. you felt very inspired by them. it is rare in these wars increasingly to find subjects that are so straightforwardly inspirational.

these guys had to have really chosen not to take up arms. and to save lives. there was a lot that resonated with what sebastian has written about. they were deathly doing it for each other. they did not want to be sitting in a refugee camp in turkey wasting the lives. the psychological situation was very interesting. you had a little bit of a window into the rebel groups. some guys drive-by and they wave of the first responders halfheartedly waved back. about theou tell us intersection of the rebel groups?

matthew: this was a cherry red fire truck that had been donated by the germans. looked out with huge black beards. they had gotten the fire truck and were running their own service. it was just totally utterly confused the overlap between the groups. seemdentities that may very clear here. the extremists in the moderates. it was actually utterly confused on the ground. >> you wrote an op-ed for the new york times. they will have to be less squeamish about picking allies in syria. are there any left.

? matthew: it is the same groups. i don't think they are substantially different in their ideology. sebastian, i wanted to ask about the process of returning home after this kind of reporting. ownwrote about your short-term posttraumatic stress disorder. could you share your personal experience? sebastian: the first time i was a little deranged by trauma was in 2000. i had been in northern afghanistan. had an point the taliban air force and tanks and artillery.

we really got pounded. this was before 9/11. at war.try was not war ♪ know the youly could be traumatized in any kind of enduring way. i am not a particularly neurotic person. i was really puzzled when i started having panic attacks in situations that ordinarily would not scare me. like the new york city subway at rush hour. or ski gondola. all of a sudden i was having panic attacks. i didn't understand it. if i jump to the loud noise may be a could've understood it. i was panicking in small crowded places. everything i was looking at seemed like a threat. the crowd of people was somehow going to turn and attack me.

the trains were going to jump the rails and come up on the platform and kill everybody. i reacted as if this was true. i couldn't take the subway for a while. i had no idea anything to do with my experiences in combat. i just i was going crazy. at age 38 is finally happening. [laughter] later i was talking neck and she the was a psychologist and she asked if i'd ever had any emotional consequences from covering war. i said no, i don't think so. but it is kind of strange, i keep having these weird panic attacks. while that is called posttraumatic stress disorder.

she said you will be hearing a lot more about that. i wrote an article for vanity fair about this. basically there is to sorts. a short-term reaction to trauma. humans are primates, we evolved to deal with things that threaten our lives. the logic of darwinian selection. we react to danger in ways that are adapted and help us survive. danger that threat a day or ats week or a month.

it is calculated to get you through the typical dangerous time. long-termt adapted is ptsd. you are maladapted to your life. that is pretty rare. 20% of people wind up with ptsd.erm i wrote an article about why that rate is so high in the military. in the united states, as opposed to the israeli or other militaries. the navajo were very warlike people. when europeans showed up in north america. idea that thes

apache probably weren't getting this disorder when they were fighting the cavalry. long-term ptsd if you come home to a fragmented, alienated modern society like ours, where it has much higher suis a -- suicide rates than in the third world. is a function of the society you come home to. that was my whole thesis, and i turned into a book that is coming out in may. >> i have a million questions, it's a really interesting topic. but i think i better open it up to questions from the members here. remind people

that this meeting is on the record, and if you could raise your hand, someone will bring you a microphone. speak directly into the microphone, stand up, say your name and affiliation, and please limit yourself to one question. >> hello, i'm charles. i have a question for each of you and all of you together. how has social media changed the reporting of war? the last time i was in a war 2008, and there was really none -- no internet. prehistory. a very remote outpost. it did not really affect the soldiers i was with. we run denies recently.

-- we were on mars, basically. a perfect this is example of how it has changed coverage of war. there is a group of young people qqa, andk that -- ra their name is also their purpose. we cannot go there because it is under state control. only one journalist managed to get permission from the islamic , and anotherhere journalists who grew up with a an of those guys, and did incredible series. i think social media has become the lifeblood of many -- much of the work coverage. it is very hard to know what you can rely on and what you can't, and that is why organizations like these are so important. like any journalist, over time you get to know their work and

trust them. they were to a certain standard. on social lot of prep media. mainstreamves to say media is corrupt and we don't do anything right, but social medias wonderful because they are not paid by anyone. you have to filter all of that out and just be honest about what you are dealing with. at the core of the mainstream media and social media, those two things come together to sustain the first amendment. without social media today, we would not be in a good place. >> and also speaking from a very personal experience, i think it has probably increased the amount of the coverage of war as well. i do waste a lot of time on twitter. [laughter] you're not on twitter. i noticed you were not.

say there are very few young freelancers who are able to ignore social media, and become such an essential tool in self-promotion online. --that is the less effective attractive side of it. but i the other side, to have great people who are able to form a network and can take cameras over the city and get information, it becomes something where people go to them. the syrian war probably is a great example. croatiant program of weapon supplies to the syrian weapons -- rebels was uncovered through social media.

a blogger noticed croatian weapons were showing up in the hands of the rebels, and it turns out is a saudi funded syrian opposition. >> tom from new york university. confronted you been with a situation in which you felt you wanted to become, or needed to become a participant, rather than an observer? or in addition to an observer? and how has your journalistic training help you in addressing a dilemma like that? >> i have never picked up a weapon shooting, i would always shoot myself in put first. i think your journalistic training is everything. in the process of being fair and putting yourself in everyone's shoes,

trying to understand it, is essentially what protects your journalism. if you say, i don't agree with this person so i am not putting their view into the story, you are not advancing the conversation in any way, shape, or form. it begins with understanding. -- trying to do understand everyone's position, i think i learned that in south africa growing up. andew up under apartheid, we were part of something that we believed was very noble and just, which was the fight for human rights and equality for everyone. we grew up despising the right wing. and then i worked for a news agency, and i realized that every time an event happened, as an agency person, had to provide everyone's perspective.

that was our job, we would offer the information and people would use it. in the course of that process, it taught me how to be open to everything. it doesn't mean i have to agree with it. i've been running a campaign for 15 years now in afghanistan. they know how i feel about it. i was think it is dishonest when journalists pretend like they don't have feelings and they are not involved. we do stories because we believe they are important and they matter. i give 150% everything i do. but the process of being a professional journalist and putting all of your work through .hat process is what protects that is the danger of social media. you don't know if anyone else -- how much of that is put through this process, and how much of it is just rumor and innuendo that is run out there.

blogs, how much of the journalistic process is there? i don't know. i have seen stuff reported on blogs that i would never report, because when we looked into it, it would not stand up. >> i also think it is unrealistic to think journalists will not have a profound impact everywhere. one thing, you are bringing in a fair amount of money and putting into the local economy, the higher fixer and other things. you are affecting the situation. i'm not saying it's a bad thing, but let's be honest, i'm not saying it is too perverse the process, but you are affecting things. i have helped carry wounded civilians, helped soldiers during firefights, whatever. there is a hold radiation of involvement. -- greedy nation of involvement. taking a ride on an american helicopter is making you part of the machine you are reporting

on, but it is the only way to get out there. i think it comes down to your intent. something thatg changes the story you are reporting on, that turns into a circular ashur drawling -- drawing. you don't want that. to never step off of the past come alike that ray , that you can go through these situations and never step off of the path, it is not realistic. >> i think we also become participants. being a phenomenon

that existed much in the media, journalism becomes a political pawn. if you think about the murder of jim foley, and the way that that had a such a powerful political impact on american perception of the war and policy as a result, we go into these conflicts already being in the game. >> can i just say, don't forget daniel pearl. jim foley was not the first person whose head was chopped off. daniel pearl was the first. and that tactic was not learned, it was not invented by these people. is thatas dallas context, it is absolutely critical -- as journalists is in that context. -- that set changed the stage for the change in journalism. from that moment on it was

impossible for people like us to go and meet with zarqawi and members of al qaeda. that became the moment when we realized how little they needed us. they did not need us anymore. they can just use social media. they speak to their audience whenever they want, on their own terms, in their own way. that is probably one of the most powerful changes in the world media landscape. in the front? >> hello, joe mentor from barclays. what was your biggest misconception about the middle east? go down to a particular country, that was changed as result of your reporting. >> matthew? that's a tough one.

i think that i knew so little , that i barelyry had misconceptions to begin with. [laughter] that may have been part of it. i think one of the things that i learned was how radically different people over there u.s.ive the world, and the conspiraciesthe about 9/11 are there. >> and powerfully held. >> yes. and another is the way that you and your country is a villain, rather than being a hero, and seeing the world through that lens was something that really changed the way i thought about it. >> i think one of the greatest misconceptions with this idea that the cia trained osama bin laden, and he fought bravely on the fields of afghanistan. there was only one afghan

commander who could stand have any arabs in battle, and he is today in the afghan government. osama bin laden only traveled once into the battlefield. most of his work was done in pakistan. you don't really understand how powerful that is until you are there, and you understand the role that pakistan's still plays. their fact that there are more terrorist groups on pakistani soil than any other place in the world. i think even syria does not measure up. it is a misconception to think afghans and arabs are the same. there are two entirely different people. it is like saying spanish people others.same as they speak different languages. the afghans feel he -- feel very powerfully about arabs coming into their country and telling them how to do things. my biggest was not understanding place our people.

it took me a long time to learn and understand and appreciate who they are for who they are. it is either this romantic thing of afghanistan being a place of the great game, and all these fascinating things, and rudyard kipling who read about soldiers -- wrote about soldiers. i was in afghanistan in the fall of 2000. u.s., the u.s.he election was hanging in the balance. remember, al gore and bush? it went on for so long that the northern alliance fighters actually heard that there was a sort of hung election in the united states. [laughter] one of them asked me, a

quite concerned, do you think there will be a civil war in your country too? [laughter] , a state ofed simmering warfare in conflict is a pretty common thing in a lot of the world. we think of where is this dramatic, outrageous thing that always happens, and it consumes everything. a lot of were is not that dramatic. they can go on for five years, 10 years, 20 years or generations, and it has a slow-motion metabolism. a lot of ordinary life happens inside of war. saw fire was in sarajevo. i was having dinner with a very nice family in the suburbs, and

the safety of some buildings outside. tracer fire was pouring down the feet 30 feet from us, but we were behind the building, so we were safe. we were having a really nice summer evening picnic dinner, ,nd it was completely ordinary unless you were in the middle of the street. i did not understand the sort of ordinariness of war for many people in the world. d-day is the exception. a lot of it happens in this weird, slow-motion way that people comedy in their lives and adjust to. they think it is normal sometimes. they think maybe the u.s. will have its own civil war for a decade or two. it's a very different perspective. >> and the afghan soldiers with the war in the taliban, i only had a cameraman for about a week.

i spent most of the time on my own. but the roof of the mud house we were on cracked, and a cave and gave way. he went plummeting down. the afghans thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen, that was all they wanted to talk about. mime thed mind that -- cameraman following two stories potentially to his death, but that was the height of wartime entertainment. [laughter] wendy lewis from the foundation for civil society. what role in contact you have with american embassies and diplomats, and american envoys when you are covering these wars? widelyink it varies depending on the american diplomat, and embassy. i just came back from iraq.

it was hard to find anyone in that country who wanted that were covered. the american military were unbelievably difficult to deal with. they did not give us access to a single base, or a single trainer. from --ave the benefit i had the benefit of living in iraq for a long time. i said, i know you have guys there, we can drive to the front gate. all you have to do is send someone to the front gate, and let us come in for one hour and give us some kind of ground briefing. so i said, is this like the longest handover in the history of any military? we have given you a three-month window. it was all nonsense. what we tried to to do is if we cannot get interview with the u.s. ambassador, wheelies try to get a background briefing from that person. organizationsnd

like that that bend over backwards to assist coverage in any part of the world in any circumstances. >> u.s. diplomatic presences have become so bunkered these days that it is even physically difficult to meet with people. they often cannot leave the embassy. getting into multiple layers of security is a hassle in itself. i think that's another way think -- conflict probably changed it is difficult to see them. >> i will answer quickly. i was evacuated from liberia during civil war by the u.s. embassy. i felt extremely grateful to them. i was in a lot of danger. the regime had fingered me as a spy. i started went into hiding. it was a very scary time. i'm very grateful to them. also what happened is they cannot really leave the embassy

walls very much at all. i have been all over liberia. they started debriefed me. they wanted to know what kind of weapons i saw. really detailed stuff. a journalist, effectively becomes a spy for the embassy. i don't know where the line is, but you do have to be aware of it. >> can become. >> yes. it is really tricky. granularity are you really this functioning in different capacities you never expected to? >> when i was in egypt, is very grateful there was an american and nearby that we could reach, at least there was somebody you could lean on. we did not end up using them for very much at all, but there were two embassy people who

helped me get on a plane. when you are that afraid, it can mean a lot. i am a diplomatic correspondent. after never been on the waterfront. i was wondering the relationship you might have being the war correspondents, being in the field with those who are on the diplomatic front. what do you see coming, yemen, if you were to think, what is next having been on the ground? >> what is the next country to get horribly invaded and destroyed? i don't know. i was in yemen this summer. it is incredibly heartbreaking.

>> that has already been horribly invaded and destroyed. >> yes, you are are going to have isis, al qaeda is already rearing its head, the country is fragmenting. libya also. >> i think you look for good people wherever you go. that,avitate towards those who you feel you can trust and once you feel you can respect and that are willing to engage. those can be in any government, anywhere. you say what is coming next, but we are already in the middle of what is coming. none of this is resolved. this is only going -- this is growing and spreading.

it's not based on what i see, it is in front of all of us. yemen is unresolved, syria is escalating every day, turkey's engagement is escalating, russia's engagement is escalating. iraqis are moving towards the ramadi. everyone knows they have to cut the lines, mosul is just a bomb factory. tens and thousands of bombs everywhere. in the islamic state uses homemade bombs like countries use landmines. that is what they have used. when i was around falluja, there were still hundreds of these bombs everywhere. they would fill a can with homemade explosives, put a detonator on it, and they are using children to plant them. there were some children we spoke to, working on something else at the moment, who'd they

said they would do 40 ied's in a day. they're using more suicide bombers every day than ever n witnessed in history. there's no sorted. the iraqis have an incredible battle on their hands. uranian appreciate that -- iranians appreciate that. the man from the shadows is no longer in the shadows. lebanon just a massive prisoner mosra, which almost is al qaeda. the good al qaeda, for now. i can see those problems being widespread. a friend of mine is a turkish journalist. he has pointed out there is really a new access of power

forming -- axis of power forming, with moscow, iran, assad, hezbollah, and even china. it is a really interesting development. basically, it is being created as a counterbalance to western tower. power. is also connected to a shia sunni conflict. >> other journalists would say it is a counterbalance to a lack of western power. look at through vladimir putin's perspective, this is how you equalize things with the west. i have not been out there in years, so the only way i have an opinion is through somebody else's opinion. we have talked a lot about that, and i think he has a legitimate point.

i and in the library arts. here's a question. you have all been talking about fragmented societies you have working a lot. i would be interested to know what you think about the american, the u.s. fragmented especially vis-a-vis what has been happening about the refugees coming into the united states, or not coming. >> if i could jump in, i think that plays a big role in the really high level of combat , american troops experienced. they are in a platoon, 30 or 40 people, tightly bonded with each other, committed to each other, sleeping in the same days, eating together and doing missions together. basically, a platoon re-creates

our evolutionary past, the way humans evolved to live. and then they come back to modern society. parties arel literally accusing each other of deliberately trying to sabotage the safety and welfare of their own country. race relations are terrible. the gap between rich and poor are getting worse. is getting worse. no tribe, no platoon would ever treat themselves that way. and soldiers intuitively understand this. they come back to this country and they cannot believe it. a lot of the guys i was with, they were in a lot of combat. you talk about war costing people something, it cost those guys a lot. just about every single one of the mrs. it and wants to go back. if you are returning to a cohesive, healthy society, you don't want to go back to combat . you go home.

