hello, everyone. and welcome to amanpour and company. before colbert, stuart there was dick cavett who found humor in some of america's most troubled east times. then richard e. grant. the surprise darling of this year's award season. and a college counselor who takes on controversial clients, young men who were disciplined for sexual assault.

the uniworld is a proud sponsor of amanpour and company. because according to bee, to travel is to eat. bookings available through your travel adviser. for more information visit uniworld.com. additional support is provided by -- welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in london where we're bringing you up to date with some of our important recent stories and we

begin with dick cavett the brilliant comic mind who late up late night television with his quick wit and inciteful interviews. for decades american stayed up past their bed times at cavett hosted an unprecedented string of must-see interviews going head to head with guests ranging from marlon brando to katherine help burn. now that its award season, we're looking at how the master of celebrity interviewed corral all those famous names and had so much fun drawing them out. dick cavett, welcome to my program. >> i'm glad to be here because i sit yelling at the screen when you're on yelling when am i going to be on. >> well, here you are. i do interviewing for a living, but it's almost embarrassing for me to say that talking to you because you are the king of interviewers. >> i'll be the judge of that. >> all right. when you came on to the stage, how did you get your break?

how did a young boy from nebraska by way of yale university become dick cavett, get the dick cavett show? >>, in fact, it was very, very strange. i became a copy boy at "time" magazine making the $60 a week so jack par worries about his monologue. i was a huge par found. i went home and typed a monologue, took it on the subway down to the rca building, new what floor jack's show was on and here he came down the hall as in a too contrived situation and i put it in a ti"time" envelope and it caught his eye and said i've written some stuff for you mr. par. he and he said, okay, kid. i sat in the audience. he came out and took some papers out. and listen to this routine about mothers-in-law and i said oh,

no. it's not my stuff. it somebody's else's. in the middle of the show he did wonderful ad libbed that were from my material i had given him, like first ship hijacking was in and he had a hand mike in the audience and he said to her, what do you think about this pirate ship? and he used that phrase a couple times and jack said, it must have been a surprise to the people hearing a voice come over saying, attention, please. this is your pirate speaking. well that got a big laugh. he used another one of my lines in an elevator later and he said, you want to write, don't you kid? i said yeah. he said come back in a week and here we are. >> here we are. >> everything followed from that -- >> and jack par was the biggest and the most successful host, right? >> he was mr. tonight show. steve allen had done one before but jack surprisingly the impact

he had on the nation, he was only on it five years. >> it is pretty amazing? >> johnny 30some. >> and johnny carson was a big rival of yours, right? >> being two nebraskaens who came to new york dewied eye, he came dewied eye ten years before i did. we were very, very good friends. >> i just want to quickly read part of the incredible roster. marlo brandon, bet davis, john lennon. that's not bad. that is not bad at all. that's just for starter. >> those are the little folks. >> but here's the advice that jack par gave you, he said to you, hey, kid, when you do your show, don't do interviews. >> that knocked me over. i picked up the phone. the voice said it was jack par and i didn't believe it because he didn't call me.

hey, kid, this is jack. let me give you some advice. please don't do interviews. i said what, do i do sing or talk to the guests in poetry. he said no interview q&a and what's your favorite this or that. david frost falling asleep on his clipboard and just make it a conversation. >> so he was -- don't do interviews, have conversation. >> conversation is best. when it becomes spontaneous and you're rolling along and you can throw your notes away. a friend of mine pointed my fault at, you stuck to my notes and i'd go to this one and this one whatever had just been said. >> you weren't listening. >> it wasn't that bad. >> it could have been, right? >> not listening, yes. >> so, look, i just read this incredible list, just for starters but it would be on anybody's dream list to have marlon brando. you were debating his premise

that each of you were, in fact, actors and to prove his point, he dissected your performance as a talk show host. here's a clip. >> oh, great. >> you're thinking of 60 things at once, how is it going? is he upset and distressed and articulate? is he -- is he bored, is he offended? here's a good time for a joke. we haven't got much time is, but you're thinking about 9 million things and reacting to what i say and how's that going to be and is that going to be offensive? so you're doing this -- this editing at an insane rate and you have to do that and that's your job and you have this demeanor of levity and lightness and amusement and zest and it's easy to ask if finally what goes

on your mund. >> i just feel like all my clothes have been taken off. >> you felt like you'd been stripped bare there and then. >> here i am little dickie cavett and marlon brando was talking about me who is also from nebraska. >> no. that does surprise me. >> here is one that would knock your head off, fred astaire a nebraskaen, the europeans won't believe it. >> did you interview him too? >> he did my show twice. >> what did you think of marlon brando? he's a pretty intimidating guy. >> he had come up to my dressing room before the show and i was in awe, but easy to talk to. he's so brilliant and afterwards he said, no, no, no.

