going on without me saying it explosively and talking about guantanamo and these drone strikes is also the marginalization of muslim communities here. effects also been a side of our policies abroad. exchangehis horrible in the last debate in which hillary clinton and trump responded to this question in which a citizen raised about the danger that many muslim ifricans feel and what either one of them was president what they do to protect and/or repair this harm. it's like, we are going to put muslim americans on the frontline and they are going to report. no no no no. that's not the question.

it was said in the last panel decreased the number of american troops that go abroad. the reason that has decreased is the number of drone strikes has increased. i will be very clear about that and i think that's important to pay attention to. >> thank you. >> i'm going to break protocol and actually refer to my notes. my head is spinning from the last panel and also here. so many rich things to weigh in. i wanted to do that because i think in my assist it when i think about the assessment of civil rights in the age of obama points like to make some specific to some policy change but also make a broader point about the federal effort to address civil rights points crin the obama presidency.

i'll start with the big one. the broader point that strikes what's being laid bare to me are the perils of this tinkering around the margins of really fundamentally civil rights crises. i'm not sure this is so much a critique of obama as it is really getting us to think about what this age of obama and obama presidency laid there for us in terms of how limited -- which is ironic to say in this forum -- how limited policy responses in fact are or can be to either immediate civil rights violations for example in urban communities with policing or broader civil rights catastrophes and crises such as mass incarceration.

there is real disconnect between the plan for change that policy indicates in the realities of how they are implemented on the ground because of deeply structural issues. i'm thinkinguickly about earlier we were listening to discuss and of the clemency for example. response toolicy the crisis of so many people being caged in america. more than any other president in terms of the number of commutations and so forth. but if you read for example the letter that obama sent to those who sentences were commuted, the language is very interesting. one of the sentences was, because you have demonstrated your ability to turn your life around. you have sentence was, the capacity to make good

choices. bareo me that really lays this disconnect between the policy response of commutations. the fundamental structural assessment -- assumption behind it that this is still down to the individual. we have 7.5 million people in this system because of their bad choices and because they have been unable to turn their lives around. that's just one example. other is the ending of solitary confinement in juvenile facilities which of course one can do nothing but applaud and say what in the world took us so long to come up with that policy response? the description of why this was necessary i found it very publicly and profoundly moving that obama referred to the suicide of -- at rikers demonstrating why this policy change needs to happen. structurally we did not

eliminate solitary confinement federal prisons. what ever drove him to kill himself is presumably the same psychological trauma that adults throughout the system are still suffering. it is deeply structural assumption about what we are doing. i won't even talk about policing. i'm sure we will get to that later. i want to talk about a tomitment on the one hand rein in criminal justice policies that are deemed to be unjust and civil rights violations. while at the same time expanding what i would view and certainly my next project is trying to sort out the core of curse reality which is surveillance. the ways in which surveillance makes the policing possible which in turn makes civil rights violations which in turn makes the crises of mass incarceration. how at the one hand on a policy level weekend rain in criminal

injustices but on the other hand expands structurally the very mechanisms by which they can exist. and i really appreciate this question of deportation and immigration. sort of like the commutation argument on the one hand supporting the dream act. on the one hand supporting profoundly self-conscious paths citizenshipip -- to arguing or decriminalizing what it means to be undocumented and having deported 1.1 million people in three years. here's what's key about that. in the name of criminal justice. there are not being deported -- it's because they are criminals. us back.course brings will to the fundamental structural problem. is this about obama per se?

i sort of think not that some fundamental level. about this disconnect at the federal level in the state level between the proclamation that policy can fix these things and deeply structural assumptions that undergirded them in the first place. i will make a few comments as well. one thing i don't think the organizers knew when they invited me to moderate this panel but that i should disclose is that i'm currently working on a project with attorney general holder that hopefully all of you will be able to read in about a year that it is an examination of the question of justice and the obama administration's approach to the question of justice in the age of obama. have also been quite critical of many of the same things that have been expressed here.

did an interview with attorney general holder while he was still in office on the television show that i produce which by the way is distributed andy good friends at wgbh airs locally at 6:30 on saturdays. we have taken over the spot formerly held by the mclaughlin group. i was interviewing holder for that and i said to him, you and the president have expressed great concern about mass incarceration but the fact is you remain the mass incarcerate or in chief. i share a lot of these concerns. time i think some of the criticism we here is a byproduct of an understandable but unfortunate what historians would call presentism. i think there's a failure to comprehend the degree to which has been somewhat

invisibly eroded and degraded in the decade previous to the obama presidency. the degree to which these legislative actions in state legislatures all across the country that are the primary reason behind the dramatic rise in mass incarceration until trayvon martin incident occurred, most americans had never heard of the stand your ground laws in order and elsewhere. things which have so complicated any efforts to address these issues. thecivil rights division of justice department had been hollowed out and even as rated entirely by the time holder -- eviscerated entirely by the time holder returned as attorney general. you have driven by the events of 9/11 a presidency that is inclined toward an imperial thatach to begin with embraces a tremendously imperial approach and is incredibly willing to at rake next bead

suspend notions of civil rights and human rights as it relates to detainees at guantanamo and interrogation techniques. this is a presidency that begins against a backdrop that most of us did not fully understand. because to some degree we thought these issues were ok. getting somewhat better in some respect. and then barack obama is elected president and that seems to be a very reaffirming sign. in reality the structural issues in terms of the way the legal system works and the practices and divisions of responsibilities were so profound i think sometimes we are guilty of under the level of the problem that has to be addressed at that time. the one indicator of that is if the present were to commute every federal prisoner in federal prison today i think you

currently have 2.2 million individuals actually incarcerated. if you got rid of all federal prisoners tomorrow you would still have about 2 million people imprisoned. think the up-to-date number is actually 800 44 commutations and pardons as of last wednesday. which is more than all presidents collectively in all of time. it's also a kind of meaningless gesture. there have been 13,000 rejections of petitions for areutations but there 32,000 petitions still under consideration. is a furious process underway at the department of justice as we speak to process through all 32,000 of those petitions before the end of this year. congress specifically limited the number of people through a budgeting move.

the department of justice cannot engage i believe the number is more than five people in the process of processing those 32,000 petitions. so in a tiny way that encapsulates the nature of the struggle at work here. it is not beyond the realm of possibility and this is me speaking not representing anything from eric holder or the white house by any means but i believe there is a very active question under way of what should happen at the very last in the final minutes of the obama administration? most of those 32,000 petitions will not have been acted upon up to that point. it's not completely implausible that there could be a very large number of people whose sentences are commuted at the last minute. is an extraordinarily complicated situation to untangle. i think these huge structural are far more profound

than the question of one particular individual or later at a time. -- leader at a time. >> do you want to respond to one another on any of that? tohink it would make sense move relatively quickly to questions. before we do that, any thoughts on that? anybody radically disagree? i have offered a mild dissent to the obama administration. me ory want to excoriate anybody else for that? >> i would not disagree with that. there were very undue expectations at the beginning and this is a long-standing issue. even in the current context of there's already a number of attempts to try to paint the rise of donald trump as a phenomenon that came out of nowhere. just like the struggle on civil

rights and the erosion that we have seen in that which driving aby the way, stake through the voting rights act. this is going to be the first election where americans are going to the polls without those protections. we have seen voter id laws in a for anybody who was in doubt about what the response to hollowing out the voting rights act would be. thing to meresting about this american people are trying to paint the trump is a is amenon and trumpism thing like it came out of nowhere. that dog whistle politics have been played for a very long time and there has been an incredible nurturing in society about compounded and take advantage of anxiety over the economy. to feed anxiety about

demographic change and what that means. in that aspect we have seen immigration used as a proxy to stoke fear about the growth the latino community because a 76% of latinos in this country are actually united states innocence. -- citizens. toigration has been painted paint them all as outsiders. the same way that crime has been used to stoke fear about african-americans and also latinos. and frankly the way that terrorism has been used to stoke fear against muslim americans. who as you mentioned even in the gave a terrible response but clinton wasn't all that much better right? she said your good as long as you report stuff. as long as you are agents of the state you are good.