of --o me is the ole miss illness of modern life is what you are talking about. you can see it in things like immigration. we don't have any kind of cohesive response to immigration, because we can't, because we are not a cohesive society. we are not going to have a cohesive response to anything until we see ourselves as one country. sometimes i think that is never going to happen again. >> we have time for one more question. i'm joel simon from the committee to protect journalists. lara, you touched on this. could you talk a little bit about the journalists you work with in these places you visit, both the ones who are part of your team and the ones who are part of the rider information

ecosystem -- broader information ecosystem? just mentioned a colleague in turkey for example. i would like to hear more about that. i don't think there's anything have done in my entire career that has not been because of a great local journalist. i have leaned on and relied on them in every place i have been. one of my closest friends is an attackedo when i was in egypt, did not even pick up the phone. he just got on a plane. i remember being in my house in hehington dc, thinking, brought me a necklace with my name in arabic, it was made up waiting for his flight. i was thinking how ironic, i had almost been killed by a mob of arab men, and the one person who is the greatest comfort to me in

a difficult moment was an arab man. these are not matches made in heaven. i remember when the marines were coming into baghdad, and there were snipers all around. he was trying to get me to go inside and go to safety. i couldn't imagine that at the one moment, had i been there through the end, through the whole war, and the very moment when it was ending, to put me in the basement, i was not going. and he was telling me to go. and at the end, i could just say, i'm a journalist! and there was a french journalist who is there, always reminds me of it whenever i see her. but those people are your lifeline.

there is no substitute for knowing every inch of ground, and every street. helped you understand motivation and history, they give you context. they risk everything. us out and we were on the jordanian border in the middle of the night, he took me with his hand over my face, and to the outside, and said don't tell anyone. if you want to go back to baghdad, i will take you. if they find you, they will kill i said to him. and he said, god willing, i would like to die in my country. it is those kind of people, you leave your life in their hands. the one to say, i will take you, you know those are the ones who are lying. the ones who know the place so much better than you, and who can guide you, and who you trust

-- one of the greatest journalists in the world, no one has done reporting like 70 uses him. i have spoken to the taliban multiple times because of him. times wee multiple pulled back, i understood he knew better than we did. you cannot go into syria if you do not have a good local network.some of his local journalists, and some of it is local fighters. it begins with local journalists. >> behind every good local story is a good fixer. there are parallels that can be drawn for freelancers.

you have both been independent journalists in conflict zones. that is all i have ever been. it is pretty difficult being out there on your own. we didn't really talk about it there but one of the -- is an amazing program to train freelance journalists lifesaving medical skills. a lot of my friends have been through it. stuff like that. living through a war lives -- means a lot to a young freelancer. you feel like you are on your own. the martin adler award, which people don't really know about,

is an award, perhaps ely one of its kind, for a fixer. in that context, it's basically someone who works for or who is employed by other journalists. they are locals. keitelmovie with harvey when he was the cleaner? the stakes are fixes everything and put you in contact with local politicians, tells you whether it is safe, they find people for you. they help you in every way. i think i've got to stop you here. -- or 2:00.hed 1:00 we are pretty strict about it. thank you very much to the panel. this was really interesting. [applause]

>> up next on c-span, a conversation on women and the. examine theists legitimacy of some of the challenges made about science. a couple of road to the white house events to tell you about. candidates hillary clinton talks at a town hall meeting. on wednesday, republican presidential candidate donald trump holds a rally in hilton head, south carolina. eastern,11:00 a.m. also here on c-span. featureddays of programming this new year's weekend.

enforcement, law officials, and journalists examine up persons and minority communities. the reasond foremost we have prisons is to punish people for antisocial behavior. not just to keep us safe. whether they are going to rehab allocate the prisoner or deter future time are secondary concerns. great if it happens, but the primary purpose is for people who are not in prison. to keep society safe from the threat imposed by those folks. a little after 8:00, a race relations meeting. it begins,is where go would do their job saying, i am protect the public.

their idea of the public is those to give them their marching orders. that is us, who need to look at all of that. we need to look at those rules toy have and start using engage themselves with our community. six: 30,ay evening at a discussion of media coverage of muslims and how muslims can join those conversations. gather in the house of commons to discuss things that are important to them. >> it leaves the young people feeling dissolution. toa child, i looked forward the life of children chattering. seenwe grow up, we have trains lose their smiley faces. we forget to notice the swishing and honking while we worry about

whether we can afford the bus to school tomorrow. for more, go to c-span.org. now, michele flournoy. the bush school of government at texas a&m university hosted this event. >> it is the 14th anniversary of the 9 -- 11 attack. this month is also the 20th anniversary of the u.n. conference of women in beijing, china. where it hillary clinton asserted that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. and, girls and women all over the globe know that now in a way

that perhaps we did not know in 1995. this month is also the 15th anniversary of u.n. security council resolutions and. nations toated include women in all piece negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction. decade and a half or so has been a time of great change. are these anniversaries related? i think they are. nations where women do not enjoy the full spectrum of rights as embodied in the convention on all forms of discrimination against women, with that is an issue. i don't think that is a coincidence at all. as donald steinberg has said, it has become my favorite quote of the last year, and you can see

that we invited him. because he wanted to hear -- we wanted to hear directly from him, not just his quote. take a look at that quote there. compare those societies that respect women, and those which don't. who is trafficking in weapons and drugs? who is harboring terrorists and starting pandemics? whose problems acquire u.s. troops on the ground? there is a one to one correspondence, do not only tell me there is no relationship between national security and the empowerment of women. and he is right. and what i would like to do now in setting the stage is to explore that proposition in greater detail with you. and sort of open and set the -- in a sense, the dialogue for the conference. that the security and status of women impacts the security and stability other nations is not some brand-new proposition. for example, way back in 2006, we had kofi annan the then

united nations secretary-general say that the world is starting to grasp that there is no policy more effective in promoting development, health, and education, and the empowerment of women and girls. and i would venture that no policy is more important in preventing conflict or achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended. perhaps what was lacking in the tiarywas strong evidence yea basis for these assertions. that time is over. what i hope to present in the first few opening minutes of this important conference is a broad survey of such findings. which i believe demonstrate across a wide variety of dimensions that what is happening with women strongly affects the trajectory of the nationstate and even the international system. so let us take a tour of these dimensions, if you will. are you interested in future security?

if you are, then you should be interested in women. -- interested in food security? if you are, then you should be interested in women. women produce most of the world's food. for example, in sub-saharan africa, women perform 80% of agricultural labor. and over 50% of such labor worldwide. but it is also true that women land, even though study after study has shown that children's caloric intake is highly coordinated with women property rights. the food and agricultural organization calculates that if women farmers were given the same assistance as men in terms of land extension agents and training, malnutrition would drop 70% globally. remuneration capital on crops is only given to those who own the land. the men. this is despite the fact that study after study has shown that over 90% of a woman's earnings go to her family.

the only 40% to 60% of a man's earnings go to his family. we know that women are expected to process food, find fuel, find potable water, on top of their other responsibilities with children and agricultural work. they have a triple commitment of time throughout the day. women are often, however, expected to eat last. or to eat food of poor quality. this is shown in the fact that two thirds of malnourished children in the world are female children. in many agricultural societies, it is actually women who are responsible for seeing that women and children do not start. -- starve. and men in these cultures may find it equally shameful to help

their wives, and so they do not assist them, even though studies have shown that men who do assist their wives in these kinds of labors have significantly larger harvests and those that do not. -- than those that don't. the question to ask is, might and equitable treatment of women make famine and malnutrition more likely for a nationstate? the answer is well-established, it is yes. we can also establish economic prosperity. we can also look at studies on economic prosperity. the world bank did a series of very significant studies several years ago in which they took a variable they call the gender gap. the larger it was, the greater the disparity between the lives of men and women. the smaller the gender gap, the more equitable. what they found is that the larger the gender gap in the society, the lower the gdp per capita of the nation. this was highly significant. the larger the gap, the lower

the rate of national economic growth. when you do not harness the talents and the energy of one half of your population, you are simply not going to grow as fast as other nations. they also found that lower investment in female education linked to strongly lower national income. and last, other organizations have found that over and over, those developed projects with a gender component are far more successful than those without. so again, we raise the question -- might inequitable treatment of women make poverty more likely? again, we could argue yes. health and women is a topic i think we know quite a bit about now. and the status of women is strongly linked to national health outcomes. the smaller the gender cap, the lower the infant and child

mortality rates, and the level of child malnutrition. the smaller the gender gap, the lower the share of household tax on cigarettes and alcohol because women have more of a say in how the income is spent in the household. the larger the gender gap, the higher the aids rate and the overall burden of infectious diseases within the population. and lastly, the larger the gender gap, the lower the life expectancy -- not just for women, but for men as well. and so, might and equitable treatment of women make disease more likely in society? i think that is so. let's go to my stomping ground. i am a specialist in security companies.

what we see is very interesting findings, some of which is from my own research. and our own studies, we found a higher level of violence against women, the more likely a nationstate is to be noncompliant with international norms and its own treaty obligations. the higher the level of violence against women, the worst the nationstate's relations with its neighbors. -- theger the gender gap more likely a nationstate is to be involved in internation and internation conflict. and the more likely it is to use violence first in a conflict. the higher the level of violence against women, the less peacefully the nationstate will behave in an overall sense in the international system. and some of my earlier work on abnormal sex ratios and security there, we show that in case

studies of indian china, that the birth or from post may delete from female infanticide creates a young adult female population that is 15% larger than the female population, fueling what we found is violent crime, general instability, and the potential for regional conflict. so a good question for us to pose is whether inequitable treatment of women makes conflict more likely? we can also look at the dimension of governance, here i am relying on wonderful studies that have come out of the european union and the inter-parliamentarian union and so forth. the larger the gender gap in the country, the higher the levels of perceived national corruption. the smaller it is on the other hand, the greater the level of trust in government and the greater the transparency in government.

and what researchers have found when they go down into the micro level and they look at what women are doing when they are in the legislature, they have discovered that the representation of women in decision-making is higher, more lawmaking revolves around issues of social welfare, fighting corruption, and approving legal protection for citizens. and what we have also found, and these are some brand-new studies that are hot off the press, when women are represented in peace negotiations after a conflict, participants are likely to be far more satisfied with the outcome and what we have also found is that the agreement is significantly more durable. it will actually last longer if there is representation of

women. so, we might ask ourselves, might and equitable treatment of women make poor government more likely? and of course, we cannot overlook demographics. you really cannot talk about demographics unless you are willing to talk about men and women. and yet sometimes we do talk about demographics as am agency -- as if women's agency were not part of it. over and over again we have found that went marriage is an institution that is conceived of as being hierarchical, where marriage is highly in equitable between men and women, unsustainably high levels of population growth often result because a woman is not in control of her body in such marriages. on the other hand, when society makes it economically irrational for women to have children by punishing mothers in the workplace, as we see in nations

such as japan, sub-replacement birth rates often result. women are not stupid. if you are going to punish them for having children, they're not going to have children. and lastly, a word has to be said about the overall global sex ratio. the overall global sex ratio should be about 98 men to 100 women, because women tend to out live men. have a longer life expectancy. what we find now in the 21st century is that that global overall sex ratio is now 101.4 men per 100 women. this is a stunning factoid. what we're talking about here is literally tens of millions of missing women, some demographers estimate almost 200 million missing women from the world.

my colleague from the university of canterbury and i have been a -- done a recent survey of childhood sex ratios around the globe. back in 1995 when we were first conducting the research, there were only five nations that had abnormal childhood sex ratios. when we redid our study this year in 2015, 20 years later, a total of nations is now 19. there are now 19 nations in which childhood sex ratios are significantly abnormal. indicating that sex-elective abortion is taking place. this alteration from 98 to 100, up to 101.4, that is not the result of any sort of natural plague or disaster. this is a completely man-made alteration of the population of the entire world.

and it is worth thinking about. and of course, is such an -- with such an imbalance, localized and extremely high sex ratios in certain areas of the world -- for example, we found ratios were there actually 2:1. two men for every women in specific locales in india and other countries, marriage market obstructions take place. where men are not able to find marriage partners or form household. and this leads to a deep sense of grievance and instability as well. so we might ask ourselves, might inequitable treatment of women make demographic problems more likely? i think we can say, absolutely. so what we have come to know is

that women are not the canary in the coal mine. oftentimes, this metaphor is used to suggest that where women are hurting, that is a sign that something dysfunctional has happened in society. yes, that is true. but i would like to suggest that male-female relations with in the society are the coal mine. and the canaries that are thinking are poverty, and malnutrition, and ill health, and violence and a poor governance, all of these issues at the nationstate level. this is that conceptual brought by women, or as secretary of state hillary clinton so dramatically put it in 2012, the subjugation of women is a threat to the common security of our world and to the national security of our country.

which has come to be known as the hillary doctrine. now in my field of study, security studies, we often talk about this german term called real politik. otherwise known as realism in american jargon. the ideas that the national security of the country is best secured by taking an unvarnished look at the realities of the situation and dealing with them forthrightly. well, if that is the case then, tiary base evidence her we have that means that seeing , women is in fact a pillar of clear-eyed realpolitik. whether we are examining the

national interest in terms of durability of peace accords, food security, security demographics national health, , wealth, quality of governance, interstate relations, or any other aspect of national security, women empowerment helps intangible ways. -- in tangible ways. and i think the rest of the speakers in this conference will be testifying to that fact over and over what they have seen on the ground and what they have seen through their own lived experience. however, that is women in foreign policy 101. i would like to suggest that it is not that simple. as patricia and i claim in our new book, "the hillary doctrine," and my publisher would like you to know there is a book signing at 5:00. [laughter] it is not simply that we can sprinkle in women, stir it up, and it will get better overnight.

that is not the reality. there are some real moral quandaries. and we talk at length in the book about these moral quandaries. in many cases, the united states and other nationstates are forced to stay silent as women are oppressed under certain legal codes. and this is not because we do not care about these women. the archetypal example here would be saudi arabia. while she was secretary of state, despite the fact that hillary clinton asserted that the subjugation of women was a direct threat to the security of our national system, hillary clinton remained conspicuously silent about the treatment of saudi women. not because she does not care about those issues. there is no way that one could

accuse hillary clinton of not sincerely caring about women's issues. but it is because, i think, a very clear-eyed view of the alternative. compared to the alternative sources of power in saudi society, the current saudi government looks really pretty good. so what kinds of silences and we have to maintain in the context where we see no better alternative for women on the horizon? and i am certainly convinced that what we called the arab spring was actually a winter for women in that area. where rights were summarily and immediately stripped from women as the regime changed to a freer system.

whether you talk to egyptian women, libyan women, even if you talk to tunisian women and others in the region, they can tell you case after case they woke up the next morning and all of a sudden, the right for which they have fought for decades, it was erased with the stroke of a pen. how could that be? second, it is also very true that we need to be pragmatic. and that sometimes open support for women activists and other societies leaves vulnerable to accusations of intrigue and treason. are we putting them at risk if we openly support them? that is another big moral quandary.

and then there is the issue of youth, or that principle of leaving a conflict zone. and what our obligations are to the women we leave behind. i believe our second panel on the situation of women in afghanistan will be tackling this question. when i visited the united nations two years ago and had a big lunch with united nations women, i was told that americans have blood on their hands with respect to places like iraq and afghanistan. that we encourage these women to stand up. and now we have left them defend for themselves. and their fate is our responsibility. if they are murdered, that is blood on our hands. that is another moral quandary. another one is what i sardonically call the feminists

hawks versus pontius pilate. the united states is such a great power, surely we can use that on the half of women worldwide. using things like military interests to help women may be misguided. are the women of iraq safer now because the american military invaded the country? no. absolutely not. and yet on the other hand, as we look at the case of the women who have been kidnapped and turned into sex slaves, surely the feeling also arises in our breath that can't we americans do something about these women? i think these are two poles, we have to do something. we cannot do something. because it will make it even worse. that is another moral quandary. and i think as was alluded to, what about our own health?