i've been looking for for years. so we went -- >> i have no idea what you just said. >> do you want to go down to chinatown? we went down. i'll make it quick. the pap ratsi followed us. everything was closed. what's going on? i said that that one right there, the other guy there, let's keep the same expression on your face and he'll get tired of taking the same picture. he did not get tired of taking it. we all know marlon has a temper and he leaned in and said, you want to take those sunglasses off marlon and marlon took them off and wham. a shot that came up from the

sidewalk, broke galelo's jaw as he fell face forward on the front of a car. >> that was marlon brando. >> this is so thrilling and one of the stupidiest things i've ever seen. >> you are known mnuchamongst y friends as incredibly literate. your late wife once said he's a genuinely witty name. he's a questioner, really. he employs the sow crattic method for 45 minutes and it drives me absolutely crazy. is that part of your secret? what makes you a great interviewer? do you recall -- what is it you thought of? you it do interviews for more than an hour or so and that was commercial television. that is it not happen that much these days. >> i don't know.

i never had any experience doing it before and but i found that when i got out there and thought of jack's talk to the people, don't read -- what is your favorite mountain or something, that it just seemed to flow. >> was somebody like david bowie a natural for you? i'm a great david bowie fan. he was particularly cutting edge on all the gender fluidity and his music was cutting edge and his persona. >> he's dynamic and you can feel it sitting there. >> which you did. >> and a few people in our business who something really emanates from them and you can feel it, yeah. >> i'm going to play a clip. >> other than that, we had a good time. >> let me play a clip. >> i decided that i prefer to enact a lot of the material i was writing rather than perform it myself.

i will continue to in the future after i found what i wished to do at the moment. i don't care what anybody says. i like doing it and it's what ish continue to do. >> >> nobody stopping you and everybody laughed at that. he was -- did you get him then? did you get how revolutionary he was in this industry and how -- >> probably not. my antenna was whimably and lame. as i watched him, garbo didn't seem very interesting in the studio when they were shooting but when you saw it on screen, saw all kinds of things going on. that was bowie. >> talking about huge stars. you did two programs with katherine hepburn. how many hours? >> i had wanted her for years,

finally she had said something to somebody. >> how did you get her to agree? >> i don't know what did it. i think a couple of other friends said you should do it with him, he's the one you should do it with. she'd never done that and she's the kind of woman if she's never picked up a snake, she will pick one up just so she's done that and she decided to do a talk show. >> she was pretty cantankerous in the actual interview. >> she was at time. >> here's a clip. watch this clip. >> you keep interrupting the long story of my life, if you'd just shut up, i'd be able to -- >> i won't speak again for the next hour. >> that'll be the day. that'll be the night. >> i mean, no punches pulled there. >> my favorite moment on that show was when i cornered her, i got having fun with her and i said, we worked together, the summer at stratford i was an

extra in the merchant at venus with you, you weren't on stage i said what line. she asked the line and i told her the line and she said, is that how you said it? >> that is pretty good. in 1971, you, in fact, had the first television interview with john lennon and yoeco ono and it was at the time when the beatles had broken up and you were asking john what made them break up. >> we don't want to be the crazy gang which is british or the marx brothers which have been dragged on stage singing she loves you when we've got asthma and tuberculosis and when they're 50. a long time ago i said -- i

didn't want to be singing she loved you when i was 30. i said that when i was 25. when i was 30 last october and that's about when my life changed, really. >> he was so approachable, so available. when you met him it was that feeling of i've known him a long time as though you had not and we had fun on the show. >> this was a very difficult time. he was choosing yoko over the beatles. >> yes, yes. i did maybe one of the few good things, which was went down as he had asked me if i would and protested the fact that our great unindicted co-conspirator of that time richard millhouse nixon wanted john out of the country and unfortunately, later

