impossible. >> we will talk about the recent presidential social media summit , where president trump discussed social meter censorship by big tech firms and what to do about it. >> i think as consumers we can certainly demand that as users of facebook and twitter and google that we expect they will respect our ability to communicate. if we don't like it, we can quit. >> it seems hard to levy an accusation that big tech is a net negative to conservative speech when someone like dennis prager is getting one billion views on the products he is putting out. the communicators tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span ♪ ♪

brian: professor allison stanger, what's the famous middle berry protest? prof. stanger: what happened you mean? the story has been retold many times. a student group invited charles murray, rather controversial figure, libertarian scholar, to campus. and because they knew he was controversial, they invited me to ask three or four questions. and it went from there. brian: this was back in march? prof. stanger: the event was on march 2 and there was a run-up to the event were tensions rose and rose that it was whipped into a frenzy. some students organized a shutdown of the speech that was successful.

we went to a remote location to simulcast the exchange. that is where you got the incident where i was injured outside the lecture hall. brian: middlebury college is where? prof. stanger: middlebury college is in the green mountains of vermont, the champlain valley. in some sense, you can explain the reaction because it is almost a bubble within a bubble. every liberal arts campus is of -- is a bit of a bubble. it's in vermont which is the home of ben & jerry's and bernie sanders and the only state in the union with the smallest percentage of voters who voted for donald trump. the context is important to understand what transpired. brian: how many students? prof. stanger: 2350, so fairly small. brian: i found the number

$63,000 online but said that is what tuition and room and board cost for a year. prof. stanger: we make a real effort to try and make the experience available to as many bright, capable, young people as possible. there are significant numbers of students at middlebury on full financial aid, but an even greater number paid that enormous amount. that is quite extraordinary. brian: where did you get your education? prof. stanger: i got my education in two places. one was a small liberal arts college outside of chicago. it was elmhurst college. i went there for three years and was a math major. at the time.atics i ran out of math classes to take my senior year. there was a requirement that made me take electives and other topics. that's not what i wanted to do and then i transferred.

and i graduated from ball state in the great state of indiana. where you hail from as well. brian: your city is what? prof. stanger: fort wayne. brian: did you get a masters and then a phd? prof. stanger: i am a living example of taking some time to figure out exactly what interests you and why. i did an undergraduate degree in mathematics and science. then i did economics. i went to the london school of economics. sovietdid a masters at studies at harvard university, followed by a phd in political science at harvard. these questions that really have answers about mathematics, to unanswerable questions which come from humanities. i embraced both of those in my thinking and in my teaching. brian: how long have you been at middlebury college? prof. stanger: i went directly after graduate school, 25 years.

brian: are you at middlebury this semester? prof. stanger: no, not this year because i am on sabbatical. i had a scheduled sabbatical so currently i am a resident at the numeric foundation. brian: what does that do? prof. stanger: it is a think tank in washington that will enable me to finish my book provides a great environment for me to do that. brian: when you are at middlebury, would you teach? -- what do you teach? i teach a whole range of courses. i'm trained in international relations, but i have an interest in a variety of fields. american foreign-policy, the political development of western europe. a first year seminar on empires and a new course called the politics of virtual realities. i am leaving some things out, but that covers the main courses. brian: what is your view of your relationship with students for these 25 years? prof. stanger: i love my students.

and i think they love me back. i am seen as an honest broker. student groups asked me to interview charles murray, but then two weeks later, interviewed edward snowden. i'm equal opportunity. i have been very happy at middlebury because i do teaching, research, and writing. but with the teaching, i am absolutely sure at the end of the day that i have made a difference in the world because there is nothing like opening up someone's mind. that is what teaching is all about. brian: did the students protest edward snowden at all? prof. stanger: no. not at all. brian: why is that, you think? prof. stanger: it is pretty straightforward. most college campuses are leaning left. in some sense those terms left and right don't mean anything today, but they are voting

democratic. a republican scholar is controversial to them. which is unfortunate because the republican party is the other major party and the united -- in the united states but that is what it is. it is very important, even though my students know i am a democrat, it is all the more important to engage with someone like charles murray because it shows that i agree with free and fair speech. which you have to have for liberal education to take place. brian: i looked up the ethnic population in vermont and found that there are 2.5% african americans in the state and in the city of middlebury it is almost nonexistent.

