Host Colman Mccarthy come its such an honor to be able to interview you about the book and your life, and i know you say dont give homework to your students, but sometimes you do and you tell them to say that they love somebody. So want to start out saying i love you. Guest you are sweet. You and our good pals and i have always admired your work and i remember that wonderful interview did with brian lamb on q a. I thought that was a credit to both of you and you did that with great sincerity and honesty. Host as long as we are single the love i love cspan. Brian lamb is such an amazing person and love the interviews he does. And cspan is such a gift. You as an educator must really appreciate cspan. Guest i do. In fact its one of the things im very proud of. One of my former students is steve scully who is here and cspan, figure a long time, a great interview. I knew stay when i was at American University in the 1980s. And another student that year was jim mcgovern who became a member of congress and is a good antiwar liberal antihelp and the war in el salvador. And he helped end the war in el salvador. I had gym class and i was kind of worried about him because he made so many as. Host but you dont upgrade. Guest i said youve got to get out. Youre spending too much time. Youre missing out on things. So we said, what do you suggest . I said theres a wonderful womens a shelter in d. C. Go down and volunteer and see which you can learn. He was working for congressman than, so he went down and he met women from el salvador who fled in the 1980s. I said can see whats going on down there. He started taking numbers of congress to el salvador. I dont think joe knew a lot i dont think he knew where el salvador was from hong kong but yet a good irish hard. And then finally at the end of finally joe moakley persuaded congress to cut off the fondling funding for el salvador. Host its amazing to think that was your recommendation on what he should do. Guest jim follow through and now hes in congress. You get into the pentagon he got into congress because of fidel castro. He went back home and ran and was defeated the first time he tried to he had 8 of the. He came back for us old job with joe moakley. Goes and runs again. The boston globe endorsed republican incumbent. Democrats gave him little to no money. He was down in the polls. Four days before the election, hollow wing, the incumbent, and meanwhile, jim had been taken to the members of congress to cuba and the embargo. So the incumbent want of a little fun at jims expense. He hires a guy to dress up as fidel castro big boots, cigar the whole works, puts the guy at the main interest of worchester messages all day long on halloween holding an enormous sign with forward on a. Vote for jim mcgovern. The trick was so foul and so dirty go four days later jim won the election. I called him up and said jim how did you do it quick you were way behind. Oh, i get the other side and decided catholic vote. A little while before i went to cuba to talk to fidel, so did the poll. So if the pulpit talk to fidel, like to talk to fidel. Host thats a great example of blowback. I was thinking reading about how it would just be so marvelous to see a diagram that shows Colman Mccarthy in the center and all the links that go to people are doing Amazing Things around the world, and you certainly just from reading this book get this wonderful birds eye view of how many lives you have influenced through your teaching. Guest well its just the readings we did and they come into the classes. Theyve never taken a peace studies class before and they go all through elementary school, middle school, high school with no peace class. They take math every year. They take science every year. Will we ever put anybody through our schools with only one math course in 12 years or no math course or no science . They did it every year, whether they need it would or like it or not. And so ive been trying for years to get the schools lets get peace studies in the curriculum and get them talking about things. Host so you are known for many, many years as a columnist for the Washington Post, which one would think as a writer is kind of a peak. You have this paper a tremendous influence. You are here in the Nations Capital. You are reaching come is that millions of people, and why did you drop out for teaching Ranking Member . Guest identity to me people in the Peace Movement. I edited desmond tutu from south africa, buenos aires Mother Teresa from calcutta, mohammed from bangladesh all Nobel Peace Prize winners plus people like schreiber and eunice Sergeant Evan eunice shriver. Jim mcgovern, people like that. I would always ask them, how is the best way to go about increasing peace and decreasing violence . Which ought to be the purpose of our lives. If you seek a life of purpose. Deangelis came back pretty much the same. You need to go where people are. People keep having complex and solving it through violent force or nonviolence force. So the idea was sound i thought. To go to a local Public High School a few blocks from the Washington Post and said can i communicate the class on peace studies . Metaclass like a but if you want to try come on in. So thats when i started in 1982 and ive been at it ever since. I think ive got 12,000 suits over the years. Its not that difficult or strategic you read the literature of peace gandhi king, musty, Jesus Tolstoy Einstein on the first day. Then we really get into it. Students often say why havent we heard about these people . Host is not only the people you introduce into its your ideas. Enforcement we should say that this book is a collection of marvelous letters to you that you didnt respond to you. And i must say that i learned so much and was inspired just by reading their letters and your responses, and thats the beauty of this book. Is a combination of you pulling quotes from text the people that you just mentioned, but then theres your own wisdom and your own humor that comes out of i