got himself out of the white house. >> out of the white house. >> i thought they'd have to cut his hands off at the wrist to get him out of the white house. >> we forget that john was put on a black list. nixon sicked the fbi on him. >> oh, yeah. i helped him. it was a good feeling. >> what did you do? >> anything i could do for john and against nixon, i would jump at. >> and what it you do for him? >> i just went down and talked about how he should not be thrown out and now, if you go to youtube and -- not while we're on and put in cavett/nixon you can see him in the oval office and the words are up here, it begins with, what is cavett any way he says to his hr alderman. there must be something we can do to screw him. >> you took the words out of my mouth. on the white house tapes.

>> you never heard you talk like that. >> you were one of the first to delve into covering watergate. you spoke a lot on your show about watergate. you debated all sorts of things. you didn't shy away from those actual topics. >> i did not, no. it was so damn interesting. i don't know how much credit i deserved for it. you woke up every morning and you had to have your watergate fix. it was just thrilling. >> again, you had an extraordinary conversation with henry kissinger. it was after watergate you discussed nixon's final days and you asked him his mental health and kissinger said it was a scary period because he said we were living in a nuclear world. what did you think when he said that? >> kissinger, who i liked even though i offended him once or twice, how would you describe nixon or what was nixon and he

said, just about anything you would say about him would be true. >> that is wonderful. can i make a very, very hard turn and a quite difficult hard turn? >> do your worse. >> because -- well maybe painful hard turn. there are a lot of great creatives across the whole spectrum of human endeavor. >> yeah. >> who suffer from some kind of depression in all sorts of degrees. you did yourself. >> it's not hard to find the latest. yeah, and there's nothing good about depression. somebody called it the worst agony devised for man and it sort of is. people are familiar with the fact that you lose interest in everything. all the color goes out of your life. you don't want to do anything and it's hateful and you also

feel that it's always going to be that way. the thing with great force tells you this is permanent. this is here for good. tell your depressive victim or child or wife or friend, it will pass. that doesn't do you much good while you're doing it and if anybody says to your wife, daughter or you while you're suffering from it, what have you got to be depressed about? you've got money and a house and a daughter and -- you can punch those people without a sense of guilt because it's -- it's a disease. >> i want to end with a really nice exchange between you and the great janice joplin back in 1970. >> oh, dear, janice, my god. >> you ever get back to port arthur, texas. >> i'm going back in texas.

>> it's my tenth annual high school reunion. >> take movies and bring them back here and show. >> would you like to go? >> i don't have that many friends in your high school class. >> i don't either. >> or mine for that matter. >> oh, boy. she loved coming on the show. i didn't know if she would. i didn't know who she was the first time i saw her at fillmore on stage. somebody dragged me down. she was terrific. i said who was that girl in the green pants and they told me her name and little did i know -- i think she must have been on six or eight times. >> you had a great connection. you had a great connection with all your guests. >> not spiro agnew. >> maybe not some of them. >> he was the dullest guest, runner up. >> dick cavett, thank you so much indeed. >> oh, my god. don't mention it.

whatever that means. and now we turn from a young man who came out of nebraska to take the tv world by storm to a young man who came out of swazi land to take the movie world by storm. he is richard e. grant and he is having his moment. after 40 years and more than 100 films, the much loved actor is getting serious award show love including his first ever oscar nomination for his unlikely role alongside melissa mccarthy in "can you ever forgive me?" . here's a clip. >> this is quite something. >> these are wonderful. >> i thought so too. >> name your price. >> you were looking at one month's rent. >> gamble, shop, drink. >> we have a couple of questions regarding the life letter i purchased. >> jack hawk is one of a series of memorable alcoholics on

grant's resume going all the way back to his break-through role in the indy classic and though he is, in fact, a tee toller off screen, grant's father was an alcoholic and that was a major factor in his complicated and sometimes violent childhood in southern africa. i asked him about all of that when we spoke against a backdrop of brexit based upheaval here in london. richard e. grant, welcome to the program. >> thank you very much. >> we just had this robust discussion about brexit. you can see that nobody knows which is the way forward. we heard from the europeans and british mps. are you political? you're an actor. >> hugely. >> are you? >> i feel passionate about it but i think that what's happened now is so -- put it this way, i think there's something on the one hand in the dna of the british people and on the other