what does that do for the topic you are discussing? prof. stanger: vermont is one of the whitest states in the union. and middlebury is bringing in students from a vast array of different backgrounds, students of color. they land in vermont and there is no one who can cut their hair. they feel out of place. an institution has to try to make them feel like this is their institution, too. that is the heart of what is going on here. it is really easy to paint it as a picture of conservatives versus students of color, but really what is taking place is we have a situation where american values are at stake. and they don't belong to a particular party, or a particular identity group. they belong to all americans. and i think that is at the heart

of this issue we are discussing. i would not want to downplay the anguish that was expressed through those protests and through the shutdown because emotions are real and need to be validated, but the most important part is ok, you feel that way, but what do we need to do about it so that it is different? how can we move this forward and make it a better place for you? from my perspective, it is not about shutting down speech, or banning certain speakers from campus. it is about talking together about how we make the environment a place where everybody belongs. brian: how often have you met someone who teaches at middlebury who is conservative? prof. stanger: you know, it is not that many. brian: have you ever met anybody? prof. stanger: oh, of course. and they are some of my great friends because they are so

interesting to talk to. i myself at middlebury benefited enormously from talking to people there. there were professors you could disagree profoundly, but that interaction was so important for my own personal development that i want it to be available to other people. brian: charles murray talked about the bell curve. i want to run this. guest: [video clip] >> the whole book was about this distribution and change. dick and i heard about this and it was one of the cases where he said, yeah, that is a wonderful title. brian: what does it mean? >> it looks like a bell. it is a phenomenon that you see in all kinds of things in nature whether it is height, weight, or iq.

you get most people in the middle and a few people on each end, and the book is about the people on each end. brian: how much did you not about this when he was slated to come to middlebury? prof. stanger: i know about the whole bell curve controversy. i used it in a symposium that had critics write about the book, and i used it in a first year seminar on american constitutional democracy. it provoked students and got them angry. but then, i said, where does it say that? then they realize they liked the bottom line of the argument, but

-- they don't like the bottom line of the argument but they needed to focus on what chain in that logical reasoning, or set of assumptions that is problematic for them? that is an incredibly useful exercise. so you take that kind of initial shock, if you will, and channel it into reason discussion, and i think everybody learned something. brian: in reading about before you came today, or about the incident back in march, i saw some reference to the southern poverty law center and a description of charles murray, and one of the reasons why the students reacted the way they did. we got on their website, and i want to read you the beginning of what they say. charles murray, a fellow at the american enterprise institute has become one of the most influential social scientist in america, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and latino communities, women, and the poor. and he goes on to say about him,

according to murray, disadvantaged groups are disadvantaged because on average, they cannot compete with white men, who are intellectually, psychologically, and morally superior. he advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action, and the department of education are green, they cannot overcome the -- arguing that the public policy cannot overcome the inmate efficiencies. my question to you is, is that accurately portraying charles murray? prof. stanger: absolutely not. if that were what he was writing, i would see no point in discussing this but the frightening thing about that website is that in the run-up to his appearance on campus, you had faculty and students alike taking what you read to me, and said this man cannot speak here even though you can't substantiate some of those assertions. if you go and look at those quotes in context, he is often saying the opposite of what they

are saying he is saying. so, it was a terrible situation that i think led to what happened, that people did not think for themselves, didn't read for themselves in the didn't just come in here what he had to say first before drawing conclusions about his character and past work. it was like something you could not control because people just kept reading that website and saying that was all they had to know. we had faculty at middlebury college who had openly admitted they had never read charles murray, but because of the website, this is all you needed to know to know that you could be a righteous human being. brian: i want to run 25 seconds of the footage at middlebury protests so people can get a sense of what it was like. before we do though, where was this room? how big of a room was it?

prof. stanger: i think it could fit 300. it's my color student center. studentmccullough center. it is the same place two weeks later in which i interviewed edward snowden. brian: and the format of the evening, how did that come about? prof. stanger: it was restricted to students only, so you have to have a middlebury id to be admitted into the lecture hall. there were outside agitators, but they were not inside the lecture hall. so what you are seeing inside the lecture hall is all middlebury students. brian: let's just look at this and get a feel for it. [chanting] >> charles murray, go away! racist, sexist, anti-gay. charles murphy, go away! racist, sexist, anti-gay. charles murphy, go away! racist, sexist, anti-gay.