-- our own house? should we clean our own house first? the u.s. has not and probably will not ever ratified paid maternity leave. i believe there are only three nations in the world that can make that claim. and as steve crawford pointed out, slightly less than 20% of our legislature is female. and we have significant levels of violence against women in our society. so what about our own domestic front? another set of issues that we go over in our book, and i think many panelists talk about, is slow death by bureaucracy. that is a good idea. such as the hillary doctrine. wonderful things have taken place, we now have a national action plan for women's peace and security to be formulated in 2011. the united nations has not been sitting on their hands, we have a dozen security council

resolutions demanding and obligating the nations pay attention to what is happening to women. for those of you who are policy wonks, you will know the import of this. by golly, we actually have nine gender indicators in the list by which all of our programs are benchmarked. there is now mandatory gender training, so if you want to join the state department, you will be taking courses in gender analysis. the quadrennial diplomacy and development review that looks at the activities of the state department and the usaid, the qddr report has numerous mentions of women and their importance to the area of development and diplomacy.

in fact, a gender analysis is mandated in all usaid requests for proposal. again, that is a little wonkish. but it really represents some progress here. and lastly, the department itself has been active in this area. and it has several efforts on securityeace and that we will be talking about in a moment with michele flournoy. but there are problems still. even under secretary of state hillary clinton, the four years she served in that position, some within the administration actually characterize attention to gender as a pet rock that was

weighing down our rucksack and so it had to be left by the wayside. there were more important things to do. so people genuflect to the idea that women were important. i can only imagine that secretary of state henry clinton was a forceful personality and making sure the people agreed him at least on the surface, the gender was important. but many of them may not have taken it as seriously as she did. and dropped it as soon as the going got tough. in our book, and we even have wonderful comments our own dean, there was a lack of will at the top. these issues were too easily put aside when the going got tough. the second thing that i believe has undermined the notion that women matter in foreign policy is the fact that we have no hard targets yet for a lot of these

issues related to women. so for example, i think i told you that united nation security council resolution 1325 mandates the presence of women at peace negotiations. but there is no one enforcing that. even the u.s. state department has a pretty spotty track record of including women in peace negotiations. so for example when secretary of state john kerry was assembling negotiations over the syrian situation, outside activists actually had to ask, where are the women? we are obligated under 1325 to make sure they are at the table.

the types of implementers we have who are running brothels who cannot work with women in their own office who underlined the gender programming at every turn. these are chronic issues we face. which brings us to this conference. tot is one of the reason hold an intensive, high-level conversation about these issues. questions be asking like what does a state policy that takes women seriously look like. foreignthis the sweden minister has announced sweden will have a policy that at the same time we know she was willing to back down on criticism of saudi arabia. so how does this happen? what does this look like? what is the united

states responsibility towards the women of saudi arabia. a doctrine suggests what? what is right behavior in leaving a conflict zone. what is a doctrine that takes women seriously look like? i don't think we know that either. what representations would we give to the next u.s. president. what would be on there to do list. our third panel will address that very question. addressing concrete recommendations and challenges at this timely season of campaign and debate. to do list be on the of american presidents. i think the theme of this conference is, how do we do

this? because i am not sure it that we know. we've had enough experience that we should be able to do and after action report. how do we avoid the same mistakes the next time. -- i have just a couple of concluding thoughts. i have studied the these issues for many years and i have compiled probably the largest on women where we have information on over 300 sd 176ables for 100 -- countries. i have been in a position to track changes. progress and regress for women over the last 20 years at a very detailed level and i have come

to a couple conclusions. the first one is, i do not believe there can be peace within nations or between nations until there is peace between men and women. the two halves of humankind globally and within every society. the two groups through whom the future of these nations come. the children of these nations. deepe also come to the conclusion that the roots of many things that we value, such as democracy and human rights are to be found in the character of societal relations between men and women. how can you have democracy at haveational level if you

no true decision-making power in the household? how would anyone in that society understand democracy if what they see as hypocrisy within each household. it will not happen. these are things that are off in not spoken of by the that are critical to speak of at this time. and so, without further a do, that is one of the most important discussions we can have is the discussion that we are going to have today. so i am thrilled to be a part of it. let's begin. thank you very much. [applause] -- i would like to invite shell to come up to the stage.

while she does, we will have a conversation with michele flournoy. michele flournoy is a cofounder and chief executive officer of the center for a new american security. familiar with that organization, it is one of the brightest most innovative organizations around. she served as a director for foreign policy from 2009-2012. she was principal advisor of the secretary of defense in the policies,n of defense oversight of plans and operations. she led the development of the 2012 strategic guide for the department of defense. she is definitely someone we want to hear from. more, iou like to read would refer you to the bios at

the end of the program which are much longer than can recite during the conference today. >> michelle, thank you so much for being here. i am grateful to you for coming. i just read in your biography, you have been in politics at a high level in the depart in of defense. the center for american security is in the business of providing recommendation for the establishment. we the view, what should

place that issues of women's empowerment for security planning? michelle: first of all, thank you for inviting me to join you today. i cannot give a more important and timely topic to wrestle with. i think your presentation was very important. from a goalt is not point. i think the male-female outcomes that the affect international security, our security, that is to be brought much more to the forefront. i think a lot of what you talked

about, whether it was about security, poverty, propensity for violence and can't ask, we talk a good game about primary objectives being deterring and preventing conflict rather than having to respond to crises and fight wars and so forth for top but we do not do a good job of actually implementing our policy in a way that is really focused on prevention. a lot of what i saw on your presentation is things we could actually be tracking as to inform our policy on where do we need to be making what kind of invest using all of the tools to shape some of these situations and prevent conflict or crises. and it is much more costly in terms of one and treasurer to

deal with. >> that is great. plan,the national action from your perch in the department of defense, how was that? i know the pentagon is a huge place. but was the women's peace and security agenda recognized as the important? or did it have to be developed over time? responsibility do they have two women in their campaigns in afghanistan and iraq? michelle: i think at first, the reactions ranged from stupid vacation, like, what is this and what does it have to do with me and what are you asking me to

to kind of an eye-role of some critically -- politically correct thing. the interesting thing that i found it is if you take that high-level of everything from bafflement to then when you started -- you go down to people on the ground and you talk to the marines who first worked for female , the first time they started to be able to access the female population in afghanistan through the marines, and a lot of information and started having a much better picture of what was really going on in their area of responsibility, starting with being able to engage those women

bring them into the discussion of what needed to be done having a better sense of how their investment can have a greater impact. totallyt to get a different appreciation. most of the p all i had the privilege of working with, they were all thinking, what were, what you are hearing from people on the ground, engaging women, and actually works. and so as that started filtering moree started getting a engaged engine interest at the policy level.

this did not trickle down, it had to trickle up. michele: it was being driven at the policy level. but it was sort of a reluctant compliance as opposed to embracing it. once you saw that, i think you got a different level of reaction. , there is so much turnover in the military that one learning curve, you can get to the point where you can start over with the next unit that comes in and has to relearn and if that transference of knowledge is happening, it has to happen in training.

it needs to be a part of how new unit is our trained because otherwise it is like you roll the ball up the hill and the next deployment, it rolls over you and you are down at the bottom having to go up hill again. that is something a future of secretary of defense might be interested in. it is actually kind of mainstream with some of this training so you do not lose the memory of what people gain. i have been through this with other issues before. back in the 90's, coming out of somalia, coming out of the experience, there was a time when most military training stop at fighting. you plan, you deploy, you take down the regime or exercise. i was like, wait a minute.

then what? where is the reconstruction? the truth was, it was not in the lanning or the exercise. people look to you like, it is not really me. you have got to get it and headed. in the doctrinal training and exercises to really have it become real and sustained the ent integrated into the understanding of how we are affected in the military. >> i have heard you talk about how commanders are some kind of early warning indicator of what is going on in a community will stop can you talk about this idea of that commander has the idea of what goes on with the

women. think, certainly areas where the oppression of , i'm thinkingter of a place like afghanistan that tended to be the most difficult environment to create security. i also think women were an intelligence,t of whether it was helping to figure out to figure out who the bad guys really were or where the ied fields were or who was corrupt. who was trustworthy and legitimate as a lawyer versus doing other things.

you got a totally different, more nuanced picture of the society you were walking into and i think those commanders that figured out how to leverage that did a lot better. >> i would like to pick up on your idea of sustainability for aboutte stop you spoke how crucial they were in a instances. to avoid this tragedy. one of the things that women know is where their children should not play. because they will be blown up by an ied or something. i could not help but notice the notle engagement teams have

gone away. there was no constant to civilization -- constitutionalism nation. , thatmed like a runoff all of that experience scattered , is this something department of defense should be concerned about? >> you definitely have to be concerned about what we learned over the course of long operations. bestvelop a lot of practices but they are not necessarily institutionalized or cap turn. there is always the risk the next time you forget what you learned. if this would work as a career path per se.

but it is relevant to the discussion we are having now about what military up ration specialty should be open to women. panetta,ow, secretary when secretary of defense, he said these services have until january 2016 to comply with a policy that opens all military specialties two women or ask for a waiver. there was a story in the wall street journal this morning about the marines, having done various research and saying, signaling they may ask for a number of waivers. integrateda fully ground force you would not necessarily need to ground teams.

the women are there, they are art of the unit. not a separate entity. so i think some of whether we need to in still to civilize engagement teams depends on whether they need to have this operations forces. i think it is fascinating while we just had a different attitudes that are prevailing there is a general component. fewer issues of people who are younger and on the field and in the ground in my appear -- experience. we have had a few women who have actually made it through ranger school. was not sure if they would be able to be in any combat area. meanwhile, one of the most elite

and difficult and challenging, point blank said, if women can screening and training course, we would welcome women. anybody who can get that course -- through that course, male and e-mail, are welcome. so it is interesting to see how it is playing out. i think it will affect not only the issue within the u.s. military, but also how we perform where we are interacting >> women ares. already integrated into the team. i wonder how this differential will play out. at some time, we will probably

michele: thestop marines will look a little bit silly for wavering. new york timesou version of that article and their tactic was that it was some sort of operational criteria. about the mixture of men and women. people have tohe be able to perform the tasks. different types of units have different tasks. i don't think it necessarily correlates to the actual performance of tasks and units. assume you could get the standards right, that is great. but the whole unit cohesion

issue is overblown. challenging,ost the teams that face the greatest challenge it are called special operation eight teams. these are those who go where no one else goes. the most isolated, the most hostile. operating on their own in teams of 12-15. many of them have women , forrated as logisticians the purpose of in gauging the population -- female population. to a team, every single team i talked to and interviewed felt the women are medically improved mission performance and there were was no problem living in these conditions with women.

it was a non-issue. policyeeling was this debate was completely divorced from their experience. now, maybe you can in some cases where there have been issues. but i think it is a question of leadership, climate, culture, and accountability and i think it is something that if women can meet the standards, the door can make open and we the question of cohesion a non-issue in my view. it may dissolve to climate and culture. michele: they are making an argument. we have to look very carefully at the details of the standards

and the test that have been performed and so forth. example, the fire department, when women were encouraged to join, that artificially stringent physical requirement. you were right. a successfulually court challenge. >> the thing that is not typically adequately weighed is trying to understand best practices on management and leadership. all of the business literature is clear on the issue that if you have a more diverse team, the performance of the company is better and the leadership makes better decisions.

the diversity of the team is one attempts to increase performance and quality of leadership. that has to be weighed. that is a key part of the equation. >> we would be remiss if we did not talk about the issue of sexual assault. that we haveime our first two female rangers graduating we also have stunning figures on sexual assault in the military. who can be to that? michele: it is a her redness and unacceptable problem and i think that we have to have a zero tolerance policy.

the big debate is whether to try and handle this through the chain of command but supplement that with advocates for the victims. better accountability. or, take this out of the chain of command and create a separate system of justice to try to get at this. when i was first wrestling with this issue i did not know where i stood on that debate. i asked to have dinner with senior lawyers in the military and the first female military judges to get there perspectives. they were from different generations and services. that theyeresting in were unanimous in their view. objectid, if the overall of is the full, equal

integration of women in the united states military, taking this out of the normal system goal.ly sets back that because now, women are special cases. i roll. eye-roll. the tools are there to make this work. need to augmented with better representation and to advocates and a range of other things. be what we need to do is prosecuting people seriously. dishonorably discharging the offenders, making examples of them. making examples of the commanders who look the other you look theg, other way and your career is over. that will end career, not

advance your career. they said the system can work with the right leadership, right accountability, and right implementation. i think that what is being tried right now, i don't think enough is being done but i think that that is probably the path we need to try first. >> is it important to understand the statistics are such that -- michele: there are more men sexually assaulted than women in the army every year. men and is an issue for women in the force. aren, i think the services

approaching it somewhat differently and some cases the zero tolerance policy is being made will and in others, there is more work to be done. about the you see role of women in this? we talked about women needing to be at the table. but they also need to be at the would you assess what we are doing there? michele: i think we have made progress but we have a long wait to go. being better teams when they are more diverse, i think that is true with holocene making and national security as well. my first tour of the pentagon in the 90's, it was a lonely thing

leader at that time. i said, let's have a lunch for all of the senior women leaders. we sat at one table, there was either one or 10. that there wasrs a conspiracy, the women getting together. what was going on? now, when i was in the pentagon in 2012, if you invited all the women leaders in the junta gone, you would overflow the tiny room. i said, that is good. but, at the very highest level it is still often, the only women in the room for many meetings. it is improving, but still, women are definitely the minority.

since the 1990's, better now. >> would you entertain a few questions? we have two microphones here, one in each aisle. if you would please come down and state your name and where you are from and to you are affiliated with. takeve about 15 minutes to your questions. please don't be shy. twos -- two women standing there work for me. [laughter] >> my name is jane. i am with texas state women's university. could you elaborate about the luncheon you had?

the system of insider versus go out side? judges viewpoint was the system can take care of this, but it is not a properly used. their first point was this was about leadership and command. understand their future in the service depends upon how they handle these issues on their watch. saying, they did a good job in afghanistan so i will look the other way. that is not ok. part of their future and performance is how they handle these things that happened in their unit.

moving them to the side, pretending they're not happening, that is a career-ending proposition for them. making me thing is justice system work and holding people accountable. stop view is, we should plea-bargaining. charges. stop lowering andhe evidence is clear there is a conviction, we should be drumming these offenders out of the service with dishonorable discharges as publicly as we can. we should make examples of them. one of the things that appears to be true although the data is iffy, as back in the time of a rock, when we had the surge, and the army had to add global force very quickly and they were keeping people in place, not

service,hem leaves the extending tours for 12-16 months, part of what happened during that time is the army and granted an impressive number of waivers for people who had criminal convictions. domestic violence convictions. some of the real offenders that have been found in the sexual whoult domain are people have those. they need to be found and driven out of the force. >> thank you. morning. my name is julie thompson. i am a graduate student of international affairs at the bush school. i am glad you talked about how the number of the women in the

pentagon has grown since the 1990's. i just wanted to ask you about how that is continuing to grow and i feel that as somebody who wants to be in national security, we still feel we are minorities in our classes, in our internships there is still not enough of us. wanted to ask, what advice you have for women who are starting out their career in security at who want to be in your position, what advice you have for us? >> don't shy away from these security issues. it gets better with every at illustration. we are seeing women coming out of security-related graduate programs. the pipeline is there.

