Transcripts For CSPAN2 Democracy 20170611

[applause] good evening, everyone. My name is john, i have the honor of being the executive director of the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and i want to thank all of you for coming out this evening. In honor of our men and women uniform protecting our freedoms around the world. If you will please stand and join me for the ming of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Before we get started i would like to recognize just a couple of people in the audience and i know the first couple, they have been terrific supporters and that would be congressman gallegly and his wife. [applause] as well we have another couple that is here with us, much is a greatness that you see here at the Reagan Library and also new Institute Office that we opened in washington, d. C. Has been made possible through generosity and i wanted po point them out briefly and that would be jerry kroll and wife. [applause] i dont know that a book has ever been written that included introductions, operators manual on how to best bruise the author. I wish there was. To come to think of it, its not a bad idea because if the introducer simply followed the introductions in the manual carefully, like a bike for your child on christmas eve, well, all the pieces of the introduction would fit right into place and one will finish, there would be not a single extra nut or bolt on the floor for the bike or praise and flattery for the author left lying unused. Now, dr. Ricks most recent bestselling work actually say . Part one of the manual, consider yourself extremely fortunate it would say. Dr. Rice is one the most respected and admired women in the world with a Public Service record second to none. The fact that she is with you prepared to discuss her newest book is like winning the powerball lottery. Now, i have no argument with that. On part two, the manual might also say someone with the statute of dr. Rice agrees to see the lectern in a form speech and an opportunity to be interviewed in stage, take it, the audience gathered before you will probably like to hear from dr. Rice, not all about tr rice. I dont think i needed an introduction manual to figure that out. Ive been honored to tbreet dr. Rice at the reagan life. A memoir about her years as the first woman to serve as National Security adviser to the president and first African American woman to serve as secretary of state. Her newest book is any decent introduction manual accompanied it would clearly state dr. Rice had to write. Its budget matter goes far beyond personal memoirs and how she thinks democracy can play and can and must play a fundamental role in lives of people all other the world. I think she detected that someone wise need today frame for the American People how it is that democracy should be upped in the context of a very complicated and confusing world order or disorder of the case may be. From the time United States and several allies set in motion to defeat Saddam Hussein to where american soldiers are fighting for the rights of people around the world, the fundamental question that seems to underline actions is this, the only interest of the United States to promote democrat, Democratic Institutions where tfer need. From the many, many other related questions tr rice has had to answer over the years, such as can democracy per vial where it has not been before . Is it right for every culture . How might we tbainl or benchmark progress, how much before it can take hold. With that, ladies and gentlemen, if you will please join me in a conversation on stage at the Reagan Library with dr. Condoleezza rice. [applause] on behalf of board of trustees and the fan that is are here, we just want to welcome you and that youre on a very long trip on the road and we cannot thank you enough for coming to the reagan. Well, first of all, thank you very much, john, thank you for your leadership, i want to thank you for joining us for this conversation but i just want to say that theres no place that i would rather be than in the Reagan Library to talk about freedom. [applause] thank you. I would like to test out my theory as to why you wrote this book . Has this been in your mind for a long time and say, someone has to get out there and describe how democracy can flourish around the world no matter how difficult it might be . Yes, as a matter of fact its been on my mind for a long time and may even go back before that because when i think about democracy, its actually kind of mysterious thing, you know, that people are willing to trust these abstractions, constitution, rule of law, they are willing to go to the polls and elect people to represent them rather than going into the streets, rather than binding to family or to clan or to religion, they trust constitutions and rule of law and thats a very mysterious process and i think as a kid, a child growing up in birmingham, alabama, i was perhaps one that very early on saw something even more mysterious. I saw in segregated birmingham, alabama where you wouldnt go to a Movie Theater or a secondclass citizen, i saw black citizens still absolutely devoted to the institutions of american democracy. I have one incident in the book that encapsulates it for me and i was 6ish years old, my mothers brother had picked me up from school and it was election day and it was long lines of black people waiting to vote and i said to my uncle, well, this must mane that George Wallace cant win. I knew we probably didnt want him to wane. So my uncle said, oh, no, he said, we are a minority so hes going to win and i looked at my uncle and said, then why do they bother and my uncle said because they know that one day that vote will matter and as i went around the world as i saw long lines of liberians, South Africans in latin america, they know one day the vote will matter and we are blessed with this extraordinary gift, democracy. Americans in particular were blessed with Founding Fathers who understood an institutional design that would protect our liberties, our right to say what we think, worship as we employees, to be free from the secret police at night and have the dignities that comes from having those that are going to govern you, asking for consent but if we were blessed with that and we believe we were endowed by our creator with those rights, it cant be true for us and not for