brian: charles murray, go away, racist, sexist, anti-gay. is any of that true? and didn't his daughter go to middlebury? prof. stanger: his daughter went to middlebury, and i would not use any of those terms to describe that man. brian: why were the students doing that? prof. stanger: it was a tragedy. there were students who wanted to shut the speech down, and there were allies wanted to be supportive. i know student after student who went there who did things they weren't planning to do precisely because of that small minority was so outraged, and so angry that they felt that to be a good human being, you had to do the same thing.

brian: what are they angry about? prof. stanger: about the gross inequality in the united states, about the existence of unequal treatment in the justice system, and about the election of donald trump, which none of those students wanted. we have real problems in this country that need to be addressed. they were legitimate in being concerned, but the tragedy to me is that the strategy they pursued brought about the very opposite of what they hoped to accomplish. brian: charles murray is at the american enterprise institute. this was the american enterprise institute's student group? prof. stanger: it was a club like any other club. brian: was he paid to go to middlebury? prof. stanger: no, nobody paid him anything. i am not part of the club, i don't know, but my understanding is -- brian: by the way, did you have to pay snowden? prof. stanger: he was paid a large amount of money. brian: who would've paid him?

prof. stanger: the middlebury activities board. that was a student choice pete -- speaker. brian: we have video of you after this erupted. you moved out of that room. how long to the demonstration go -- it the demonstration go on? prof. stanger: it just accelerated from their precisely because the speech was not shut down. it just enraged that small group of people who were determined to shut it down. so there were fire alarms going off, people screaming obscenities through the window. i don't know what clip you're going to show. i haven't watched any of it. and you set down with charles murray. prof. stanger: i have not watched it because it is so unsettling to me. they used these directional microphones. so what we were hearing is not what you are hearing on the tape. it is enhanced so you can hit a -- see you can hear the conversation, but it was absolutely terrifying to continue. brian: how far ahead of this that you knew something was going to happen?

prof. stanger: i didn't think anything was going to happen. before i walked out the door when we were confronted with the crowd that injured me, i said, i left my computer in the car, and i will go separately and meet you at the dinner. i had no clue it was going to happen. brian: had you met charles murray before? prof. stanger: no, but i knew of him and knew that he was some of the republican party takes very seriously. it was precisely the person i want my students to engage with. if we are only allowing democrats to appear on campus we are just an indoctrination center. we are not an institution of higher learning. brian: let's go back -- you moved to this other room. was that set up in advance? prof. stanger: yes. brian: television cameras in there? prof. stanger: yes, yes. exactly. that was a plan b. brian: and how far away was the room?

prof. stanger: it was in the basement of the building. i wish it was further away. brian: this again was only 30 seconds. >> harvard in 1962 is a place with a lot of rich kids. you then go to 1960 which is just a few years later. i told them to put people on the fire alarms. hold on just a second and they will turn those off. prof. stanger: this is unique in my academic career. >> i was speaking about where my son was attending. prof. stanger: that is pretty funny. brian: anyway, go back to that setting. how long did you --talk to charles murray? prof. stanger: i think it was roughly 30 minutes or 45 minutes. we took questions from our

students on twitter after the q&a, which was nice. brian: any of the students in the room stay with this whole process? prof. stanger: yes. that's what's so fascinating. on the one hand there is a coalition of students who are united and wanted to challenge charles murray but in a variety of ways. some want to shut them down and some students to participate in the broken inquiry statement who asked questions on twitter, so they stayed with it. they wanted to engage him. so the main message i would want to give to your audience is there is a variety of views at middlebury. it is not the monolithic, extremist place. it was just a small part of the population was amplified and a -- in is variety of ways. -- in a variety of ways. you can draw erroneous conclusions about middlebury students. brian: did this start with the students are with one of your fellow professors, or both? prof. stanger: the shutdown? brian: the whole idea of trying to shut it down?

prof. stanger: there were all of these meetings before hand that my colleagues attended them where they were discussing resistance. the interesting thing is that all of the students who organized the resistance were used to being unanimously applauded by the faculty. for example, with the executive order against immigration, some of the same students involved in the protest against charles murray were leaders in that resistance, and they had the whole faculty behind them. i was there with my constitution, and waving my american flag. and everybody supported them. what was so disappointing to them with this is that they were taking it to the next level by shutting it down. and everything fractured. and they were condemned by a large number of people. they were expecting to be praised. that is part of the educational process. they made a mistake and have to think about what that means. brian: at the end of your

discussion with charles murray, you left that room and went where and what happened? prof. stanger: they took us to this, the fact of the matter is, i don't really remember much of it. i couldn't even tell you what door we went out. we were taken out of the hall and confronted with a mob of angry people. somewhere in masks. -- some of whom were in masks. they were shoving and jostling. their target was charles murray. and i was a little bit behind him. and it kind of intensified. it looked like he was about to fall to the ground. and at the time, he was a 74-year-old man. i'd did what any decent person would do, i grabbed him by the arm to make sure he didn't fall. and i don't know how many, but i was really fearful of being separated and being left behind. so i took his arm, and then it all turned on me.