which led to #muslims report stuff which you should all look at. it was great. and #that mexican thing was the best thing that came out of that. the point in terms of the expectations and the state of notctural me which are moving forward because of our inability to govern given the state of congress among other that this is not a new thing. lining potential silver is that what trump has done is to make the implicit explicit. has been dog whistle politics is now like a blue rail whistle. like the loudest sound you could ever here. and when you recognize that and it is undeniable there is an

opportunity to grapple with it. it's an opportunity that lots stay there. so we are going to have to take advantage of that fairly quickly. donald trump is a natural, logical response and follow up to the presidency of an african-american person. right? in a wayt made real that is also undeniable that change that was underway. but now people could feel it. it was in front of their faces. what we are experiencing is the backlash. there has always been resistance to change in america. played out in policymaking and the ability or inability to move some of those things forward. plays out in very real ways because of this backlash. economyin a political

where notions like being tough on crime has currency and significant currency. disclosure, i shared senator obama's criminal justice policy committee. some of the things that are going on in criminal justice now are absolutely amazing. never been done before and probably won't be done again. at the same token, some of these things politicians simply don't want to trumpet. saying, if elected elected i'm going to let people out of jail. it doesn't happen. so people cap and messages in certain sorts of ways to be relatively palatable to a larger public but actually do the work.

let me give you one quick example since you mentioned clemency. this process could go a lot quicker. one of the reasons that it's going slowly is because the pardon office is looking through each file. nyu had a clemency project. of this stuff has been reviewed and there are executive summaries and so forth but they are looking through each file. one of the things i think priore looking for our domestic violence charges. and they're are not granting clemency if anyone has a prior dv charge because they don't think the politics will do well. academics, it is wholly irrelevant. the point is they percent in sundry regime that they would not have had this amount of time no matter what was in their jacket.

had they been sentenced under a more rational regime or under today's legal rule. thing for people in political circles is to let someone out and they reoffend. they are being extraordinarily careful. that's just one example. for we go to acumen day -- q&a i want to hear from megan. you both looked at the postwar southern evolution which is andher period of effort dramatic change to the civil rights regime and extraordinary backlash. i'm just curious to hear from you guys about this notion of perhapsst inevitability in the way that america works that you are going to go through

after an extraordinary event such as the election of the first black president we should have all into stupidity even more so than we did that there would then be this period of astonishing backlash against almost everything that related to what we would call racial progress. what's your take on that? >> a couple of thoughts. clearly symbols matter. on substance of obama as a fairly centrist if not conservative bourgeois technocrat. symbolism as an african-american president is so powerful that it has given rise to a return of massive resistance. we have witnessed a consolidated white supremacist effort to dictate the course of american politics that has dispensed with dog whistles the likes of which we have not seen since the 1950's and 1960's. is because the polity confronted with the symbolic black president whose concerns

about race specific issues are cryptic, guarded, private. maybe deeply felt that still nevertheless not out front. that i think is extraordinary. you wonder how deeply buried if at all the massive resistance was ever. it makes you think about the 80's and 90's. white supremacist compounds up and down the eastern seaboard and in the pacific northwest. it makes me think about the long view of some of these things. dating the militarization of the tanke back to o'connor's tank.l connor's it makes me think about the legal history of chattel labor after slavery following it all the way through and then the efforts of agriculture companies to incarcerate or capture in some way immigrant labor on

plantations or insights were the moved. couldn't be practice that continues to this day. for ak there's a need very kindly made a case for bigger history departments all over the world and for more historians by saying we need more history. that's a great call. is thislenge of the day is not the constituency that necessarily needs that history. it's the people who buy those texas history textbooks. and those textbooks are not written by these people. and they are not for this constituency. and we have a challenging time getting in the room to shape those textbooks and that view of history. >> history doesn't feed a hungry man. that's always the problem. the tension between some of these issues. my first book focus on the

racial campaign against violence in the early part of the 20th century. i document their work. what happens after that is the naacp moving away from very much a radical campaign to protect lack lives from mild violence to focus on education. not that education is not radical. it is. one of the things i want to focus on an untraditional way that came up during this moment is a new project that i'm working on tries to look at why this change happened. and why rights are rolled back. i locate this change in the role of funders and philanthropy. seen as ahat we are radical movements and diverting them to other causes. one of the issues i try to focus

formsbacklash not in the political scientists actually but in the ways in which private individuals and corporations use their money to rollback rights that other groups have. i think you see that whether it is prison complex rights and/or thatizations right now i've tried to shift focus -- have tried to shift focus. . what's take some questions -- let's take some questions. >> i like to give a frame of reference for my question. in specific groups of americans

who are less affected i.e. white america by these criminal justice issues that we see, there has been a large-scale conflation with morality and legality. that i wanted to touch a little bit on the unrealistic expectations some of us had of obama going in to lobby congress to ease the war on drugs specifically. congress too lobby declassify marijuana as a class one substance. and i believe that has a very on the criminal justice mass incarceration that we are doing. so i would like to get your opinion of whether that expectation was realistic and if there has been any progression in that field. >> this is my scholarship. i do criminal law. the federal level represents the of the practice

of criminal law in the country. the overwhelming majority has to do with states. for which the federal government has very little relationship. it can do some encouraging things in terms of withholding money the same way we do with speed limit signs. you set the speed at 55 you get federal transportation dollars. the federal government can do some things with money. mainly the game is with states. having said that, there is a peoplenflict now where reach to criminal law -- federal law and say, medicinal marijuana for example. but it's illegal in the state. when federal law and state law are at odds on a particular issue, who wins? with that battle it is usually

going to be the state. my answer to your question is the federal government has limited reach into the criminal justice system because it's mainly a state function. where the federal government does have reach i actually think this administration has done an incredible job under eric holder's leadership primarily and its continuing now. it's a very small fraction. back on the push characterization of the presidency and offer up a notion that i think there is room for pragmatic leadership in areas pronouncements sound nice but will have absolutely no effect on the ground.

and by way of history, i will just give one example which should register. let's take around the board of education. we teach brown one and brown to. -- brown two. after brown one nobody did anything. this is one of the things i think this president is trying to guard against. there are iraq receives. a judge can order what he or she wants. you have to deal with prisons and they have their own sets of rules. first-year law students take this class called administrative law. it's an ugly morass of rules. administrative agencies have extraordinary power. and you have to negotiate through all of that.