hand fair minded and those two things have absolutely revealed themselves today in what's gone on. we're not going to be told what to do by europe and we're not going to be told to take this deal that the majority of the people in parliament don't seem to agree with. i think it's going to be an alice in wonderland. >> can you see it being fodder for more films or tv series, one of your british colleagues has done brexit, the film and its endless interesting as characters, right? >> i think so. i also think that people are sick to the back teeth of all this, you know, turmoil that's going on. they don't want to know about it. i would be very surprised if that gets the viewing figures that they clearly anticipate they will get. >> that turmoil presumably you felt when you were in the united states shooting this latest film, "can you ever forgive me?" >> i was there for the inauguration of donald trump and people were so depressed on that friday and on the saturday

morning, there was this huge marches all across america and huge women's march, almost 1 million people in central park. >> all these years later into his second year, we've got government shutdown here, paralysis of the government here. let's move on and talk about your film, the breakthrough, this sorted reality. let me say the "new york times" quoted about the book that you made the film, it's a slender sorted and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures. it's based on the author lee israel. give us the premise. >> lee israel was a successful best selling biographer in new york in the 1980s and she then fell on hard times. her book about estee lauder failed to

nobody wanted to do a book about fanny price. so she schenn added a post script to a lesser and sold it to a collector and realized there was money to be made in being a ventriloquist like forger. she was very successful at it. i play a guy, a clept toe maniac hiv drug addict alcoholic who worked in collusion with her. she's an unapologetic, misan throppic grump played by multiple sclerosis mccarthy of the -- ms. mccarthy. >> with that in mind here's when you first meet. >> jack hawk. last time i saw you we were both presently pissed at some

horrible book party, am i right? >> it's flooding back to me. you're friend with julia somebody. >> she's not an agent any more. she died. >> she did. that's young. >> maybe she didn't die. maybe she just moved back to the suburbs. i always confuse those two. she got married and had twins. >> better she to have died. >> it's funny. you both play gay characters. she's an alcoholic and you're an alcoholic. you end up hiv positive. what drew you to this film and also, what was it like working with this irrepressable melissa mccarthy? >> that's what i was curious about. when i got the script and saw it was a true story, i wondered whether this was going to be a vehicle for the comic persona that we know and love her ms. mccarthy. i met her on a friday last year,

january. she was wearing a gray wig showing the gray roots and very, very dowdy clothes. her center of gravity seemed to have shifted. her voice was lowered and i knew that she was 5,000% committed to playing this character without a scintilla of sentiment alt and to play her for all her cantankerous. for a comedy actress to take that on in a movie was a bold choice and she does it absolutely brilliantly. >> you have a great rapport in the film. >> you hope for that. it's almost like -- i know that you're recently singled, you know that when you meet somebody you hope you'll have a connection with them. on paper there's this, but as i said, we knew we would play all these -- and it felt like lightning in a bottle. i knew we'd be friends forever

and we are. >> it is award season and you have been nominated and the film's been really critically well reviewed. did you imagine that this weird under the radar -- >> i'm 61 years old. i've never been nominated for anything in my whole life. i've now got 20 of them on myself -- it's extraordinary. for something that took me 20 days to shoot and the rest of the movie is 26 days in total, this should be -- this should have happened is extraordinary. we keep meeting people that said this movie made us feel something. >> because loneliness is also -- obviously the sort of forgery and all of that, but loneliness is really i think the theme of it and how you both try to comfort each other. >> the lonely and their failures. who wants to spend an evening

with two people doing that but they have responded very positively. >> you're on a good run. so you also have an amazing back story. you grew up in swazi land. your father was a major personality in the education system there. but he was also an alcoholic and you're not embarrassed or shy about talking about it. you've talked quite a lot about how difficult it was growing up in that kind of environment and, of course, you play an alcoholic in this character. >> i'm allergic to alcohol. i cannot keep alcohol down whatsoever, but i think that's what i saw the toxic price that my father paid and we paid as a family by keeping all that secret and so i made a movie about it 14 years ago. so i feel very, very strongly