somebody pulled my hair. somebody body slammed me from another direction. then we finally made it to the car and this was a horrific getaway seen were students were climbing. they were banging windows, trying to prevent the car from moving forward. poor bill is in the driver seat. he is the director of communications. he was the one who devised the radio free middlebury alternative plan, if you will. he was taking directions from public safety on how to go. it was moved forward, retreat, move forward, retreat. i was on the passenger side, screaming, stop, you are going to hit someone! the car was stopping and starting, stopping and starting. and that is what exacerbated my injuries. brian: how badly were you injured? prof. stanger: i did not think i was badly injured at all, but it was worse than i thought.

brian: you had a collar on for a while. prof. stanger: first i realized something was wrong with my neck. then i was taken to the hospital. two days later, i was driving on the wrong street and i could not find something that i already knew where it was, then i realized, you know, i needed to go back to the hospital. brian: after you were out of the hospital and after things quieted down, what did you do about all this? prof. stanger: it was awful. have you ever had a concussion? brian: no. prof. stanger: for all of those people who have had concussions, they know what it is like. your brain just gets scrambled. your brain is like a computer, and you can only --you just need to keep one window open at a time. you cannot have multiple open windows open at a time. but everything we do in life involves having multiple windows, so that was deeply frustrated for me. it was pretty frightening. brian: for how long?

prof. stanger: i was in physical therapy until last month. so, it took a while to get better. brian: how did you feel emotionally about all of this? did you do anything with middlebury's administration? did you talk to them? did you want to do anything about this? prof. stanger: sure. i was putting in my two cents all along the way as best as i could. brian: i read somewhere in all of this that 74 people were disciplined. were those only students? prof. stanger: i don't really know. i wasn't involved with the disciplinary procedures and i did not testify at the hearings. brian: how much did they do on campus? how many hearings to they have? -- did they have? prof. stanger: i don't know. i was disengaged from it. i was trying to get better. brian: were you doing this on purpose?

did you just want to stay away from the whole thing? prof. stanger: yeah, well -- this is the first interview i have done, and i am glad to be doing it with you because we can have an extended conversation, but i did not want to speak to journalists until my brain had been restored to be because i was angry. part of what was at stake is i wanted to model the behavior i wanted to see. i did not want to respond emotionally. i wanted to talk constructively about where we go from here? what it all means? you cannot do that until you are healthy. i waited. brian: if this happened again at middlebury, do you know what they would do? and you have a woman president. prof. stanger: yes, we do. what do you mean? brian: if another lecture was shut down like this.

let me put this in the mix -- i am sure there are a lot of people saying the students were great and they did the right thing. there is another group watching that says, you know, i have given a lot of money to my alma maters. someone is watching it they give a lot of money to middlebury, and they are saying, i did not give my money so that it will cost $63,000 a year for a student to go to school there so they can do this kind of stuff. what would you say to them? prof. stanger: i think the president is trying to stand firm for the values that are so important for liberal education and for american democracy. i'm hopeful that she is going to be able to prevail in that environment. i am not a good person to ask about what is going on right now because i left vermont in may. and continued my convalescence in michigan, where my family has a cottage that we have been going to since i was born.

my hometown, if you will. i am not a good person to comment on what is going on right now. brian: i assume you have tenure and you will go back to middlebury after this is all over? prof. stanger: that is the plan. brian: and if you are asked to moderate another discussion with a conservative/republican like this man is supposedly, would you do that again? prof. stanger: of course. i don't regret a single thing i did. to me, it is enormously important that students be unafraid to confront controversial ideas, and in my classroom, speak their mind. and what concerns me is that some students are free to speak their minds because it may offend someone. -- they are afraid to speak their minds because it may offend someone. and to me, that is catastrophic because if you cannot speak your mind, and make mistakes, and learn from them, it is the end of liberal education.