the president could have said, i'm going to commute everyone in the federal system. good luck. seriously. good luck. i just want to throw that, this idea is there space for pragmatism, it does not mean activists should not be screaming luddy murder, right? that's what will the agencies as well. >> i want to jump in because i think we have said a few times and this is very correct that whatever we do in the criminal justice system at the federal level is going to have a limited federalfar fewer prisoners. if you are talking about drugs, marijuana, this is going to play out more profoundly at the state level than federal level. it has to do with this

disconnect the policies on the one hand and maybe implemented legally on the other. he is true when obama says there is no more juvenile solitary, thou will not impact what is happening in louisiana, that is true. also true, this whole new data-driven police initiative which is essentially a policy that says we are going to deal with the crisis of policing which is the feeder for the state prisons and that intense focus on drugs is all about relying on data, on people who have the most contact with police and the most contact also with emergency responders and mental health responders. focuses the solution within the criminal justice system, which are who are those people who have the most contact? and the idea is they will not be police and arrested, they will

get in these other resources. first of all, where are those other resources? in a sense, they end up still getting arrested, probably from low-level marijuana, probably because of the dime bag and small amounts of cocaine or opioids or whatever. and so in fact, the federal policies do have a profound effect on the state criminal justice reforms like marijuana reforms. i wanted to connect to the dots. >> over the sweep of history, the federal government has been the innovator on criminal justice and civil rights again and again, almost all modern policing, fbi was from the federal government. it began with the federal government. it is a model for a better justice system. a long history of that. it could be well the obama

administration failed in the opportunities to have held the opportunity and the obligation of states and local governments jewelry address the way they did things. >> or putting more police on the ground and communities there are ready hyper policed and will lead to the people. >> also speaks to miscalculation a day president obama made an almost every assessment of his administration that he believed that a constitutional lawyer even though he do not practice must law will well trained by mr. ogletree, mr. obama came in office energy you will believed severeting certain, scriptures like a certain approach to immigration we will deport everybody who crossed the line area and the room to get a similar totion as

criminal justice. over time, the folks adopting we will see the -- adopting the idea and the people will want to work with me. all,oring details of it things like directive from the attorney general saying directing them to no longer double and triple and quadruple prosecute individuals. the practice had been in most drug cases to charge with every possible thing. and federalize his many cases as possible if there were more severe penalties. and so, the attorney general sent out a directive and saying do not do that. from theous backlash regional u.s. attorneys around the country who said this is not the way we do it. and you are going to end our ability to fight crime.

they have this political concern about the consequences of getting these measures. this is what we did not have a president dukakis, significant part because somebody he let out of prison went out and does a terrible thing. a huge consciousness of that risk in all of these measures. panel thisuck by the morning and last night, part of what we are hearing from audience members is the disenfranchisement of the limits of the of the president and though federal government to address questions of inequality. and it strikes me that is not what it was meant to do in the first place. there is a reason why policing andone at the state level jim crow was a state level initiative and slavery largely built at state-level laws. there's a reason why the federal government left things like the north was ordinates and prominent laws -- northwest

ordinates and prominent laws were not meant to fix things at the local and state level. we're dealt with the system that was simply not met have a federal solution to questions that will understand as moral. alsoset up, that executive will not be able to fix this. >> method that another question. the lady in the red or chartreuse. >> i am a graduate of the kennedy school. thank you for comment in -- for coming and partake in the. coral. there you go. free speechrder for for people because i think money and politics is so corrosive. my question is a follow-up to you when you mention corporations and individuals are rolling back rights.

i am wondering how we as citizens and activist may be able to translate that into value that actually would mean something to the ordinary person as well as academics or people fighting on a particular issue? how could we get to black churches and help people understand money in politics now that sanders is no longer talking about actively. hillary clinton said she supported an amendment. my question is the focus on money and politics and the rights that are being rolled back. >> you were about to -- >> we need to get to the white churches that make that point because i think you are right. i was struck was of the moral compass. like folks have had to do a hell of a lot of heavy lifting for a blackm that is not the

community creation. that heavy lifting has got to come, how do we in fact start moving into the white spaces and white churches and why community organizations and white voting groups and have that moral awakening? that means the moral awakening. >> we have a conference and there was a lack of diversity. [inaudible] >> there is a need to get a broader reach. >> the comment was you said you were at a conference where there was not much of the first, saying it was mostly white? yes. money problems. >> that is tough. i hear a lot of the concern that heather raised. i spent at the last two years

wanting to rethink how do we change. a lot of the ways, especially with the black lives matter movement, especially well-intentioned white people of always had black people to talk to different groups. i am very concerned about the labor that black people do. for people who have already borne the burden of of oppression, how much labor are we asking of them? is it right for them -- for us to ask for them to repair the damage? but at the same time, i hear you in a sense of that there's office these spaces -- often these spaces where there is a need for different voices for different perspectives in so many of these spaces. changet to get how do we what people value and care

about? it is often people who can do that. i do not have the perfect answer for you. i think the great place to start is for white people to asking the question and demanding that we talk about it there broadening the circle of people who matter. one of the things that has happened a lot especially over the last year, specific people in black lives matter we go to. i think we can expand to that and go to other people as well. table.ther voice to the some people have borne the translating racial oppression of more than others and it needs to be distributed more equally. i love that question, though. >> if i can add it to that because i think that question is applicable to a lot of issues not just money and politics.

leadergreat civil rights henderson would say, you have to be a friend to make offerings. i find it there particularly among progressive groups, there is a tendency to come to communities of color and ask line, ihat's not to my heard another activists say this in a criminal justice convening in california saying we are tired. saying we are tired of you coming to us for you to hold up our signs. able to have conversations about strategy and policy and we have ideas. people just come to us when they need bodies were true -- troops. that is one part. the other part is be a friend to make a friend is how is that issue connecting with people?

amongk particularly progressives, there's a sense of why are people voting against their own self interests. without making those connections are bringing that to the level where people are need of an intervention because there's something existential or present they are facing. court, for example, that is another topic that tends to be off track, for the average voter. i can tell you as a result of leavingeme court case, undecided the fate of executive order for immigration, that was a real education for a lot of folks following decades pulls lives hang in the balance about the importance of the supreme court. it is very different to experience it that way that have the like, hey, don't you care by bucks --the supreme court?

, not socially competent just about language, about english or vietnamese or spanish , it is about culture competency of what is the context of that community? how are they experiencing these issues? what are the connecting point? what is her own boarding, meaningful engagement point? >> if i can add why it is specific education, why it is important to engage at ndane.nday and -- mun , shooter was not indicted. why? the elected district attorney and cuyahoga county which is cleveland did not want to that person indicted. because of the activism of black lives matter, he was voted out of office, right?

michael brown, number two. prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich, they could've gotten a dime if they wanted to. a criminally low standard. it is problematic. -- gotten an indictment if they wanted to. people said to me, what can we do? to impelile a motion them to re-panel another grand jury? no, i said. you can elect a new district attorney and a new district attorney the day of election. the day he swears in cap panel another grand jury and do that, right? these sorts of decisions, we cannot wait until these are massive blowups. let's think about it before hand and get engaged. the supreme court, this why the supreme court matters.

