thank you, robert jay lifton.again, thank you to -- [applause] thank you to my colleagues here at the columbia graduate school of journalism and the dart center of journalism and trama. go buy the book in the back of the room, eat some food, and enjoy the rest of the evening and the conversation will continue. thank you. >> now on your screen is eli, a staff writer with the "washington post," and he's written a new book called "ten letters,", and what are the ten letters? >> the ten letters are ten of the letters that come into president obama every day, and really they are a reflection of the mail that comes from across the country. republicans and democrats, 4th graders, grandmothers. it's just really democratic collection every night that comes into him that he reads and usually writes back to one or two letters a day. >> so how are the letters delivered to him? are they carefully edited? is it pretty -- can they be frank with him as well? >> they can be frank with him, but getting the letters to the desk reall

and you're lucky this evening to have robert jay lifton here. it seems to me, but i also, i will tell you why i think you are lucky but i also want to give you a warning, and just take a minute or so. it seems to me you're lucky because he has as a psycho the a psycho historian, a unique perspective on history, because he deals with great subjects, and you know if you look at these books here, i haven't inspected all of them, but it's among his subjects are do not see doctors and medical killings, the nuclear threat, the psychology of genocide, the survivors of hiroshima, capital punishment, these are huge subjects that hang over all of us, and everybody out there. so, my warning is that the robert jay lifton to me is the ultimate geographer of moral responsibility, and it is impossible to listen to him talk without getting a sense of your own the moral dimensions of what you do. and those of you who are students here, it seems to me that you can listen to him without understanding that your job is not merely to report on the moral responsibilit