Transcripts For CSPAN QA Allison Stanger 20171030

Followed by the Prime Minister taking questions from the house of commons. This week, allison stanger, professor of Political Science, she talked about the reaction on the appearance of Charles Murray. What is the famous middle barry protest . Ebury protest . A Student Group invited Charles Murray, a controversial figure, libertarian scholar, to campus. They invited me to ask him the first three or four questions. And it went from there. This is back in march. The event was on march 2 and there was a runup to the event where tensions rose to the point where they were with into a frenzy with into a frenzy where some students organized a shutdown of the speech, which was successful. That is where you got the incident where i was injured outside the lecture hall. Where is the college . In the Green Mountains of vermont. You can explain the reaction because it is almost a bubble within a bubble. Oats liberal arts is something of a bubble. Vermont, the home of bernie sanders, the state of the union with the smallest percentage of voters who voted for donald trump. 2350 is the current number of students. 63,000, that is what tuition and room and board cost for a year. It is an expensive proposition. Are a significant number of students on full financial aid. What is your background . I got my education into cu places. Into cu places two place. Major. Math there was a senior residency requirement. I transferred to Ball State University where i could do applied mathematics. What about did you get a masters and then a phd . Ofi am a living example taking some time to figure out what interests you and why. I went to the London School of economics. And then i went to harvard university. Followed by a phd in Political Science. This trajectory from a set of questions that really have answers to an interest in some of the unanswerable questions, which come from the humanities. I embrace both of those strands. How long have you been at the college . 25 years. Not there this year . Sabbatical. I am currently a scholar in residence. It is a think tank in washington that is enabling me to work on my books. What do you teach . I teach a whole range of courses. I have an interest in a variety of fields. Course i love called the politics of virtual realities. That covers the main courses. What is your view with your what is the view of your relationship with students . Students. My i think i am seen as an honest. Roker i have been very happy because i do teaching, i do research and teaching,ut with the i am absolutely sure ive made some kind of a difference in the world. There is nothing like opening up somebodys mind to new possibilities. Did the students protest Edward Snowden at all . Nodded all. Campuses are left aey are voting democratic and scholar associated with the Republican Party is controversial to them. That is the reality of it. Snowden isvered revered by the left. Important, my students know i am a democrat engageis important to with someone like Charles Murray. I looked up the ethnic population in vermont and there are 2. 5 africanamericans in. 025tate and in the town or Something Like that. What does that do for the bubble . That is a great question. Vermont is one of the widest st states in thetes union. It is easy to paint it as a story of conservatives versus students of color. We have a situation where American Values are at stake and they do not belong to a particular party or identity. Heart of this issue we are discussing. I do not want to downplay the anguish expressed through those protests. The emotions are real and they have to be validated. You feel that way, what do you need to do about it . It is about talking together and how we make the environment a place where everybody belongs. I benefited enormously by interacting with the great conservative thinkers there. People like harvey mansfield, james wilson, signal huntington. These are professors with whom you could disagree profoundly. That interaction was so important for my own personal development that i want it to be available to other students. Host Charles Murray, 1994, appeared on this program, talked about the bell curve. I just want to run this. The whole book is about this distribution and this change. We heard it and it was one of those cases where he said yeah, that is a wonderful title. It refers to the picture on the front of the book that looks like a bell. It is a phenomenon you see in all kinds of things in nature whether it is height and weight or iq. They distribute themselves so you get most people in the middle and you get few people out on each end, and the book is about the people on each end. Host how much did you know about this when he was slated to come to middlebury . Guest i know about the whole bell curve controversy. I used a symposium which had murray and their critics write about the book, and i used it in a firstyear seminar on constitutional democracy. I found it a really effective pedagogical device precisely because it provoked students and out the main great, but then you could take them to the text and say you think it says that. Where does it say that . And then they begin to realize that they do not like the bottom line of the argument, but they need to focus on what chain in the logical reasoning and what about those set of assumptions is problematic for them. That is incredibly useful as annexes eyes, so you take that kind of initial shock, if you will that is incredibly useful as an exercise, so you take that initial kind of shock, if you will. Host you heard about the incident in march. I saw some reference to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the description of Charles Murray as one of the reasons why these students reacted the way they did. They had on their website, and i want to be to you the beginning of what they say and ask you what you think of this. Charles murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise institute, has become one of the most influential social scientists 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, when in, and the poor, and it goes on women and the poor. It goes on to say that disadvantage groups are disadvantaged because they cannot be with white men who are intellectually, psychologically, and morally superior. Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action, and the department of education, arguing Public Policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that caused unequal social and educational outcomes. The question to you, is that accurately portraying Charles Murray . Guest of course not. I would see no point in engaging with him if that was what he was writing. The frightening thing about that website is that in the runup to his appearance on campus, you had faculty and students taking what you had read to me and saying this man cannot speak here, even though you cannot substantiate those assertions. They have quotes not linked to the original text. If you look at the quotes in context, he is saying the opposite of what they are saying he is saying. It was a terrible situation that i think led to what happened, that people did not think for themselves him and did not read for themselves, did not just hear what he had to say first before drawing conclusions about his character and his past work. That it was like something you could not control, because people just kept waving that website and saying that is all they had to know. We had faculty members at Middlebury College who had openly acknowledged they had never read Charles Murray, but because of the Southern Poverty Law Center website, this is all you needed to know to know what you had to do to be a righteous human being. That is problematic to me. Host 25 seconds of the footage at middlebury protest so people can get a sense of what it was like in the room. Before we do that though, where was this room, how big a room was it . Guest i think it seats 300. It is wilson hall, mccullough student center. It is the same place, the same place two weeks later in which i interviewed Edward Snowden. Host and the format for the evening was how did this come about . Guest it was restricted to students only, so you had to have a middlebury id to be admitted to the lecture hall. There were outside agitators that people referred to, but they were not inside the lecture hop your it what you are seeing inside the lecture hall is all middlebury students. Host just look at this and get a feel for it. [video playing] [students chanting] Charles Murray, go away. Racists, sexists, antigays. Host Charles Murray, go away. Guest racists, sexists, antigay. Host is any of that true . Guest his daughter went to middlebury. I would not use any of those terms to describe the man that i met, no. Host from what you know of the students, why were they doing that . Guest this is a tragedy shown on your screen. It was a small minority of students who wanted to shut the speech down, and then there were allies who wanted to be supportive. Student after student went there and did things they were not planning to do precisely because that small minority was so outraged, and so angry, that they felt like if you are a good human being, it you have to stand by their side and do the same thing. Host what are they angry about . Guest about gross inequality in the united states, the existence of unequal treatment before the law and our criminal justice system, about the election of donald trump, which none of those students wanted, all of those things. We have real problems in the country that need to be addressed. They are legitimate in being concerned. The tragedy to me is that the strategy they pursued actually brought about the very opposite of what they had hoped to accomplish. Host Charles Murray is at the American Enterprise institute. This was the American Enterprise institute on campus, i mean, a Student Group . Guest it is a club, like any other kind of club on campus. Host was he paid to go to middlebury . Guest no, nobody from middlebury paid him anything, that i know of. I am not part of the club. I dont know. Host did you have to pay snowden . [laughter] guest he was paid a large amount of money. Host who paid that . Guest the Student Activities board. That was the students choice speaker. Host we have some video of you after this directed. You this erupted. How long did the demonstration go on . Guest its accelerated because the speech was not shut down. That enraged that small group of people who were determined to shut it down. There were fire alarms going off, people screaming obscenities to the window. I dont know what clique youre going to show. I have not watched any of it. Host you sitting down with Charles Murray guest it is so unsettling to me. Precisely because they used these directional mics, so what we were hearing is not what youre hearing on the tape, because it is enhanced so you can youre the conversation, but it was absolutely terrifying to try to continue that. Host ahead of this, did you know something was going to happen . Guest i did not think anything was going to happen. I have never seen anything like this in my