that secrets like that are ultimately toxic. in talking about them, you know, problems is problems shared. i believe in that. it's saved me and it's connected me with other people who were in the same situation. >> now there are so many people and people are more and more open about it whether it's about opioids or whether it's any kind of addiction and that's pretty good in terms of progress in trying to get help but at the time you were a kid and quote/unquote, in a foreign land. you grew up there, but nonetheless it was just a strange environment and you talk about your father even pointing a gun at you. >> well, you know -- >> and firing the gun. >> i was 15. i was very, very angry and he was very drunk and violent and so i emptied a crate of his scotch down the sink. in the deluded hope i could stop him drinking by doing that, by removing the source material. >> that's a very natural

impulse. >> and he had a gun and he came at me and called at me in the garden andad the gun at my temple. i said blow my brains out. get it over and done with. he pulled the trigger but because he was so drunk, he lurched. i lived to tell the tale. the thing is with all addiction i'm sure you've experienced with people that you've interviewed before, the person that i loved and adored who's my father was very very quick witted and well-educated and incredibly charming person. by 9:00 at night this jekyll and hyde character would come out and that wasn't the person i knew him to be. it was very clear to me that our lives were in two halves. >> but it is actually extraordinary to hear that he actually pulled the trigger. you know there's a lot of threatening behavior that can happen like putting a gun to your temple but he pulled the trigger. >> yeah. and i ran. when he missed, i then ran away

from home for a week. i felt my life was really in danger. >> and given the title of this latest film, you know, "can you ever forgive me?" can you forgive him? >> absolutely. he blacked out and didn't remember this had happened. that's the weird thing about if you're -- you forgive your parents almost anything because, you know, they're the people that you love and he wasn't like that all the time. during the day he was sober. >> it must be so difficult for a kid. your mother also you caught her having an affair. >> when i was 10 years old. >> and how did that affect you? >> i started keeping a diary, which i've kept ever since since i was 10 years old. i tried god and got no response. i have no faith or religion although i live by the ten commandments. i couldn't tell my friend or

family. by keeping a diary this makes it real. in the same way that i've just been on the huge press junket in los angeles and new york and san francisco for this film that when i meet people i never thought that i'd possibly meet my whole life, writing about it is a way of making it real. that's a lifelong habit. >> did you ever confront your mom? >> oh, yeah. oh, yeah. >> was it because your dad was a drunkyard? >> no, no. she fell in love with somebody else. >> you think he became a drunk because of that? >> i know he did. and so he suffered, you know, unrequited love for her and basically drank himself to death at the age of 53. after three decades of estrangement after i had really good psycho analysis with an absolutely brilliant man in

london, i then had -- with my mother. it's all good. i skyped with her today. i skyped with her today and i speak to her once a week. >> that really is wonderful, actually, to see -- >> oh, it saved my life. >> and come out of these life altering experiences. but i am interested that you say you're allergic to alcohol and yet your breakout film you play, what, a alcoholic? >> you played more alcoholic, drug addicts, cocaine heads more than anything else in my career. >> there must be a reason. >> i don't know. >> i'm going to play a little clip just to show what you look like drunk. >> these aren't mine they belong to him. >> you're drunk. >> i assure you i'm not officer. i've only had a few ales. >> i play a good drunk.

the night before the final day of rehearsals because the director who's a lifelong friend now, he said that i had to have a chemical memory he called it of what it was like to be completely -- so i did and i've never done it sense. i passed out. >> here you are as you said at the age of 61 and 3/4 suddenly receiving awards never had done before and you're in the prime of your life. how happy do you feel? >> i am astonished because i'm very, very kind and considerate actor ronnie mcdowell, i met him when i was researching a novel when i was 40 and he said how do you see old age? i said, i haven't thought about it. do you go -- i'm the luckiest person to have worked with, to

have met with to earn this, so the wisdom of that has really stayed with me. if you told me 41 years ago that i'd be in the final "star wars" film that i've just been shooting, i would have said you're completely insane. the fact that i've had this up surge at the age i am now is beyond all -- it's like what john lennon said before he was shot that life is what happens in between making your plans and that really is what's happened to me so i'm incredibly grateful. >> richard e. grant, thank you very much indeed. it's great that he's getting all this recognition for the first time in over 60 years old but now we turn to college and a college admissions counselor who dead indicates her career to helping struggling students. hanna stotland specializes in what she calls the kryptonite cases, kids with a record of substance abuse, legal troubles