them and one of the marvelous legacies of the United States of america and the buildings that we sit, the libraries in which we sit, one of the most marvelous legacies of Ronald Reagan was that he never forgot our obligation to speak for the voiceless. He never forgot our obligation to do the right thing in supporting those who just wanted the simple freedoms that we had and he delivered because he believed that the United States of America America is an idea and its an idea thats universal and so thats why i wanted to write this book. When you were [applause] when you were secretary of state you were in the position to know the worlds opinion of the United States and its actions better than any other american, im sure. I know youre not in office now and its only been 100 days since weve had the Trump Administration in power but i wondered if you are able to speak has there been any change in your mind as to how americans are viewed as we transition from president obama to President Trump. Well, i was in europe not too long after the election and the first thing i said to my friends in europe, all right, just settle down, all right. [laughter] the United States of america is engaging in a little bit of a democratic experiment. [laughter] [applause] weve just elected who has never been in government before, whose never even sniffed the government before and that president is going to take sometime, a bit of a learning curve but the one thing that you can trust is that america has institutions that are absolutely firm and absolutely concrete and will hold america in check and so if you look at the president , i think, hes getting used to the fact that actually its not as easy as it looks in there. That the american presidency is not just one person, its a constitution, a constrained institution. Founding fathers were terrified of executive power. As they were leaving a king, they didnt want to create another one. They created a congress, two houses as separate and equal branch of government. As a matter of fact, its article 1 of the constitution as the congress will constantly remind you when youre in the executive branch. [laughter] and today that congress is made up of 535 people who most think they should be president of the United States. He has governors, 50 of them, half of whom think they should be president of the United States and they have legislators. By the way, he has the press as well, Civil Society and americans who are ungovernable. So the job of getting to be president is one thing, once youre there its quite another and so the learning curve, i think, has been steep but i think we have seen some things that really the world likes in what they see in america. I think the decision to strike the syrian air bases after the combim call weapons on assad, we had layed out a red line four to five years ago, it had been crossed, it had done nothing that. Eroded american credibility and that single strike the administration said, this far and no further. There are just some things that are intolerable and i saw Something Else in the way this president did that, you remember he said, i couldnt sit by and watch babies choking on chemical gas. What he was really saying was as president of the United States, i cannot sit by and watch babies choking on chemical gas and so i think that theres a lot of water to pass under that bridge and we are still learning what its to get up and not just react every time but some very good things have happened and the one thing i will say as an american, we have only one president at a time and we have to do everything we can to try to make our president successful and thats where i stand. [applause] you point in your book and ive also heard you in various speeches make a similar point that when we talk about democracy its extremely important for the United States to beyond talking the talk and you have got to walk the walk and set the example if we are going to promote that they adhere to democracy. Im wondering if there are an instance or two not just during Trump Administration certainly going back last decade or two where you would think america really messed up, set the wrong example and we could have done better than we should have known better . Well, do it all of the time, right, because democracies are not perfect. America is not perfect. One of the hardest moments for me was in iraq because it was stain on our grautest institutions. The fact that we have men and women who volunteer to defend us at the front lines of freedom is just an extraordinary gift. I mean, absolute gift. And a few people acting badly cast a cloud on the commitment of men and women who do the right thing. I felt terrible at that moment. But i also say to people whenever Something Like that happens, when we have awry yacht in our streets about a contested Police Shooting or we have a katrina where we dont respond quite as well as we would like, i say to people abroad, thats why america is a good example because as madison said, i didnt think that the constitution would be the perfect work of perfect men. He said it was because men are imperfect that we need it. So imperfection is a part of the human condition. The fact that the United States has been struggling with our imperfections ever since by the way our birth defect of slavery. We were born with an imperfection, a constitution that original counted my ancestors as threefifths of a man but somehow i would take the oath of office to that same constitution as a 66th secretary of state, oh, by the way, i would be sworn in by a jewish Woman Supreme Court justice and you would say to people, you know, we just keep striving, we get up every day, we try to do a little bit better and thats what really democracy is about. Its always a work in progress. [applause] turn to go russia and a few other countries for a moment. We seem to have real predicaments in on hands and feel like theyve accelerated in the last 100 days for the relations with russia and tendencies with iran and funding of terrorist actions and north korea, access to nuclear missiles, longrange missiles, is there one of those examples where you would say, this one rise above all the rest, if we cant fix this one we have a huge problem on our hands . Let me say that President Trump has outstanding National Security team. Rex tillerson is a fine secretary of state. Some kind of understood