life. Before i walked out the door, we were confronted with the crowd that injured me. Before saying i left my computer in the car. I will go separately and you up a dinner. I had no clue that was going to happen. Host had you met Charles Murray before . Guest no, but i had read his books, and i knew of him. He is someone the Republican Party takes very seriously. To me, this is precisely this sort of person i want my students to engage with. If we are a department of Political Science that only allows the views of democrats to appear on our science, we are just an indoctrination center, not an institution of higher learning. Host let us go back to you moved to this other room. Was that set up in advance . Guest yes. Host with Television Cameras . Guest it was a plan b so we could continue even if it shut down. Host how far away from where the auditorium is was this room . Guest i wish it had been further away. It was in the basement of that building. Host this is only 30 seconds. [recording] this is a place with a lot of rich kids. You then go to 1960, just eight years later. I told people to put on the fire alarms. They have hold on. [fire alarms] i think they will be able to shut that off. This is unique in my academic career. Guest pretty funny. Host in the home state of indiana, in richmond. Go back to that setting. How long did he talk to Charles Murray . Guest roughly im not sure. He spoke first and then we did the q a and to questions from students on twitter. Host did any of the students they with this whole process . Guest on the one hand, there is a coalition of students who are united in wanting to challenge Charles Murray. You have some who want to shut him down, you have some students who participated in, you know, the broken inquiry statement, who actually asked questions on twitter. They stayed with it. They wanted to engage him. I guess the main message i would want to give to your audience is that there is a variety of views at middlebury, not this monolithic, extremist place. Just certain small segments of the populations boys was amplified. You can draw all sorts of erroneous conclusions about middlebury students. Host did this start with the students or one of your fellow professors or both, a combination of that . Guest the shutdown . Host the whole idea of trying to shut it down . Guest there were all these meetings beforehand and a number of my colleagues attended them, where they were discussing resistance. This is the interesting thing. A lot of the students who organized the resistance were used to being you notice me used to being unanimously applauded by the faculty. With the executive order against immigration, some of the same students involved in the protest against Charles Murray were leaders in that resistance. They had the whole faculty behind them. I was there with my constitution, at a rally, waving my american flag. I like to keep those front and center. Everybody supported them. Part of what was so disappointing to them with this is they thought they were taken into the next level in shutting it down, and everything fractured, and they were condemned by a large number of people, and they were expecting to be praised. That is part of the educational process. They made a mistake, and they have got to think about what that means from there. Host at the end of your discussion with Charles Murray, you left that room and when where, and what happened . Guest the fact of the matter is, i do not really remember much of it. I cannot even tell you. We were taken out of the hall and confronted this mob of angry people, some of whom were in masks, 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 going to alter the ground. He was a 74yearold man, so i did what any decent human being would do when you see a 74yearold man on the verge of falling to the ground. I grabbed him by the arm. It was a large i dont know how many. I was really fearful of being separated from them and left behind. So i took his arm, and when i did, that is when it all turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, body slammed me from the other direction. We finally made it to the car, and it was a horrific getaway scene where students were climbing on the car, shoving traffic signs under the car to keep it from moving forward, banging windows. We were so afraid we would hurt someone. Poor bill burger was in the drivers seat. He was the one who devised the radio free middlebury alternative plan. He was taking directions from Public Safety outside about how to go. Move forward, retreat. I was in the passenger side, screaming stop your your going to hit someone the car was stopping and starting and stopping and starting. That is what exacerbated my injuries. Host how badly were you injured . Guest i kept saying im going to ice it, but it was worse than i thought. Host you had a caller on for a wild. It for a while. Guest it was a slow realization. I was taken the hospital. I realized i was driving the wrong way on the street in my hometown. I could not find something where i knew where it was. I realized, you know, i needed to go back to the hospital. Host after you were out of the hospital and after things quieted down, what did you do about all this . Guest it was awful. Have you ever had a concussion . Host no. Guest for all those people out there who had concussions, your brain gets scrambled. The way they describe it, 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 windows open. Everything we do in life practically involves multiple windows. So that was deeply frustrating for me because i was