the jobs are opening up more and more at the top. there, the you get opportunities will be there. is,second thing i would say actual harassment, when you encounter bias, one of my first meetings at the pentagon back in the 1990's, i was 29-years-old, a civilian female, democratic one-star, and a general said, what is a nice girl like you doing here? said, well, what is a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? let it be the other person's problem. what passed it and say, in a week you will have no question about why am here because i will not your socks off with how i am working.

so, as the provost said, i am an incredible woman. incredible because she managed to put a sentence together. wow. to let it be the other persons problem. mentors thating can see you for white you are and who will appreciate the work you do and promote you. >> hi, i am a professor of political science at a a dam. -- a professor of political science at a&m. you just mentioned in your ice

at junior college, don't shy away from the hard issues. make sense. i am curious about the question of should that the eight career path? let me ask the question of oath of you. find women in the legislature in other countries and oftentimes, if we pursue a poor -- a position, it is not good for the career. , do you think this might be a dangerous career path for a woman taking a career in the military? thinking is, at this i am, it becomes as if, the mail infantry officer, i don't have to worry about this.

i am the senior general, i do not have to worry or think about this for the so i worry about it being used as a way of, we have these special women who deal with the special issues as opposed to really mainlining and mainstreaming and integrating this into how we think about approaching these operations w rit large. i think this will depend on how broader integration is. in my perfect world, you have women in the broad range of ground units who essentially can that astrained to have part of their traditional duties but it would be integrated and you would not have to re-created where othersthing

could marginalize the issue. >> good morning. i am a first year student. is, what about race? what conversations are happening about intersection of race and gender? there are very few people of color here, very few people of color in the military. what conversations are happening about race in the military, defense, and is very -- and security? at the: when you look large, theit military has integrated much better than the rest.

program,at the phd that pipeline is not there. as a demonstration projects, we're partnering with thurgood marshall's college fund. to create a type line of interns -- a pipeline of interns to be trained and launch into the federal government. we are a tiny little ink tank but we are going to prove the concept this works. you can train them, you can make them successful. then we are going to go to every other think tank in washington to create more of a pipeline. when i was under and trying to hire, the type line was appalling. >> that is great. they queue. >> we have time for one more

question. >> high. i am a retiree at the department of political science here at texas a&m. i read about the two women in the special torsos in the army and it was breath taking what they accomplished and went through. for men and for women. i could not help but think in reading about this, is this really necessary? you mentioned a little bit about maybe some analysis was being done on exactly what is necessary to do these jobs. in policene it departments, fire departments, and we found that there was a lot of stuff that was not necessary. is there any work done, is there an analysis being done?

that work willk of a largethe extent number of waivers are ultimate lee requested. that will derive a much more rigorous approach. fortruth is, the standards marine corps platoon are not going to be different from a ranger battalion. rangers are in elite. rangern wash out of training. most men wash out of navy seal training. there are being asked to do more things than most people in the military do. you have to go specialty by specialty and really define what are the standards to do the job well and that will take some time. willcope of the effort

depend upon how many waivers are requested. but i am confident that kind of work will be demanded. it has been being done in a haphazard way. much of it in internal he. i don't think that will be accepted. i think there will be a much of waypartial and object to look at this issue if the waivers are pursued on a larger scale. >> we're about to take a 10-minute rate. before we do, join me in thanking michele flournoy. >> more now from texas a&m university's bush school of government conference on women in foreign policy. this panel is an hour into 10 minutes.

-- is an hour and 10 minutes. >> thank you everyone. i am so honored to be here. [applause] >>. that, one to say although all of us here are so disappointed that gloria steinem could not join us in person, we are thrilled to learn she is

with us now, not just in spirit, but watching all proceedings via lifestream. so, howdy gloria! [applause] like valerie, i think we really want to dive into the discussion of the biographies of these amazing experts, the vests, change leaders here today. if i were to list their accomplishments it would take the whole time for our panel. so i will just mention reflate. i encourage you to look up their bios, their amazing accomplishments. first we have with us today robin morgan. robin is an award-winning novelist, poet, activist, journalist, editor. she is the author of 22 books. for me, the thing that really

grabbed me looking at the body of for work worthy titles of her classic anthologies. "owerfulm" is ," andhood is globalm sisterhood is forever. thenext speaker, i love range of topics she has covered in her teaching and her experience and act 70's. few,ntion a democratization, politics of recovery. women's participation in public decision-making. public accountability systems. in terms of policy-making,

preventing sexual violence in conflict. affective peace-building. some of the names, a conviction must be moreople effectively engaged in the struggle for gender inequality. another theme, the value of norm development and addressing the and in this agenda. the capacity of technology to enable a deepening of the women's rights process. i picked a phrase out of one of her writings that i think is fabulous. women's human rights have no country will stop we are especially pleased to have with us on this panel patricia. for one is standing in of our colleagues, lauren wolf, who was hit with strep throat. i understand lauren is also with us via the live stream. so, howdy lauren. wish you could be here.

patricia as to have well. why? all, because she is the co-author of this wonderful book which i hope you will get and read. it is pretty interesting and it ofa very unique compendium past accomplishments, future challenges, and present endeavors. want to lead off with our three panelists. with some of the questions that to valerie posed when she brought us together. at wanted our panel to look the question, when we are considering a state foreign policy that would really take it seriously the cause of women and girls, what should that policy look like? what would look different?

what would our priorities be? who would our allies he or not be? what would our red lines look like. we, following michele flournoy's presentation, how do we do that lansing act of -- balancing act of the separate entities to get us from point a to point b versus the ultimate goal of integrating women's issues in all sectors of our dimity and the mantra for mainstreaming. how do we close the gaps? how do we close the gap between rhetoric and action. without further a do, we will start our panels. robin, will you lead off russian mark -- robin, will you lead off? howdy! audience: howdy!

>> it worked. when we get to the questions, ie most interesting part, will be glad to help. i want to thank the instigators of this. not only for this book but for the research they did. sex and world peace is a ground-breaking book. that was the one preceding the hillary doctrine. their scholarship made an honest movement of the women's movement. a have been we were always right. thank you very much. >> these are experienced people. i coming from that perspective, and one of my aims is to get us

away from fashionable ways of dealing with "gender" and remind us there is a real world of suffering out there and it has to do with women, because the w gets lost a lot these days. it is fashionable to have a gender lens, that we have to develop a gender lens of factoring things. i propose that we have a gender lens and we need to strip that off. we do not just part of the world that happens to have penises. this year is what is at stake and the enormity of what we are talking about here, a very few stats do add on to what valerie went through this morning. 90% of the refugee population in the world are women and children and the displaced populations. 2/3 of all illiterates are illiterate women, and while the

rate is falling, the female illiteracy rate is rising. pollution and toxic waste take their first tolls as cancers of the female reproduction system and stillborn births, across the pacific, when french atomic testing was happening there. there considered less educable, and their opportunities have to do with factory work at less than $1 u.s. a day, or working in prostitution. the standard model of radiation tolerance in the scientific community is that of a male, 150 to 160 pounds, in his late 30's and 40's. this leaves out most women and

most men in asia. all issues are women's issues. let's never again use the phrase "women's issues." women suffer first and worst from every world problem, and we are the last and least considered. we are here to talk about women and foreign policy, which translates into women and power. we do not often like to put those words together as if, power, a male why some women have fled from power because the guys have not used it, arguably, well. we are talking about power to an odd power over. i will suggest five specific and

general things that i hope will be taken up as themes by other panelists later today, just to put them out there. some are specific, some are more general. they are not in order of precedence. the overlap and they intersect. i hope they might be useful. first, listen to women. last night at the dinner, wonderful journalist mentioned, touched on this, but every organizer knows that is step one. we are here at this conference because as early as the early 1970's, the women's movement was dealing with the question of

what about women and foreign policy? "ms." magazine did a special issue and convened a roundtable that was chaired by the late bella abzug. this is all a trickle up. we have been pounding our fists on the doors of power, this wave alone, for 50 years and not listened to. we are here thanks to the bush school for politics, and yet we pounded our fists on that administration, both bush administrations, and other administrations for decades about afghanistan and gender apartheid, no one was interested in doing anything until after 9/11, and that is when women went to afghanistan. listen to the women. foreign aid is a strong part of foreign policy. when there was a major famine in sahel, the state department went in and replaced dead cattle with

a head of cattle for each powerful, but they interpreted it as head of families. traditionally, cattle care was the women's job. women knew how to do it, and they were so offended that the cattle were given formally to the men, who did not know how to care for them. the women views to do it at all, and all the cattle died. number one, listen to the women. number two, connect the dots. i have been in screaming matches with senators over whether population and overpopulation was relevant to women's reproductive rights. honest to god. and yet we know in any area where women are educated and given real reproductive choice

organically and naturally population rates fall. connect the dots. in the united states, the single most effective boost the economy would be equal pay for women -- connect the dots. hillary rodham clinton, when she was secretary of state, arranged for hundreds of thousands, it may have been in the millions of smokeless stoves to go to women in the south because there are such higher rates of emphysema, lung cancer, tuberculosis, etc. this is a health issue for women and families. it is also an environmental issue, because smokeless -- this is a health issue for women smoke stoves produce black carbon. black carbon is a major pollutant. unlike other pollutants, when it gets in the atmosphere, it lasts for a short time unless you are producing more of it. so that less black carbon that is in the atmosphere, the more

that actually disappears. connect the dots. make the connections. hammer them over and over and over because the guys tend to forget. three, economic aspects. women do not basically around the world exist in capitalism or any other system other than feudalism, because women's unpaid labor is a global shocking shame. if a woman is in labor, and let say she is in labor in the best circumstances, she is in a hospital, a midwife, a doctor, an obstetrician, nurses, anesthesiologist, all there, each of those people, their work is considered productive because they exist in the formal wage market. the woman in labor is not considered productive. she is not producing anything, you understand. since we are based on a market economy, most women do not exist in that sense. we're not considered to have found.

-- have value. i would recommend a book, because among other things she exposes where this system came to be. it is based on the united nations system of national accounts. the unsna was created by john maynard keynes and richard stone, both of them -- one american, one british -- who called the paper "the national income and how to pay for the wars." that is the system on which the united nations systems of national accounts is based. the first thing you can do and everybody can do this is to pressure your government, in this case cannot united states, but every national government to factor women and women's work and all that unpaid labor -- gardening, housework, child raising -- we produce the labor force -- factor that into the census forms because the gdp shifts 40% to 60%. where are we up to?

clear up to four. never underestimate the value of individual audacity in moving systemic change, because these are systemic problems we are facing. but individual acts of audacity are not only fun and outrageous, but they make differences. my beloved friend just until about a year ago, the high commissioner for human rights, that when she was the judge president of the rwanda tribunal, entered into the annals, the concept that rape in war is a crime against humanity. we might ask if it is in peacetime, but we take this one step at a time.

that was a huge act of audacity, and it exists in judicial annals. the kind of academic audacity that valerie and patrice showed in producing the kinds of studies they do, or that dr. naomi has done on unmasking who the climate change deniers really are. power -- audacity in office or in policy circles, like that of -- and ingenuity and audacity, gender court being a perfect example, founded by a swede, that is currently deployed in both afghanistan and in congo to protect women. it is taking the concept of responsibility to protect, which i hope we get back to at some point, which has been batting around for 10 years in united

nations circles, it is a force employed to protect women in crisis situations. it is run by women. the force is male and female combined. and my fifth, we have to sever the connection between violence and eroticism and the combination being defined as what is manhood. i spent an entire book on this, and that is the hardest thing in front of us at all. recently, i do not -- basically, i do not think we can ask is it possible to make these changes. the point is it is not only necessary, it is imperative. this is the missing link. women are the politics of the 21st century, and not only for the fairness in terms of women, for the salvation of the kind. i came just about a minute over. ms. ponticelli: thank you. thank you so much. thank you for those powerful comments. we now turn to you. anne-marie: thank you very much. congratulations to patricia and valerie, and for the leadership in this area.

and thank you to all of you for the interest and commitment you have shown to this issue. i am going to speak about the imperative of the u.s. in taking a very strong unambiguous role. i will answer your questions about what are some priorities for foreign policy. i will start at the end with my list of elements of a feminist foreign policy, and i will come back to the list. my this starts with yours, your first point. listen to women. the u.s. has got to exercise and politics of recognition, respect, and solitary come up with women around the world, and that requires breaking the silence and invisibility. it is an act that is symbolic, but has endorsed impact in terms of taking concrete efforts to out women from silent and

invisibility. the second is the politics of redistribution. it is inescapable. redistribution of foreign aid and military resources. you have to pay for it if we want to have women's rights internationally. the third is domestic activism. fostering and supporting and building women's leadership domestically and abroad, building women's power. in the process, the u.s. has got to do more to build a global alliance for women's rights to counter increasingly coordinated forces. there have been vacuums of governance in parts of the world.

the u.s. has to stand up for women's rights at every opportunity. a politics of accountability and consequences for neglect of a women's rights agenda, which will require questioning some of the u.s.'s alliances. let me make it clear that the u.s. is already a global leader on women's rights. i worked at the u.n. for a decade as an advocate, and i knew where i had to go when i needed a friend, and i always did. the u.s. mission was home, and this was important to note the u.s. was a leader on women's issues. it could be more consistent and it could act sometimes with a lot more conviction. the issue of where is the conviction and top leadership is something that has to be addressed. geopolitical factors show opportunities for the acceptance or rejection of demands of women's rights internationally.

the interests of state and the relations between them and the relations with powerful nonstate actors ranging from armed groups to private corporations shape women's rights everywhere and shape opportunities that advance the status of women. the way the united states navigates past the current global sees on women's rights will have massive repercussions or feminism around the world in years to come. i can give a brief post world war history sketch, the story of women's rights internationally, we have the formation of the united nations after the war, and the u.s. response to the cold war with the soviet union and the east was to limit the u.n.'s power over domestic power and to limit the expansion of women's rights is a distinct area of the u.n. system.

this changed in the 1970's. the major ways of postcolonial colonization, which meant -- many of whom turned out to be interesting in women's rights having women's participation in national liberation movements. the u.s. emerged from the early 1970's as the out-front leader on women's right in united nations and the multilateral field. it sponsored international women's year. it sponsored an international women's conference and sponsored the drafting of the convention of termination of discrimination against women. that was a republican administration that did that. it also under the next administration sponsored the houston conference, the famous conference that provided a massive -- did the massive

feminist movement in the u.s. there was a stagnation of all of this in the 1980's and a backtracking of multilateralism, and then in the 1990's there was a third wave of democratization, tremendous expansion of international ngo's and a major international conferences that set up huge achievements on women's rights and agreements on women's rights -- vienna, cairo, beijing. and of course the post-9/11 period since, particularly, 2008, there has been a rerefrigeration of relations between east and west and a lot more rigidity. there is what has been called the democratic stalling. there has been the occupation of governments in somali, other countries, by islamic extremists, economic crises, and the u.s. loss of credibility on a leader of human rights because of the fallout of invasions of iraq and afghanistan.