that the president needed a different kind of secretary of state. He needed a business peer. Oil men know the world like nobody else. They have to deal with long tilt investments and deal with Difficult People and people working troubling circumstances. [laughter] jim mattis is one of the best commanders of the generation and hr mcmaster but any would struggle with the north korean problem. I was the secretary of state who try today negotiate with the North Koreans to get them to give up Nuclear Weapons that. Was kim jong il, the father. I think jr. Is unhinged. When he says, i can destroy the United States, i hope he doesnt really believe this. Hes also reckless, anybody who will reach into malaysia to kill half brother and half brother was under chinese protection, so hes reckless, hes probably a little unhinged and theyve made a lot of progress in the last several years on their nuclear programs. You see, a Nuclear Weapon usable Nuclear Weapon, you have to have fuel and theyve been harvesting plutonium and uranium for sometime and you have to have a bomb design. When people tell you that its easy to make a Nuclear Weapon, it actually isnt easy to make a Nuclear Weapon. Bomb design has to hold the material in Critical Mass until the moment that you want to hit it and explode. So when you read in the newspapers that the the north korean tests that theyre not getting very good yield, that means its exploding prematurely. But theyre Getting Better at it and theyre working at it and pretty soon they are going to get to the place where they can explode it when they want it and then they can affix it to the third element which is a delivery vehicle. What worrying people that delivery vehicles are getting longer in range and i dont know whether President Trump is being told one year or three year or five years, my guess is 3 to 5 years hes going to be to marry that weapon to intercontinental ballistic missile. So what do you do about it . Well the only country that actually has influence over the North Koreans is probably china but the chinese have always been more fearful of the collapse of the regime than of a nuclear regime, so that i have refuse today tighten the screws on the North Koreans and they could do a lot, they could close the bored, they could deny them fuel oil, the chinese could really hurt the regime. The chinese have to be convinced that they now have to do whatever it takes to stop the regime and when you hear the administration say, if you wont deal with the North Koreans, we will. Thats the message that theyre sending. Now the we will is kind of ugly because if you want to look at military options, youre looking at seoul which is very vulnerable and very close to border, militarized zone, the North Koreans could do a lot of damage, civilian casualties in seoul. So the options are not very good. Its complicated by the new president in south korea who is a man of the left who has said we ought to be negotiating with the North Koreans. Trust me i tried that and they walked away and we are going to try to find a way to protect south korea and protect japan because, again, no president can let the North Koreans be able to reach the United States with a Nuclear Weapon. One good thing here, the russians that we have so many troubles on on some other things, if a longrange missile can reach alaska it can reach russia. [applause] speaking of the russians, ive seen a lot of analysis that basically says that putin, one strategy to occur to happen in the last thousand years he will point dissolution of the soviet state. So crimea and georgia, what do you think hes all about . What does he want . I got an inside into all of this. I know Vladimir Putin pretty well. He actually kind of liked me because i was a russianist and he thought, they would get more attention, he actually told me that once. Now that youre secretary of state we get to do one day we are sitting there and he says, condi, you know us, russia has only been great when its ruled by great men like peter the great and alexander the second and every bone in the body want to say do you mean vladamir. He thinks hes reuniting the russian people in greatness, so what if it means you take somebodys territory like crimea, so what if you make Eastern Ukraine basically ungovernable because the russians are backing ukrainian separatist who is are killing ukrainian soldiers every day. Sobeit if you fly bomber runs in the coast of sweden. At least in the 3200 years they havent done anything to the russians and he threatens, he does something thats really dangerous, russian pilots fly awfully close to american ships, to american planes and so hes going push it until he stopped. Now president obama did a good thing in deploying, rotating forces in the Baltic States and in poland. That was a signal that article 5 in nato that an attack on one is an attack. I would have made those permanent but rotating will do. We also need to say to putin, stop flying within 10 feet of our planes because one of your guys is going to get shot down really soon and stop doing it. They are doing some very Dangerous Things and we need to send strong signals about that. Now as to ukraine, i would arm the ukrainians because people deserve the right to defend themselves. Now, to be fair the ukrainians are not great militarily so you want to be careful what you give them, something they cant hurt themselves with, so be careful what you give them. [laughter] but i do think you should arm the ukrainians and the final thing, this is something that the president has done, we are building building the American Military budget is an important signal. All the years of sequestration has been very tough. [applause] from a land grab perspective, is there one nation that you think is most particular at flific putin strategy . Yeah. I think he will try to just dismember ukraine. Thats basically what hes trying to do. He can make georgia ungovernable as a whole and even in syria as long as assad is in power in part of syria, so what if a third of syria is completely ungovernable. I think thats the game that he plays. Crimea was a little different and one of the things that we have to understand about crimea. I have a lot of liberal russian friends for whom the crimea seizure was the right thing to do. Crimea was from katherine the great and gave crimea to ukraine as symbol of friendship, it didnt