supposed to stay in a dark room. I was cheating and violating that. It was pretty frightening. Host for how long . Guest i was in physical therapy until last month, so it took a while to get better. Host how did you feel emotionally about all of this . And did you do anything with middleburys administration . Did you talk to them . Did you want to do anything about this . Guest sure, i was putting in my two cents as best i could. Host what though . I read somewhere in all of this, 74 people were disciplined. Were those only students . Guest i dont really know. I was not involved in disciplinary procedures. I did not testify at the hearings. Host how much did they do on campus . How many hearings did they have . Guest i am not sure. I was disengaged from it, trying to get better. Host were you doing this on purpose . You wanted to stay away from the whole thing . Guest yeah, well, this is the first interview i have done. I am glad to be doing it with you as we can have an extended conversation, but i did not want to speak to journalists until my brain had been restored to me. When you feel like this happens, you are angry. It is emotional. Part of what was at stake for me was i wanted to model the behavior i wanted to see, if you will. 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 until now. Host if this happened again at middlebury, do you have any idea what they would do . You have a woman president. Guest yes, we do. Again, what do you mean . Shutting it down . Host if another lecture was shut down like this let me put this in the mix. Im sure there are a lot of people out there saying these students were great, think goodness they were there, they did the right thing. And there is another group watching this that says you know, i have given a lot of money to my alma maters, a lot of money. People are saying to themselves i did not give my money so that they would cost 53,000 a year for a student to go to school there so they could do this kind of stuff. What would you say to them after all of the dust settles . Guest i think the president is trying to stand firm for the values for education and american democracy. And i am hopeful she will be able to prevail. I am not a good person to ask about what is going on right now because i left vermont in may to do my convalescence in michigan, which is where my family has been going to since i was born, my hometown, if you will. I have not been on campus, so i am not a good person to comment. Host i assume you have tenure. You will go back to middlebury after this is all over . Guest that is the plan. Host and if you are asked to moderate another discussion with a conservative republican like this man is supposedly, would you do that again . Guest of course. I do not regret a single thing i did. I mean, to me, it is just enormously important that students be unafraid to confront controversial ideas, and in my classroom, speak their mind, and what concerns me is that i see some students i have been told us repeatedly. They are afraid to speak their minds because they might offend someone. 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 is, in my classroom, i continued to teach my one class in the Political Development of western europe after the incident. It was the one thing i would do, teach them, and then go sleep for 15 hours. In my classroom, we were able to maintain an atmosphere were that was possible even in the midst of other controversies swirling over the Charles Murray bought. To me that is deeply significant. It is in the hands of every supervisor professor to create an environment where everyone doesnt think and belong, mind. I say we dont even speak our minds. If you offend someone, i want that person to call you out and want the person who offended to apologize and then we will move on. Everybody makes mistakes, we are all human. We cant eliminate offense from the world. We have to be able to say the wrong thing and correct it to have those conversations that educate us as human beings. Brian here is a segment talking about the incident. Clip] i have been breached by the people of middlebury. What we do know is if they would keep it up forever. Minas thought was i will stand up your all night if i have to do with them out. This will not be a lecture demonizing welfare and other things like that. I said 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. [end video clip] brian what do you think of that statement . Allison i think he has a point. That is a tragic irony of what transpired. He wasnt even speaking about the bell curve which was written over 25 years ago. There were all these advances in Genetic Research sense. He was coming to speak about his 2012 book coming apart. It had a message about how the election of donald trump could transpire. It is sad that we are having a conversation about that book instead of looking back at something written long ago. Brian what is a microaggression . Allison that is when somebody knowingwithout even it. Even when you pointed out, youre being too sensitive or you should not be pointing it out. Brian how much complaining goes on in middlebury about microaggressions from the students to professors . Allison my own 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. I dont have a problem with the concept. I have a problem with people who expect people to preempt their mistakes before they make them. That is the Chilling Effect that is so damaging to the Free Exchange of ideas. Brian looking back to march when all of this happened, how much interest was there in the media to get you to talk . Allison tons of interest. I dont apologize to anybodys i should apologize to anybody whose email i did not respond to. I still have this large trove of unanswered emails. I was able to look at screens and read them and i hope i respond to people who do time. There are people all around the country who wrote things that made me go so much better. I am deeply grateful to them. Brian you did write some oped pieces for the New York Times. Allison i had to do that, that was probably not wise but i had to. 