so i do not want to depress you, but we need to take stock of the current situation, and it is so bring assumptions about it continuous upwards of progress and democratization around the world have been unseated by a range of developments, and erosion of democracy even in the west with the rise of oligarchic types of patterns of decisions, the importance of democracy, and even here, where money trumps merit in competition for power, and even an individual called trump is presenting that kind of oligarchic decision-making. the defeat of revolutionary ideology in the 20th century has also paved the way for new types of anti-globalization and anti-materialism, has shifted from goals like democracy, economic development, and secularism, and it was an

alternatives to capitalism, to violent, masculine expressions of violence, religious fundamentalism, all of which is articulated as anti-u.s. positions. regrettably, when u.s. for women's rights, that becomes the reason to oppose it by many of these anti-imperialist groups. these shifts in political and

social attitudes are compounded the deepening of inequalities within and between states him and his inequalities are sharpening, not eroding gender differences. i believe that is what you were alluding to. so just to sort of -- i am sure and running out of time -- what we see is the emergence of an explicit antifeminist double coalition, and it has a name, and this has a process. it is called the group of the friends of the families. sounds sweet. but this group was announced in january of this year by the ambassador of belarus, and let me tell you who the members are. belarus, egypt, indonesia, iran, kuwait, libya, nigeria, pakistan, russian federation, turkmenistan, yemen, and zimbabwe. that was the group in january. it has still expanded considerably. this is a serious alliance of current u.s. allies, some of the world's biggest democracies, with huge feminist movements,

like nigeria and malaysia and indonesia. plus former socialist states, creeping towards -- what do they have in common? they have in common a commitment to erode women's rights and also the rights of sexual minorities. and this group is operating as a bloc. before the commission, they are treated to a retreat in arizona at a spot where they get training in how to negotiate international negotiations on women's rights. the argument explicitly is, where's the coalition on women's rights? the reason there is not an explicit want is there is a reluctance to suggest this is a western issue, which it is not just a western issued at all. so i am out of town, so what do we need? coming back to the policy of recognition and redistribution. u.s. is a global leader on women's rights. as a nation, that's also a universal idea.

it has had a complex and ambivalent relationship with multilateralism. and it has to get past its reluctance to engage in multilateralism. it has got to be a leader on these universal pounds. and it can lead it out -- without resorting to military duration. this leads to commitments to women's rights as a re-examination of the u.s. alliances, triumphs, and it also means a clear legislative framework for this which means -- it has still got to be kept on the foreign relations committee relations committee agenda, also has international violence against women act. third, the politics of recognition requires going out there and looking for the women because we will not see them if

you are involved in the social project amend talking to men about what they think on the concerns men. you got to look for them. that means promoting affirmative action policies, saying we want to engage in peace talks. politics of solidarity requires building constituencies. it is women saying what women want. mechanisms for uniting includes things like building networks. the biggest nonevent this year was the holding of a fifth world conference on women's rights, which was due this year on the 20th anniversary of beijing. these conferences build solidarity's and networks. institutionalizing change in the state department and other parts of the u.s. administration has to require serious money and appointment of significant high-level staff to positions on women's rights. that includes negotiators at the security council that were sent by the p5 on resolutions on women's rights, and this would be their first assignment. we need the same kind of authority that iran is sending

to these negotiations, polished, experienced diplomats. avoid vacuums in women's collective action. i have no time. i will finish with the point that you added it to, the virginia woolf quote -- "as a woman, i have no country. as a woman, i want to know country. as a woman, a country is a whole world." this is the important women's rights, transnational and some the arena that we have been fighting for women's rights, but the time for a country. women need a country. we need many countries working in alliance for women's rights, and the u.s. should be a leader in its foreign policy on this.

ms. ponticelli: thank you. you have packed a lot into a great presentation. and now you will be followed by your colleague, our colleague patricia, who we are so grateful you can pick up the baton for lauren. patricia is a journalist, and like anne-marie, patricia has quite a great deal of experience with you and agencies in multilateralism. i hope you will get to sprinkle your own insights regarding that. patricia: that will have to wait for the questions and answers, because i have been tasked to read lauren's speech. lauren, if you are watching, i'm sorry, i will try to maintain your voice as much as possible,

so without much ado, i will go on. so lauren wolfe -- she is here in spirit. when does the violation of women's bodies become a redline? how many millions of lives must be ruined for what we consider that a redline? i'm not talking about the random acts of violence that systemize the use of rape and relation undertaken by armed forces or militant controlled by governments and our position in another on state actors? i'm talking about a policy of targeting women and girls to some of the most part behind abuses conceived. three years ago this week i became angry. i had been tracking sexual violence in the syrian war and received a policy response. cases piled up along with the bodies and the response was nil.

now suddenly president obama was responding, but not in cases of rape or torture, but to the possible use of chemical weapons. it was a so-called redline, the one thing that would propel his administration into action. ok, so chemical weapons are abhorrent, but so is the destruction of female bodies and minds. how many lives will be destroyed before the shirt of women's bodies and sanctity of our rights become the red line? during this angry days, spoke with the author of a book who advocates on behalf of women in the congo, a country that has had 16 years of warfare. as many of you know, the congo is one of the worst countries in the world in which to be born a woman.

like syria, all parties to the conflict target women and girls. so much so the researchers have coined the term vaginal destruction to describe the extreme nature of the abuse. for how many years he asked me have we been banging on the doors of the white house saying thousands and thousands of women have been raped? he was not advocating for a military intervention in places where women bear the brunt of the fallout of war. they are asking for a political intervention based on human rights violations, but still no one seems to be listening. why? world leaders like representatives in congress have turned a blind eye to the violence for some reason -- it does not disturb their preconceived notions about where violence is normal. if people understand destitute normal and not normal acceptable and not acceptable and makes a terrible kind of sense. violence is women has been normalized, especially in afghanistan. the example of the refugee crisis can be explained by the response to one particularly damning question. do the people matter to the people in power, and the answer we are seeing is no. from here i want to imagine a world in which all people matter, including women and girls.

what would that look like? here i will paraphrase what she described in the next few paragraphs of her speech, which will be uploaded online and which you can access later on. because lauren is a journalist, she was privileged to meet women were most affected by this foreign policy attention, as i had in afghanistan and yemen and central america. in her full speech, she describes to women, syrian refugees whose life are defined by being born female and poor. one is pretty, so she was married against her will to someone who will abuse her. the other is too impoverished to afford the tools of her trade. both face helplessness. lauren says i find it fascinating that while the media talks about the bored young men, silent to things like one of these women's mental health.

putting aside for now that girls like her sister are being sold off into a marriage, let's think what happens to others. this often does not make sense for what occurs to the lost generation of women and stop thinking about the old men. apart from fears of radicalization, the reason that educating young women makes economic sense, as we have seen with previous speakers. the woman and girls i have met living the reality of war tell me conflict is not what the media makes it out to be. it is not bombs or not just bombs. war is what happens to the people caught in the war zone. those people are mainly civilians, often refugees who make up nearly 90% of conflict-related casualties create the safest place to be in a modern conflict is the guy with the gun.

war is trauma, at it is lack of mental health care that accompanies it. war is rape, and the silence and the suffering that surrounds the victims, but neither the act or the perpetrator. war is the acknowledgment that soldiers are worthy of reparations when they are injured, but civilians who have been sexually violated or born of rape, such as an entire generation of kids in rwanda, are not. it took 20 years to bring reparations to any victims of wartime rape in bosnia, and is worth noting that the men who had been ordered to pay insist they cannot afford the piddling $15,000. because i work in the media, i asked myself if what happens to women and children are soft stories or traditionally left off the front page. is it because the media run by men reflects a prioritized male

experience? it is because they are not negotiated -- is it because they are not at the negotiating table and it comes to creating peace in this country, or is it just a symptom? years after the signing of the u.n. resolution on women's peace and security, these agreements are almost exclusively negotiated by men and for men. an ngo leader said when we talk about women at the table, the men see the women as -- she also said the future of syria should not be decided by those carrying guns. once we conceived of what we think of as -- the one that includes civilians as the predominant feature of fighting in the 20th century, maybe we would think about and address the plight of refugees differently. we would think of what it does do girls like these two how to stop a sharp uptick in domestic violence, where men become frustrated and take it out on their wives, the one person more

powerless than they are. could we prevent this knowing full well that is a difficult feature of life of displacement and statelessness? the bottom line is this is not just about women when we discuss them in this context of foreign policy and national security. sexual trauma and violence stores families with repercussions that cut through all generations. it cuts through communities and sows the seeds of future violence, and it is attempting to rehabilitate perpetrators. or better yet, a system in society to understand that are based violence for what it is before it occurs. and that is this -- a gender-based violence is the most basic and entrenched of

human rights violations. which brings us to the proverbial elephant in the war zone. what happens to former soldiers in places like congo where researchers revealed men who are not properly reintegrated into civilian life after demobilization will continue to rape. these researchers discovered something very strange, that when the fighting ends, the incidence of rate increased as much as 70 times. so why does our coverage of war and when the bullets stop flying and the bombs stop falling? these kind of realities exist all over the world. we are about only a slice of what makes up the experiences of conflict. from my journalist perspective, i cannot help to point out that media attention -- diplomatic and military response. so when the media gets -- rather than rape, than a weapon of war, that will be a redline, but the other is not. i have met too many women have never seen or ever considered justice in their lives for the crimes they have suffered.

next to nobody prosecuting these crimes, having money or systems, the fact is just as this unattainable for many women in particular. it is not defined by the larger issues of conflict. there are tribunals in which women are prevented from coming forward, and local levels there are problems of police. they bribe or rerape women. this cycle of violence depends on how we prioritize it. if we need attention to all facets of the conflict as a select few are doing, if we can gain the attention of policymakers, and the world coming more peaceful ways in which women's and men's lives are equally valued?

i'm glad there are so many you view out there pushing the boulder up the hill. thank you. lauren wolfe. ms. ponticelli: great job. briefly, because we have little bit of time left, maybe 10 minutes, 10, 15, with interaction among the three of you, because there's so little time, there are so many questions that pop into my head. but i think the biggest one is the one that valerie mentioned this morning, the very simple yet weighty question, how do we do this? that is a question i want to throw out to you all.

we are working on headlines now. i think it is wrong to say that the world is not watching, listening, or seeking what is going on. it is what we do and how do we do it. how do we create a critical mass of alliances that we need for the critical questions that we are seeing?

how do we find those resources and distribute those resources that anne-marie talked about? maybe a rapid response that would help those who are on the redline right now. and how to better connect the dots in terms of our bureaucracy, our alliances, in terms of our multilateral association, though there are several questions that go under that one, but i want to throw out to you -- how do we do it? ms. morgan: one way that helps internationally and at home is to understand that there is a global women's movement. and i'm delighted and proud of the united states' part in it. but feminism is not a u.s. issue. it was not invented here. leadership more and more has come from the global south who know what they are doing. it is our job in the global north to listen and work with that. you are mentioning the pattern of ethnic bigotry in the world at large, religious fundamentalism, violent rhetoric and violent acts. what happens when we look at home, or we find more and more ethnic bigotry, religious fundamentalism, i call it the domestic u.s. taliban, the bombers of abortion clinics, the violent rhetoric and even acts, and we don't even have a sane domestic policy on guns. probably the most progressive people in texas are in this room, which makes me nervous.

they could drop a net over all of you. it is true, we have to look to our own house and not position ourselves as the beacon of the world, even in those rare occasions where we are and i'm proud of those, and approach the international community with the kind of humility that has been discussed before in rhetoric but never really practiced with what i would call feminist diplomacy. women around the world are in the same boat. that does not mean women in the u.s. who suffer by us, particularly european american women, are in the same boat with a woman in afghanistan or in iraq. it does mean that the settings and the costumes and dialogue may differ in extreme, but the plot is exactly the same. when we realize we're in the same boat, that female genital mutilation was practiced in the united states up until the 1940's as a cure for lesbianism and masturbation, we are not

some savages in some other place. it's a matter of approaching the global women's community, and beyond that, with humility and respect, and listening to women ourselves and starting at home. that is one way. [applause] >> i've spent quite a bit of time in the field in afghanistan and yemen, and i also do reputation management as well. one of my observations over the years is that if you want to have credibility, you have to have credibility. you have to be seen to have credibility.

a key component of credibility is humility and the ability to listen. one of the issues that used to confront me when i worked in yemen and afghanistan is my staff would come up to me and say, we thought you were better than we were. but here you are, firing people without cause. you are harassing your female staff, your female contractors are being fired without cause because they are pushing gender too much, it's making their male colleagues uncomfortable, so where is your credibility? how can you tell us about what democracy is, what human rights are when we see you abusing the human rights of your own staff? and i think that's really important great if you want to be a leader, you have to be better than everyone else. the many -- the u.s. from many decades was that way. but to maintain that leadership you have to maintain rigid lengths and constantly be keeping your own house in order and creating the kind of

sanctions, benchmarks, indicators, hard targets that are necessary to establish a cap -- accountability. >> in terms of the house, what do we do? >> probably the most important effective thing that can be done is something that may not sound like foreign policy, but it is giving space and voice to women's movements and enabling women to thrive. the u.s. has an important role to play in protesting the abuse of women human rights defenders who are coming under enormous attack in places like afghanistan. in terms of funding and things like that, there is an unfortunate problem which comes from the u.s. was of credibility on human rights in general, which is this problem of feminism being seen as a western concern, which it is not.

when the u.s. supports women's movements around the world, that can lead to their loss of credibility. the question is what kind of funding processes would help to foster an enriching of women's collective action around the world? if we think back to what valerie said earlier, in countries where there is high gender a quality low violence against women, there is less a resort to conflict or none. they are more stable. what leads to countries having high gender equality and low violence against women? one thing, strong, vocal women's movements engaged in public decision-making. this is a key part of social transformation. there is a very interesting funding experiments being run by the dutch government, which is to support women's collective action and north africa and the middle east by funding women's

organizations but not by funding women's organizations projects. the entire funding world works on projects that people have to be accountable for outcomes. rather, funding women's organizations development is organizations, paying for a financial officer, the purchase of computers, development of an internal system enabling them to be organizations and developed constituencies. after they are funded to do this, pricewaterhousecoopers steps in to do an audit. that's an interesting approach. domestic feminism is strong in many countries that should be part of a global alliance on women's rights, like south africa, brazil, india, domestic feminism in india -- india probably has the biggest women's movement in the world in terms of numbers. it is strong, but it is not influencing foreign policy parade arguably that is the case at times in american history too. and there's the question of

supporting democratization in these countries in order to enable more of a feminist voice in foreign policy and make international decision-making more transparent. in terms of the concrete how, it is striking to people like me and many here that we know that sexual violence is going to happen in almost every conflict, domestic violence goes up exponentially in many conflicts, yet we don't anticipate this problem as part of humanitarian work and foreign aid and we don't set in place systems to deal with it. we know that refugees need food and shelter. we know they need asylum procedure set in place, and we set those up automatically. why don't we do these things on gender? we know if women have control over land they will increase agricultural production. starting to incorporate this

knowledge into the reflex of foreign aid and foreign affairs is crucial. that is my question to all of you, why doesn't that happen? you all know it. the state department knows it and usaid knows it. >> can we open it up to the floor? we have a few minutes for q&a. any questions? great. >> hi, my name is olivia, i'm a sophomore at texas a&m. what are your views on abortion? shouldn't women have a say in what can be done with their bodies? >> in terms of a foreign policy perspective -- >> as opposed to a domestic question about it. that it can be seen as a

foreign-policy issue as well. >> maybe if we could, because it might bridge other questions that might be out there, might you also be interested in in terms of a pillar of u.s. foreign-policy, women's health, including women's reproductive health, which we've had some discussion today. i think that might be better to lead us to where do we go from here. let's throw out the health issue, and i think valerie made the great correlation today between health and women's inclusion. whether the "a" word is a problem or not. unless and until women's right to control her own rip -- reproductive -- as a basic human right, her own reproductive system, is a pillar of our foreign policy and domestic policy as well, women cannot be full human beings. this has been a political football of our foreign policy, back-and-forth, depending on different administrations. this has got to stop.

it's simply a basic human right and that's all there should be to it and nothing more needs to be said. the vatican islamist coalition that seems to have forgotten the crusades because it's more important to stop women from controlling their own reproduction has to be swept aside and this has to stop being a political football at home so that it isn't one of broad. period. [applause] >> this is a trigger issue. maybe i should not use the word trigger when were talking about conflict and guns. it is the reason why u.s. foreign-policy on women's rights is not stronger.