matter it was all the soviet union. When my liberal russian friends said when it became independent, they should have given it back. Thats not the way it works. Its a violation of International Law and we can never recognize the soviet the russian annexation of crimea but we need to be aware that among russians its not an unpopular thing to have done but it actually added to putins popularity, but he can be stopped. You just have to be pretty firm. Last russia question, with putin in charge in russia, i think if i recall correctly, youre pessimistic about russia with putin in charge, theres absolutely no hope whatsoever for democrat institutions to thrive in russia with him in charge. The sad thing is that he dismantled institutions. When you think about institutional design, what you want an executive thats no so strong because its checked by other power centrists. They actually had a functioning legislature, he started ruling by degree and tanks into the streets. The strong russian presidency under putin is quite another. Theres always a sliver of hope because when Ronald Reagan said mr. Gorboshaw tear down that wall, i dont know if he actually thought that was going to happen and putin is right now in a position to rule because theres no organized opposition to him and hes making sure of that, but a few weeks ago people flood intoed the streets of moscow to protest corruption. Still online, bloggers are still protesting government actions and so theres something slightly alive underneath and another thing is that russian people are different than they were in the soviet union, the 25 years of the collapse of the soviet union doesnt matter. Russians looked at their feet, they never looked at you, now they travel, they send their kids to study abroad, they spoil their even middleclass russians spoil their kids at toysrus and putin is not their guy, somewhere along here someone might i personal to be a focal point for that constituency but before we get too carried away with the new liberal russia, the other potential opposition to putin could come from even the harder right because theres an even more ult extra nationalist, ultra side that even putin tries to keep under control. So, yes, i worry about russia, a place that i think has Great Potential but the institution is just not there right now. On the refugee front, President Trump, i think, has lost now twice in his attempt to halt for much, much better vetting refugees coming coming from syria and other such points and i wondered if he has policies that he attempt today put in place actually survive judicial review and they were in place, do you think that would substantially improve our National Security or in your view a lot much to do about nothing . I think that the executive order as it was redrafted, lets be frank, the first one wasnt so great. It was evidence of a white house that didnt quite have its act together, did things like tried to ban green card holders which is not legal, but the second one probably is the right target, there are a few countries in the world that are ungoverned spaces, yemen, libya, somalia, sudan. We dont have the ability to vet people on the ground because if we have embassies they are very small and under constant siege and so i think of policy that says youre going to need much more thorough vetting from those kinds of countries and iraq should have been taken off the list but we will take the time and step back for six months, a year and see, i think that would have made sense. Because of the way the first order came out it poisoned the well in what would have been a completely sensible policy. The fact is they can really if they want today improve and increase the vetting, they can probably do it without executive order, more Homeland Security agents on the job f somebody wants to get the visa dont let them get in in sudan, make them go to another country to get it. There are other ways to do this and i do think we have a problem. Despite relate today President Trumps and the way he has tried to capture when he talks about America First policy and under that umbrella might want to put foreign aid in there. Im betting that a large percentage of audience here, some the left and the right that foreign aid is an absolute waste of tax dollars and why would we be putting money in foreign aids when our schools need to be prepared and bridges and all of that. The question is coming from former secretary of state, do you think theres a foreign aid thats really important for the American People to grasp . For me its a little bit the same argument that i would make about democracy and promoting democracy. You can say we will Pay Attention to our own affairs, we have to rebuild bridges in pennsylvania, so why are we building bridges in afghanistan . You can say our schools are not in great shape, why are we trying to send schools in nigeria, you can say all of those things but i think there are two really powerful arguments against that kind of thing, one is a moral argument and one is a practical argument. The moral argument is america is an idea and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are universal and good for us and not for them. And we are at our best when we lead from both power and principle. The principle that no man or woman or should have to live in the direst of poverty and the worst of circumstances because we are also a compassionate nation that actually believes that as many problems as we have, we have been tbichgiven an extraordinary bounty. If you go to places on the world, i dont care how bad it looks in the United States of america, its much, much worse. How can you turn a blind eye to those children playing in the dirt in haiti and how can you turn a blind eye to an ebola pandemic in liberia . We are too good to be that way. The moral argument is that i am i am christian i have been told that what you do for the least of my brothers you do for me and whatever your tradition is and wherever that impulse comes from for come page, america has had it and we have to keep it. Thats the moral case. Now the practical case. Democratic states that can deliver for their own people dont invade their neighbors, they dont traffic soldiers and dont traffic in human sex trade so women end up in brothels and they dont harbor terrorists as a matter of state policy, they dont as democracies dont fight each