so what i do in my classroom, what is interesting in my classroom, i continued to teach my one class after the incident about western europe. in my classroom, we were able to maintain an atmosphere where that was possible, even in the midst of all of that controversy that was rolling over the charles murray fallout. to me, that is deeply significant because it is in the hands of every single professor to create an environment where everybody feels like they belong, they can speak their mind, and i tell them, we are going to speak our mind, and if you offend someone, i want that person to call you out, and i want the person who offended apologize, and then we will move on because everyone makes mistakes. we are going to misunderstand and say the wrong thing, but we must be allowed to say the wrong thing and correct it and have those conversations that educate us as human beings.

brian: here is charles murray appearing on the "tucker carlson" show in june. just talking about the incident. [video clip] >> i expect it, because i have been briefed by the people of middlebury. that the protest would occur, but what we did not know if they were going to keep it up forever -- but what we did not know is that they were going to keep it up forever. this will not be a lecture demonizing welfare, mothers and things like that. i was going to say you as members of the new elite have to be aware of all the ways in which the elite is screwing the working class in this country. brian: what did you think of that statement? prof. stanger: i think he has a point. and that is another tragic irony. he wasn't even coming to middlebury to talk about bell curve, that was written over 25 years ago. there have been all of these advances in genetic research

since. he was talking about his message about how this unexpected outcome, the election of donald trump, could actually transpire. it is sad that we could not have a conversation about that book instead of looking backwards at something written long ago. brian: what is a micro-aggression? prof. stanger: that is when somebody offends somebody without even knowing it. and even when you point it out, they still think you are being too sensitive, or you should not be pointing it out. brian: how much complaining goes on at middlebury about micro-aggressions among students and professors? prof. stanger: you know, my take on trigger warnings is that those are good things, if you are saying something and you are unaware that it is deeply upsetting to another human being, we need to know about it.

you need to reflect on it. so, i don't have a problem with the concept. i have a problem with people being expected to preempt their mistakes before they make them. that creates this chilling effect that is so damaging to the free exchange of ideas. brian: looking back to when this happened, how much interest was there in the media to get you to talk? prof. stanger: tons of interest. i mean, i don't apologize to anybody's whose email i did not respond to. like i still have a huge trove of unanswered emails. i was able to look at screens and read them, and i hope to i will respond to people in due time because i received wonderful notes from people. there are people all around the road and better country who -- there are wonderful people all around the country who wrote things that made me go so much better. i am deeply grateful to them. i will respond to them in time.

brian: but you did write some op-ed pieces for the "new york times." prof. stanger: i had to do that, that was probably not wise, but i had to. brian: why not? i was not supposed to be on a computer. i had to sneak to do it. i just felt like i had to define the situation as i saw it. brian: those that are interested, this on march 13, understanding the angry at the middlebury they gave me a concussion. prof. stanger: i did not come up with that headline, by the way. that was "the new york times." brian: the second was on the third. -- was on i -- april 3, "middlebury, my divided campus." how did that come about? did they call you, or did you call them? what did they want from you? prof. stanger: my perspective. they called me. they wanted my perspective. brian: did they find other perspectives on the other side of people who thought this was the perfect thing to do? prof. stanger: the new york times was great about that, i was on a panelist that wrote the definitive justification of

shutting down speech. he wrote a piece in the new york times called "what snowflakes get right." brian: what was the broken inquiry? prof. stanger: that was a heartfelt statement by students at middlebury college. they put their names to it, they were trying to explain why they had done what they had done. it was a response to another piece that ran in the "wall street journal" on principles on free expression written by my colleagues. broken inquiry was their attempt to respond point by point to what they were reading. and people can read it for themselves to understand the perspective. brian: how often is a conservative of any kind invited to speak on the middlebury campus? prof. stanger: a lot of times. i mean, what you will find on

college campuses is there are conservative faculty who camouflage their real views. until they get tenure. they are a minority, but they are there. through this charles murray incident, i became aware that there were some conservatives on my faculty, and i did not realize previously that that was their political leanings. that saddens me to some extent, why should they not be able to talk openly about their politics? we would have a better conversation about policies, we need to debate together, to move the country forward. if people to be more open about thinking for themselves. brian: are you one of the 900 plus members of the heterodox? prof. stanger: no, i am not.

brian: are you aware of what it is? prof. stanger: of course. brian: what is your opinion? prof. stanger: i think it is great people are mobilizing for it. i am not a joiner, i don't join things. brian: we have a list of some of the leading schools and the in the -- in the heterodox. they judge on whether or not the universities are open or closed on all of this. i want to put on the screen the top five or six of the schools. prof. stanger: purdue. look at that. brian: that just happened. the last couple of days. prof. stanger: that is your alma mater. brian: yes. university of chicago, george mason's number two. university of tennessee. the prof. stanger: carnegie mellon, look at that. brian: and there is a whole scale of how they judge, and i have no idea of what that is. and let's look at the ones rated on the very bottom. prof. stanger: northwestern?

