You are sweet mightier. You and i are good pals and i admire your work and remember that interview that you did with brian lamb on qanda. That is a credit to both of you and you did that with a great sincerity and honesty. Host brian lamb is an amazing person and i love the interviews that he does. Cspan is such a gift and as an educator guest via the grade school program. He was here and have been here for a great time. It was in the mid1980s and another student that year was jim nick governed who became a member of congress as an antiwar liberal. He helped end the war in el salvador. I had him in class and i was kind of worried about him. Youve got to get out. You are missing out on things. What do you suggest . He said there theres a wonderful shelter in dc. We go down and volunteer. He was working for a congressman said he went to town and met women from el salvador and said whats going on down there so we started taking the members of congress to el salvador and i think that he knew a lot i dont think that he knew where it was, but he had a good heart. Finally, joe persuaded congress to cut off the funding for el salvador. Guest its amazing to think of the recommendation. Guest to get into congress because of fidel castro and he managed 8 of the vote. There he was again the boston globe and the worst the incumbent republican and they gave been little to no money and he was down in the polls for days. Meanwhile they had taken them to cuba and the incumbent wanted to have a little fun. He put him on the main intersection all day long holding and an armistice line enormous sign. It was so foul and dirty but four days later he still won the election. How are you doing, you are way behind. I was on the other side of the vote because a little while before i went to talk to him so did the pope. [laughter] host that is a great example. Guest host i was thinking how it would be marvelous to see a diagram in the center and all of the links that go out to people doing Amazing Things around the world and you certainly just from reading this book you get a wonderful birds eye view of how many lives youve influenced in your teaching. Host they commended the classes and they go all through Elementary School and high school they take math and science every year. With the ever put anybody through the schools with only one math course whether they like it or not so ive been trying to for years to get the curriculum to get them talking about these things. Host said you were known for many years as a columnist for the Washington Post which women think of a writer as kind of a peak. You have tremendous influence here in the capital, you are reaching is that millions of people. Why did you. They are from belfast and buenos aires, bangladesh all Nobel Peace Prize winners. And Bernie Sanders and jim nick governed and people like that. And i always ask them what is the best way to increase peace and a decrease in violence which if you seek a life of purpose the answer always came back the same you need to go back to where people are. So they took it to a local Public High School a few blocks away from the Washington Post and asked can i come in and teach the class on peace studies class we dont have a class like that but if you want to teach the class come in. So thats when i started in 1982 and i had about 12,000 students over the years. You teach a. On the first day they didnt really get into it and they asked why havent we heard about these people . Postcodes not only the people that you introduce them to but its your ideas. First maybe we should say that this book is a collection of marvelous letters to you that you then respond to come and i must say i learned so much and was inspired to justify reading their letters and your responses and that is the beauty of this book. There is a combination of you pulling quotes of text from people that you just mentioned and your own wisdom and humor that comes out. There is a combination of that. You are such a unique person and here you sit in front of looking like you could be a republican. Guest ouch. Host i remember reading the columns and then i remember you were appearing once at a protest that we were doing and you rolled up in your bicycle and you said i am mccarthy and i said that isnt all been mccarthy, he is the writer for the Washington Post and we made you get up and say something. But you embodies so many amazing volumes and concepts and challenges to students that come out so beautifully in this book and i think you said in the book if you dont teach them peace everyone else is going to teach them violence. And your concept may be for the listeners that start out with your basic sense of what is peace. Guest if the result of love, if it was all easy we would be good at it. You have to talk about that. In my High School Classes i deemphasize whenever a professor says we have a lot of ground to cover today, i told them to be the track coach where they cover a lot of ground. [laughter] there is no hurry to rush through. Theres so much there. Host but it isnt just the absence of more like Animal Rights you write your bicycle. Could you maybe give your personal philosophy . Guest i think we are all called on to decrease the violence and in many ways to go about that, i decided one way is through my diet. I always ask my students for questions, who would like to reduce cruelty in the world and all hands go up. Who would like to reduce world hunger and all of their hands go up. Would like to reduce Global Warming clacks all of their hands go up. Who would like to have a healthy body, all of their hands go up. Ive never had anybody say i want to increase cruelty. Okay, four aalpha four. So then having to go up that you will make some progress and if everybody did that, we would have a very serene world. As the people say okay i cant do much about stopping the Death Penalty right now. I can write about it i cant do much about bringing the troops home from