other, we know that, its called the Democratic Peace and so theres a reason that we have believed that we are better off when other people beyond our borders can live with decent governments to try to take care of them. Now as the foreign assistance, yes, i think there was a time when foreign aid was just given for strategic reasons, the soviet union was giving money so we gave money for somebody else, maybe a little bit of guilt about colonialism or whatever, but those days have been long gone for a long time and if you look a lot of the foreign aide programs, the millennium challenge is good for this, millennium challenges says you will receive large foreign packages from the United States only if you are governing wisely, if you are fighting corruption, if youre investing in your people and if you are doing those things, then we will give you foreign aid. I will give you one example. A millennium challenge compact. They wanted to do, a lot of farms in the third world are actually quite inefficient because they are very small farms and one of the problems in combining them is nobody know what is the title is for the land so they were going to the land titling but there was a law on the book that women couldnt hold land in their own name and so the United States of america said, if you want to see a dime of this foreign assistance, you will change that law and they changed that law. So when you go abroad and you look at what america has done in aids relief, humanitarian crises or in the kinds of programs that we run all over the world, we are the largest donor of food aid, you recognize that the most powerful county in the world also ought to be the most compassionate and its good for us too because when you create responsible sovereigns that agent in the National System that enhances prosperria, we are all better off. So foreign aid is a very inexpensive way to keep us from ultimately having to intervene in other more expensive ways including by military force. And most americans, theres been a poll out there, survey, americans think that foreign assistance is about 25 of the federal budget. Its less than 1 and a half percent. About half of that goes to democracy and improving the lives of people. Good statistic. [applause] i have two more questions and then i would like to invite you in the audience to raise your hand when you have a question. The evidence of it says as you well know that in the last two decades everywhere you go people ask, would you please, please run for the presidency. [cheers and applause] and you know youve always said, no i wont, no i wont. I wonder if its the kind of thing now youve reached a point in your career when you say no, you really mean it or do you not say no [laughter] john, i really mean it. You have to know your dna. I admire people who run for office and i dont think the process is too tough but it should be tough. I remember running being in election with george w. Bush and at tend of the day i was rearing to go and i wanted to go back to the hotel. I love doing Public Service, i will keep doing Public Service. Im very involved in k12 education reform which i think is very important to our country and without that we will not be very strong and i work a lot with the boys and girls club to try to do work. Im busy teaching those millennials. They are the most wonderful they are the most publicminded kids in my 30plus years of teaching but they also have r the kids who got the participation trophy for soccer and so they are slightly fragile and but, yet, their are the funniest combination of slightly fragile and hyperconfident because theyve been told that they were, you know, the next, so my favorite two lines are, i want to be a leader and i say, now, thats not a destination and its not a job description, so what actually are you going to know so that somebody might want you to lead and my other favorite one is i want my first job to be meaningful. I say, your first job is not going to be meaningful. What will be meaning is somebody will pay you to do something for the first lime in your life that would be meaningful. [applause] so ive got work to do at stanford. Final question from me, what can anyone in this audience do to influence Foreign Affairs . Theres so much opinion and so much interest in, you know, the public that involves americas relationship with the world and i also sense people frustrated with decisions that we might make or foreign aid, is there any advice that you give to someone, just read about it in the newspaper because they are too far away on being able to do anything or theres something that people can get involved with that can make a different . Look, youre not going to have an effect on what we do in syria. Those are decisions, that we have elected people to represent us to take those tough decisions or north korea. But when you look at the United States of america and the wide range of things that we do across the world, much of what we deliver for the world is actually through volunteers and through Civil Society. If you care about Girls Education worldwide, i guaranty theres a Nongovernmental Organization thats dealing with that problem. If you care about the march of islamic extremism, i guaranty that there are Civil Society organization that is are trying to find reconciliation between the great religions and that are trying to help people find a better way. If you care about what is happening to people who live in places where religious freedom is not permitted, i guaranty you that there are faithbased institutions that are finding ways to bibles to people so they can practice their faith. The one thing that we forget as americans is that not all of our democracy is actually practiced in washington, thank goodness. [laughter] much of it is practiced in the states, thats why the Founding Fathers gave us federalism and much of it is practiced in Civil Society. You know, when he came to the United States in 1835 and wrote his great book, democracy in america, he noticed these as he called them voluntary associations of americans and he said, they just get together voluntarily to do great things, to do good things and he couldnt quite understand it and it is a little bit of a paradox because we are the most individuallyistic people in the earth. If you violate my rights, i will take you to the supreme court, brown versus the board of