that is why these appointments matter. what a pro or against, these have very real consequences that work themselves down in concrete ways. you are behind to the eightball until you let it work its way that is antagonistic to what you think is a good use of public resources. >> i am glad you said that because i get at the same quest. what can we do about in this community? i said i do not know what your issues are here but you let the chair and the district attorney and the sheriff is the people who put in jail the larges of the 2.2 million people. the sheriff has discretion over how it works. there is discretion over who gets ticked up on what and gets released and will gets prosecuted. major latitude that every citizen lives in a you can have an effect on that. if we all collectively thing and our brave enough to think that petitions before

president obama right now, all of those people should be released before he leaves office in three months, were in the hell are the protesters -- where in the hell of the protesters demanding the release? when the governor of virginia did this remarkable thing off pardoning to it or 50,000 felons who had completed their sentences and restore their voting rights, which is the reverse by the virginia supreme court and began a methodical process are we pardoning all of these people and now 30,000 people into the process of pardons. i'm surprised there was not a giant core writs of a claim across the country. why aren't there more people, why aren't you doing the same? why aren't democratic governors under pressure -- much less the republicans to consider those things. ofre's a curious combination

frustration over even among timid ts, a committee -- matter is aives first contradiction to this, a timidity over whether they have control of the immediate circumstances of their public lives. and a huge hunger and demand of what these leaders are supposed to accomplish for us. so many oft is why us were not paying attention when this regime was put in place and ended up incarcerated so many people. >> right out of his window, harvard student could get caught and a dime bag a marijuana an officer will take it and reported to the student's dean and tell the young person to have a good day. five miles away, that person would be in handcuffs and in the system. why?

one constituency demands a certain issue be dealt with in one way and another constituency regrettably does not have the voice to make the same demand. >> let's take the question right here. yes, it isess -- true the police will not arrest the kid and harvard because there is an assumption and demand the all hell will raise on the police officer should he dare to dedicated to jail. it is not true with respect in the black community folks are not demanding on a daily basis. you have to stand outside in detroit where i am from and every time the police roll up and they are putting somebody in the back, the entire community is coming out and saying, what did he do? why are you doing that? their singular the kid, called -- as they are saying to the kid, call me. it is about power. it goes to the point you made.

it is about money. it is about power. i do not feel it is about people not speaking doubt. >> it is how they speak out which goes to the point of civic going to vote for particular people who do exercise is a discretion. i agree. i grew up in one where we thatained but then complained in a register at the ballot box or a whole host of structural reasons. -- for a whole host of structural reasons. from georgetown, a law professor, butler, he advocated war without these huge meetings in d.c. where the community is taught if you are a juror, do not convict on nonviolent drug crimes because that will send the message to stop picking on certain communities

disproportionately. that is the kind of thing i am about. did not mean to cut you off. >> a question from the lady in the front. >> thank you for your comments. i work over at the business school working on a project looking at the history of african-americans at the business school. i want to build off of your comment about money and power at the root of a lot of this. and posed the question, whether or not within the context of our foundation being built on money ,nd power, built on stolen land will we ever have a moment in our civil rights dialogue where we talk about reparations for african american people without laughing? without saying it will never happen? will there ever be a real conversation to rectify economic, social oppression in the form of economics? will we be able to do that?

>> do you want to take a crack? >> i will take a crack. there been different moments and that have been fleeting and short-lived. not as interested in the dialogue. out that wer hold will have a much longer discussion about reparations and perhaps legislation and or real policy responses around it. , what ishat is needed needed, what can help push this forward is what is going on right now. if you look at lack lives in -- blacklicy platform lives matter policy platform, they call economic reparations. just thinking slavery but that is incredibly important to think about. nativeferent ways in land has been taken and stolen and the different ways in which

the black communities and different communities of color in which different things have been taken and are owed. the discussion continues on a. in terms of reparations for slavery, some of the work that is being done right now and has already been done, there is good work, not like we do not know who the individuals are and we cannot codify. we know these things. another area of work that i am invested in with a number of people is wanting to understand the industries that survive today that profited all of of labor in post-civil war era. white and pink grocery store in the south for you i was thinking about u.s. still, jpmorgan and

that is where that money comes from. of working the hope in the area right now, these corporations accountable for a lot of that has happened. areaw it is a business where number of insurance companies, aetna is one of them insured slaveholders. is that something that should be owed. it is always an important question to ask. had to this moment in the 1980's and 1990's and then a 2008, we rely, oh yeah. casehen now, it is not the . deeply entrenched injustices and black people and a lot of people of color has been there's never been a long period of time where black people were not being a murder by law enforcement. crazy? crazy? -- is it

i do not remember a time. people are engaging this long history more than what they did before. i think as will take time. >> yeah, i will add one thing. there'sion that even more terrorism today than ever before, i tweeted out after the horrible events in orlando and people may similar karma -- comments that was not the most violent or most -- highest .umber of americans killed if we go back to chicago in 1919 ,0 years before that, rosewood huge numbers of people killed. some of the issues became part of the reparations discussion prior to 2001 that was largely directed by dr. charles ogletree at the law school. i was with dr. ogletree in july

-- late august 2001 at the u.n. conference on racism in south africa and others may have been there. controversial at the time because the bush administration barred secretary powell from taking delegation. that was the peak of the reparations movement that was so fertile at the time. i used to joke until that movement, no one ever said the words reparation in america who was not wearing the dishes be. fashionwho was in every . -- was not wearing a dashiki. ining the meeting, it was the durban city hall, extraordinary memory of mine ,he black caucus was there remarkable constellation of african-american leaders and others in the room to discuss the reparations topic.

ogletree was trying to win over more leaders and jesse jackson makes her surprise appearance and walks into the room. if you know his history, reverend jackson historically andopposed to reparations viewed as a great distraction of the movement as did other civil rights leaders. he walked into the room, he took over the space completely. to the microphone and began talking. , he said allaking of you know, i have always opposed the movement of embracing reparations of but my views have changed. he said the request so fight must be a central objective of the civil rights movement and as we do that, other things must fall away. it was an extraordinary moment. i am witnessing a turn that is going to be highly consequential . two days later, we got on planes and flew back to new york and two days after that, the planes

crash in the world trade center. nobody heard the words reparation expressed again for a long time. where back to a moment there may be serious consideration about whatever reform it may take. did you want to say one last thing? this,titutions like harvard, brown, georgetown, places where it is happening and students are intimately involved in driving the conversation and defining justice comprehensively . and i applauded the work you are doing encourage you to do it not a you need help loss but you have it anyway -- applause but you have it anyway. >> we have to cut it off. one more? no, sorry. thank you all. we enjoyed it. and thank you the panel. [applause] >> political news this morning.

dr. ben carson tweeted this morning an announcement is forthcoming about my role in helping to make america great again. dr. carson retweeted this from fox -- is a hud was one of the offers on the table. president-elect donald trump has announced south carolina governor nikki haley is his pick to be you in a vascular. meanwhile -- you in ambassador. family will be spending time at the private club in palm beach, florida. he has a residence there. no word on if he will be holding meetings over the holiday. one of the political issues that has come out is a new poll showing more than half, 55% of u.s. voters oppose his promise to build a wall along the mexican border. last week, mr. trump said he would consider fencing for some parts of the boundary.

