Foreign policy as a way to promote democratic ideals around the world. It was moderated by Pulitzer Prize winning lab for john meacham. [applause] jason thank you very much. It is my great honor to introduce this remarkable panel on a topic that is the core of everything that the Carter Center does. At the core of everything the Carter Center does, the northstar of this organization forever will be human rights because that has been the northstar for my grandparents forever and ever. To do that. Ed many of these people have been introduced to you before. Im going to use a prop to introduce my grandfather in a unique way for the first time ever. [laughter] i would like to introduce you to jonathans great grandfather. [applause] , on up, buddy. On up, buddy. That is the easiest applause line of the whole day. [laughter] poppa, weiousness, are all thrilled that you are here. We are excited you have devoted your life to human rights. And all of us are doing our very thatto ensure that incredible, incredible legacy on this particular issue is preserved forever. So thank you very much and welcome to president carter. [applause] next, another person who needs no introduction is fritz mondale, 42nd Vice President of the United States, served with my favorite president of all time, [laughter] morningcould see this at breakfast that the relationship that these two great leaders have is perhaps one that is unique in history. They are great friends, have an a normas amount of respect for each other, [applause] and the way that, the fact that they are getting to hang out today is a treat for both of them. So thank you very much for that. The Senior Advisor for human rights and special representative on women and girls at the Carter Center. She has been at the carter aspect that at the Carter Center since 1988, assisting on human rights issues. Human rights is the heart and soul of the Carter Center in all of its respects, and karen is the heart and soul of that human rights endeavor at the Carter Center throughout this time. So it is a giant treat to have karen here. We are also blessed to have john meacham, a Pulitzer Prizewinning biographer, professor to time vanderbilt university. Thererom chattanooga and is a border dispute between georgia and tennessee, but we are proud to say at least he is from north georgia. [laughter] you are obviously not running this year. 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 i would 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. 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 their what we are seeing there, and what you think ordinary americans can do about it. President carter every day, we send a graceful 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 the 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. So i think what ice 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 the 2020 elections. Im not sure. Even before then, hopefully, i hope it will land as we change president s. Mr. Meacham it be basic political activism that you would advise people worried about it just to get in and change the president . President carter i think everyone in the United States should take the same position and for human rights, the numberone basic measurement of how governments are performing, that would be the best thing to do. So 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 present to comply al declarationrs as if you apply the basic human is humanly possible. 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 up. Mr. Meacham what would a cartermondale administration, how would the 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. As you know, they sent about 15 people to the embassy where he was destined to be, scheduled to be, and apparently they killed him and cut them up in little pieces and buried him in an unknown place. And that could only have been done under the orders from some of the highest people in any government. I would demand an accounting for that. When i was president , we tried to put human rights as a measuring stick in every incidents. 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 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 that . President carter the president himself should condemn it, and admit that it happened, which 16 intelligence agencies of already agreed to. And there is dont doubt that the russians did interfere in the election. I think the interference, though not yet quantified, should be fully investigated and it would show that donald trump was not legitimately elected in 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 things that i said, i cant retract. [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, farm families. My family was the only one that was white. All the rest of them were africanamerican. Cell i grew up completely immersed in africanamerican culture, black culture. And i could see, as a little child even, that there was a great differentiation between white and black people. 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 planes,hment in georgia, was very powerful so , she was impervious to this. I grew up in that environment and later, i became chairman of the board of education in our county. And i demanded that the other Board Members go to visit schools and to see whats going on. 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. And the africanamerican kids down, worn out textbooks, in inferior schools. The board of education later insisted that africanamericans get school buses too. So when they finally got a few school buses, everybody saw the school buses carrying children and they knew this was being done in a silly and segregated way. So thats how i grew up. It was a completely segregated area. And then i went into the navy when i was 18 years old. I went through naval rotc at georgia tech and i eventually got into submarines. I was in the submarine force in 1948. Harry truman, our 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 services and civil services. He commanded it so because of that, i saw an easy transition on my submarine and other ships benefite, and how much to everybody in their attitudes toward one another, fellow citizens and fellow navy men equally. So that was a very good test seven or eight years before , Martin Luther king jr. Became famous or rosa parks. So seven or eight years earlier harry truman was the one that , broke the ice and started the desegregation of america. Mr. Meacham your religious upbringing must of been essential. President carter it was. I grew up also immersed in a inrch in planes church ns, a Baptist Church and my , father was a sunday School Teacher and we went through many parts of the bible. I was a 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 was doing, and it evolved into the universal declaration of human rights. So 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 terms, wassemilegal in the development of the declaration of human rights. That has never happened before and or since in history. And now i am afraid that they abandonedlly being and so many ways, around the world. The Carter Centers fighting against that abandoned meant every day, by the way. 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. And i would say that when i became president and during my term, there was a general sigh of relief in america that racely we had resolved the issue. We had gotten over years of slavery and 100 years of official and legal discrimination by white people against black people. We kind of brief the sigh of relief that we were finally out , but lately the developments in the white house and other places, its become a very burning issue again. And there is a great deal of discrimination and racial animosity that has evolved again, or come to the forefront again. And one of the demonstrations of that is not only between africanamericans and white people, we have seen that on television lately, and for a long 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. So that discrimination against to our country just seeking relief from persecution is another indication of how far 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, and without being embarrassed about it. Mr. Meacham one of the things you hear and i agree with as well, i will put my cards on the table, 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 never dead and its 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 it is never, on this side of paradise going to be resolved. Think is there a , benefit to us 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 was00 years, after slavery abolished, it is a way for the United States to correct its longstanding mistakes. Is not easy to do and it faces a lot of altercation in our country. Luckily, this time instead of having a civil war, we are having a war of political factions. In general, the Democratic Party is now standing on the side of presenting what the finest aspect of American Civil Rights think, and ild, i hope our party will continue to show everyone 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 which in many 1948, ways is a huge Inflection Point in the formation of the human rights question. You had the declaration with mrs. Roosevelt, you had the break up of the Democratic Party after your fellow minnesotan 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, but 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 three . Vice president mondale in these little towns, and i would go to sunday school, wednesday night prayer and debtor, and then i would sweep and cleanup the church. That was my religious leadership. [laughter] mr. Meacham not 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. And the difference was that 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, his and in the small town in , southern georgia, standing up for civil rights when it was not the thing to do. And 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, and human rights. And it was my privilege over those four years to try to work with the president as he led us direction,arkable 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 you would point us to as a case study about how we should be doing this . Vice president mondale i thought the boat people issue was a good issue about human rights leadership. The vietnamese communist government decided to push their citizens of chinese ethnic origin out to sea in unseaworthy boats. Many of them lost their lives as a result. And president carter tried to intervene in a positive way to provide an alternative for these boat