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 tho those are interested in understanding the angry mob in military that gave me a concussion. Allison i did not come up with that headline, that was the New York Times. Brian the second was on the third, middlebury my divided campus. How did that come about, did they call you or did you call them . Allison they called me. Want and what did they from you . Allison my perspective. The New York Times was great about that, i was on a panel that wrote the definitive justification of shutting down speech. He wrote a piece in the New York Times called snowflakes get ripe. Brian what was the broken inquiry . Allison the broken inquiry was a heartfelt statement by students at Middlebury College. They were trying to explain why they had done what they had done. It was a response to another piece i ran in the wall street journal on principles of Free Expression written by my colleagues. Broken inquiry was their attempt to respond point by point to what they were reading. 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 . Allison a lot of times. On campuses, there is conservative faculty who camouflage their real views. Thats until they get tenure. They are a minority but they are there. Its part of that wonderful thing. Butnt mean wonderful 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 the political leaning. 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. Be more openld about thinking for themselves. Are you one of the 900 plus members of the heterodox . Allison no. Brian are you aware of what it is . Allison of course. Brian what is your opinion . Allison i dont join things. Brian we had a list of some of the leading schools in the heterodox space. 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 schools. That just happened. Purdue. University of chicago, george masons number two. Tennessee and there is a whole scale of how they judge and ive no idea what that is. Lets look at the bottom. They are at the very bottom. Allison northwestern . Uc berkeley . Brian i know that you and harvard are right there at the bottom. Yale and harvard are right near the bottom. Allison but theyre making such efforts to uphold freedom of expression. I would want to dissect those rankings. They could be right. Anything like that will capture a particular moment of time, when you ask the question, you have to look at the methodology to understand what you want to take away from it. Brian they judged it on the basis of how open the campus is and all of that. Some campuses have more activity than others. The university of chicagos number one and people often cite them as having the strongest statement. Ellison re a john he wrote to the class of 2020 and you know that person in chicago that did a study on this. Theson jeff stone led committee. Brian it says here that one of the university of chicagos defining characteristics is our freedom of inquiry and expression. We dont support trigger warnings, we dont cancel invited speakers because their topics microcontroversial and we do not condone the creation of the intellectual save space where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own. You said you liked the trigger warnings. Allison how you parse that is very important. Because i have been on a panel with university of chicago. I think we can agree that a university cant be a safe space. Learning has to take place, you have to let ideas collide but there can be safe spaces within the university. In other words, if youre a student from a disadvantaged background, you might need a place to retreat where you can feel completely safe and at home but that doesnt mean youre not engaging in larger issues in the classroom. What is interesting to me is that there are safe spaces that we dont 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 a quiet. Vietnamme before the war. What happened . Allison the pendulum swung back, it was a renewal of some of the same sentiment and feelings. Brian what caused it . Allison 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 could be a good thing, we can let market values drive things and that is good but i think it has changed the tenor of government. In a sense, it made increasingly large proportions of the population feel that their dont represent them, dont speak for them and are acting in their own top interest rather than the interest of the common good. I think that is directly linked to the privatization of so many functions. Brian that book in 2009, one nation under contract talks about privatization a lot. You said that the word elite you heard that from Charles Murray, you hear from conservatives, Newt Gingrich media all theite time. How would you define elite . Allison those are the people with the power and lets face it, this town washington has become enormously affluent over the past three decades. We can speak to this, as it not changed . We have all these Amazing Restaurants they are upscale. People have gotten rich and there is a consequence to that. You know, the people were 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 