uc berkeley? brian: i know that yale and harvard are right there at the bottom. prof. stanger: really? but they're making such efforts to uphold freedom of expression. i would want to dissect those rankings. they could be right. anything that will capture a particular moment in time, so when you ask the question, you have to look at the methodology to understand what you want to take away from it, and i have not done that. brian: they judged it on the basis of how open the campus is and all of that. some campuses have more activity than others. prof. stanger: yeah. brian: the university of chicago's is number one, and people often cite them as having the strongest statement. i got a john ellison, dean of students, who wrote to the class of 2020. you know the person in chicago that did a whole study on this? prof. stanger: jeff stone led the committee. brian: what did the committee

do? prof. stanger: it came up with the principles of free expression. which the faculty endorsed. brian: it says here that one of the university of chicago's defining characteristics is our commitment to freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression. our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings. we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of the intellectual safe space, where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own. you said you liked the trigger warnings. prof. stanger: well, how you parse that is very important. because i have been on a panel with university of chicago. and i think we can agree that a university can't be a safe space because learning has to take place. you have to let ideas collide. but there can be safe spaces within the university.

in other words, if you're a student from a disadvantaged background, you may need a place to retreat where you can feel completely safe and at home, but that doesn't mean you're not engaging in larger issues in the classroom. what is interesting to me is that there are safe spaces that we don't call safe spaces. athletic teams, liberal arts colleges are safe spaces. i want those guys and women out of their safe spaces as much as i want students of color out of their safe spaces and interacting. through that interaction we can create a dynamic intellectual life. brian: when i grew up, and went to college, it was fairly quiet before the vietnam war. what has happened since then? prof. stanger: well, the pendulum has swung back. it was a renewal of some of the same sentiment and feelings. brian: what caused it? prof. stanger: what caused it is a variety of things.

a big one, just something i have written about is the privatization of government. we take all kind of things that were done by government employees and turn them over to the private sector. on its face, that is a good thing. we can be more efficient and that market value drive things, and that is good. but i think it has changed the tenor of government. and in a sense, made increasingly large portions of the population feel that their elites don't represent them, don't speak for them, and are acting in their own self interests rather than the interest of the common good. and i think that is directly linked to the privatization of so many functions. brian: you had a book in 2009, "one nation under contract," that talks about privatization a lot. you said the word "elite." you heard that from charles murray, you hear from conservatives, newt gingrich talked about elite media all the time. how would you define elite?

prof. stanger: those are the people with the power, and let's face it, this town washington has become enormously affluent over the past three decades. you can speak to this. hasn't it changed? we have all of these amazing restaurants. but they are upscale. people have gotten rich, and there is a consequence to that. you know, the people who are running our government institutions are increasingly part of an elite that is detached from ordinary people. that is not just true of government elite, it is financial elites. part of what we are seeing on our politics is ordinary people realizing, hey, you have the levers of power, and you are doing things to benefit yourself. you are not benefiting me. and that is a legitimate response from both left and right.

brian: in 2015, $68 billion was sent to american universities for research and development. prof. stanger: yeah. brian: the pell grants are up to over $30 billion, that is over $100 billion going to college campuses. what about the academic elites? and their particular position -- they have the tenure. nobody can touch them. so many of them, their life revolves around the next grant that comes in from the government. prof. stanger: well, when you talk about academic elites, it is important to talk about which disciplines. are we talking about natural sciences, social sciences? humanities? i can speak from my own discipline, which is political science. and i have seen over the course of my career, when we were at harvard, the idea of the best and the brightest -- matt bundy, henry kissinger, the idea was to

educate yourself, and they go make a difference in the world. you know? and what has happened over time is you see think tanks developing in washington, and they are more concerned with the policy and real-world issues. there are exceptions to this but the departments of political science, they are talking about theoretical concepts, methodological debates that are less directly connected to real life policy issues. so in some sense, that is a horrible thing because people with tenure are the ones that can really speak truth to power. people in think tanks don't have that same freedom. because they can be fired. so, i would like to see departments of political science back in the fray, debating policy issues. because they have something that the rest of the chattering classes don't have, which is tenure. and tenure means cannot be fired.