in domestic policy, in u.s. domestic policy, there is such a profound risk on this issue. we could go on and on about this. i would say, talk to the women who are in conflict zones. what do they need? if you're in congo in a rape crisis center, a young, 14-year-old girl came in once pregnant with a hole in her side from a wound and a baby on the other side. she said, do i have to have this rapist baby? there is a line in resolution 2122 of the un security council which is extremely interesting. it says, anybody who has been made a victim of war has the right to medical treatment without discrimination. it is part of foundational humanitarian aid and law. everybody has a right, soldier or civilian, to medical

treatment without discrimination. if we take the term without discrimination, it means you can't discriminate between the medical needs of women and men. women have different medical needs than men do. and especially somebody coming in who has been raped, needs antiretrovirals right away and a chance to decide what to do about a pregnancy. >> i want to weigh in on another issue about the denial of contraceptive -- contraception and safe abortion is a violation of women's human rights. we have examples, for example in hunt deer us, and what a mile and el salvador, where it's guatemala and and it's illegalwhere

for a woman to have an abortion, even if she has a neck topic pregnancy -- in a situation where a woman has no chance of surviving, her child has no chance of surviving, she can still not obtain an abortion. so, what is that? state sanctioned murder? i would suggest it is. the issue of access to contraception, safe abortion in my opinion is critical to the development -- critical to peace and security, critical to human development. i've also worked in many nations as micro palace's have, where as met women who have had 10, 12 children, and they've gone insane because of the combination -- i met one woman who had 12 children and 9 of them had died. she was effectively a prison of her own -- prisoner of her own body. down the road there was another aid agency dispensing viagra for men. i won't say where this was, but that was considered a critical health need in that area. and yet women were not getting

contraceptive --contraception. >> i would like if i could, having covered some of these issues for some years, and particularly in the context of afghanistan, i think there's some issues there are very connected to women's health and the health of girls, and that are connected to practices that are allowed by tradition or excused to culture or the lack of legal implementation. i want to mention the problem that has broken my heart for 13 years when i worked with afghan women, and that is the issue of forced and child marriages. according to unicef, 60% of the young woman in afghanistan are under the age of 16 when they are married.

there are eight-year-old girls who are forcibly married to 40, 50, 60-year-old men. i think it should be part of the red line for all of us working together. it's an issue i feel strongly about, and if you look at early marriages of girls -- we've talked about women today, but there are girls here who i think are pretty voiceless. and the problem of obstetric fistula that occurs when a very younger albert as a child. -- young girl bears a child. it's a horrible problem, the clinics are full, this not enough help. the question is a good one but it's very complicated, and there's a lot of different challenges involved. do we have time for one more, valerie? >> i was going to ask a question. >> oh, good. >> alyssa, this is for you.

i've heard the panelists talk about democratize a should in. -- democratization. i'd like to challenge you. it seems to me on the basis of what we saw in the arab uprising that democracy has been bad for women, and that in fact, some of the best regimes for women have been long-standing autocrats who towards the end of their lives have finally realized that women are people and they should do something for them. the second question i'd like to ask, is even though a couple of you have mentioned how our alliance structures would change if we took the cause of women seriously, give me an example. who would you drop as an ally and what would the consequences be? >> thank you. >> who would you drop as allies? >> drop or draw? >> drop. >> probably are only allies would be the scandinavians. [laughter]

that's my first thought it my second is a realization would be the scandinavians and all the villages at village level around the world, where the women who are maybe nonliterate, who were supposedly non-powerful, supposedly just women, reside. they would understand, and that's a very powerful set of allies. i don't know yet since i'm just making that was scandinavians, how that gets organized. those would be the extremes. and probably not somebody in the middle. whether they had oil or not. [laughter] >> let me start with the point on alliances, which is a terribly difficult one. there is no question it is an enormously difficult question and requires trade-offs, but there's a lot of creative work that can be done there.

the u.s. has really interesting alliances. in the u.n., or potential allies that i do not feel are being cultivated enough on this issue. the big voices in women's rights debates this year and last year were small and not very powerful countries during uruguay, philippines, south korea, and middle size countries that are enormously interesting. chile, argentina, brazil. there's many more. most of the central american countries -- they are there's many more. complicated because of catholicism, but there are some very interesting allies. sometimes, turkey. beyond the scandinavians and the obvious europeans. a lot more can be done to work with those countries to develop an explicit shared commitment to

work together on these issues. when the u.s. comes forward with women's rights, it becomes a red flag and a trigger for the opposition. but the u.s. can work behind these countries in this debates. i'm out of time. complicated question. i'm being told that time is up. women would have done much better in the arab spring at the brotherhood been supporting democratic development there for much longer, and supporting women's capacity to mobilize politically so they did not collapse the minute elections came andy brotherhood moved in. brotherhooduslim moved in.

women need electoral machines too. >> historically, what we've seen with revolutions is they are typically followed by terror. whenever there's a power vacuum it's going to be filled by the most extreme elements, the bolshevik revolution was followed by terror, the french revolution. i could go on and on. in terms of foreign policy, the united states and its allies have to be wary of supporting revolutions because there are unintended consequences which can actually be far worse than the original tyranny that precedes it. i would say that in the world of sort of realpolitik feminism, it's probably wiser to support the secular devil that you know than the nonsecular extremist devil that you don't. at least in a secular society, there will be change, there is education, women will be

educated, people can in their cafés and talk for the most part. we've seen under saddam hussein women had tremendously -- enjoy tremendously more rights than they do now. similarly in egypt under mubarak. it behooves the united states and its allies to be very, very careful in the future and not to be too quick to support rebellions, particularly when they are islamic in nature or when -- the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. we have to choose our allies very carefully and figure out who will actually represent the process of democratization in the long run. >> thank you. if i can wrap up with maybe an observation, as a former diplomat, former person who had worked at the state department and on international women's

issues, i just to find that how we make the case is just as important as who do we make it to. if we look at potential new alliances, i think we have to do a better job making the case about why standing up for the cause of women and girls is not a soft thing. it's not just the right thing to do, it's a smart thing to do, here is the smart thing to do. in afghanistan, they have seen, here is the smart thing to do.

what works? what is going to make the whole thing more effective and what are the better results you're going to see. what is smart, because it is smart? the,ncluding remark would and i think often of this proverb. an african proverb. fast, gont to go to -- alone. if you want to go far, go to gather. so let us find ways we can go together, told common ground. frankly, when i look at the road ahead, i think we could not have any better traveling companions the end that the wonderful people we have with us on this panel and in and the audience today. thank you for your attention.

>> with the president's rule will be in the 2016 campaign. after that, a democratic consultant at a republican strategist examine the political year ahead. and what to expect from the presidential race. us, your phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. washington journal live on c-span. as 2015 reps up, c-span presents congress, a year in review. a look back at all of the debates and hearings that took center stage on capitol hill this year. join us thursday at 8:00 eastern as we visit mitch mcconnell taking his position as senate francis'leader, pope

address to congress. and the election of paul ryan. the debate over the nuclear deal with iran and the reaction to congress on mass shootings. gun control, terrorism and the rise of isis. congress, a year in review, here on c-span on thursday at 8:00. eastern. weekend, bookar's tv brings you three days of nonfiction books and authors. eastern, tom:00 hartmann on his life and career. his many books include the crash of 2016, rebooting the american dream and threshold. then as 10:00 eastern, an economist. his other books include race and economics and up from the projects.

karl rove, former white house deputy of staff, looks at -- campaign in his new book. why the election of 1896 still matters. he discusses the political environment in 1890 six, including gridlock and the expansion of the republican base. >> the republican party has them beaten in the election. grover cleveland has come into the office. mckinley has been the governor of ohio and has seen the country descend into a deep depression. and if the election is going to be theirs, he wants to be the nominee but he is not the front-runner. >> directly following after his -- following afterwards, at 11:00, join us as we go to a book signing party. yourwe will be live with

phone calls and messages on sunday afternoon. -- first in his class, a biography of bill clinton. and barack obama, the story. book tv this new year's weekend. three days of nonfiction books and authors on c-span two. television for serious readers. scientists and journalists examine the legitimacy about some of the questions about science.

i am tom blumenthal. of currently the director the institute for down syndrome at the medical school. previously -- let me briefly institute the subject. i want you to think of a world where nobody was deliberately seeking to undermine the public these facts just

because they stood to gain financially. or by raising doubts because they seemed at odds with their religious beliefs. a huge amount of americans don't believe facts. because whether or not we act based on truth or fiction matters a lot, this isn't the scientific issue. it is a political one. today's panelists will address the question of how to get people to believe facts, even when they don't want to. so let me introduce the panelists in the order they will speak. first is michelle faller. she is an astronomer and a science communicator. she has been a regular host of the science channel and the discovery channel. you could say that she is narrowly focused on the

universe. richard is a professor of sciences at penn state. thes a major figure in subject of climate change. he is determined to educate the public about what is happening and what will happening -- what will happen. to notht me that for men have affected the laws of global physics the laws of would have to be wrong. -- is a democratic socialist and a civil rights absolutist. predicted the tea party movement. he is sorry.

[laughter] has won the pulitzer prize and published several books, especially on the subject of race in america. so first, michelle. michelle: one of the gaps in my training in science is finding myself in this social situation as a communicator where i'm dealing with the odd cadence of people insisting that something is false is true and something that is true is false.

this is the first spacecraft that is using an ion drive and it has gone from one extra to another, a series of 600 miles across. there may be evidence of water underneath this asteroid. approaching, we took beautiful photos and there were odd bright areas inside some of the craters. they were bright and we were wondering if they are lighter rock or if we saw exposed ice. the images stopped coming and the reason for that is because we are using an ion drive. the thrust is small. it has the equivalent of blowing underhand. very low thrust engines. so we have to sneak up into orbit. for the last few weeks we have been on the night side of the asteroid, and we're all waiting for two weeks from now when we swing over to the dayside and

get better images. but this morning, i answered images about what i'm hiding. what was in the craters that i don't want to talk about. seem to getsn't people to emotionally respond to that. the month of my life back from the 2012 apocalypse. they were afraid the world was coming to an end. people say at that the world isn't coming to an end, get alle can i go to the interesting information? and they think to tell them is that there was nothing interesting happening on that date. this is what of the reasons that i stuffed it with the history channel. present a show that i was doing on asteroids or life on mars from a scientific perspective and then there was

ancient aliens on right after it. they would be presenting these things as equivalent. and this was enough to make me stop working with the history channel. is, someonething called me and said, is the world going to end next week russian mark and i said, think about this. do you think i would be here in my office answering the phone if i thought the world was ending? start getting worried when all of the scientists by up expensive wine and max out their credit cards and go to a tropical island because then you know. but the idea that i am not a person, that i don't have feelings and a -- and emotions and a family, that i would react

if i thought the world was coming to an end, what an odd disconnect. this is something that i have seen come over and over again. i was listening to the keynote address and he was using the term, the weapons of mass destruction. that's when there are things that people say are bad for the economy or bad for the , people willulture try to distract you with something else. and this started to make me very uncomfortable. and i enjoy working with the discovery channel. i have talked to the producers about this. but i'm beginning to have an ethical problem doing a show about the risk the earth stands burst wheneroid or a

there is a greater risk presence right now. and we are not talking about that on the discovery channel. we are not talking about the huge amount of data that makes human driven climate change a fact. and this is the sort of thing that if you ask me for an in ther speech, if i'm elevator and have you for three minutes, about whether you should believe this is real, what are some of the things that i think are the most compelling arguments, well, just as 20 .atellites some of these have been giving data about land use and the land surface of the world. and my friends are flying research aircraft over the caps

of the world right now, and they are wonderful and incredible women scientists. managing from orbit -- one of the satellite fire most proud of is grace. you know of it? the thing about that is that there are two spacecraft that betweenthere is a beam them. accuracy. tiny flies overspacecraft earth, they respond to the mass underneath them. above athey are flying mounting, it changes the distance between the spacecrafts. and they do a reverse image every two days. the reason we measure mass is

because there are areas on the earth where mass is changing quickly. measurehe things we can aquifers. and we see them draining. this is something that all of to everyone inee the world. we want everyone to see this data. the other thing we are mentioning is the health of the ice caps. equilibriums in years ago. years, the last 15 ice cap on greenland, a lost 200d ice cap, has billion tons a year that is not being replaced. if anything, the trend is accelerating. stablerctica, they were until just a few years ago, and

now, the western antarctic ice sheet is moving and we have one that we believe is beyond saving. that water will go into the oceans and at this point there isn't any way to reverse that trend. i think that is something you can say. people often ask me, i'm i'll have to say this as a nasa scientist? the answer is absolutely, yes. what i'm not telling you about is policy. i cannot comment on what we should do. about whether we should do carbon trade or not use fossil fuels. that is not my right as a federal official. i take that seriously. i serve the united states government and you, no matter what your affiliation is and i will give you the best information nasa has about what is going on with climate change. but it is not my place to argue about the politics.

the attack on what a scientist is, are we not allowed to be human? am i not allowed to go on television and say, i am scared? that i'm going to tell you what to do, but i can tell you my response. it is becoming aware that as a that we have been studying the suns for years. and all of this data is not helping in the debate. we are trying to draw back into our skills as storytellers as emotional human beings. trying to tell this story. i will wrap up with one quick anecdote. if you ever wonder how much of an entertainment value that people are getting out of this entertainment debate, i appeared

on fox and friends and steve had done a huge peas a few days before about how nasa scientists were lying about the climate change records and about how there was a temperature .4 1934 and they have moved it. and this shows that they are lying about the long-term climate trend in the united states. a pants ons rated as fire lie by independent fact checker. we became more consistent about the time of day , andwe took temperature also we took into effect the altitude difference. i had all of the facts and i went onto the show at their invitation and before the cameras rolled, he was talking to me about this. about facts and climate change data. and i was being very friendly and nonconfrontational and

saying, your money pays my salary. i'm here to help and clarify the situation. and the cameras rolled and he gave me a softball question and then he got me off. he wouldn't even let me talk. they are not interested in telling you what the facts are. they are interested in information -- in entertainment. it is one of the things that we have to decouple. what have you heard about climate change and why are you skeptical about it? thank you. [applause] >> for those of you not familiar with the conference on world affairs, we will hold questions until it to be panelists has spoken. the next speaker is richard alley. >> thank you.

i'm trying very hard to not give her a standing ovation. i am a client's -- i am a climate scientist. they do fantastic things. in the previous panel we talked about water. that thereing out are places that we are getting our food by pumping our water out of the ground so fast that it is not being replaced and it is changing the orbit of satellites. people get that. scientists somate i am one of the people who get the occasional e-mail that says i am an evil liar. "i hate you, i'm going to watch you, i know where you are." i have also weighed in on evolution issues and the people who do not want to see evolution taught 10 to be much nicer to me

-- taught 10 to be much nicer to me. at 3:00 today,k i will tell you how we can solve some of this. but i'm going to tiptoe a little .it into --'s world but michelle gave me such a beautiful opening. some is some research on of the many wellsprings of this, i don't want to hear the facts. littleto show you a piece of that, not the whole thing. first of all, i would like you you have ever been in one of the great cities in the world, london, paris or new york. and tried to drive a car or have seen someone driving a car or at least when you have heard about people driving cars in one of the great cities of the world. i would like a show of hands how many of you have the impression

that a great cities in the world are uniquely and beautifully designed to be absolutely optimal for moving the modern mix of traffic. [laughter] >> there are a number of reasons for this. one of them is that because the great cities of a world are designed for an oxcart coming to market thousands of years ago. and they have built themselves around the street that were built for an oxcart. they have built overpasses and underpasses but they still are preserving the street from 1000 years ago. now, i want you to think of a baby. a one-year-old a 2-year-old and how fast they learn. and what they learn. and by the time they are 1-year-old or 2-year-old, they have a naive physics.