or behavioral issues that might block their path to a college education. but one aspect of stotland's practice is particularly controversial. she's the go-to expert for students who are disciplined for sexual misconduct at a time of white hot controversy over how colleges handle assault allegations, stotland believes that everyone deserves a second chance as she's been telling our michelle martin. >> thanks so much for talking to us. >> thank you. i'm glad to be here. >> you got your g.e.d. and then you actually transferred to harvard. tell me how all that happened. >> so i flunked out of high school. i had straight fs my last three semesters and i didn't think i was college material. i didn't think i was going to go. i got a job. my parents said if you're going to live in the house you need to have a job, so i started working full time on my 18th birthday. after a couple of years i thought i wanted to go to

college but i had no idea, if any, four year college would take me on the strength of my test scores. i got into a small women's college. did really well for two years and was able to transfer and ended up going to harvard. >> how did you get into educational consulting? >> this is something that came to me. after i transferred, i got a job as a tour guide in the admissions office and, you know, i would be giving a tour and there's a spot in the tour script and you say this is what brought me to harvard and i said i had three fs my last semesters of high school, i got my ged and i got here when i was 22. after every tour, some family would talk to me. >> did that freak you out or did you think -- did you do it? did you call these people's nephew or whatever? >> i would give them a card and i would say, here's my email

dress and if you want to get in touch with me and those that did i was happy to talk to. they wanted to know, can you retake the s.a.t. when you're 20? yes. i had to do that. questions like that and so it grew from there and i started learning from my clients. >> you said in one interview that i read with you to other folks in the field, you said send me your convicted, your expelled, your eating disorder, your kryptonite cases if you will. did you mean that? why did you say that? >> absolutely i meant it. i think these are -- these kids can benefit from education too and it's really hard for them to get it, but i know how to help them do. >> i understand that you said you're doing a lot of eating disorders, kids who had to take health breaks from school and trying to figure out how to get back in, when did it become about sexual misconduct? >> i got my first two calls from students who had been accused of

sexual misconduct in january 2014 and they asked, can you help me in this situation and i said, i have no idea. let's find out. but after i had a few successful clients, the next thing i knew i had dozens. >> why january 2014? did something happen that started to stimulate these particular cases? >> i'm not sure. i think it was probably a delayed impact of the 2011 obama era dear colleague letter from the department of education that revised the standards that universities had to follow in adjudicating sexual misconduct cases. >> could you just briefly describe for people who don't follow this field like what the shift was? >> the shift was designed to push back against a system that was i think correctly perceived as silencing victims, particularly women, and it was perceived as not resulting in

real consequences for folks who had committed harassment or assault and so it was an attempt to make the system more stringent so that there would be stricter enforcement of title 9, the law that mandates equality of the sexes in higher education. >> is there a typical scenario that brings someone to you? >> so about two-thirds of my cases stem from i would broadly say a drunken hook-up, about one-third of the cases the accusation happened the break-up of in college terms a long-term relationship. >> and so are these mostly men, young men? >> they are mostly young men who are accused. >> by women? >> but that's -- that's a mix. i see both men and women accusing men. i have a tiny handful of women who have been accused either by men or women. >> and what do you do for them? >> the main thing i do for them is help them make a plan for how

to continue their education after this interruption and help them talk about the problem on their record in a way that gives them a shot at a second chance. >> do you ask them what happened here? >> yes. >> if you're representing somebody in a criminal proceeding, i think the question would be, what do they say happened? >> i need both. if i'm going to help you write an explanation of what happened, i need to understand and you need to talk about both the best way of looking at the facts and the worse way of looking at the facts. >> talk to me more if you would about how you go about this. >> i want to take the counseling equivalent of a searching medical history, you want to know both from the point of view of you as a student, what major do i want, what's my career plan and then also what happened here in the incident in question and also in the process that led you out of that school.