>> following the transition of government on c-span and donald trump a comes the 45th president of the united states a republic's remain control of the u.s. house and senate. we will take you to key events as they happen. watch live on c-span. watch on-demand at www.c-span.org or listen on our freedom c-span radio app. >> thank you all very much. announcer: tonight on c-span, discussion on school segregation if rachel's investigative journalist who speaks about how racial segregation is maintained. i really decided i wanted to what is causing this? why our neighborhoods still segregated 50 years after we passed fair housing act?

why our schools still segregated am not only segregated, you look across every measure lack a latino students are getting least qualified teachers. i wanted to understand why that was. and that is really when my work began to focus on looking at a particular action that will taken in the past but also that people are taking right now that maintains segregation and racial inequality. we segregation was way to do that. if a place was segregated is an integrated, you could go back to that point where it starts to re-segregate. somebody had to do something. i sort of looking at school district ordered by federal courts to integrate. they will layout certain things they you must you do.

you have to bust these kids or have to have racial balance. and then, once the school district is released from the court order, that could do whatever they want. they can crate all black schools as long as they never say a because want to discriminate against black his, they can do it -- black kids, they can do it. as school district or school have been integrated and you can find who did what, who made this decision. later today, that discussion on school segregation, its history what is going on today from columbia university school of journalism at 8:00 p.m. eastern. james madison is the architect of the constitution and he might be. and jordan larson as the general contractor and if you ever go , what to the architect has

in mind. larson talksward about george washington's role in unifying the country in his new but "george washington: nationalist." electy wanted to washington it would. madison had talked about it and said it will never work. washington was a true republican. he believed in republican government. "q&a."er: on c-span's announcer: a couple of sessions from the techcrunch disrupt conference in september. first we hear about the future of facebook messenger and a conversation about top technology officers about their role in the digital government. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your disrupt mc and tech writer, jordan crook.

♪ guys?: what up, so happy to be back here. a favorite thing for me in san francisco. this is it, literally. you guys live in a great city. is.where to lay she i want to welcome you to the hunger games. we're going to have a blast. it is early and you guys are never going to laugh at my jokes. we have an amazing lineup. a couple of things before we get started. disrupt.use # directly into the conversation. go ahead and do that now. without further do, i will bring up our first guest. please welcome david marcus from facebook the manager and our moderator. ♪

-- facebook messenger and our moderator. ♪ >> thank you for joining us today. >> thanks for having me. >> messenger is always strived to be different from sms. first group texting and embraced stickers, animated gifts, what you see as the next big differentiator? like aeally, really real-time communications. as you have seen recently, we just announced and opened up to everyone this new thing we call instant video that enables you to have video. your videoyou unmute for the other press to see while you type in you can start streaming while the other person had the honor a bus or a meeting and type and see you or see what you want to show them. we're going to continue investing in real-time communications. one of the things we have not

talked about is we have over 300 million active users of video. that makes message or one of the biggest real-time apps in the world. jason: your not had video calling for very long, about a year ago. get me, how does video messenger to one million users but many feel like it was because you forced people to download messenger. does that ever feel at the hollow victory? david: we do not feel like it is a victory or not a victory. downloads pretty it is people using the app on a monthly basis and the vast majority of them on a daily basis. it is actually people communicating with one

by the notion -- energized by the notion we can build things as then the 4 billion people on the platform will get to use it. is surely benefits from having a messenger be is on app, more room for extra features. you're cramming conversation into one-size-fits-all and recently you started to remove the ability to message from the mobile website. don't users deserve more choice about how they communicate? david: deal -- and you know any other mobile apps that have video? is a good point. you are the biggest so you must be held to a different point. david: messaging apps do not

work if notifications are not enabled for everyone. on facebook, not everybody has push notifications. an messenger, everybody has push notifications. messenger, you can get people to respond faster and it works. when we survey our users, they tell us they feel like people will respond faster on messenger than text. that is great because the first and you want messaging app to do is be reliable, fast and no people will respond quickly. just think there has to be situations where people might be and do use a mobile app and not have the time or bandwidth to download an app, would you say to those users? david: we have been careful not to remove access to people who are on older android devices that may not have memory to downloaded the app or network additions to download the app at a certain point in time. but notal --

-- just a bank sometimes you have to make decisions that users may not like -- jason: sometimes had to make decisions that users may not like and also typically benefit face looked as well. -- facebook as well. good for facebook. how do you guys balance facebook's agenda with user benefits? i do not think we ever think about it that way. product like no matter, if you're a startup or a startup or large company, when you build a product, you want the vast majority of people out of their to use it, to like it and engage with it. that is why you come to work in you build things that are actually solving real problems in the daily lives of people.

we do not think about, let's do that because we think we will make a bunch of money on the other side. -- jason: facebook mostly make us money from the newsfeed. still, you must make decisions thinking about the long road and data you are pulling from users for boxing doubt other competitors in terms of the newest capabilities. when you work with mark zuckerberg on these features, how do you guys make top level, strategic decisions about where to go with a messenger? is that your job or his? david: we're doing get together. it is great to work with mark because it can execute really and and are short medium-term and has a really bold long-term vision as well. it is great to work with a mark on messenger. the way where thinking about things are pretty simple. what are the fundamental things people want to do when they talk

to with another? they have one-on-one conversations, group conversations. we needed to make sure we built at the right experiences so that people use the product and find more utility in the product. we invested in a lot of things we have not talked about. in the last six months, we have invested in performance. while with added a ton of features, we made messenger way faster. isregate startup time on ios -- seconds. on android, it is 1.38 seconds. it is really fast. we cut to the latency by 30%. all of those things we do not talk about are things we continue investing in because want to made messenger the best messaging app out there. just bang you talk about wanting to be useful for people. you touch my wanted to

be useful for people. you launched an app. what was missing from it? here: what we want to do is building ecosystem. when you want to build an ecosystem and bring developers and bring up he would discover new types of experiences and at the same time, reinvent the experience and interaction model on that scale, it is not easy and it takes time. what we wanted to do was put to the stake in the ground and enable all of the enablers, all of the companies to me in and build capabilities. from that standpoint, it has been successful. over 34,000 developers on the platform and they are building either capabilities for third parties or actual experiences. the problem was it got a really overhyped very, very quickly. the basic capabilities we provided at that time were not good enough to replace

traditional apps and interfaces and experiences and so what we have done in the past couple of months is we have invested and build more more capabilities and provided a lot guidance on how to build a successful experience. number ofve seen as a vertical working really, really well. like a news is working really well. engagement on news boxes is really good and techcrunch is one of the best ones. cnn is another one in a bunch of others. what we have seen is that other companies are able to build experiences that covert users to paid users for their services in debt with a much higher conversion then redirecting to a mobile website or app. maps.com in europe has abated experience in major -- in messenger and they are converting to pay subscribers

recently directed to a mobile site. like are other experiences -- in india that does bill pay and all of these things. they are converting 10x the direct into mobile sites. we are seeing more and more of these things. we are releasing a brand-new update to the platform. messenger platform. it brings a whole lot of new capabilities, even more engaging experience. jason: one of the things i thought was the most lacking from the platform at the time launch was to make a native payments. i was going to grill you about the that. you build to that now, right? david: yes. jason: you are working with payment networks to build that, it is not all infrastructure. you used to work with paypal. is paypal who you're working

with? david: we are working with almost everyone on the solution. we are working with paypal, strike, mastercard, visa, mastercard -- american express. what we have done, the two main announcements we have on this new update to the platform is one, we are releasing a new enhanced web view capability. you can basically draw ui instead of the thread and determine the height of the window so you could have the proper ui in context of the thread. and native payments. those are the two main updates. more to this new platform release. we think we have the best in of -- of both worlds. in the thread, you have identity , transactional capability, the ability to draw ui, ability to draw native buttons and