that is a big thing in washington. i mean, i have seen it myself. when i have testified before congress. that this is an enormous asset, because i can speak the truth, and no one can take away my livelihood. that makes me feel like i have a moral obligation to not be partisan, speak freely, encourage people to speak for themselves. because i am in a unique and privileged position in that regard. brian: here is a recent incident, this is only 30 seconds. back on september 27, at the college of william and mary, the executive director of the aclu's virginia chapter. and black lives matter challenged this person. let's watch this and see what your take is on this. >> and i'm going to talk a bit about knowing your rights and the demonstration, i appreciate

it. then i am going to respond to questions from the moderators and then any questions from the audience. >> shame, shame, shame. brian: they are saying that the aclu protects hitler, too. prof. stanger: they need to be educated. when you see 18 to 21 year old's doing stuff -- are those students or activists? brian: i have no idea. prof. stanger: you have two things going on here -- they are 18 and 21-year-olds. they are still learning and growing. they don't have a real historical sense. they can make statements like that. they have no historical context to understand it. they do not understand how american constitutional democracy operates. for me, my job as an educator is to help them have that context.

not to tell them to think differently, but to say, look at how extremist actions or violent actions have played out in history. have they ever led to the things you want to see realized? once you become educated, you realize the role of unintended consequences, and you realize that most of the great breakthroughs in the world come through nonviolent actions. but you know, you can't tell people that. they have to own it and learn it for themselves. you can just keep asking them questions so they can arrive at some of those conclusions on their own. so that is the student piece. they need to be educated. but the activist piece, you know, that is a horrible thing. because the black lives matter movement is a diverse movement. you can have some extremists speaking out, and people decide the whole movement is about that. you even have direct evidence of russian meddling to try to paint black lives matter that way.

we all have to be critical thinkers and say -- question the reality that is presented to us in the media. and think for ourselves. and the best way to do that is to speak to people in black lives matter. talk to your neighbor. that is when you realize what people think and feel. brian: back in june, because of your incident and others, senator grassley had a hearing, and interestingly enough, after the william and mary thing, the student that testified was a guy named zachary wood. he was at williams college, and he says that he is a liberal democrat, and here is what he says about the whole student issue. [video clip] >> i identify as a liberal democrat who supports many progressive causes. yet i adamantly believe that students should be encouraged to engage with people and ideas that they vehemently disagree with. at williams, the administration promotes social tolerance, often

at the expense of political tolerance. in my time at williams, i cannot name a single conservative speaker that has been brought to campus by the administration. in classrooms, liberal arguments are often treated as unquestionable truths. in some cases, conservative students even feel the need to refrain from stating their opinion in fear of being shut down. i appreciate the desire of my administration to ensure that all students on campus feel included, yet i deplore the state of free speech and intellectual freedom on my college campus. brian: williams, a big liberal arts school in massachusetts. did he say anything you want to comment on? prof. stanger: that is a wise and articulate young man. i think it is great you are showing this clip. it allows me to say that i have many -- you cannot paint with a broad brush what students of color feel. on one hand, you have some that want to shut down charles murray, and on the other hand we

have something my office saying this is horrible. i don't agree with this but if i speak out i am being seen as a traitor to my people. nobody wants to be that. that is a toxic environment that needs to be changed. brian: traitor to what people, though? prof. stanger: make them feel as though they are somehow an oreo. black on the outside, white on the inside, and that is bad. you should not be undermining the cause of bringing about justice for african-americans who, let's be honest here, this is america's original sin. we got a lot of work to do in that realm. and so, it is a real debate about how you bring about the change you want to see. it is unfortunate that there are some very smart people who have said publicly that they are giving up on america.

i would never give up on america. for all of its flaws, if you look at its trajectory since the revolution, you know, it is the story of gradual progress, to make those ideals reality. i think it is called the great unfinished symphony in "hamilton," and i like that phrase. so, we have a lot of work to do, but a symphony is a beautiful thing and there aren't a lot of symphonies out there in the world. so what i want to say to my radical students, ok, this is wrong and this is wrong, but what would you propose as an alternative to the rule of law and the american constitution? that is where it gets tricky and challenging. brian: speaking of the ongoing attempt to change things, johns him hopkins university just got $150 million grant to facilitate the restoration of open ended

and inclusive discourse. this is from a greek family. what can a foundation do with $150 million to improve the discussion that we have been talking about here about open dialogue? prof. stanger: it is funny that you say that, because obviously, money is a good thing, and you can do great things with money. you can bring speakers and outside thinkers who can help you to parse these difficult issues. but for me, this is a matter of individual responsibility. that if you want to encourage open and inclusive dialogue, we can all model the behavior we want to see. which is another way of saying, stop believing that ad hominem attacks substitute for genuine argument. that is what we see on television today. these partisan labels.