>> do you look for remorse? >> absolutely. >> what if it's not forthcoming? >> there's often disagreement about what happened and i don't try to evaluate, you know, who's version of events would match a video tape if there had been a video tape. it's not my area of expertise, it's not my job, but it is essential to making the argument that you need a second chance, that this won't happen again. if this was just a lightning strike that could have happened to anyone, then you have no -- no leg to stand on saying i'm going to prevent this from happening again in my life. even if you feel you didn't commit assault which maybe you didn't, i wasn't there, you better find other choices that you made that you would make differently now of the maybe you weren't as kind as you could have been. maybe you were drinking under age, maybe you were hooking under someone who was drinking

or using drug and now you think that wasn't smart. you need to look at what your failures of judgment, of kindness, of any standard that you want to live up to in the future, look at those failures and talk about how you've changed them. >> and how do you know you're not introducing somebody dangerous back into an environment where they're just going to do something else because guess what, they got away with it? >> it's always possible that someone who's done something wrong in the past will repeat that behavior. there's a couple of assumptions that i want to unpack. one is -- these kids will be in the community some where. these are not students who are typically charged with anything criminally and so they can be in the community as students or they can be in the community as workers or volunteers. if indeed someone is a habitual predator, they can and will be that wherever they may be, you know, unless they're in a cell

which is usually not on the table. >> can you give us an example without -- to the degree that you can without violating your vow of confidentiality to your client? >> yeah. >> can you just give me more detail about a scenario? >> so, there's a few typical scenarios. one is two people meet at a party, they go off and hook up. both have been drinking. following the hook-up in some days or months later, one of the parties alleges that they were too drunk to consent to the hook-up. in that case, frequently the person who didn't make the allegation is going to be expelled or suspended even if they were equally or more inebriated and the whole question that the case would turn on is were they intoxicated or were they incapacitated. >> which party? the claimant or both? >> the claimant. so that is probably the most

single most common scenario i see where you have two intoxicated people and everyone agrees that the -- that the encounter was -- appeared consensual at the time. that, yes, there was participation. there wasn't no, but the consent -- the apparent consent was no good because of the level of intoxication and so that's the -- that's the core of the dispute usually that determines whether someone gets expelled or not is how drunk do we think the accuser was at that moment. >> are you telling me that the bulk of your caseload is ambiguous consent? >> the bulk of my caseload is ambiguous. >> there's no force involved in your view. >> there's a meaningful minority of my cases where force is alleged and there's usually mixed evidence on that question. the majority of my cases don't involve an allegation of force.

>> what is this about in your view? there are a lot of people saying, times up, right? enough. women have been manipulated for too long, have be coerced and have had it and they're speaking up now. that's what some people say is happening. i take it you say it's actually different than that. >> i agree with that. i think that is happening and i think there are a whole lot more accusations. people are speaking up. both in cases where -- where the evidence is unambiguous in supporting the allegation and cases where it's ambiguous or even runs contrary to the allegation, but it is absolutely true that the patriarchy has been silencing of victims for sexual violence for mill lenna. we ought to do something about that and that in general the fact that you have a lot of complaints is not a bad thing.

>> you are a lawyer but you don't represent people in court, do you? >> that's right. >> criminal defense lawyers often get this question, right, which is how can you defend that person? and typically what they say is, you know what? it's in the constitution. you have a right to a defense and have a right to be represented by counsel and that i think a lot of them would say particularly people who take cases that other people won't f the system doesn't work for everybody, it doesn't work for anybody, okay? but going to a four year college, a private college, that's not in the constitution and i remember in one of the interviews you said that there was a client you helped to because he was super happy because he didn't have to go to community college and the question a lot of people might have is, why are they entitled to go to a private four year college, why is that something that they have to have? >> they don't have to have it and they aren't entitled to it. they may earn it. my students, again -- the only reason to work with me is to

tell your whole story and give each institution an opportunity to make their own decision and for a typical client of mine who's been expelled from under grad, i would encourage them to apply to about 30 universities and i would expect them to get into three to five. that's often a very good outcome for one of my students. there are plenty of colleges that have no trouble saying no, but if what i'm helping the student do is make their case for why one of the spots in the class -- and they're not highly selective colleges, but why one of the spots in class would be well served with me. >> and tell me why. you say you think you're making the system more fair, tell me why. >> i think we absolutely should believe women and accusers in general, when we are their friends, their doctors, their

