Lenovo sounds vaguely italian, but they did actually buy the ibm business. So its not hike the japanese wave in the 80 where they just buy stuff and hope it works out. Theyre more strategic, but there are some crazy things happening. U. S. Two weeks agomen bank en banc they already bought the waldorfastoria hotel. A lot of chinese entrepreneurs need to keep talent, keep brands. So a Company Called club med, they built the largest bought the Largest Insurance Company in portugal x. Then the chairman went missing for a couple of days, and we dont know why still. Its interesting. We heard about, like, the relationship between the government and the private sector and Companies Like theres kind of a glass ceiling. If china govtogov relations with the rest of the world, for example, southeast asia, are not great, how does that help companies . Alibaba just bought an ecommerce platform there, and yet the Chinese Government is having lots of friction with those areas because of maritime issues. So its all very interesting. [laughter] so i have 12 chapters in the book, but chapter 13 is the most interesting, but i just couldnt write it because its happening all the time. Okay. I think thats a cue to, like, wrap this up. So im happy to have you here, including friends i havent seen for many years. And im happy to sign and stay in touch. You find me on we chat, if you dont know that, duncanclark. Com. Thanks. [laughter] [applause] like he said, well be signing over here. Please purchase up at the front. I have three quotes from jack ma, so help yourself. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup. Starting shortly, we talk to Charles Kesler, editor of the claremont review of books. And at 7 45, Elaine Showalter talks about her biography of julia ward howe. On after words at 9 p. M. Eastern, America Online cofounder steve case speculates on the future of the internet. Then at 10, the 2016 colby award given annually for a book on military history or International Affairs for the history on the 1947 partition of india. And we wrap up booktv in prime time at 11 with the marine corps universitys Sebastian Gore ca on fighting isis. First up, an interview with the editor of the claremont review of books. Host and now joining us on booktv is Charles Kesler. He is the editor of the claremont review of books. Professor kesler, what is that . Guest that is the countrys leading and possibly only journal of its only conservative book review, essentially. Its a quarterly, and so you dont see it that often, but it is on newsstands, and you can find it at www. Claremont. Org where you may subscribe, and its a publication of the Claremont Institute which is a conservative think tank. Here in claremont, california. Host how did the review of books begin . Guest it began about 16 years ago because of a felt necessity, really. There had been for many years a leading liberal book review in the country, the new york review of books. There had been the sunday New York Times book review, there had been the new Republic Book review pages which were very prominent and imminent place for liberals to review one anothers books, but there had been no place for conservatives to engage in long form book reviews and essays about books. And bookish ideas. And also we thought there was conservatives needed that, point one. Point two, they needed an intellectual Playing Field where debates still very much going on about what conservativism is and should be could be fairly fought out at a high level among conservatives. Host is it like the new york review of books in the sense that there are several essays in there that arent necessarily book related . Guest yes, it can be. We do they are a more comprehensive book review than we are because they come out many more times, 20 times a year, and they have a lot of power and money behind them which we, which we, alas, do not. But they set out really to review all kinds of books for all kinds of academic readers. And i would say they have a much more academic reading class to feed than we do. And so our books are more concentrated in history, politics, philosophy, religion, war, literature, classic literature. We do a little bit less current literature, more classic literature than they do, and we do much less in the way of arts and decorations and furniture and all the kinds of interesting things which they and the Times Literary Supplement to take another, of course, imminent example from england, can concentrate on with utter abandon. Host Charles Kesler, what are two books that have recently been reviewed in the claremont review. Guest well, we recently reviewed Charles Murrays book, coming apart, which i think is one of the most important books on American Social class and society at large that has been published in probably 20 years. We have, we review all kinds of books, of course, not just books by conservatives although Charles Murray is a kind of libertarian writer, but we also review, you could say, the counterpart to his book, our kids, a book by robert putnam, imminent liberal political scientist at harvard. And both, i thought, received long, interesting, meaty reviews which said a lot about the state, the peculiar state of american politics and society these days. We have not yet had our big piece on donald trump, but im writing it now. [laughter] host when will it be published . Guest that should be published in the spring issue host which comes out in maysome. Guest which will come out in may, thats right. Host s what is that peculiar situation in american politics and Society Today that youre reviewing with putnam and murrays books . Guest well, you know, something strange has happened Many American politics. In