was in every letter theres a combination of that. You are just such a unique person. Here use it in for me looking like he could be a republican, a very ass ouch, ouch. Host over the others i cant get away with writing such things in the post . And then i reread you have it was at a protest that we were doing, and you rolled up in your bicycle and you said, im Colman Mccarthy. And i said thats not Colman Mccarthy. Colman mccarthy is the writer for the Washington Post. You said yes i am Colman Mccarthy. We made to get up and say something. But i think that you embody so many amazing values and concepts and challenges to students that come out so beautifully in this book. And i think you come you said in the book that he they dont teach in peace, everyone else is going to teach them violence. And your concept of peace may be for the listeners we should start out with you getting a basic sense of what is peace . Guest well, peace is a result of law. If love was easy we would all be good at it. A result of love. You have to talk about that and so in my High School Classes and all of my classes our discussion based and i deemphasize syllabus and sell by by. Whenever advertisers wouldve a lot of ground to cover today, i tell the students, tell the professor to go be the track coach where they cover a lot of ground. There is no hurry to rush through gandhi or dorothy day. Theres so much of their. Host but peace to you is not just the absence of order to bring issues like animal rights. Youre a vegetarian. You ride your bicycle. Could you maybe give your personal philosophy . Guest well i think we are all called upon to decrease the worlds violence. And in many ways to go about that. And i decide one way was through my diet. I always ask my students would talk about animal rights, i asked for questions. Hoop in the class would like to use cruelty in the world . All hands go up. Who would like to reduce world hunger . All hands go up. Who would like to reduce Global Warming . All hands go up. Who would like to have a healthy body . All hands go up. Ive never been presented yes i want to increase crude in the world. Ive never had that. Okay, four out of four. So then how do we go about that . Stop eating meat and you make some progress. If everybody did that we would have a very serene world. Thats one example. People always say okay i cant do much about stopping the Death Penalty right now. I can write about it. I can do much about bringing the troops home from afghanistan or the other 700 military bases we have around the world. Okay but i can do something about my next meal. Host one of the marvelous exchanges in this book was when you talk about bringing turkey into the class. Maybe you could tell us about that. Host i always do and will rights in the fall but two weeks before thanksgiving a little bit perverts i am. I said no dead rotting cookies turkeys for me. The rest of you barbarians keep eating them. So if something they can do uzbek but you brought a live turkey into the classroom for the students to get a sense empathy with the turkey tragedy that turkey walked around at the turkeys name was abigail. The only turkey ive ever made page one in the wall street journal. There was a crash after bring the turkeys down the highway and suddenly the highways filled with turkeys. Some friends of mine in maryland were riding along and they grab one of the turkeys to bring it down to the rescue center. So i knew the folks. Bring Abigail Tuerk last edited. It was a great learning moment. Heres what youll be eating in four or five days. A lot of conversion happened the day post that because the students like the turkey. Guest it brought the reality home. The way we tell them is out of sight the theres two types of violence, there is hot and cold violence. Hot is what isis is doing cutting off heads. 9 11 was hot of violence. The gun shootings you know in aurora and in connecticut. We feel that. The media talks about it often, but cold violence, how the animals are killed, executioners on death row People Killed by drones which youve written your book about. Its out of sight. We dont feel it. Its not emotional. But its violence whether it is hot or cold it still happens. Host are their personal things that should make lifelong commitments to, one is you dont drink, edgy challenges students about drinking. Drinking and should write in the exchanges with the students is such a devastating impact on our society. Could you talk a little bit about your interaction with the students on the drinking issued . Guest that was a very touching letter that i had from a student who went to my high school, Wilson High School. And shouted very open mind just going off to college and she writes to me and says, shes a senior at Wilson High School, and from a very fine family. Ive been pondering something quite a bit lately and i was wondering if i could share if you could share with me some of her thoughts on the subject. Here goes. Ive always chosen to abstain from drinking and doing drugs because i have known ive always known that they dont need them toxicants of that sort to enjoy myself. And so she goes on. If you have any counsel about i gave her, i said dear hannah, this is august 2009. You may have come across it that ambiguity free live from t. S. Eliot in a world the fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away. Thats you. And so i encourage her to take a stand, dont go near that drug. It is the worst of all the drugs. There are more families ruined by that drug than any other. Host and you started out because a friend of yours, was attacking your high school . Was killed in a car accident from drinking. And that led you to make a lifelong commitment not to drink. Guest i always ask my students if you want to write a paper, and prominent law schools, they write papers. I said do a Research Paper and research your own life where do you spend your money and where do you spend your time. That tells a lot about you. Enjoyed erasure to something