education, yesterday anniversary. But we are also the most commune communitarian, the red cross, Boys Girls Club or rotary clubs. That work makes america stronger abroad than even the things that we do with our extraordinary military power and our extraordinary economic wealth and so there are many ways to be involved internationally and by the way, being informed is also very important base in the day where social media does matter and congress is always listening to opinions, informed opinions would be nice, we are getting a lot of awful uninformed. If you can wait until someone puts a microphone so we can hear the question and we are also on television now as well so we will start right here in the middle. Thank you. Im cure curious as to the feelings of the tinderbox that is the presence on the israelinorthern border of a hundred thousand missiles and hezbollah and the iranian proxy army, where does that fit in, say compared to north korea and other shifts . Right, well, look, its a very bad situation but it is a situation that has two things going for it, Israeli Military strength and american deployments of missile defenses under iron dome recently that have help today protect israel. Now, both the gaza and senia have become more dangerous and you have the northern border between syria and lebanon which applies hezbollah into lebanon, so these are, indeed, tender boxes. We were by the way able to cut off the southern border after the 2006 war by getting Syrian Forces out of there and getting the Lebanese Army in. But the way that we deal with that problem is we helped to protect the israelis, they are very militarily capable and they are also excellent in terms of their intelligence and thats the reason that i think you see fewer incidents, not no incidents but fewer incidents in that area. Problem with north korea is we really dont have that kind of fix on the problem. Over here. I know you dont want to be president but how can you help out this beautiful state . [applause] well, here we really do need help, right . First of all, we cant living beyond our means and trying to raise taxes as a way of covering up the fact that we have pension that is are unsustainable and at some point californians are going to have to blow the whistle on the budget gains that are going on in sacramento. We have other issues, i think, in california. Do i think k12 education is just a real disaster for poor kids. You know, i am a major proponent of School Choice for the following reasons. [applause] we have an optout system of public education. If you are well off you will move to a district where the schools are good, thats why houses are expensive in palo alto, you know, you name the place, you know where the schools are and thats where youll move. If youre really well off you will send your kids to private school. So who is stuck in failing neighborhood schools . Poor kids. A lot of them minority kids and yet some poor parents are disfunctional but a lot of poor parents dont have good choices so the next time i read idtorial in the Los Angeles Times or in the Washington Post about how charters and School Choice and vouchers are so bad for the Public School system, i want to say, okay, send your kids to school outside of washington or east oakland and when youve done that, you can talk about keeping poor parents from School Choice but dont [applause] i think this is one california could lead. [applause] over here. Let me just say that you are my hero. Thank you. [applause] in the day and age where theres so much talk about the challenges for women, the challenges for minorities, i am looking for you to help share what you think are the attributes that will help us as woman and those who are interested in raising millennials that can be productive and contribute and no so entitled. Yeah. I work with millennials and staff development. Women in leadership is important to me. I would take your big your top five attributes in a heart beat. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let me start by saying i grew up in a particular way. I was lucky to grow up in segregated birmingham, alabama, that might sound odd, but my parents had me believing that i couldnt have a hamburger but i could be anything i wanted including president of the United States if i wanted to be, secretary of state, whatever i wanted to be, now the way that they did that was kind of interesting because they had two important montras and i repeat this to my students. They meant this as armor against prejudice. If you work hard enough if you think you might be twice as good youre going to be confident and nobody is going to be able to throw you off and secondly they said there are no victims because the minute you have described yourself as a victim, you have given control of your life to somebody else. You might not be able to control your circumstances but you can control your response to your circumstances. Then they would say, now, your armor is going to be a highquality education and then they also had several others which really funny, so my father would say, somebody doesnt want to sit next to you because your black, that doesnt matter as long as they move. [laughter] [applause] and what he was saying is dont let somebody elses prejudice bring you down, right . And so i say to young women and minorities but also to white male students, dont internalize somebody elses prejudices about you or views about you, be confident enough in yourself. You know, i watched our kids and i think by the way social media has contributed to this. I heard someone say once to a group of young people, dont compare your actual life to somebody elses virtual life because they read on social media and everybody is perfect on social media and so i think theyre internalizing now the sense of kind of i cant achieve, i cant succeed and we need to say to them, lock, life look, life is not so easy but if youre well prepared, you can get there. The final thing i will say in terms of Women Leadership and the like, we have this conceit about mentors and role models that they have to look like you. Now, had i been waiting for a black female role model, i will be waiting. [laughter] your role models, your mentors have to be people who you admire, you know, mine was white males, old white males, they dominated my field. They were people who saw things in me that i didnt even see in