american politics. For one thing, and the trump, the trump example shows some evidence of this, White Working Class people are becoming less democratic and more republican. Upper middle and upper class people are voting very reliably democratic and very liberal democratic these days. And Neither Partys social composition has really adjusted to that fact. And so both parties are sort of out of phase with their own social bases now, and Neither Party is quite ready to embrace the new voters who want to embrace it, or at least who want to embrace some of the candidates that it could produce. Bernie sanders on the one hand, a donald j. Trump or even a ted cruz to some extent on the other. But that, i think, you know, the cold war ended 25, more than 25 years ago now, and a lot of things are still working themselves out through american politics. And, you know, its going to be different. After this race the Republican Party is going to be different from what it was before. Democratic party a little bit, but less so, i think. But im not really sure where the republicans are going to end up in 2017. Host are you a fan of Donald Trumps . Guest i dont admire him. I do find him interesting and to some extent amusing. [laughter] i think that hes hard not to watch. Theres something about him which is attractive and fascinating in a way that makes you slightly ashamed of yourself for being so fascinated. But i dont think hes, i mean, some of my friends are very upset by him and think he spells the doom of republican government in america. I dont think so. I dont think hes a caesarist sort of personality. Be anything, hes more interesting in Caesars Palace than in caesarism. I think, though, that he is probably if he were to be elected, he would prove to be something closer to schwarzenegger than to berlusconi, lets say. I dont think hes as serious a politician as berlusconi. I think if we do have a president trump, we will see a lot of drift and uncertainty in his Administration Just as we saw out here in california with schwartz network. Schwarzenegger needed a script. He was very good at performing, but he didnt know, he didnt know what he was supposed to say. He didnt know what he was supposed to back as a politician once he was in office. And i fear the same would be true of trump, that hes fascinating in the pursuit of office, but once hes got it, i wonder if he will be bored. I wonder if he will fail the test of seriousness. [laughter] that any, obviously, any president has to pass, a minimal test. Host well, booktv is here at Claremont Mckenna college. What is the setup out here . Theres several different colleges, but theyre interrelated. How is it, how does it work . Guest well, its articles of confederation. So we go back this is not the constitution, this is articles of confederation, there are five independent undergraduate schools and a graduate school, two graduate schools. Each one seven campuses. Cheek by jowl. And theyre linked together as a kind of Permanent League of friendship. And so each has its own faculty, its own administration, it own president and so forth. And its own fundraising responsibilities. We share in common a library which is about the size of dartmouths library, and we share a steam plant and some property in common. But otherwise its every tub on its own bucket. And each campus focuses on something slightly different academically. So Claremont Mckenna has a disproportionate number of political scientists and economists. We have many we have a vastly disproportionate number of majors in economics, finance, Political Science, International Relations and those kinds of fields. But if you want to study classics, if you want to study latin or greek, you have to go to pomona or scripps to take those courses. But they can come here and study Political Science if they wish to. And so you have a kind of a balance of trade. And a typical student spends maybe a fourth of his courses off campus or, as we like to say here, abroad. [laughter] host is this a conservative college . Guest Claremont Mckenna is more conservative than any of the other claremont colleges and more conservative than any other high quality, top tenstyle liberal arts college in the country. But that means that in contemporary terms we have probably 15 professors who may be republicans, conservative republicans, 15 out of 130. However, if you go next door to pomona, you will find far, far fewer than 15 if you find any at all who are registered as republican. And every now and then students range outside the campus and track down those, that data. Because you can find out what a persons registration is. Host Charles Kesler is also a professor of government here at Claremont Mckenna college and the author of the book, i am the change barack obama and the future of liberalism. In the claremont review of books, this is a quote by you. You cant teach at an American College these days without wondering if and at some schools, lets face it, you wonder when its going to happen. A student, fellow faculty member or administrator is going to charge you with offending them. Guest uhhuh. Yes, im afraid thats true. It still hasnt happened to me, happily, or to, i think, any of my friends here at Claremont Mckenna. But you can see that the National Trends are bad, and they are all moving in that or mostly move anything that direction. Moving in that direction. Its a terrible thing because it leads to a kind of, it invites a kind of selfcensorship. And i do hear my colleagues occasionally saying im not going to be teaching that topic again, because its just too risky, its just too hot in the current sort of environment whether its because it offends against, you know, income inequality or black lives matter or whatever sort of trendy Political Movement of the day there is. Were aware of that. Professors are aware of that. Students are aware of it too. So last november we had some disturbances on this campus, on Claremont Mckenna. I wrote a piece about it a week later in the wall street journal, in november. And within 48 hours, it was over. That is to say, within 48 hours the administration had conceded to almost every demand that the protesters some 30 or 40 of them at most had asked. 