true with financial elites. Part of what we are seeing on our politics is ordinary people realizing that you have the levers of power and you are doing is to benefit yourself, youre not benefiting me. That is a legitimate response from both left and right. Brian in 2015, 68 billion was sent to american universities for research and development. The pell grants are up to over 30 billion, that is over 100 billion going to college campuses, what about the academic elites . They have a tenure, nobody can touch them, many of them their life revolves around the next grant that comes in from the government. Allison when you talk about academic elites, i think it is important to talk about was disciplines are we talking about natural sciences, social sciences . I can speak from my own political which is ive seen overt career is my c the we were at harvard, idea of the best and the brightest, matt bundy, henry kissinger, the idea was to go educate yourself and then go make a difference in the world. What happened over time is think tanks developed in washington and they are more concerned with the policy and realworld issues. There are exceptions to this but the department of Political Science are talking about debates that are less directly connected to reallife policy issues. In some sense, that is a horrible thing. People with tenure are the ones that can really speak truth to power. People in think tanks dont have that freedom. They can be fired. I would like to see the premise of Political Science back in the fray, debating policy issues. They have something that the rest of the chattering classes dont have which is tenure. Tenure means you cant be fired. That is a big thing in washington. Ive seen that myself, when i have testified before congress. This is an enormous asset. I can speak the truth and no threat in my livelihood. That makes me feel like i have a moral obligation to not be partisan, speak freely, encourage people to speak for themselves. I am in a unique and privileged position in that regard. Brian here is a recent incident, this is 30 seconds, back on september 27, at the college of william and mary, the executive director the aclus virginia chapter black lives matter challenge this person, lets watch a live it of this, lets see what your take on this is. [video clip] im going to talk a bit about the demonstration, i appreciate it. Respond toing to questions from them. Chanting] aclu protects hitler, too. Shame shame shame. Brian they are saying that the aclu protects hitler. Allison they need to be educated. When you see 18 and 21yearolds doing stuff, are those students or activists . You have two things going on, dudes that are 18 and 21yearsold, they re learning and growing. They dont have a real historical sense. They can make statements like that and they have no historical context. They understand how this operates and for me, my job as an educator is helping them have that context, not to tell them to think a different way but to have to say look out extremist actions or violent actions have played out in history, have you 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 come from nonviolent actions. But you know, you can tell people that, they have to own it and learned for themselves. You can keep asking them questions so they can arrive at some of those conclusions on their own. That was the student views, they need to be educated, the activist piece, that is a horrible thing. Because the black lives Matter Movement is a Diverse Movement and you can have some extremists speaking out and people decide the whole movement is about that. You even had direct evidence of russian meddling to try to paint black lives matter that way. We all have to be critical thinkers and question the reality that is presented to us in the media. Think for ourselves. 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, senator grassley had a hearing and interestingly enough, after the william and mary thing, this guyent that testified was a named zachary wood. He was at Williams College and he says 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 really disagree with. At williams, the administration promotes tolerance often at the expense of political tolerance. At my time at williams, i cannot name a single conservative speaker that has been brought to campus by the administration. In classrooms, liberal argument are often treated as unquestionable truth. 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 do for the state of free speech and intellectual campus. On my college [end video clip] brian a big liberal arts school in massachusetts. Allison 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 you cant paint with a broad brush. 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 dont agree with this but if i speak out i am being seen as a trader to my people. Nobody wants to be that. That is a toxic environment that needs to be changed. Brian traitor to what people . Allison they 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 bring about justice for africanamericans lets be honest, this is americas original sin, we have a lot of work to do in that realm. 