and you have got to think that way, or you are cast out of the tribe. i want people to think for themselves. i want them to challenge those labels. and that is particularly important to me in a big data world, because let's face it, this last election, where very much of the clever manipulation of people. through firms like cambridge analytica, you could speak out and determine from social media. certain emotional buttons, and you can get people to vote that way. what is the antidote to that? don't be an algorithm, be a human, think for yourself and then you can't be manipulated by your government, or by large technology companies, or by the russians, for that matter. if we think for ourselves, we solve a lot of problems simultaneously. brian: you said you are at the new america foundation.

who runs it? what does it do? prof. stanger: it is created to thinking about -- it is a think tank that is devoted to thinking through some of the challenges america faces in the digital age, more specifically. brian: what kind of contract does someone like you have with them? limited to a year? prof. stanger: yes, yes. i will be there for a year, i have a nice home and people to speak with. it is a wonderful place to be. brian: and now that you have seen a little bit of the foundation world in washington, what is your take? prof. stanger: i have seen it before. it performs a valuable function. but i think what you can see is that it has its limits. so, very much again as i was saying, there is a role for tenured academics to make a contribution to policy debates. i think we have this advantage that we are not bought by anyone.

brian: were you all set up in advance of what happened in march to do the america foundation, or did they come to you after that and said, they had a home for you for a year? prof. stanger: i had a sabbatical and it was up in the air. i had different plans ever change. i was supposed to finish one book and start another. i haven't finished the book. my life had all the pieces thrown up in the air. yeah, they were kind enough to give me a home and i decided to stay in washington for the year. brian: are there any residual health problems you have after all this time? prof. stanger: i still have a couple of muscles in my neck that misbehave. but i think i am almost back to complete recovery. i feel like my brain is functioning decently, which is a good feeling. i missed it. i appeared here on time, i was having a lot of trouble back in spring about getting out the door on time. that was enormously difficult for me. so yeah, i am feeling strong and almost 100%.

brian: after that incident, did anybody who was responsible for that come to you and apologize? prof. stanger: no. and i would like that. brian: do you know who it was? prof. stanger: i have some ideas. i do have some ideas. and i would not want to see anybody punished, or suspended, or anything like that. i think it would be a very constructive thing for students who were involved in the shutting down of this speech that led to my injury to apologize. brian: why would you not want to see someone punished? prof. stanger: because you have to make a distinction -- ok, there are a number of layers to this. one, what disturbs me about what happened at middlebury, i think students were actively encouraged by some members of the faculty to do things that were not in their interest. that upsets me. 18 to 21-year-olds are still developing, and they need to be advised in the right ways.

i think i will leave it at that. to say that i would fault some faculty more than the students for what happened -- brian: do you know who they are? prof. stanger: of course. brian: and have they apologized to you? prof. stanger: some of them have. i think there is a real belief on the part of the people who are more radical, they want to say that what happened outside of the lecture hall has nothing to do with what happened inside the lecture hall. to me, they are directly connected because shutting down speech is an invitation to violence. we have these heated, passionate exchanges of views precisely to avoid having to pull out guns, or swords or have a duel. and so when you shut down speech, you are basically

inviting violence. but i think the people who supported some of the extremist actions thought well, that happened outside. and they want to say it was a result of outside forces, but it is all interconnected. brian: our guest has been professor allison stanger. she is with middlebury college and currently in washington. she will be back in the classroom in january? prof. stanger: no, no. not for two years. brian: thank you for joining me. prof. stanger: yes, it has been a great pleasure and honor. ♪ announcer: all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

announcer: next sunday on q&a, doug mills talks about photos he took during the 2016 presidential race and talks about what it is like to cover president trump. that is next sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. next, we are live with your calls and comments on "washington journal." then we are live at the brookings institution for a discussion on the security situation in sub-saharan africa. >> tonight on "the communicators," -- say iple cannot to me and can't follow you, they make it impossible. these are people who are good at what they do. they say they make it absolutely impossible. >> we will talk about the recent presidential social media summit where president trump discusses social media censorship by big tech firms and what should be done about it with the heritage