myself and when you found those kinds of mentors and role models, youll be able toandahalf get a lot navigate ups and downs no matter what color you are or gender you are. I was fortunate that i had parents that never kind of let me off the hook for personal responsibility. Thank you for coming here today. During secretary clintons term, about the second year, the state department was doing influence in president putins election term and then all of a sudden that was on the news on msnbc and fox news once or twice and then it disappeared because of the alleged hacking into dnc and then release of very damming emails. What do you think about our interference in other countrys elections and nation building . Thank you. Look, its not we dont actually interfere in peoples elections, what we do is that we try to help people to have free and fair elections. So one thing that the United States supports is when the National Endowment for democracy which president reagan began sends electoral monitors to make sure that the elections are proceeding freely and fairly. We do speak out when we do see fraudulent activities in elections. We tend to through National Endowment for democracy or Freedom House or through others actually train people who then can be candidates and so forth, so thats not interference, what we are doing is we are trying to strengthen Opposition Forces in places where authoritarians suppress them. Now in putins case he got really mad in 2012 because Hillary Clinton said that his election was fraudulent, his election was fraudulent. If you were not named Vladimir Putin, youd never showed up on russian news channels, you found your offices if you were the opposition suddenly closed, you found your people picked up for tax evasion, i mean, this was a really bad election and even in a bad election, he didnt win moscow. And hes an eye for on eye kind of guy. So he says, by the way, theyve been trying to interfere in our elections for a very long its just the internet and the cyberattacks gives you other ways to do it, so he says, now im going to show you what i can do and my view is that really was what the interference was all about. Now, the way i think that we should have dealt with this is to say, we know you did it, we will punish it at a time and place of our choosing and, oh, by the way, we have absolute confidence in the american electoral system and we have absolute confidence in the outcomes of the american electoral system because we likes Nothing Better than seeing us spin around like chickens with our heads cut off talking about, you know this was influenced and that was influenced. But thats were i wouldve thought terms of the motivation. I would not of controversies that he was trying to elect a particular person. I think that he was, he was an eye for an eye. We have time for one last [applause] one last question here id like to take it from right up here in the balcony, if you can. Youve given us your thoughts on places like china and russia. I was wondering if you could share similar thoughts on the socialist government in south america. South america, yes. Its a very good question. Latin america is a tremendous success story. When i first started teaching at stanford i taught a course called the role of the military and politics. I always had several latin america i could talk about. Night look in latin america and most of the big states are functioning democracies. Brazil, chile, peru, colombia. We by the way one of the things i wanted to do in the book was to say to people democracy promotion is in iraq and afghanistan. Thats a security problem and thats very hard. But colombia is a place we help bring back from the verge of it being a failed state. So the big states of latin america are actually doing very well. There are a few slackers that are still hanging on. And the cubans are still making trouble in latin america, but they wont last. Those regimes i think will not last. The place that i most worried about is venezuela. This is a horrific situation. Its used to be a middle income country that now people cant find food and they cant find medicines. I dont think theres a contagion factor to the rest of the region because the other countries are pretty strong. But i do think that the organization of american states ought to finally say to my girl, enough. Anthony to arrange for that regime to be voted out of office. Its going to take a long Time Committee of transition transition of a couple of years, because the liberal forces have been still depressed and so suppressed by the regime. But he is sort of shop as without charm. [laughing] and so i dont think that that regime can last pick your beginning to see cracks in the regime. But venezuela is the single sad situation right now in latin america and we need to deal with it. You know, the efforts to bring socialist regimes in central america, it will come and go, come and go in places like el salvador and nicaragua, but ultimately those regimes cant last. We are honored as it always are when you pay us a visit. And on behalf of all of us your i want to say thank you for coming, and you invited back at any time. Thank you so much. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] tonight on after words, new America President and ceo annemarie slaughter examines global networking in the digital age in her book the chessboard and the web, strategies of connection and a networked world. She is interviewed by denis mcdonough, former white house chief of staff in the Obama Administration from 20132016. What would strike me was that we knew there was a world of states, today think about north korea or iran or sometimes china and russia, that world of states and stat state relations is ver, very important. I think of it as the chessboard world because its the world of how do we essentially beat our adversaries, and we think about a move and we try to anticipate what move theyre going to make. And that world is there and its very important, but equally important is what i call the world of the web, that world of criminal networks including terrorists but also arms traffickers and drug traffickers, the world of business which increasingly the Network Supply chains, global corporations, and the world of Nongovernmental Organizations. I think of all those actors as web actors, as increasingly important actors, but we dont have strategies