interfaces and basically different physics to those different spaces. imagine you are trying to book an airline ticket. you go into a thread, the actual atent capture is great in conversational way. i want to go to paris tomorrow. and then you basically have results that can come up a web fast.it is really you have native payments and then you can get your are 10 reposted back in the thread which is meant to stay a you can check in and do all of these things have customer support. all of theseinging type of mobile experiences together is what ultimately is going to make a platform successful. many of those were not there when you first launched. honestly, what happened is a lot of developers do not feel like that enough time for the final functionality to build a good

bot. facebook will always be the news. there are so many users prefer some developers, they may only got that one chance to make a splash and they do not necessarily have the capability. how long i had of the launch did you give developers? david: a couple of weeks only. jason: is that enough time? david: probably not. jason: it seemed a little short. you are focusing more on the set to launch date. did you guys end up prioritizing secrecy and making a big/about putting that stake and the ground over being able to launch? the problem is you can look at this in different ways. i choose to look at it is a long journey. you need to start somewhere. a great opportunity to get

developers' atttention. we have a lot from the conference and starting to build. since been six months-ish we launched and welfare to 4000 developers on the platform. with a lot of middleware that have built -- we have a lot a middleware that built connected if -- conductivity. today, there is a really good book that is launching. it was actually get you a free drink in new york and other cities are in it is probably too early. and the way it works is really cool. you get from news feed to messenger which is something we are releasing today which is destination ads. you can get people straight to messenger and connect with people directly. you combined intent connection and with the case, it tells you

where to go to get a free drink on absolut. you get a cold and you give the cold to the bartender and he gives you your free drink. you get a notification inside a thread that offers a lyft ride back home. when you think about it in the sense of an app, that is not an app. it is such a great opportunity for brands to engage their users in a brand-new way in those type of things are really working well. jason: i am sure bartenders will love for me to show their code and figuring out how to make a work. when you think about the platform, a lotta people are saying bots are a sad, word you think -- a fad, what you think we will use them? bots but is not about how can you get an experience

like so. we interact with people and with services and we interact with brands and with businesses. if there are a bunch of different things that the capabilities with opened up that are really selling. at the basic, basic stage like customer service on messenger ined on was was released april is really flourishing and a number of large companies. rogers in canada which is the largest in canada's providing customer support on messenger and seeing a left and customer -- lift and customer satisfaction. iss also a messenger and working really well and has hypertension. as in all of these different experiences which brands are enables them to connect directly to their customers. if you are a cpg company like the ability for you to target a

demographic and then get one on one with your customer is brand-new. you would never been to do that before. when you combine all of these capabilities that we are announcing today, you see companies that are going to launch soon an updated version of their bots where you will be able tell book airline tickets and hotels in a really fast, really easy way that i think will be pretty close to having a native app. am interest and not having to talk to humans about getting a plane taken. where do you see the future of the navigation and dictation and voice for facebook messenger? david: this is not something were actively working on now. we have the ability if you want to use voice, you can leverage voice quips and process these. it is an ok experience. i do not feel like it is great.

assome point, it is obvious we develop more more capabilities and interactions within messenger, we will work with voice interfaces. jason: i would love to be the switch from threats by saying and switch around especially if i am to use hands-free while i am working. not necessarily while i am driving. that would be a big deal with amazon at go and -- echo and alexa a big hit. do you think you are waiting to long? david: maybe. then: looking further future, you guys how bots, you got a working more with businesses. what does messenger look like five years from now? david: when you look at all of these entities that you interact with, bringing it all together. can you bring your daily life onto messenger in a more organized way and actually have

the best high quality, high fidelity interactions with people and businesses? and get an opportunity for developers to get distribution. --are driving did not only has messenger got over to one billion monthly users that has grown as measured tremendously in the last couple of years. we want to continue accelerating that trend and making it a more central part of daily life. jason: is group video going to be a part of it? david: if you look at what we launched to date, have nothing to announce, it is a pretty logical thing to build a one point for just i feel a little smile. -- jason: i feel a little smile. what will you do to kill off the final foe which is sms.

david: it is a question of reach in messaging. theaging is all about ability for you to reach all of the people you want to reach. not like 95% of the people you want to reach. we are increasing our reach and penetration in smartphone users and we just need to grow it. as we grow its, people will continue using get. -- using it. if you look at sms of versus messenger, no-brainer to use messenger on android because experience is so much better, you can do so much more. ability toth the also get your text messages inside messenger, you get all of one -- you get all-in-one messaging in one place. it is the way we're going to make this happen.

jason: you're making great strides. you have 300 million people using audio and video at breaking mobile payments for you admit it maybe you would of light to a given messenger developers more time to make something more great. the ideas to bring it all together in one cap -- app. you could do your whole day life and messenger. thank you. [applause] >> unlike josh looks dapper, i decided to dress down. i called the start of sheikh. i did i know if you know but i have something to swisher. -- i call this the start up chic. if you think i am standing up in hawking t-shirts, you're wrong, it is the swisher. but not right now. we have an amazing panel.

please welcome our next guest, jason robins from draftkings. and our moderator. >> thank you for coming. are you excited talk about sports and roomful of nerds, including myself? >> as i've said many times, i am a nerd. >> who has played on draftkings before? draftkings is a daily fantasy sports app, what is daily fantasy sports? >> a segment on the overall game where basically instead of playing for an entire season, you play for a day or in the case of football, a weekend. it is pretty much the same of what typical sports fans are accustomed to. you pick a player as if you are the general manager and those players get points and then you play against people. wherever scores the most wins.

fitz: and it is over. you the plague and if you want. fitz: why do people like a more? jason: and brings was season-long fantasy sports and bring and eliminate some the things people do not like. people love the draft and picking players for it you get to do it everyday or soften as you like. people love the scoring and playing with their friends. what sometimes people, including me was placed season-long fantasy claim about, you get an injury and you are out of it. some of the daily sports, moreially -- it is engaging. you do not have the baggage of carrying players that maybe you thought they were good when you drafted and then they got injured. for some the daily sports, it is important to have flexibility. if you do not want to play every single day, you cannot play season-long. yesterday was the

first-ever nfl season. a big day. espn fantasy was down all day. jason: yes. fitz: how many people use yours? most exciting is we have a big push. with talked a lot about moving more towards getting people who like to play with their friends and social play and that was the focus of we rallied the whole company around and driving that. social play was up 3x year over year. get: a ballpark number to people in idea. millions of people playing? jason: on a given sunday, we usually have millions of people caught -- across free and paid play. yesterday, we ran a huge free contest and we had about 500,000 people enter. fitz: what was the price? jason: $100,000 total. the top prize was 15k.