afghanistan or the other 700 military bases we have around the world okay tell me something about my next meal. Host one of the marvelous exchanges in the book is when you talk about bringing the turkey into the crowd. Maybe you can tell us about that. Guest two weeks before thanksgiving a little traverse im there were a lot of thanksgiving dinners where the kids go home, the rest of you keep eating. [laughter] host you bought a turkey into the classroom for the students to take a sense of empathy. Guest the turkeys name is abigail. Bringing the turkey is down and the truck crashed on the highway. Some friends of mine from the sanctuary was riding along to bring them down to the rescue center. So for four or five days a lot happened that day. It brought the reality home because the way we tell them is out kill them is out of sight. Theres too much of violence. Theres hot and cold. There theres the gun shootings. We feel that ended the media talks about that often. They are written by drones, its out of sight. Whether it is hot or cold its still happening. Host are they are personal things that youve made lifelong commitments to as long as you dont drink and you challenge your students as you write in the exchanges with the students is such a devastating impact on the society. Can you talk a little bit about your interaction with the students . Guest that was a very touching letter that i had from a student. Ive been pondering if we can share. Here it goes. Ive always known that i dont need an toxicants of that sort to enjoy myself. So she goes onto you have any counsel this is august of 2009 you may have come across it in the world of the fugitives they are taken in the opposite direction that would appear to run away. Thats you. So i would encourage you to take a stand. It is the worst as more families are ruined by that drug than any other. Host you started off because a friend of yours was killed back in high school in a car accident having been drinking and that led you to make a lifelong commitment to drink. Host i always ask my students if you want to write a paper due do a Research Paper and research your goal in life where you spend your money and your time and spends a that tells a lot about you. If you want to research something close stop drinking this semester. Host i wonder if they see you as to good advantage sample and that makes it hard for them to aspire to you to write your bike everywhere you dont drink, you are a vegetarian. It is on the larger level do you think that makes it less of a model . Guest we joke or not we are glad you are here professor they are a little loopy but you will wake up one of these decades. Host you dont even agree with drinking in moderation. It is that the commercial that anybody holding the book. I have no friends i just had drinking buddies. Host the whole life revolved around the postgame drinking when she stopped drinking she didnt want to have anything to do with this when they realized the value. The name was george a harper. Host i wonder if we can talk a little bit about some of the other controversial things that you bring up. One thing that im sure is very controversial in this town is that you dont vote and maybe you could explain why you dont and is something you that something you just put out to the students saying this is something i do or do you actually tell them dont vote . Guest the constitution sanctions violence in the article one section eight inaugural of the commander in chief they shall raise money for the militia. So anybody that votes for them to matter how they are is the document that sanctions violence and weve been doing that all these years, all the intervention. That is tracked in our economy and ive always show my classes this visual from the Service Committee and on the left is the military spending. 59 of the discretionary funding goes to killing people are threatening to kill people. We dont say we are defending democracy. And over here on the right or the social programs for the state department five for education. If you have the peace corps budget it would be way over here. Host there is no light Dennis Kucinich tried for many years. Guest i had written about and Congress Demings it by not funding it adequately. Host what about the rotc campuses and your involvement in opposing that . Guest they have rotc programs. Notre dame is the biggest in the country percentagewise. Boston college, all of peace schools, and here christ was a pacifist. How can that be . Im waiting for that hope to see whether he ever comes out and tells catholics you are forbidden to go into the military. There is nowhere near saying that. Host you live in dc. I could see if you had his views if you lived in ann arbor michigan or berkeley that you are in the nations capital. You are surrounded by the contractors, surrounded by databases and yet you say things like you want to serve the country, dont join the military. And youre constantly in this book advising your students not to join the military. Guest the reason i do that, you hear this phrase thank you for serving the country. While no one in the military serving their country, they are serving those that run the country. There is little evidence of those that run the country that cared cares about you. Otherwise the va wouldnt have a long waiting list you wouldnt have a high suicide rate among veterans in vietnam and iraq and afghanistan. They dont care about you. Otherwise they wouldnt have declared them in the first place they had only one in that war. That was the son of a longtime democrat whose son was killed but the other boys can i send this out to my classes. This is a good bill by one of the journalists here in town and there he was. A father talking to his son and he said everyone that went to college in the 60s there is a war going on. [laughter] host but today was the field war in afghanistan, iraq libya people are voted into congress because of war record and