for how to bring together. Watch tonight at 9 p. M. Eastern on cspan2s booktv. Part of the thing that we have to do, because i think, i thought your poem was so beautiful and the id we been here before, granted im not trying to, the 80s were horrible for us. Even when folks say it was bad when no one listened it something i came up in baltimore. That was some bad times for us. Bad times for us. We are still the implications of the 80s right now in our communities. But heres the thing. I think part ofthe education isnt so much about how are we educating this administration about our virtues and our joys and all this kind of stuff. I think part it is also educating ourselves. [applause] part of it is helping people to understand our own people, that you dont have, no one has to come i dont need verification nor do i need any type of satisfaction from somebody else. I come from the blood of company. Company. I come from the blood of rogues and, i come from the blood of marshall. I dont need anyone else to tell me that im good or that im special. I know that in who i am that im special. And i think part of what we can collectively have to do is even so much about how we educate other people about us. Way to make sure we understand ourselves who we are and where weve come from and what we can do with and what we can do. We worked with students, we worked, the best interest of our students are africanamerican, vast majority are first generation and resource students. One of the first things i will always articulate to our students is that you are where you are right at the now because of someones kindness, not because of someones benevolence, not because of someone social experiment. You are where you are right now because you belong there. And no one can pull that away from you. And so i think part of the process that we collectively have to go through is we have to stay vigilant. We have to stay on each and every policy, each and every message, each and every subliminal messages that is sent out. But what we also do is in our own communities is make sure that everybody understands the power that we inherently have and that we dont have to sit there and just be a witness to history over the next four years and hope that it is okay. There are history shows us were much more powerful than that know any better stationer man is sitting in a chair. We have 21st intro understand that and, frankly, by me spend time trying to educate whoever else about it, thats just not as good use of my time. Because i frankly dont care what you think. [applause] can i just add, that is absolutely 1000 true. Just. Just in terms of operationalize that come how we do that, i would love to see us as a community utilize our institutions much more strategically to be able to provide that education about our history to our own children. Lets get real about it. They will not get it in the curriculum at school, right . So like other cultures why not develop a series, this is been done before, i quit his tenderness in doing this in the past, saturday academies where our children can come together, get instruction pacific on their history so that no other powerbrokers are, so the note with a herrick tub and are no from once they come. They need that. Ive done a lot of research over the years that shows that the students who have a strong grounding in own history and in the own culture, and not only have a better sense of self, they also do better academically. Academically. Because they dont believe the hype that they dont belong. They know they belong. We have to take on more responsibility when we are in discharges of defendant we did say what are you giving back to the committee . To make sure your planting our children seats that will grow up and fight for us in the future. [applause] rtv guys if you are very strategies for yourselves over the next two years. Number one, this is borrowed from Evan Mcmullen who ran as a thirdparty candidate and he had a very idea about some of the things all of us should do, whatever your walk of life, racial background, political situation. Number one, listen to the goldstar dead. Read the bill of rights. Skim through what are the amendments to the constitution. So know your rights. Get really with the bill of rights. Number one. Number two, test everything you hear the administration doing against the bill of rights. If it is a violation of the bill of rights then you need to get loud about it. What do you protest, what you call your congressman, what you call your sender, make notes on social media. Know the bill of rights, test everything you hear over the next four years against the bill of rights. Because we do so have the fundamental rights about who the president is and no matter how imperfect the founding of this country, those bill of rights apply to us all. The third thing is user social media. Your social network. Our social network in the past used to be our churches. A lot of people it still is your church. Our social networks can be our groups of friends and family. Our social networks can be social media. How many people use facebook likes especially are seeking folks, our moms and grandmas anybody still use facebook. Young people using snapchat, twitter. User social networks wisely. Find good news sources that are credible. Do not share fake news and rumors in your social media whether its facetoface, at church or on your social media streams. Look at the source. Make sure its a couple of different sources. You know if you hear it on ap, reuters, nbc news, abc and, even then double check. A media sometimes picking up. The New York Times reprinted clinton cash. Double check the sources of news, publisher credible information. Most powerful information sharing medium right now is facebook. It is the most powerful information sharing medium. Where do people get what they put on facebook . Traditional media, blogs or fake news . Share only sound, credible information in all of your various social networks. If you do those things that i think we will be five. You can watch this other programs online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some of the books being published this week. Look for these titles and bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone. My name is jennifer levasseur, and the curator here in the Smithsonian Museum and want to welcome all of you to whats new in