and we had one that was almost 2 million entrants. winner when?d the jason: about $1 million. fitz: why is it to this gambling? there is a distinction between games of skill and the law. it is a game of skill. the way the law distinguishes between games of skill and games of chance. fitz: if there is chance in their, if it rains, my team is going to be affected. game. that is every if you're playing golf, the wind can pick up. things in any of game of skill some chance. but overall, it is a game of skill. fitz: i have tried a few times

and i come in the last. i attest to it being a game of skill. four years ago, you worked at the vistaprint as a marketing manager. four years later, you are the ceo of a billion dollar company. how? how does it happen? jason: i've always had a passion for sports, fantasy sports. i used to play chess and played in tournaments. it was the germane for me to start something. and it worked in the tech industry before and i had a lot of friends interested in this really have the entrepreneurial spirit. i was wanted to do it. right after the bubble burst the traditional route -- fitz: i was not slimed you it is amazing. the dailyt invent

fantasy sports. what was your official pitch to vc's? emphasizing our backgrounds. we love to the game. we felt that that was born be where we could differentiate a look of the general market at the time and no one was really putting it all together with test products and analytics. we backgrounds at our histories would allow us to be competitively advantaged in this stage, combined with the fact that we knew the consumer and we had a feel for what we thought we would want. it is very hard. in the beginning, fundraising was brutal. from an up raising investor in boston, and it was really hard. we brought in a board member who francisco-based, helping on the west coast.

also, i have to give two more shout outs. my wife, who let me come to this, which i appreciate. secondly as to jeremy who over the last eight months, helped us go from a tech company that did not know a lot about regulation to really being sophisticated there. talk all about that. so it was hard to raise money. around 50-60ly people said no until i got to my first yes. probably another 50 said no before i got to yes. i mentioned, bring on the new board member. i knew a little more by then. i had never done this before. , a bighim -- an approach people, thisce for target. what really made a difference is i prequalified investors. i said, is this something that will ever be of interest to you?

a lot of people do not tell you up front. i did it thinking i was traveling and wanted to limit my meetings. i should have done that on the east coast fundraising. by the time i got out here, i had a great qualified pipeline. there, the round happened very quickly as a result. raised a lot since then. is that the number? over 600 million. you have some really impressive investments now. baseball, major league soccer as a league, the nhl as a league, and the patriots -- >> jerry jones, the yankees, president. would any entrepreneur kill to have one of those people

invest in the company. jason: the most recent round was revolution, ted lyons, one of the founding members, owns the washington wizards. we are fortunate. what is cool is speed -- people in the sports world get it. it is part of what is fun about having a sports company. those are the people who understand what the product is and what it means and they are the people who can help us get introduced to the right relationships and help us understand how to continue to make the product better. >> how does it help you guys? it brings credibility to our brand, belief in our brand and our company is huge. there is also a lot we have done with the money on the integration side. you can seamlessly integrate. if your player comes up to bat, siri will announce to you -- you

tap a button. if you are a subscriber, you watch that and can seamlessly link back to draft things. you got that investment, that was the first major league, were you like wow? jason: i thought it would take more time. cool tog small and follow but we will see how it goes. the fact that major league baseball took interest in other sports leagues followed suit, it showed me they were ready for this and they knew it was something that would be transformational for their content. do you bringenefit to them? this, when people play they significantly increase

content. something like 80% report they consume more content. almost half of our customers say they started following a new sport since they started playing draft kings. those are powerful and they drive -- draft kings is a cool industry. we are lifting these other industries. when you arent trying to take something from someone then when you are posting industries. you make partnerships and alliances you otherwise could not create. david: i want to get into the legislative stuff. it seems like it has been smooth sailing. but it was not really like that. of events that guys come up with in the course of a month or two, the first thing was one of your employees one day or and in the next

two, the department of justice opened an investigation. then the nevada gaming control andd said it was gambling in the state and then that new york attorney general issued a cease and desist. thisyou like, holy shit, is over? jason: it was a tough time and a lot was coming at once. we were prepared for it mentally . required to get a crash course in understanding how to navigate those things. were prepared. the earliest days, when we could not raise capital and we were running out of money and it felt like it would be the end, i remember an amazing run where it seemed like every major sports league and team owner, capital was -- this was before.

up in front stood of the company and said that the numbers were skyrocketing, over 10 user growth year after year. everything was through the roof. we were a darling, really. good. all i remember feeling like, just 2.5 years ago, i was not sure we would be able to raise this to get to the next level. that was the most stressful i never felt. companywith the september of last year and i rightthis feels great now. we should celebrate and enjoy it. but building a big company is about ups and downs. it will not always be this way.

it can go to either extreme. everything you described happened and i remember thinking back to that and thinking back right,early days and all this will be challenging and i think we have the right people here in the right mental makeup to get through it. i am geared up. issues outss the there. no one ever took their eyes off the ball. the passion we felt for it, in some ways it helped rally the -- usy, like it is up against the world and i think that helped a lot in terms of pulling everyone together. the metrics are remarkable for a company that went through a trying time. it rallied everyone together because people are so passionate about the product and the mission and what we were doing. david: you had some help. you hired lobbyists and

world-class expensive lawyers. -- not want to see jason: did a fantastic job. it was amazing to see the response. listening there are over 100,000. is just one state. if you look across the country, it was close to one million plus and i think that lets legislators know. when i was in new york, a legislator walked to me and they were dealing with the heroin epidemic and other tough things. i have never,

gotten in my entire 25 years, as much outreach and support of something as i did for this. that meant a ton to me that people cared enough and wanted enough and that is the difference. in support of our customers and everyone wants to see us successful. david: the media was having a field day and there were rumors of you merging with the biggest competitor, if anyone does not know. were there talks between you? always been have talks. i have gone on record saying it is an interesting discussion. mergers are always tough. that you be something think is better than just an idea that can be executed on. there are always talks. where that leads and when, we

will see. we have been talking on and off for the last year and a half or so. the devil is in the details. it is complicated to put two companies together. , there isime is right potential for something like that, but it has to be right. i think everyone knows right now, it is a really important time of year for us. it is important to focus on the nfl season. we will see if those talks ever go anywhere. david: what would the benefit of these two that merger? companye would have a with more liquidity in our marketplace, which is the most important value to customer. i also think the fact that there is a lot of synergy on the legislative side and the legal side, everything you just talked about we were double paying for for the most part. there is a lot of synergy there. david: you got the mlb to invest

in you. to stake yoursh claim in the sports world between you and them? think maybenow, i there is some of that but i also think for us at least, it is more focused on we are creating a new industry, we are trying to grow that industry, we are trying to expand markets. it is important to have relationships with the league. they control the content. if they do not have a good relationship with us, it limits what they can do with the content. will be i know i showing later on the facebook live feed and a lot of people ask me how you get video highlights and stuff like that in there. if we want to be able to get those things in there, it is important we have a close relationship. dk life.t's talk about the app.