must be very controversial to many of the students. Im sure some of them have been in the military or their parents have. How did that go over with them . Guest i didnt blame soldiers. I think many in my class and have one now. They all saw combat in afghanistan and iraq. They said please dont ask me any questions. I promised i would not ask. It was very tense. Heres a marine and yes they were so strong it was published in the newspaper. He is doing fine now. He said they tend to be disciplined people. The Peace Movement was strong in the dedication. Host if the Peace Movement had the resources that the military had for people to go to college because as you know, a lot of students go into the military to get their college paid for and in fact we have students writing letters about that in the book. But you see that you dont blame the soldiers at you tell them dont join the military and doesnt that kind of overlap and make people uncomfortable . Guest you cant tell them what to do. You can show them what the options are. The first letter is a student from the Naval Academy she wrote a piece to me how she was an english major and it came to the panama organization in 1988 and they said women shouldnt be in combat and i dont think men should be either. Nobody should be. They said you have some crazy ideas about women in the war. So she goes on in a very gracious way letting me know. So i wrote back to her and said half a ton of thanks for the letter and its in passionate language. So i go on and quoted einstein do the school books glorify the war they indoctrinate children with hate it. I would rather teach peace rather than war. They should fight for things worthwhile, not an imaginary geographical lines or racial prejudices and private greed draped into patriotism. There should be weapons of the spirit, not a shrapnel and tanks. Einstein who was largely ignored. So i invited them to come to georgetown university. She have to go had to go through the navy to talk up the admiral to see if she could be allowed to go with those liberals and she had to get security clearance. She came in every week. She had no credit for the class and came in. She invited me to her graduation and i kept up with her. She went five years in san diego and went to night school, san diego law, became a Public Interest warrior and has done work in bringing the war in africa back to justice. She now works for one of the largest law firms and is doing good deeds and had she come to that class and never had this before and a student named grace armstrong wrote to her and said your visit to our class was the most fortunate thing that happened to me all year. She goes on and thinks them. Listening to your story encouraged me to pursue my passion. I am so glad to have met you and in one afternoon i see you becoming a role model in my life so you never know. I always tell the students you should never ask any questions instead come in here and question the answers. I quoted that great line from the great philosopher and she said violence like all action changes the world. But the most probable change is in the more violent world. Host i think one of the Amazing Things about your teaching career is that you are on so many Different Levels of teaching in high schools and colleges and law schools and also in prison. And one of the most compelling exchanges in here and the discussion is about the violence started by the prisoner on death row. Guest i wrote about the case and finally he was taken off death row by Douglas Wilder but he couldnt get in because of the rule in virginia. If you have proof that you were innocent but i funded a class and inmates would take the class and its lowered the violence. Host the officials didnt like it. Guest they told the director you are running a prison not a school and they did close it. Host while it was going, you relayed in the book how you took your students however you managed. They gave a diploma to the roommates and it would wreck ignited the other educations. Guest nobody coming home is pro Death Penalty and when they met them in their car they they were still human beings and we shouldnt. Theyve been exonerated and scully john roberts, pro Death Penalty people and obama is pro Death Penalty. He says while in some cases it is so heinous that we have to do it. Host because he is pro killing people, too if you can kill people by drones. Guest ive been very lucky in my life i have a family with three sons that are doing good deeds in the world. They were athletes, and my wife i love and adore her. The family said zero now you are rushing into this. Its been 96 years. 48 for my wife and for me. Host does she worry about you writing around on your bicycle . Guest i broke my jaw one time and i was hospitalized. Host and you still write everywhere on your bike and you are at 76 . Guest 77 now. I run marathons, ive run 18 marathons and i just did the Cherry Blossom race on sunday. She was an obstetrical nurse and they do a class now that obstetrical violence and how they treat women. And i admired the midwives and the obstetricians. The hospitals are run by men and i think that home births are lowcost and the midwives can do it and i bring them into my class. Host i did mention one thing when you said that you have a cost for writing letters of recommendation for the students but they have to bake something for you and your wife. Can you tell us why you think that . Guest will you write a letter for me and if you do it by friday, okay youve got to bake something for me. So some of these College Folks they dont know much about the kitchens. This will help. But when you have the vagaries of think of all that you would save. Host a lot of the teaching you do you dont get paid for. Guest i dont get a love payment but i get a lot of satisfaction. The students that are debating the issues i had a High School Teacher that saved my life. You are not going to get out of this place. It is any