would be close, stopped drinking this semester. Host well, i wonder if students see you as too good, too pure an example, and that makes it hard for them to aspire to you. You ride your bike everywhere. You dont drink. Youre a vegetarian. You are so committed on the personal as well as the larger level. Do you think that makes you less of a model . Guest they always say they always joke around well we are glad you are here, professor. We need a few eccentrics like you around. And then they kind of say you know, youre a little loopy, but youll wake up one of these decades. Host because of the drinking come you didnt even agree with drinking in moderation. You say dont touch the stuff. Guest i still love those alcohol companies. They lie to the kids. Its awful. Ive never seen the commercial on television a beer commercial, with anybody and holding a book. Its always you know this frivolity. But the book represents thinking thinking. And the student wrote an essay how she stopped drinking. It was a powerful piece of writing, and she found out i really have no friends. I just had drinking buddies. Host that was a great piece in there when she was in a subordinate realized that her whole life revolved around pregame drinking and then they came and then the postgame drinking and when she stopped drinking she realized who were her friends, she sought out people that before she would have anything to do with this. Guest and then her name was George Harper and shes in grad school now. I admire her greatly. Host i wonder if we could talk a little bit about some of the other controversial things that you bring up. One thing im sure is very controversial especially in this town is that you dont vote, and maybe you can explain why they dont vote. And isnt something you just put out there to your students think this is something i do, or do you actually tell them dont vote transferred, conscientious nonvoters because number one the constitution sanctions violence under article 1, section 8. We will have a commander in chief, that Congress Shall raise money for the militia. So anybody you vote for no matter how good they are, they are sworn to uphold the constitution which is a document that sanctions solving conflict with violence. Weve been doing that all these years, all these interventions, the wars weve had. We have a military budget that has wrecked our economy. In fact, i always show my classes this visual, which is on the American Friends Service committee. And on the left is a military spending, 59 of our discretionary funding that goes to killing people or 352 people. We dont say we are defending democracy. And over on the right on social programs, 4 of the state department, five for education. If you had the peace corps budget it would be way over here. So thats the reality your. Host and of course, no department of peace that people like Dennis Kucinich tried so hard to get for many years. Guest right. We have to use institute for peace which i admire and have written about but Congress Demanded by not funding adequately. Host what about rotc on campus is and your involvement in opposing that . Guest well i think a school at georgetown where i teach, i teach at the law school, a teach undergraduate there. They have rotc programs. These are catholics, notre dame is the biggest one in the country percentagewise. Boston college, all these jesuit schools, and here price was a pacifist. He preached nonviolence. How can that be . Im waiting for the pope to see whether he ever comes out and tells catholics you are forbidden to go into the military. He is nowhere near saying that. Host you live in d. C. I could see if you had these views and you lived in ann arbor, michigan, four you lichtenberger, a in the Nations Capital and are surrounded by the military contractors. You are surrounded by basis and get you say things like you want to figure country, dont join the military, and youre constantly in this book advising her students not to join the military. Guest sure. The reason i do that, either that phrase, thank you for serving your country. Well, i dont think thats true. No one in the military is serving their country. They are serving those who run the country. Theresthere is very little evidence that those who run the country care about you. Otherwise the va wouldnt have a long waiting list. You wouldnt have the high suicide rate among veterans both vietnam and iraq and afghanistan. They dont care about you. Or otherwise that would have declared those wars in the first place. Altering the vietnam war unsure remember, there was only one member of congress who had a son who saw combat. Only one in that long war. Host window was a draft. Guest and that was the son of clarence long, a longtime labor democrat from baltimore whose son was killed. But the other boys, here is come here something compares richard cheneys draft deferments. I pass this up on to my classes. This is a letter by mark plotkin, one of the journalists here in town. And there he was, and theres a cartoon from the new yorker. Father talking to his son and said son, everyone went to college in the 60s. There was a war going on. A great line. Host a great line. But today with the wars in afghanistan and iraq libya yemen, we could go on and on still, people are voted into congress because of their war record. It must be very controversial to many other students, im sure some of them have been in military or their parents have. How does that go over with them traffic i do not blame soldier to ipad mini veterans in my class. I have one now. They all saw combat in afghanistan and iraq. One boy came up to me leaving at the end of the first class. He said, please dont ask any questions on what i did in afghanistan. I promised i will not ask you. He was very tense. And the boy wrote a wonderful paper about what he did. He was a marine. He was taught to break into houses and kill people. The essay was so strong, i have it published in the newspaper. Hes doing fine now. So gandhi admi