like af people say it is stab at espn and you are trying to become a media company. are you? think anyoneot does anything as a stab at espn. i love espn. we think of things less about who the competition might he and more about what is our customer want and what do we need and what is a natural expansion for us. there are a lot of apps out there and espn is one of them. nothing really caters specifically to the sports -- the fantasy sports fan the way the red zone channel caters to that. it shows just highlights of key place and it is so clearly designed for a fantasy audience. a lot of scoring apps are out there and they are useful for create an how do we experience for the fantasy fan that is every bit as good digitally as the scoring at and

that was the goal. i think nolan has really done that. it is not about trying to compete as trying to provide for customers that we are well situated to provide. if you could create an app for people who are not in the fantasy but huge sport fans, would you? jason: eventually, yes. but the focus is fantasy fans and we have about 7 million customers there 50,000 people in north america alone place -- play fantasy sports. customers are a natural point to promote to for us, it is about reaching that audience. then we will see if it makes sense to expand. if there is no other at out

there the way this is. david: thank you for sitting down with us. we are excited to see where you go next. jason: thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> first of all, congratulations on the new audit. you apparently got three customers before we announced it. >> we launched a three minutes ago. people areted that already getting excited about what we're doing here. >> fantastic. we are getting adjusted on the fly. monetizationirst of this product and it has been around for a long time. >> almost nine years. a year ago, that was the start of the change of us becoming an

independent company, and we realized with 25 million your this waslion users, the culmination of all of that effort. >> in that time, you all were with thisto market version of a data set, tracking new startup companies. and likegot insight 100 other companies that have launched around the thesis of doing data analysis. would you have done anything differently? do you feel like you have lost a competitive advantage by letting these guys take market share? >> i do not think so. we have more users than any of them. about one million users a week and that let's us, the reason people come to us is because our data is exceptional and people

expect to see it. we have democratized that data set and allowed anyone who has interest, we let you analyze that data and extracted the value you are looking for. jonathan: you have a number of users, but you have like three customers right now, right? and i am saying from a customer acquisition standpoint, these guys are little bit ahead. jager: sure. we just lost our application. we have other revenue streams. almost 100 customers are paying for and we also have advertising as well. this is our next foray into a new revenue stream. been the if you have

ceo years ago, would you have done anything differently? jager: i do not think so. we built a all of these users so when you search for a company, we are one of the first things you see. do when you're focused on revenue and trying to build applications. that becomes the thing to pay the most attention to. i think we have the right focus for now. see a lot of other names for companies that are doing this data stuff get referenced in the press. about frenchclips space and the way it is used just by journalist, it is minimal compared to others that hit a lot more regularly. is that something that will change with a new product set? are you looking to open it up it be morell accessible?

are you looking to partner with other companies to get the data out there in circulation more widely? jager: one of the coolest features is you can make a list and have it he complicated and that is great. can also take it and share it. not just with other users. you can also search and say let's say it is drone companies merging, you can take that same canch on twitter and people see the results and see what query you used. journalists might decide to make a list and then put that along with the article. like here in the data that proves what i was just talking about. other people will use that as well. i played around with it a little bit. picture me a little bit. when you look at the features that, what are you most proud of in the new version?

jager: we completely re-architected it to support this. you will see it is extremely fast. manyould expect to take seconds are almost instantaneous. another feature is relationship searches. a lot of competitors will let you look at the top layer may be with a certain amount of funding . you navigate the entire graph so you can ask ridiculous questions. that let's you ask questions like, show me all of the companies who have women founders who used to work at sales force who went to stanford and ask a ridiculous question and get answers back within seconds. we are excited about this. jonathan: how many of you all use this?

raise your hand. all right you all are engaged. you all are excited about this stuff. and yet my twitter is sadly empty. come on, guys. trying it out. problems i had with the data set is when i first played around with it, consistently, it was really dirty, like really dirty data. what are you doing to clean that up and what confidence should people have? should people think about it as >> the last at -- year, we completely changed how we get data in the country. driven.to be community

there were very little checks and balances to see if the data were any good. we have a new strategy. we have four pillars of what is a good data set. one is community. 300,000 contributors and it is usually the object doors themselves. we have an amazing partner network. data.end us portfolio that is stuff that is hard for anyone to replicate. eight or nine years to go into to form those partnerships. the government primary stream of data direct the, coming with a check and balance. the third of the four is automation. learning ai and all of that to figure out what is happening in the ecosystem, and we checked to see if it makes sense to be in their. that are our

research team, and we have a vast research team looking and double checking to see what data should or should not go in. looks like spam, this looks suspicious, the way we do that is complicated. the research team double checks and it already becomes checks and balances with each other. this is how they look to investors. youwanted to look right and wanted to look good. if you start line, investors will figure that out and you lose all credibility. ofathan: i noticed a couple companies i might not have expected to see. let's call them easter eggs. a lot of hits come through, check that out. >> by the way, they are both cool companies.

i know it is a low-cost data. how is that working? jager: when we knew we were building it, we knew it would allow people to analyze the data set. we had to make it look good. funding part of our went into making sure the data looks good. we spent a decent amount of cash on that process. something like 8 million with all of the evidence last year. one third came from the community and one third came from our own research team. add it all up across the data set, it is a lot of work

jonathan: yes. for sure. and it shows. it is a much nicer looking product than the one i was forced to work with years ago. [laughter] totally not better. -- totally not bitter. there's more of an ability for people to build on top of the data. that seems to have gone away. are you worried at all that this move from free to premium, what that may mean? for the user base jager: thank you for the opportunity to -- what that may mean for the user base? jager: thank you for the opportunity to answer that. yes, the data is still there. not all of it. some of the premium data we do not put behind a pay wall. on the functionality side, crunchbase.com come other free

stuff you had and how you use crunchbase, all of that is exactly the same. the original starting point, what is crunchbase pro -- what it can't be is taking crunchbase and putting pay walls in front of it. add features on top of crunchbase and charge for those. either way, we also give some of those away. so anyone without a trial or a credit card, you can on the left side, click any of them. how many companies have female founders in crunchbase? you can do that search. jordan: i'm super lazy, but one of the things you are describing is a functionality that seems to be a little awkward. i remember at another company i

used to work at previously, i had access to a database. those queries were a little smoother. is there a way to refine that process? is that something that you all want to do? jager: we are going to listen to what our users say. we are in a world where we can iterate on weekly releases now. what has crunchbase done lately? it looks like nothing. now that it is out there, we can release new features, make changes, and streamline it pretty quickly. what we have is a tool that is pretty powerful. you need to play around with it and learn how it works, but once you have done that, we think he will be happy with the questions and answers you can get. jonathan: i have been beating you up a little bit about my problems that i have with the product, but what do you see as some of the things that need to get done to improve? jager: i think right now, we challenge our users to say, hey,

do you think the company you are looking for is in crunch space? often times the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is no. one of the challenges we have is how do we go and expand the breadth of the data. a lot of companies will talk about how many hundreds of thousands of companies they have on their data set, but you need to have a level of quality that is up to our standards before we consider it acceptable to import. we want a large number of companies that have that high-quality bar. alaska airlines in crunchbase? yes, we are. we don't want that to be an expectation. we just want every company to be there. jonathan: so how do you get every company in there? jager: we have a series of partnerships. it lets us go wide and deep. just today, we were announcing

that we won some great hardships. he did -- great partnerships. the data is not in crunchbase yet, but we are getting it in there. companies like glassdoor, all these different sort of data sets. we are going to bring in huge inmates amounts of their data into our system, analyze it along with the other data sets. really trying to get people thinking about crunchbase as the master record of the internet -- on the internet of companies. jonathan: is the idea to become the linkedin of companies? do you want to be a linkedin killer? jager: i think linkedin for people is really cool. if we can become a linkedin, facebook for companies that help companies connect with one another, i think it's an interesting challenge that can take us into the long-term.

jonathan: what does that long-term look like? five years from now, what does the crunchbase product look like? what is on offer? jager: if you think about every company being in crunchbase at that point, we are focused on having companies care more and more about what their profile looks like. we are only going to have that community aspect, but allowing companies to go and put on applications, parts of crunchbase that allow users to access different parts. like imagine if there was a press release section that a company was controlling, or an rfp section that only certain types of companies can have access to. those are ways companies connect with other companies, and you need to have a lot of users using th