To promotes as a way human rights [applause] thank you very much. It is my honor to introduce this remarkable panel on a topic at the core of everything the Carter Center does. The north star for this organization will be human rights, because that has been the north star for my grandparents. We are honored to do that. Many of these people have been introduced to you before. I will use a prop to introduce my grandfather to you in a unique way, for the first time ever. [laughter] [applause] i would like to introduce you to jonathans greatgrandfather. [laughter] buddy . That, [applause] thats the easiest applause line of the whole day. Seriousness, we are thrilled you are here. We are excited that you have devoted your life to human rights and all of us are doing our very best to ensure that incredible legacy on this particular issue is preserved forever. Thank you and welcome president carter. [applause] jonathans greatgrandfather. Next, another person who needs no introduction is the 42nd Vice President of the United States. He served with my favorite president of all time. See even thisuld morning at breakfast the relationship these two great leaders have is one unique in history. They have an enormous amount of respect for each other. [applause] the fact that they are getting to hang out today is a treat for both of them. Thank you very much for that. Karen ryan is the Senior Advisor for human rights and special representative on womens and girls at the Carter Center and has been at the Carter Center in various aspects since 1988, assisting on human rights issues. Human rights has been the heart and soul of the Carter Center, and karen has been the heart and soul of the human rights endeavor here the whole time. Its a giant treat to have karen here and i know you have heard from her before. We are also blessed to have john meacham, a pulitzer prizewinning biographer, contributor to time we are also blessed to have john meacham here, who is a pulitzer prizewinning biographer and contributor to the New York Times book review. He is a professor at Vanderbilt University from chattanooga. There is a border dispute between georgia and tennessee but we are pleased he is from north georgia. [laughter] [applause] you are obviously not running this year. Im not running in tennessee, thats for sure. I am not running in tennessee, that is for sure. He has embarked on a project, in addition to numerous books he has written. Last year he published a book called the soul of america the battle for our better angels and that project belongs in our group. Im going to introduce them to you, which is to say this is a group of people who share your desire to find out what it is and to remember what it is that our country is based on, and that soul is real. We believe the Carter Center has a special place there. My grandparents have been a part can intopeering as we the heart and soul of this country and the issue of human rights. We are going to have a panel discussion, but as an introduction there is a video we will show briefly that highlights the work of human rights defenders the Carter Center supports. The Carter Center has done its ony best to focus, not ideals only, but ideals as put into practice, and to support the people on the ground every day fighting the battles for human rights in their own communities. These examples are remarkable. You will hear more about them, but i will show the video briefly and then john meacham will direct the rest of the panel. There will be time for questions. Once we get there we will let them go for a while and then we will cut it off after we have too many questions. First the video, and thank you for being here. Im excited about the panel. [applause] [video presentation begins] [singing] swimwish i could like dolphins, like dolphins can swim though nothing will keep us ,ogether beat them forever and ever. Forever heroes, just for one day how we can be heroes, just for one day be king queenu, you would be though nothing will drive us away, heroes, just for one day how we can be heroes, just for one day i, i can remember standing, standing by the wall and the guns, shot above our heads and we kissed, as though nothing could fall othere shame was on the we can beat them, forever endeavor everrever and then we could to be heroes just for one day [applause] mr. Meacham thank you all as a tennessean, i am the diversity. [laughter] i appreciate it very much but i think we should all be honest that the only reason we are here is because of mrs. Carter. So thank you. [applause] i know its the only reason you got this far. [laughter] i want to start with a little bit of whats happening right now. Im interested, mr. President in your views at whats happening at the u. S. Mexico border with family separation and your reaction to what we are seeing there and what you think ordinary americans can do about it. President carter every day, we send a disgraceful signal around the world that this is what the president and the United States government stands for, and that is torture and kidnapping of those children, separation from their parents and deprivation of those who are incarcerated, and there are thousands of unknown children still incarcerated that has not been revealed by the government. I think what i. C. E. Is doing under the direct orders of the president is a disgrace to the United States and i hope it will soon be ended, maybe not until 2020 elections. Im not sure. Even then, i hope it will end as we change president s. Mr. Meacham would it be basic political activism that you would advise to people worried about it . Should they just try to change the president . President carter i think everyone in the United States should take the same position for human rights, the basic measurement of how governments are performing, that