secret high school. I told you what coming you write for me and right for me and i will get extra credits for you. So we wrote a thousand words every night during my senior year of high school. I love writing. But thanks to bernie i was able to get out of high school and i wrote in college and then i ended up at the post. Ive been lucky all my life. Host one of the things in this book they are beautiful letters by the students and i wonder with young people these days focusing so much on social media, Twitter Facebook where you are not writing more than a sentence or two are they good at writing any more . Guest i often do a little exercise. Write out all the words you can think of beginning with the letters a and b. You have ten minutes to do it so they start writing it down and rarely do they get into 20 words theres about 150 words in the dictionary beginning with the letters a and b. You have to have a great language to get it out for people to value that it and pay you for it. Host this seemed like it was from a young man that came from a upper middle class family that was lost. He said he had as much Attention Span as a goldfish and he worried you because it made you call his father to to say is he okay because hes worried about suicide. Guest thats right. I lost all students to suicide one in law school and to encourage and one in high school you often worry about that someone going through tough times and i told them no matter how bad it is you can do two things, call somebody and say i need your help. Number two, no matter how hard a time you were going through the others have had the same decline in fury to overcome and you can do it, too. For example i always think about that. He is doing fine now by the way. Students worry that their grades endlessly and this one student wrote. It begins, she tells me her name dear professor i was in your class this past semester. I was quite shocked and slightly offended that i had received a b . I did every assignment helped with the video, joint discussions where i could and i even gave up a part of my former diet for this class. Im still not eating meat. I didnt expect a b so i wrote back and said b isnt so bad. I think grading is degrading. Host you called call into fearbased learning. Guest the American Education system no more than socrates i dont think so. But i have to do it. I teach at a class and i walked in and the very first day is anybody here just to get an a if you are here tommy. And i promise you you can leave right now and i will turn it in for you at the end of the semester. My god what is the catch . One boy put his hand up and he said im here to get the a come and he left the room and never came back. So, the word spread. They are handing them out like flowers in the spring time. So they didnt invite me back and i never saw him again. He now runs a shelter for Homeless People and he was in the class and it worries the students and they tell him take a look at the obituary page writing a 2. 9 average in college, he died yesterday. [laughter] go find somebody that said i wish i need more in college. Host its also the parents pressure with a great letter where the mother calls you to say how is my daughter doing in class and instead ask your daughter. I said how would i know. [laughter] just ask your daughter she will tell you. I said send them off with the poison ivy doesnt make any difference. Host but you know it does make a difference in terms of the students of these days getting out of school with so much debt. They are on this track that they have to get highpaying jobs and a lot of times that depends on what college you went to. Guest plus what you measured in. Now obama is pushing Science Technology engineering and math. Host what do you advise people that stand coming with 100,000 in debt i want to do something good for the world what can i do . Guest it is a tough thing that i think that they will excuse much of the publicinterest law and some of the colleges also. But they are the bigger in the economy fighting all these wars. Weve been fighting iraq and iran that cant be explained or afford it. And that children and the school are victimized by that. Host speaking of that, when the war in iraq started, it seemed like every friday at the Chevy Chase High School where you talked the students would go out. Guest 1991. Id ive been a volunteer at the bethesda Chevy Chase High School. We would go out every friday. Host was it in the beginning that you got in trouble . Guest we were right near this highway and we had signs and then 25 down honk again for peace heat. Host i love the stories that you tell of a woman coming over and then you think youre not giving it loud enough in my up loud enough in my day in vietnam we were allowed go and get a megaphone. Guest and there it was. You teach them make your voice heard. Host and the parents dont complain . Guest dot so far no. I encourage them the whole time. Host again this is a Military Area how can you not get complaints that the teacher is coming in and encouraging students . Guest i. E. Do not force them to come out and make signs where they stand. Host so do some of the students stay in . Guest . I have never asked about about except for a few complaints from the teachers and the Student Newspaper had to defend the protest because the teacher didnt like it because you made noise and i said the whole school should be out there doing this. Not just all in the peace class. Everybody should be out there. But high school can be very high anxiety because the pressure on grades and colleges. So i say no homework, no test exams those examines how those are all forms of academic violence. Theres never been a debate about that one. The pressure is on them. So we will discuss the things and then theres another teacher in the room as well. They are very good about it and so i love being at school and i taught in high school we had police in the holes carrying i said you must