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 trajectory, it is the story of gradual progress to make those ideals a reality. It is that great unfinished symphony that is from the closing lines of hamilton. We have a lot of work to do and this is definitely a beautiful thing and there arent a lot of symphonies out there in the world. What i want to say to my radical student is 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 Hopkins University Just got 150 facilitate open group,from the thats a greek family million do to facilitate the discussion and open dialogue . Allison we can bring in speakers and outside thinkers that can help you to parse these difficult issues. To me this is a matter of individual responsibility. If you want to encourage open and inclusive dialogue, we can all model the behavior we want to see. That is another way of saying stop believing that ad hominem for a genuinetute argument. That is what we see on television today. In our discourse are these labels. You have to think that way or you are cast out of the tribe. I want people to think for themselves. I wanted to challenge those labels. That is particularly important to me in a big data world. But face it, this last election in the brains election, that was very much the creation of the clever manipulation of people. Like cambridge analytica. You can determine weapons from social media and you can get people to vote that way. What is the antidote to that . The antidote to that is dont be algorithm. Be a human. Think for yourself and then you cant be manipulated by your government or Large Technology companies or the russians for that matter. If we all think ourselves, we solve a lot of problems. Brian you are at a think tank. Tell me about that. Allison this is a think tank that is devoted to thinking through some of the challenges that america faces in the digital age. Brian what kind of a contract do you have with them . Limited to a year . Allison 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 now that you have seen a little bit of the Foundation World in washington, what is your take . Allyson ive seen it before. It performs a valuable function. I think what you can see is that it has its limits. Very much again as i was saying, there is a role for tentative tenured academics to make a contribution to policy debates. Because i think we have this advantage that we are not bought by anyone. Brian were you all setup in advance of what happened in march to do the america foundation, or did they come to you in advance and say, we have a home for you for year. Allison i had plans that were changed. I was supposed to finish one book and start another, i have not finished the book, my life had all the pieces thrown up in the air. They were kind enough to give me a home when i decided to stay in washington for the year. Healthany residual problems you have after all this time . Allison a little bit, i have a couple muscles in my neck that misbehave. I think i am almost back to complete recovery. Id like my brain is functioning to easily, there is a good feeling, i missed it. It is nice to be able to i appeared here on time, i was having a lot of trouble back in spring about getting out the door on time. It was difficult for me. I am feeling strong and almost 100 . Brian after that incident did anybody responsible for that comment apologize . Allison no. And i would like that. Was . do you know who it allison i have some ideas. I 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 . Allison i dont get to make a distention, there are a number of layers to this. One, it disturbs me about what happened at middlebury. I think students were encouraged to do things that were not in their interest by some of the faculty, that upsets me, 1821yearolds are developing and they need to be advised in the right ways. [silence] allison i think i will leave it at that. To say that i would thought the faculty more than the students for what happened. Brian do you know who they are . Allison of course. Brian have they apologized . Allison some of them. Some of them have. I think there is a real belief on the part of the people who are more radical that they want to say what happened outside the lecture hall has nothing to do with what happened inside the lecture hall and to me, theyre directly connected. Because shutting down speech is an invitation to violence, we had these heated, passionate exchanges precisely to avoid having to have guns or swords or have a dual. When you shut down speech, your inviting violence. I think the people who supported some of the picture missed thought that happened outside and they also want to say that it was the result of outside forces but it is all interconnected. Brian our guest has been professor allison stanger. She will be back in the classroom in january . Allison no, not for two years. Brian thank you for joining me. Allison yes, it has been a great pleasure and honor. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] announcer for free transcripts or to give your comments about this program, visit us at q a. Org. Q a programs are also available as cspan podcasts. Announcer if you liked this weeks q a interview, here are others you might enjoy. An author talks about his writing and role as administrator of the White House Office of information and Regulatory Affairs during the obama administration. Also, Mitch Daniels discusses his political career during a q a session with students at purdue university. Hillsdale College President larry arne the schools history and its conservative roots. You can find those interviews online at cspan. Org. Announcer that the british house of commons this past week, british Prime Minister theresa may they questions on proposed cuts to Housing Assistance programs for low income families in the solvency of the National Health service, she was asked about the status of brexit negotiations between the u. K. 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