30 or 40 students out of 1300 undergraduates, to put it in a little bit of perspective. But for me, leaving aside my political disagreements with the administration, the most worrisome thing was it was very difficult to get students to talk about what had happened. The very next week i tried to have a discussion in my classroom. I was teaching freshman American Government. One student gave, actually, a very braf yourous speech in favor of the demonstrators, but no one would second him. Nor would anyone object to him. They literally, i couldnt get them to say anything. So i talked to a lot of them in office hours x i asked them why are people unwilling to speak . And they said theyre afraid. And i asked, afraid of what . Are you afraid of your, of the administrators . Are you afraid of your faculty . Are you afraid of your fellow students . And without exception each one of them, and were only talking four or five students here, but each one of them said to me, my fellow students. And id never really heard this before. And it was interesting. It was something, it was not just their fellow students, it was their fellow students on social media that they were afraid of. It was being denounced on facebook or on one of the other comparable sites. And it i never heard a student say before, but it was quite interesting. You can see its a kind of generational change now that for the first time we have students who have grown up with social media. I mean, theyve spent their whole lives, basically, on social media at this point. They never knew, they dont know a time before social media existed. But what was interesting was theres something illiberal about social media. I mean, email and other kinds of similar technologies are not illiberal, they are a continuation of a conversation or a letter, you know, just by other means. And faster. But theres something thats more like a mob mentality on facebook and twitter. Than like any, than like a letter or a conversation, you know . A thoughtful conversation. And that was, it seemed to me, what they were getting at. That they you can have 80 people denounce you in seconds. And theres something about that which they were, they found deeply disturbing. Unhappily, you write, todays campus isnt steeped in the spirit of the lincolndouglass debates or of any debate for that matter. Guest yes. One of the things weve lost, and i too have just come to realize how much weve lost it, is when core courses still existed or more so at least than they exist today, when survey courses existed, a lot of kids read john stuart mills on liberty, they read john milton, they read sort of classics of free speech. They read jefferson, they read tocqueville. Fewer students do that now, although i must say cmc is pretty sound on that narrow question. But one of the unanticipated consequences of dropping so many required courses and books is that the free speech classics are no longer as known as they once were. When i was in college, i must have read really, in four years i must have read john stuart mills on liberty four or five times for different classes. It kept coming up. Now you can easily go through most school, including cmc, without ever reading on liberty even once. And so one used to be able to assume that there was a kind of common culture of liberty or of free speech that you could fall back on. And i think thats less true now. But it has sort of inspired me to begin to assign on liberty in freshman American Government and other courses where i wouldnt with necessarily have assigned it before just to get it in at some early date in the average students curriculum. Host whats another book that you assign regularly . Guest the lincolndouglass debates. Every time i teach freshman American Government, i teach the lincolndouglass debates, and you dont need to. [laughter] you could easily teach freshman American Government without it. Its a lot more interesting if you teach it. It is a tough book, its a controversial book. The nword is used multiple times, both nwords are used multiple times, negro as well as the other one. And negro so fencive is offensive these days too. Of course, fashion changes in these matters all the time. But lincoln and douglass, what a story. I mean, what a drama. Seven debates, three hours each, you know . No microphones, no reporters except ones taking notes. Just the two guys getting up, one talking for an hour, one talking more an hour and a half, and then the first guy getting a right of response for 30 minutes again at the close. And students love it. I think its the highlight of the year because they were not running for president , of course. They were running for senate in illinois. They would be douglass and lincoln would be opposing each other two years later for president. This was sort of a dry run for that. But it raises all the same kinds of questions and deep questions about how you how a politician speaks to voters in a democracy and what the relation is supposed to be between a politician and a voter especially if, as is usually the case, you cant be completely candid with them. And you certainly see that there are things lincoln p doesnt want to talk about, doesnt want