feel pretty safe, dont you with bulletproof vests and he said no, they are not knifing proof. Host the issue of violence in the community and the home how do you deal with those issues . You talked about some whose parents were killed. Guest i had a student one time a couple of weeks she was leaving the classroom hearing about the ideas of war and peace my parents had been quarreling for years, verbally abusing each other, often physically. How do i stop that, she said and i said maybe if we had the parents in school when they were younger and taught them the basics maybe we could lower the Domestic Violence rape. Host you bring up that some of your idols in terms of people were not so great in their personal lives. Guest he was a distant and cold hearted father. He was so angry that he couldnt get through to his father that he joined the military and now he suffered from alcoholism and became a prostitute. He wasnt a waste particularly a good husband or putnam was often an absentee father. A tall story, she was constantly depressed, he was cruel emotionally to the lives so you have to take care of your family first. Host did you talk then you talk about people that do terrible things in the world. Guest hairy truman idolized his wife. I got to know his daughter margaret and Clifton Daniel who was the bureau chief in london survived to know margaret and harry truman idolized his wife and left his family. He bombed 100000 people and families, great family man. Host i assume that george bush was a nice father. Guest yes indeed. Host how do you deal with that keeping people in the personal lives and what they do in the room ex guest i try to tell my students to be professionally not angry with personally gentle there was a great reporter but he was always seething in the drug industry and General Motors and he was a great reporter and would leave the newsroom that he was the most gentle man and raised three loving children and had a very happy marriage. Host but you are not even seething you are seething when you talk about the issues that you do it in such a gentle way and with a sense of humor. So it is a beautiful combination of things where you still have to fight the fire in the belly. Host you cant go around and raged im sure you do, we all suffer outrage overload. I cant take another. Im sure you get through that yourself and you know how much i admired the dedication and getting the word out. Host another thing i wanted to bring up the advice to the students that want to live a life that promote a more peaceful world. I was a little confused in your advice because it seems like sometimes you are giving a great congratulations to people that go into the peace corps or become judges or people who are out in the world on some kind of a larger level trying to do peacekeeping. And then on another site you see the most we can do is at this at the local level doing something in your survey said both . Guest some end up in Congress LikeJim Mceachern and i also have mark garrett as the director of the peace corps. So some end up that way and others to. I remember Mother Teresa one times that few of us will ever be called on to do great things about all of us can do small things in a great way so it is good to keep that in mind. And also we emphasized to be successful. But its more important to be faithful then successful. Host i know that my mother passed away, her greatest role model was donald trump. She thought that success meant money and i also wonder if youre talking with students how much you bring up the issue of consumption. It doesnt come up much in the buck or host she had a great line live simply so others simply live. Live simply. Host what about the other aspects of living . At catholic worker kind of model where people live collectively. Do you bring that up with your students . Guest i bring up a lot of guest speakers over 400 in the years. Ive had a Homeless Veterans coming, id have members of congress and all varieties so they see there is a lot you can do. Its when youre in high school and college. Many grew up in a very privileged family and havent had much to struggle about. But if you have a grounded philosophy in nonviolence that helps a lot. I encourage students dont go overseas. Go to el salvador. You will learn the results of American Foreign policy. Go among the victims of the what the country has been with so many people. And then you come back really educated. Host or you can go in this country where would you encourage people to go . Guest maysan runs a baseball camp and they give you a lot of scholarships from underprivileged families and my son has a program here and it gets a lot of scholarships. He played Minor League Baseball and he has a program in the Dominican Republic more than any in the world. Its right here in dc. Host i want to thank you for this beautiful book that people should read and would be inspired by and thank you for a life that is just a wonderful inspiration to many of us. You are one of my heroes. [laughter] host me, to. That was after words, the Signature Program which offers of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers and others familiar with other material. After words airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On sunday into 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. But they dont know anything of clinical process to discover what works. So we were gone the novel partnerships. Well. There is a new book out on several bestsellers list and it is called ghettoside a true story of murder in america. And it is written by Los Angeles Times reporter, jill leovy. She is joining us now at the l. A. Times festival of books. Who was bright in l. A. . Guest brands finale isnt 18yearold living in south los angeles, the son of an lapd homicide detective who is black. His mother was an anagram from costa rica. He was murdered in 2007 and the story of his murder is the central narrative of the book at her