would be the best thing to do. What we would do is apply human rights in the finest and most precise way we can, and as fulfilling as we can to comply with the universal declaration is humanly possible. If you apply the basic human rights standards to every instance that happens in diplomacy and everyday life, that would be the best thing for the United States to do, and i hope all americans will take us take this on. Mr. Meacham what would a Carter Mondale administration have reacted to the murder by saudi arabia of Jamal Khashoggi . President carter i believe we would have demanded a complete accounting about how high up the orders came from concerning the direct murder of khashoggi. As you know, they sent about 15 people to the and the sea where khashoggi was destined to be, and apparently they killed him and cut him up in little pieces and buried him in an unknown place. That could only have been done under the orders from some of the highest people in the government. I would demand an accounting for that. When i was president , we tried to put human rights as a measuring stick in every incidence. We didnt always succeed, but thats what our effort was. Mr. Meacham one more off the top of the news and then we will dive in. Russia has been proven by our Intelligence Community to have interfered with one of our human rights, which is the right of free and fair elections. What is your reaction . How should we deal with russia . President carter the president himself should condemn it and admit it happened, which 16 intelligence agencies have already agreed. I think the interference, though showet quantified, would president ial lost the election in 2016. He was put into office because the russians interfered on his behalf. Mr. Meacham you say President Trump is an illegitimate president . [laughter] president carter the problem with what i said is i cant contract. [laughter] [applause] mr. Meacham having made news [laughter] lets talk about Eleanor Roosevelt. [laughter] which, to me, is news. Talk about your interest in human rights. Given both your background in the segregated south and your International Experience in the navy, heading into your public career. President carter i grew up in a Little Village in georgia, which had about 50 families. My family was the only one that was white. All the rest of them were africanamerican. I grew up completely immersed in africanamerican culture, black culture. I say as a little child could see that there was a great differentiation between white and black. My mother was a registered nurse and never paid any attention to racial distinctions. She treated everyone the same. She was part of the medical establishment in plains, so she was impervious to condemnation or criticism. I grew up in that environment and later, i became chairman of the board of education in our county. I demanded that the other Board Members go with me to visit all the schools. We found that the black kids were going to school as close as they could to where they live because they did not have school buses. White kids had school buses, but black kids didnt. The africanamerican kids got the handmedown worn out textbooks and inferior schools. Later on the board of education i insisted that africanamericans get textbooks too. So when they finally got a few school buses, they painted the fenders of a bus carrying black children black so that everyone would know this was being done in a segregated way. So thats how i grew up. It was a culture that was completely segregated. I went into the navy when i was 18 years old. I went to georgia tech at naval rotc and i eventually got into submarines. I was in the submarine force in 1948. Harry truman was commanderinchief and president and who i still think of the best president who has lived in my own lifetime. Anyway, harry truman ordained that racial segregation be abolished in all the military forces and in the civil service. It went into effect because he was commanderinchief and he commanded it. Veryse of that, i saw a easy transition on my submarine and other ships around me and how much benefit it brought to everybody and the attitude toward one another, treating fellow citizens and fellow navy men and officers equally. That was a very good test seven or eight years before Martin Luther king jr. Became famous or rosa parks sat in the front seat of a bus. Harry truman was the one that broke the ice and started the desegregation of america. Mr. Meacham your religious upbringing must have been essential. President carter it was. I grew up also immersed in a church in plains, a baptist church. My father was a sunday School Teacher and we went through many parts of the bible. Particularly the sermon on the mount and the chapter of matthew. Jesus spells out the essence of what is presently known as universal human rights. He spelled out the proper relationship between the powerful and the weak, between the jews and gentiles, between men and women, and he said everybody should be treated equally. That was the foundation of what Eleanor Roosevelt later said and it evolved into the universal declaration of human rights. There are times in Human History where the United States has gone through all the basic measure of revisions and struck at the essence of the primary moral and ethical values are and put them together in lay terms, but also semilegal terms, was in the development of the declaration of human rights. That has never happened before or since in history. I am afraid that they are basically being abandoned in many ways around the world. The Carter Center is fighting against the amendment that abandonment every day. Mr. Meacham when you were running for president in 1975 and 1976, did you know that the human rights agenda would be as central to you if you got there . President