if i put this in midair, it will fall down. if i put it on something, it will stay something. -- it will stay there. it is not rotating around, it sits there. and you know, i am a baby and there are certain things that come out of me that require that might ever be changed. but a gaseous omission is not one of them. who is a reliable source and who takes care of me and whom i people are and so forth. and i get a view of the world that is -- that works. but a puppy grows up to be a dog. and if i throw something, it it hits where i threw it. and now i go to school and start learning science and the i am on thiss that

giant ball spinning through space. those trace gases that come out of my rear end and the other side -- and the other ones that come out of your tailpipe are going to affect the atmosphere. and if you watch the puppy go into a dog and you do that long enough and there is a reason to selection that affects survival, you will get something different. and none of that makes any sense. oxcart that is the was laid down in my brain when i was 1-year-old. andou go to a 7-year-old they have been told the world is round and people have actually done experiments. and they have a little bit of trouble with this. they will draw the world round with you living inside or a flat

spot where you live. and they may be 9-year-old or so before you get that. but eventually all of us with a exceptions, of almost all of us get that. because all of the trusted authority figures in our world have told us that. and we have trusted authority figures. we have built a hierarchy of who we are going to believe. and when all of our authority figures say the world is round, we get it. but with some of our trusted authority figures say, nasa is lying to you and they are making : -- the data, maybe

now the gas that comes out of me , maybe you don't have to believe the scientist. and what we have seen is this who of authority figures say that the two of us are evil liars. right? so in some real sense, we can go into our media bubble and we can stay there. and in some real sense, the media bubbles are scrubbing reality. alongthink i will pass it to chip and see what he does with that. [applause] >> haiku for climate change.

reality bites. as sea levels keep rising. water nips our feet. so, if you have a authority figures, there has to be a mass base that listens to the authority figures. i will argue the mass base has been groomed since the late 1800s to reject science. to reject collectivism and government, all of which is evidence that climate scientists are agents of satan. it is ok. you can get over it. it starts with evolution, the big lie of science. most mainstream protestant religions reach an accommodation saying, wasn't god clever? easy out. come on. what happens, unfortunately, is about the same time this accommodation is happening there

is a rise of organized labor in the united states which is a form of collectivism. it is determined by a handful of protestant ministers to be a satanic distraction from the rugged individualism that allows you to have a direct relationship god.

and so they become concerned with what are the fundamentals of christianity and they actually write a series of books and efforts called the fundamentals and they are known as on the mentalist. that is where the term comes from. one of the things is, science is a lie because if you believe science as evolution, you are rejecting god. now, if you are a bible-believing literalist and god is a centered heart of your life, this is not something you brush aside. it becomes ingrained in your worldview through the doctrine of your religious ideology or theology. so, ok. let us go through the roots of this. how does this involve corporations today who are funding science deniers to go on television and say things? in the 1800s, it is evolution, in the 1920's, it is bolsheviks and anarchists. 1935-1945, roosevelt into a massive corporate funding of anti-a government labor unions. anti-collectivists organizing around the country. one of the most massive propaganda campaigns ever launched. in the 1950's, the red scare.

communism.less let's not forget godless communism. in the 1970's, the christian right which a number of scholars point out when you have the collapse of the soviet union, what happens is that the scary threat becomes internal. there are internal subversives. the internal subversives are people who want you to embrace this false claim of science and reject your biblical understanding of god. and they have taken positions in the office, both the political scene and in religion which happens to tie into one of the most significant aspects of evangelical and fundamentalist europe, whichn the idea that we are

living in the end times, the apocalyptic end times during which trusted leaders will lie to you. that is what scientists are, the lackeys of religious leaders who are lying to you. sorry. now, who could possibly believe this? roughly 75%-85% of the united states, depending on how you do the holding is christian or they claim they go to church on sunday. a lot of them are lying. let us not go there. social science has gotten over that. you have to actually ask leading questions that get them to admit it is only once a month or even just christmas and easter. i am a christian so i get to tell these jokes. don't get mad at me. i am a different kind of christian. i like science.

our kind of branch got over that. conservative fundamentalists and evangelicals who reject science because it interferes with their relationship with god. and so, it then becomes part of an alliance which includes at the top, corporate profiteers, who really want to keep making money because they have got to finish their wind before the earth turns into a dustbin or covered by water. no big deal. taking any industry, stripping it and living the high life. except it is the earth. i wrote this all yesterday so i totally am agreeing with you.

there is a tiny group of anarcho-libertarians that read conspiracy theories. i am happy to talk to you. the biggest base are the conservative christian fundamentalists and evangelicals who are convinced we are living in a time where satanic agents walk the earth and they are going to try to get you to abandon god. this is tough. it is science collectivism and big government and if they are part of satan's plan, the roots of the corporate manipulation do not start climate change, they start back in this late 1800s trying to get fundamentalists to reject big labor. they are in fact a form of collectivism which divides you from god. the stakes are much higher. and the joke is of ours that if these fundamentalists only in an apocalyptic outcome, they are bringing it all. for the first time, we actually have the ability to create and apocalypse that you are not going to lose the bet. it is going to happen if we do not change things. they are going to say, the apocalypse happened and it did not happen the way we got but that would be a brief thought in their minds. [laughter]

what can i say. here is the thing. as a person who does write about social science and am a journalist, and i worked for a think tank for 30 years that researched right-wing movements to try to help left-wing organizers to understand why they are saying such things as there is no climate change and gay people should be shot or hang. that is only in two states. i'm sorry. it doesn't work is a to them, your religion is a farce, get over it, embrace science. because you are not going to convince these people that that is true. what does work is to talk about the difference between dominion and stewardship. dominion is one way of understanding within christianity what god gave to humans and dominion meet you get to do whatever you want. you get to shit in your own kitchen. this is what we are doing to our planet. the other view is stewardship, an obligation as a christian to preserve what we have and make it better and to pass it on to the next generation.

this is not just the same in christianity. it is a theme in all major religious. not just this idea of serving the planet but seeking justice. there are similar ideas in judaism and islam and other faiths. if we want to convince the mast base of climate denialists, we

in the encourage people work onn community and dialogue with them because pushing them up against the wall isn't going to work. [applause] >> good morning. i thought i would be the only christian on the science panel. i feel a little less alone. there are three of us. >> praise the lord. >> praise god. [laughter] >> there are two minutes that i want to make. the first, when we talk about science denialism we need to talk about this in context. it is not just denial of the reality of global warming and the fact that the climate is changing. that should be seen in the context of a nation where we now

embrace what i call designer facts. where we have given ourselves permission to reject any fact that does not comport with what we have already chosen to believe. i want to tell you a brief story. i wrote about henry johnson a few years ago. he was an african-american soldier in the first world work. -- first world war. he stood about 5'4", and weighed about 150 pounds. he was on observation duty one night in 1918 when his post was overrun. no one knows the exact number of germans. the low count is about a dozen. the high count is about 30. the miracle of the story is that henry johnson and his companion outnumbered the germans.

they drove them off. he was wounded 21 times. he live the rest of his life with one foot. an amazing story. his lifethe rest of with his foot like a little seal flipper. it is called the battle of henry johnson if anyone wants to look it up. an amazing story of this very slight african-american man who defeats a horde of germans who overran his post. i wrote that story in a column and i got an e-mail from a gentleman named ken. he said it was all pc bunk. [laughter] i did not blame him for not believing the story because it is an amazing story. we sent him proof.

we sent him the proof. of what had happened. there is a quote from teddy roosevelt talking about henry johnson's bravery. the story was covered in various news accounts including the saturday evening post. it is even on the web. mr. thompson was not convinced. mr. thompson refused to believe even though we had overloaded him with all of the verification that we could think of very and

this was one of the first in the that helped me to clarify what was going on in this country. we have reached a point where we no longer have a pool of facts in common. previously, we had a pool of facts in common, assuming we are all of goodwill and are trying to solve the outlook. we all pulled from the same pool of facts and made our arguments. and maybe i interpret the facts in one way and you in another but we are all pulling from the thing pool of facts. what has happened with the rise of the internet, with the rise of the conservative news media and designer fact era, is we no longer have the same pool of facts. i have a pool over here and someone else has one over there. we are talking past one another. you don't just see this with science and denialism of the climate change, but also with a presidential candidate, now president who was born in a u.s. state whose birth was attested to not only by his birth certificate but by notifications in two contemporaneous newspapers. and yet, there is this whole cottage industry, books and fox news appearances and radio appearances debating whether or not barack obama was born in this country.

the obvious fact is there is a need for some people to believe that there is something other about him or something for an about him. there are not enough facts you can bring to the table to convince them otherwise. that is the context in which we are swimming. the other point i wanted to make is that one of the worst things that ever happened to science and to religion i think is when antiscience became seen as a religious value. i want to reach you from a column i wrote. this was a few years back when the state of kansas was launching one of its schemes to

allow the teaching of creationism. creationism being taught in schools. here is the thing i keep coming back to. why are those who accept every bible passage as literal truth so fanatical in their quest to make the others assent. if you know what you know, it seems you would be serene in the celebration of it. in the last roughly 20 years, and all of the time that they sought -- it is not too much to say that the characteristic that seems to mark them more is an abiding lack of faith. no faith in their ability to survive unaided in the marketplace of ideas. no faith in their ability to pass that knowledge to their kids. no faith, only the fear that conflicting ideas pose imminent threat. that they and their children must be kept hermetically sealed because exposure to opposing

views or simple questions is destructive to their convictions. i have never perceived evolution theory as incompatible with religious faith. it contradicts genesis but not essence. it confirms what we're told that humans and apes all have common ancestors. before this, there were dinosaurs. and before that there was a primordial planet. i say fine. who lit the fuse on the bang? who was here at the beginning and who will be here at the end? only one name suggests itself to meet which leaves me marveling at the weak-kneed creed espoused by some. is there a god so small that he

is challenged by charles darwin. mine is not. that was the column i did in 2000. [applause] i have long felt that trying to use science to understand faith or faith to understand science is sort of like using out to read to understand poetry or astronomy to understand motown songs and why we love them. they serve different needs. this whole idea that science must be hammered into conformity with the letter of genesis or exodus or whatever is destructive. i think it is destructive to science but ultimately it is destructive of religion because a lot ofays to me and and i am sure --

you have heard this -- abandon faith all you who enter here. they say abandon logic. i refuse to do that. i believe that there is what speaks to my soul. and there is that which speaks to my intelligence, my intellect. i do not see that those things are necessarily in this life or death struggle that a lot of christians seem to feel. i think there is a weakness in what they call their faith. that if they really look at it, they would be embarrassed by it. i am not threatened by science. i am enlightened by science. [applause] >> thank you all. before we get to the question period, from the audience, i would like to offer to the panel

members an opportunity to respond to the others. richard. >> i would like to follow on leonard's statement. we have one of these efforts to teach false problems with evolution in pennsylvania. before i waded into it in a public way, i spoke to our pastors, we are methodists. i told him what i was doing and they said it was fine. in pennsylvania, they were trying to teach this intelligent design. people who are not biologists say high school teachers should tell people to believe in an unnamed intelligence. because someone who is not a biologistslaims taht that.t do my pastor said, you know, you are unhappy with the lack of science in that. we are more unhappy with the lack of religion in that.

they said this may be bad science but it is worse the allergy. -- worse theology. you're completely correct. [applause] >> the thing that amazes me with regard to faith approach to science and faith's approach to a lot of things as how often people of faith give themselves a get out of jail free card from doing the hard personal stuff that we are wired to do. i have always understood my faith as an obligation to do forward, not a license to hit someone over the head. i have often than not to take it to sunday school, but if you have ever read the sermon on the mount and all of the things that you are required to do on the sermon on the mount, you could spend the rest of your life to live up to that. i have never lived up to that. and be a much better person for that but you would never have enough time to call a scientist and leave death threats on the telephone. turn the other cheek. if a man take your shirt give him your cloak. if you take my shirt, we are fighting. that is still where i am.

it really is fascinating. the same holds true when i look at the more extreme proponents of islam. islam and the torah both say variations of "he who saves one person saves the entire world." why are we not literal about that? [applause] >> there is no social science data that fundamentalist christians are more or less intelligent or crazy than people in their own neighborhood. they tend to reflect the background demographics. if you hear on liberal left programs, or those envelopes you get from the dnc that these people are scary crazy, it is not true. [applause]

>> let me throw out a question. nothing that any of you have said has made me feel any better. [laughter] ok, now it is time. how do we go from here to improve the situation? >> i think it is getting a little bit better. when the internet first became a really big prevalent part of my day, when about 5-10 years ago, when you started to get a lot of e-mail and social media, i had a greater volume of people that was a -- i am going to be killed by the exploding star.

there did seem to be a recalibration especially among young people. what you read on the internet could have very little bearing to fact. this is anecdotal. i would be interested to see data on how people are responding to this. there was a barrage of interest in all of the apocalyptic theories that were coming out. that has calmed down a little bit. we had a large asteroid pass by a week ago and i didn't get a single e-mail. it was safe. we had the data. it was perfectly safe. i am seeing a bit of wariness that i think is encouraging. i think that is anecdotal what there may be a cultural shift. the internet may have made the spreading of these ideas so tempting. now we are better consumers to some extent.

>> if i might follow on for a moment. i have here my smartphone. it is turned off. i have here my smartphone and it is a fascinating exercise to take this into a high school class and say -- what is it? what is it? i have done this very recently. how would you make it? well i put circuit boards together. what is a circuit board? this is about that much of sand with silicon and glass and that much of oil for the plastic and some of the right rocks. a little bit of some of the elements. sand, oil, and rocks. if you were to take the sand, the oil, and the rock and take it into the senate and say make me a smart phone. or get to the football team or the bridge club and ask them to make you a smart phone. this is science, engineering, and marketing. einstein is in here. without relativistic calculations your gps will drop you in new mexico in about a week.

you cannot design a computer without modern mechanics. this is communicating -- the same that we used to calculate the changes in the climate. there are still people in the world that will take this and send me a message and say scientists do not know what they are talking about. [laughter] [applause] but i actually think most of them know better now. it really honest-to-goodness is sand, oil, and rocks and science and engineering. [applause] >> without further comments from the panel, we will turn to the question. let me remind you that if there

are students who would like to ask questions please allow them to go to the front of the line. and also remind you that there are two microphones and all questions should come from one or the other of those microphones. feel free to lineup behind the people who are already there to ask the questions. finally, let me remind you not to make statements.

we have an expert panel here and these are questions to allow the panel members to expand on a subject. for the first question -- >> i see a student. >> it is very hard for us to see you. student first. >> here is the question. you commented on the profit motive of the corporate driven anti-climate change junk science. would you comment on the profit motive of the cottage industry among religious right leaders in their science denial. >> he is a ringer. he is one of my pastors. i have been to his church here when i come to my conference very he is an old friend and he was one of the first people to write about the dangers of the religious right. many of the leaders of the religious right live a very lavish lifestyle. and they raised millions and tens of millions of dollars to build their little empires. for a religion that is supposed to reject mammon and the profit motive as a core element of one's being, it has always been remarkable that a lot of leaders of the christian right has been extremely clever practitioners of a kind of rapacious form of fundraising and scaremongering.

it is a blemish on christianity. >> the only thing i would add is that i think the politicization of faith, while it may be mining someone's coffers in the short run, in the long run it is proving to be damaging to faith. i think the acronyn is american religious identification, i wrote about this a couple of years ago. religion is on the decline by some measures in this country. the percentage of people that defined themselves as christian is on the decline. the percentage of people who believe in god has not declined. in a lot of ways, by making the church of whatever denomination, seems to be wholly-owned subsidiary of the republican party. a lot of these folks are doing themselves a disservice because people who are going to look for the comfort or the genuineness that they find in charge

nevertheless do not want to the identified with what seems to be identified as charge in the media these days which is hateful, science denying and not very good. ultimately, the church faces a challenge from itself or some of its more extreme members of this whole idea of god as a political candidate who abhors climate science is really not a good business model. [applause] >> so, people who are discrediting science -- is that coming from those -- from the human race becoming more gullible?

is it coming from our politicians having such radical beliefs that we believe them because they are authority figures? is it coming from interpretation of religion differently? >> there is nothing new under the sun. 1906, the earthquake knocked down buildings in san francisco. the people of the east are scared to go to san francisco because -- scientists say don't worry now. the scientist says that said there may be another one and they try to hold them back.

they set up early warning systems so when the next one hits, you can call boston were washington and say don't worry. they start a campaign saying it was not an earthquake but of fire. what happens. the earthquake breaks the gas lines. it breaks the electric lines that sparked the gas lines. it breaks the water lines so you cannot put out the fire. then the city burns down. so, there was a fire. there was a fire but that is not what hundred percent the whole story. the business of when people feel that they are living or that their beliefs are threatened and they try to defend them with all of the tools that they have available is not new. what is new is how efficiently this is done.