professors, their family members, when you're student or patient or friend or loved one comes to you and says i was assaulted, believe them. absolutely believe them. if you are a judge, a juror, a journalist or a decision maker at a college, there's no one you should automatically believe. in the first instance, your job is to provide support and care for the person in your life and in the second much smaller group and many people are in both groups at different times, but in the second much smaller group your job is to seek the truth. >> there are still those that would argue that the scales have been tipped on one side for so long that anything you do on the other side is helping the patriarchy to felt back and it is undeniable that most of the people that retain you well-healed, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white, this

is a group that controls most of the assets in the country, so what would you say to those and i'm not saying it's fair, what would you say to those that say why is that fair? the scales are always on this group's side, why are you helping him? >> i'm helping them because this is about individual justice. i think if if i'm examining u.s. society from 30,000 feet, i might make different choices than if i'm looking at it one student at a time. i think our justice system and the title 9 enforcement system is like the justice system, for good and for ill, for ill in that it's racist just like every other system in the u.s., for ill that it favors those with greater resources just like every other system in the u.s., but for good in that we don't judge people by, okay, well you're a white male, that means you are a racist.

we try and determine, all right, the allegation is about you and sarah in drake hall on the 19th and what happened there and i think that's how we ought to do justice whether it's criminal justice or in this case school discipline justice, we should be saying, what happened in this case between these individuals. >> i cannot help but wonder what your reaction was to the kavanaugh hearings. >> i've now worked with many dozens of young men and i'm certain that in my population i'm seeing both people who are wrongly accused andple who are correctly accused. i just don't know who is who. i've never seen an accused young man rage, cry and blame in my entire career the way justice kavanaugh did in front of the u.s. senate i'm their counselor. i wouldn't judge them if they did do that. you would take them as i've find it, i've --

>> what do you make of that? >> i can't decide whether it's more disqualifying that he uncontrollably had an emotional outburst and talked back to the u.s. senate and everything else or whether that was all a planned, careful cynical political act. i don't know which of those would be more disqualifying for the supreme court but they're both possibilities are disqualifying in my book. >> can we just take a step back and take that 30,000 foot view of relationships right now, relationships on campus and what should happen? is there something you can tell us by what you're seeing on campus? >> a big part of what i'm seeing is that a whole lot of students would be a lot better off if there were less alcohol abuse. that's the almost -- i hesitate to say this, almost the easy part. there will absolutely still continue to be sexual assault in a society that doesn't have such

rampant alcohol abuse, but it's playing an enormous role in the large majority of my cases. i'd love to see a lot more public health research about prevention in general and about alcohol responsibility in particular. the conflation of getting wasted all the time and getting the most out of college is a white middle class idea. we already don't see it at nearly the same way with first generation students, we don't see it with nonwhite students. that is a really poisonous idea that's hurting a lot of students. >> i'm trying to hear our conversation through the ears of people who might have other experiences and there are going to be people who are going to hear what you said and say, you're blaming the victim, like a woman has a right to be alone with a man and has a right to have had a couple drinks and not be raped or assaulted or had sex against her will and to that you would say? >> you have all the rights in the world. you have rights to do lots of

things and the world has a lot of bad people in it and that hasn't been something that any prophet or king or anyone has been able to solve and i'm interested in harm reduction. i want people to go out there and learn, discover what helps reduce all of this harm to these young people that's so unnecessary. >> hanna stotland, thank you so much for talking with us. >> thank you so much for having me. it's a complicated question especially in this times up moment. do these young men deserve a second chance. stotland, of course, believes they do and that is it for our program tonight. thank you for watching amanpour and company on pbs and join us again tomorrow night.

>> announcer: this is "nightly business report" with sue herera and bill g great rate debate. the former fed chair adds her two cents saying the next move by the central bank could be an interest rate cut. higher costs. they're starting to eat into profit margins and earnings estimates are dropping fast. clicking yes. we all do it when we log onto websites, but what's in those privacy policies, and what exactly are we agreeing to? those stories and more tonight on "nightl" for wednesday, february the 6th. good evening, everyone, and welcome. not that long ago investors were factoring in a series of gradual interest rat