carter i did. I would say when i became president , during my term, there was a general sigh of relief in america that finally we have resolved the race issue, we have gotten over years of slavery and 100 years of official and legal discrimination by white people against black people. We kind of briefed a sigh of relief breathed a sigh of relief, but lately, with developments in the white house and other places, its become a very burning issue again. There is a great deal of discrimination and racial animosity that is evolving and coming to the forefront again. One of the demonstrations of that is not only between africanamericans and white people. We have seen that on television lately. Time, as a matter of fact, but also at the border. We assume someone trying to come to our country like my grandparents did many years ago is inferior to those who are longestablished here like i am. That discrimination against newcomers to our country is another indication of a serious human rights mistake in our country that is being promulgated worldwide. The United States doesnt stand anymore for human rights. We are opposed to some basic human rights openly, without being interest about it. Without being embarrassed about it. Mr. Meacham one of the things you hear, and i agree with as well is when people say about the current moment, this is not who we are. It kind of is. Right . This perennial tension, we are southerners. Faulkner was right, the pass is the past is never dead. It is not even past. President carter thats right. Mr. Meacham when i look at your work, i think about you are an army on the right side of this in this perennial struggle between our better angels and worst instincts. But its never on this side of paradise going to be resolved. Is it fair to think is there a benefit to the country to our being more honest about our worst instincts . That racism and xenophobia and isolationism and nativism are parts of the american character . And our struggle is to make them ebb as opposed to flow . President carter that certainly is part of our political situation. The fact is that in the past, overcoming slavery and overcoming Racial Discrimination of 400 years after slavery was officially abolished is a way for the United States to correct its longstanding mistakes. Sometimes, its not easy to do it, to face altercation in our country. Luckily, this time instead of having a civil war, we are having a war of political factions. I would say in general, the Democratic Party is now standing on the side of presenting the finest aspect of American Civil Rights is to the world, and i hope our party will continue to show that everybody in the United States and around the world is equal to everybody else, not only in the eyes of human beings but also in the eyes of god. Mr. Meacham mr. Vice president , can i ask you we talked about 1948, which in many ways is a huge Inflection Point in the formation of the human rights question. You have the declaration with mrs. Roosevelt, you had the break up of the Democratic Party after fellow minnesota and said the party had to walk out of the shadows into the sunlight of civil rights, which sent Strom Thurmond back to the south pretty fast. Can you talk about your upbringing in minnesota and how you were shaped in these questions, and when you signed in with president carter, did you know this was a lifetime gig . [laughter] Vice President mondale i do now. [applause] Vice President mondale our upbringings were different. There were a lot of similarities. My dad was a farmer and a minister. He was a devout methodist. He would give three sermons every sunday morning. Mr. Meacham 3 . Vice president mondale in these little towns and i would go to sunday school, wednesday night prayer, dinner, and then i would sweep and cleanup the church. That was my religious leadership. [laughter] mr. Meacham wasnt bad preparation for the Vice President. [laughter] Vice President mondale yes, i was sweeping around there. Youre not being helpful. [laughter] mr. Meacham i will be quiet now. Vice president mondale one of the things that i found most impressive about our years together was how much our backgrounds suited us to work together, even with anybody briefing us. I think even though carters background from the south was different, in fundamental ways it was very similar. We had 125 years without a southern president until jimmy carter. The difference was, he stood for civil rights. And one of the great contributions to human rights in our country and in the world was his personal courage in the small town in southern georgia, standing up for civil rights when it was not the thing to do. Then going into the white house and speaking up for human rights and filling in the blanks of what america should do as the leader in the world of human rights. It was my privilege over those four years to try to work with the president as he led us in this remarkable direction, which set a precedent which is not perfectly complied with today, but it made a difference which still has a big effect in the world. Mr. Meacham when you think back, is there an example or two he would point to or a case study about how we should be doing this . Vice president mondale i thought the boat people issue was a good example of human rights leadership. The vietnamese communist government decided to push their citizens of chinese ethnic origin out to sea on seaworthy boats. Many of them lost their lives as a result. President carter tried to intervene in a positive way to provide an alternative for these boat people to live a decent life. President carter we were trying to admit 12,000 per month of the refugees, you might say, from the vietnam war. Vice president mondale a lot of them were drowning at sea and we got the navy to go out and pick these people up. It