>> it is a dynamic relationship that starts with corporate profiteers, researchers paid to lie -- i'm sorry, do serious research that contradicts what these people say. the media profiteers. what you end up with is subcultures that live in information silos. these silos are impenetrable except with face-to-face communication. that is not how the democrats actually work anymore. they do not organize people anymore. they do not try to go out and convince people to change the way they think about something. they put ads on tv saying republicans are idiots and scary and will ruin america. and republicans do the same thing. and as a nation, we do not talk with each other and discuss ideas like we do at my organization. [applause] >> i am a retired medical research scientist. one of the interactions i had was of finding the amish would come to the hospital for their children with meningitis but

they would not vaccinate their children for the same disease. i sent a resident who was mennonite out to define what the problem was. she found that each parishioner had a very different insight. my question is the following. if you are religious right, it is almost mandatory that when you are dying from cancer, you will show what to the medical profession and get the latest. death has a major difference of opinion. can you speak on that. we are all mortal. what is it about death that brings us back to science? [laughter] [applause] >> fear. fear.

one word answer. reject science and still benefit from it. life isoint where your on the line, the cards go up. otherate to advertise and panel, but they put me on a panel about science and religion tomorrow. it is not my expertise. to intersect very much. i think one of the things people don't understand about being a scientist is we do not leave we have found truth. as the equations of albert einstein are, and i studied graduate level. we cannot find one small deviation from these laws set up 100 years ago. when you measure how light bends

around the sun, einstein is correct. but we know he is not the be-all and end-all. quantum mechanics contradict him. when you are a scientist you give up the idea of there ever being an answer or truth. my view ofnfluence spirituality. i live in a world where you learn it to swim in doubt. complex,ful, ever-increasing accuracy. getting it toward the truth but not getting there. there is a beauty in trying to lose your ego in that. dople often think scientist not respond emotionally but i do not think that is true. this is general. it is not a simple progression

from start to end. the modern laws almost require that to not true. of their dimensional view, you can see all of my life from beginning to end. mostlieve the big bend likely created time as well as space. time, from start to end whatever it that means to temporarily based creatures like me. i say to my husband sometimes, because we expect to die and expect to not have anything after that, the debt when the universe began i was holding your hand and when the universe ends i will still be holding your hand. there is a way to swim in doubt and still find beauty. [applause] to pose ato come back

ago after that pisa beauty, but it is worth keeping in mind as a scientist, and our practice of science, we have given up the idea that we have reached truth. our job as educators is to make sure we will promote those students who will find what we missed. we know there are things we missed. but the practical parts, this withing was not built quantum. this was built with newton. the practical parts of science we do not overthrow when we change the big picture. we add to them. when einstein came in, newton's calculation for how this beautiful building stands up did not go away. you will find people who will say science is not absolute truth, therefore we should not believe. no. tend tothe tested parts

go on. foron is still fine designing this building. applause] cosign withant to what michelle said about swimming in doubt. that has been my experience as well. swimming in doubt. there is this misconception that faith drives out doubt. the only people who do not have questions are the people who are not thinking. i do not care what your religious background is, it is truer to say, at least for me, that faith and doubt live side by side will stop one of my favorite stories from the bible is a man approaching jesus and saying, lord, please heal my son if you can.

jesus takes offense, if i can? the man says, lord i believe. help my unbelief. saying i wrap it up by very much understand. it is a lie to say scientist's are not people of eight. there is a huge range of interpretation of the universe and the approach to god that scientists have. going back to what we were talking about how doubt means you don't know anything, this is some ring throwing this in me science debate. scientists, where you are going to publish a paper if you disprove something, your career is on the herriot shove what we know. that does not negate the huge amount of stuff we do know. respondclimate to not to what we are doing to it would break the laws of physics.

lot we know. this may surprise you, we had actually made a satellite that could measure all of the precipitation going around the globe at once. do not knowocked we about the climate system because we do not have the data at yet. how much rain is falling, how much snow is falling. should we worry about methane or other gases? there are is a lot we have to find out. that is why we have all the satellites up there. none of this negates the fact we know what is happening. truth i amther miss very angry about when people talk about what scientists are doing. [applause] >> next question. >> my question comes on reflecting what is, at least to

me, a new insight that this panel has expressed, and especially leonard, that anti-science is a statement of religious faith, which is religious faith in a weak god. and this weak god is a circumstance of personal fear and perhaps pathological, cultural fear which ends up an expression of a feeling of helplessness. our national path of escape from that is material consumerism and financial development. i wonder if you all could comment on that connection of a weak god with a cultural fear and such a helplessness with -- which then promotes escapism.

[laughter] leonard: i have heard it said that that wisdom, and i'm not sure this one answer your question or not, but i have heard it said that wisdom begins when instead of having what you want you want to want what you have. i do not know that ties into a weak god, but there's definitely a sense in this country that satisfaction can be found at the mall. and the joy income we win this and whatever -- into the joy and complete this -- and the joy and completeness and whatever -- i think the attraction of faith is that there is a sense of -- it offers the possibility of completeness. it offers the possibility of being satisfied within your own self.

within your own sphere. and i think that that is sort of , antithetical to consumerism in this country. the whole point of consumerism is to make you feel as if you are incomplete. you know you are not doing so , well, but if you buy this car, if you get this soda pop, if you buy this brand of whatever, then your life will be complete. and, the trick of course is that it is always a state of income lesion because there is always nothing else to buy. have an iphone five, the latest is a six. the six, the five. i not know. i have got the previous model, let's put it like that. and, there is a multimillion dollar campaign out to get me to upgrade this to whatever the next model is. but leonard, you are incomplete , until you get the next iphone. and by the time i get that one, the next one will be out.

it is a constant shell game which i am able to decline to buy into. i do not believe that consumer goods will make me a better person. [applause] ms. thaller: it is not something that scientists are trained for. it is not our education to deal with these questions. the interesting thing is how much that is changing. we are working with people -- alan alda has an amazing institute at suny stony brook. this is an odd one. this is a true story. there was a meeting at nasa headquarters and we were going to be talking about advertising strategies. the people who were hosting said the people that were hosting it said mars. i thought, ok, we will be talking about the mars rovers and how we can communicate. it turned out to be the mars candy company. only at nasa headquarters is that going to happen. they brought in advertising executives from mars.

they were talking about how they design and advertising campaign. because as a federal agency, we cannot advertise. us it is starting to behoove to understand more about how the work and how this is done. i am sure i am not saying anything that mars would not want me to say, because i know this is probably advertising 101, but what shocks me is they were talking about their candy bar campaigns and how the way they designed their campaign has nothing to do with the candy. they are selling self-esteem. once they were talking about where they were advertising a body spray for young men. the immediate first line of the campaign is adolescent male insecurity of the body. that is what we are shooting for. they identify our psychological tendencies and they know that they are not selling candy. they are dressing those. and that's what will get you to

buy the candy. they also said, and i speak as somebody who likes a snickers bar every now and then, that for them, having market penetration, more people buying a candy bar, was more important than return customers. it is not so much how good your candy bar is, but how many people initially by your candy bar. not part of training as a scientist. when it comes to what they are selling us, what doubt and very simplistic views of religion, anybody who asks me, do you believe in god, if i say no, does that mean we believe the same thing? if i say yes, does that mean we believe the same thing? that is a dinner conversation. that is not an answer. it is not a word. and you know, they are selling us -- we do become more easy consumers when things are simplified and they are going after our innate insecurities about death, fear, our body image, all of these things. [applause] >> next question.

>> what would be steps that everybody can take to eliminate the believe that scientists are liars and basically bring science and religion together and just eliminate the anti-scientific belief? ms. thaller: there are some very simple solutions. you have heard this before. it sounds really cliche. i spent a lot of time in congress and on capitol hill. i spent a lot of time in congress and on capitol hill. i have talked to all of ted cruz's staffers. i spent a lot of time in the actual offices. i am amazed by how much they respond. they will come in and say, what are the e-mails today saying?

they really do pay attention to your letters. e-mails and written letters and phone calls. written letters the most and then probably e-mails and phone calls. i am really encouraged by some of the public figures in science. neil degrasse tyson, who i have known for years, i think is going to get his own television program. he is funny, quirky, geeky, a good dancer. i love dancing. he really skewers the stereotype. at the same time, i find him very authentic a scientist. my only criticism of his television show is that he was not given script writing credit. when i saw the show, it seems more like a tribute to carl sagan, who i loved. it did not have neil's humor. given they would have neil more free range.

there are some wonderful role models coming up. also, put pressure on your politicians. they feel it. they will listen to that. there i am, a scientist at nasa. why am i responding to one person when there are thousands of people who might have a similar question or a better question. they got to me. they sent me an e-mail. [applause] >> this has been an excellent panel. my only regret is that there is not a science denier on the panel. i would love to hear what they have to say. a lot of what you said has gone to religious faith and its effect on science denial. i think there is another more cynical component to it. i saw a trailer at the movies for merchants of doubt that talks about the people who are paid to cynically plant doubt in our minds about all these things. cigarettes or automobile safety or flood safety or climate change. i would like to hear you address that a little bit.

>> that is integrity. there are always going to be those people who lack integrity or are going to pander to the basic instincts for money. foro the basest instincts money. ms. thaller: this seems like an odd thing to say, but if it is good data, i will take it from whoever has it. the problem is bad data. for example, there was an extensive research into climate science. brothers.h

climate scientists came up with the same conclusions that the nasa scientists did. there were cases where the studies sponsored by oil companies produced useful data. that is why we have peer-review. it sounds so ivory tower-ish. people say, you are a scientist at nasa. i have this great idea for a new jet engine. won't you look at it? i tell them, there is a process for this. submitting papers, having discoveries, having people replicate your result and look through your data. they say, i do not want to do that. i do not want to take that time. that is why we have the process. i think there needs to be a course, a lot of transparency about who is being supported by companies. that is one of the big things about being a fully-federally-funded scientist. we are not allowed to do that. i am not allowed to take money from anyone. i went to talk at a local astronomy club and they handed me a $100 check and i had to hand it right back. from the discovery channel, all of those appearances, not a penny. i cannot take anything from them. but if they sponsored the climate study and the data is good, bring it on. i am not afraid of real data and real debate.

>> that does not go to the issue of we live in a society that claims to be a democracy based on informed consent. there is an industry of lying to people for profit. we live in a society that has abandoned the idea that we have that pool of shared knowledge and that we have an ability to make these things because we do not anymore. we live in an anti-democratic oligarchy. [applause] growng towards learning to fins. >> next question. >> does it make sense for you to be a science believer when it comes to climate change science and a science denier when it comes to vaccine safety? >> not sure who you are talking to, but i would bet that there

are many people in this room who are very seriously engaged in making sure that vaccines are safe. and that this is done with science and literature and that they know a lot about it. vaccines have saved a fantastic number of lives. [applause] ms. thaller: there is no good science that says that vaccines are unsafe read i am sorry. -- are unsafe. sorry. the entire study was discredited. that person was on the payroll of a drug company trying to do a different sort of vaccine. we know the whole story. it is one of the things that i have to say has shocked me a little bit coming to boulder. i have met some wonderful, excellent people here who are not in favor of vaccinating their children. i am very much in the spirit of civil discourse. i am very polite. i am very, very frightened.

[applause] >> my question sort of rides on that one a little bit. from science, we kind of pick and choose. we have been talking about people accepting science. just some quick examples. forad the "butter is bad margarine -- people sort of pick things. what i am wondering is, how do we influence the people that are taking data and refusing to switch when new data comes out? prof. alley: we are supposed to look for the next new thing. the next science paper may be the next new thing and it may not be. one paper is not science. you know this very well. i am preaching to you. but governments have worked out

ways to find out what the scientists know with the public watching in the public good. it is a fantastic story. during the civil war, lincoln signs the document for the national academy of sciences that makes them the advisors to the nation on matters scientific. then we have the national academy of sciences during the institute of medicine as well. the civil war breaks out. what happened, the u.s. navy is now splintered. some of the ships sail out of the south to the north and some of them get burned. one of them that got burned was a virginia, the merrimack. they burned it. they take her into battle and they are trashing the union. then the monitor comes to fight the merrimack. they fight to the draw and then two weeks later, everyone in the

world is building ironclad ships. you just put giant slabs of metal next year compass. you were out in the dark. which way is north? they call the national academy of sciences and they say, how do we find north? these people are trying to sell you this. it does not work. these people are trying to sell you this. it does not work. this one does. what does it do to this day? the academy gets the full range of use scientifically. gets them to sit in the public eye for the public good without paying them. get some to say what is speculative and what is silly. when the mid-1970's people were saying, is it going to get warmer or colder? newsweek ran an inflammatory disease -- piece about getting colder. in the late 1970's, they said it was going to get warmer. they have said it was going to get warmer ever since. when george w bush was elected president, he said the academy would tell what was going on. they got a panel including the

most prominent scientist that has been skeptical about this. that scientists said, we are making it warmer. the difference between one paper and the assessed science coming out of the national academy of sciences, the royal society, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, be wary of the -- be warywill stop of the next paper. look for the voice of science pulling together what is known in the public eye. [applause] >> i am sorry for the people who did not get to ask their questions, but we are out of time. i would just like to thank this fabulous panel. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> three days of nature to programming this new year's weekend on c-span. law officials, activists, and journalists to andine the prison system its impact on minorities. the first and primary reason for prison is to punish people for anti-social behavior and remove that threat from society. to keep us safe will stop whether they will debilitate the prisoner or deter future crimes is secondary. the primary purpose of the prison system is for people who are not in prison. to keep people safe from the

threat imposed. >> saturday night, a race relations town hall meeting with police and officials and areas affected by race issues. >> they are doing their jobs and, i am protect the republic. their idea of the public are those who gave them their marching orders. that is us. talking about transparency, we need to look at those roles they have not started using to engage themselves with our community. six: sunday evening at already, a discussion on media coverage of muslims and how muslims can join the conversation. later, young people from across the united kingdom gathered to discuss issues which interest them. feelingaves people

disdained, deprived, and dissolution. as a child, i looked forward to the train. trains grow up, we see lose their smiley faces. we forget they swishing and the honking and worry about whether or not we can afford the bus to school tomorrow. c-span.org. go to >> washington journal is next. we will look at today's news and take your calls. ater, hillary clinton holds town hall meeting and portsmouth, new hampshire, to talk about her economic plan. coming up this hour, jennifer bender he of the huffington post talks about the january 12 state of the union address and president obama's role in the

2016 campaign. after the democratic debatestial consultant the political your ahead. we take phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. >> good morning, a grand jury in cleveland ohio yesterday decided that the officer who killed tamir rice will not face criminal charges. starts a debate about the prosecution process and the role of grand jury trials. we want to begin with your experience serving on a jury. even if you have been summoned and not called. dial-in.entral if you live in the mountain .acific part (202) 748-8001 you can send us a tweet or on