What does the president of a college do . Well, Everything Else is a problem. [laughter] you pay for getting to do those things by dealing with proob. We had our monday morning meeting, i work with fabulous people, they are awesome. Very good at their jobs, very fine huipings, every monday morning for an hour or two, we sit in my office and goo everything wrong and theres always a long list and and we try to keep the college straight and running right. Theres always the risk, its a big business, theres always the kids showed up early in the term. Its early when we are doing this. They are all really happy right now. By the end of the turn they will look like vampires, because theyve been up too late and the stress is getting to them and they have the dark circles under the young bright eyes and you to cope with all of that and you have to watch the budget and the revenue side is important and i have a fair amount to do that but a lot of people do and so, yeah, im running big business and i couldnt do it for ten minutes without the people who help me. Do you ever wish you had taken the Heritage Foundation job that you were offered in. Im not saying that i was offered that job but i like this job a lot. I like that a lot. They are doing very well. Whatever happened about that, the right choice was made by everyone concerned and mr. Deman who run it is place is fun to watch and help and things that i can never do and, yeah, im very fond of this. One thing is first of all, if your viewers want to be a College President , you probably can be. There are thousands of them. Theyre always looking. I urge you not to do it unless you really love young people because they are the reward and their potential, right, one of the things i teach them is that actual is superior to potential. God, for example, in christianity and in judaism is no potency at all. Hes entirely actuality. Why . Because if he were potency that would mean he could change and get better and that would be imperfection. So its true that Abraham Lincoln in his prime is a superior human being to nearly anybody and too himself when he was young. But against that, the massive delight of growth and that is pleasing, courses through the being of every being that undergoes it and then ive been here a long time now so some of my students are grownups now and some of them are in very awesome places and many, many of them are very awesome people and theyre beginning to tell me what to do now all of the time. [laughter] and finally, larry, if you were to write an instant ebook on the state of the conservative movement, what would you write . Well, holds great promise. Its divided. The way to cure the division is for it to focus much more on the things that it is to conserve and in america that wuib the thing of the greatest Free Republic in Human History and its appeal to the laws of nature and of natures god and appeal to the selfevident truth of human equality. Professor at hillsdale. Salvation of free government. This is book tv on cspan2. Post a comment on our facebook page. Facebook. Com booktv. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everybody, good evening and welcome to the Lower East Side museum, my name is annie, im a Vice President for programs and education here at the museum. How many of you have visited in the past . Okay. How many of you have gone to 97 who orchard . Upstairs we will be eeping an exhibit. Weve done talks in here so maybe that was, okay, great, youre wonder. Excellent. People they fell like they came in 1992. What we are really excited about is an exhibit thats going to open, the third floor of this building is now being transformed into an apartment in which over the years we had a family who survived the concentration camps and came here and started the new life in Lower East Side, refugees will be telling their stories, a puerto rican migrant family that came here in the mid1950s and moved to this family, sas family and the wong family that came to the Lower East Side in 1965 and moved in the building in 1968. Many way ways to use the story to real people and elevate the stories in order to inspire connections past and present. So that what we do at the tenement is not only talk about the history of immigration and migration but connections to today. In a few hours some of you may head home to watch the third act of a of a debate where probably not much of substance will come up and so we are excited to be able to welcome you here tonight to have a really substantial conversation about immigration, past and present with two of our most Favorite School arson and people who have worked with us behind the scenes with educators and on our exhibits. I know some are you friends, sister, welcome here. We are also a museum about family and so we like to invite you into this broader family. Come back, come back to more exhibits, come back too more programs and welcome tonight to this program on city of dreams, one last thing i was going to say is that i dont know if you know this, but in 1885 a german immigrant got off the boat and he came, this neighborhood two blocks from here and had, i think, a barber store, he was a barber and his name was fredrik trump. All of the immigration stories are going to come together in some way. Im going to do a quick introduction and im also going to ask you and do it myself, have a phone, you might want to turn off the volume. Okay, i did it and and i also want to thank edison for helping sponsor the free tenement talks. Tyler, first book nativism and slavery, organization of american historians, his second book when the new york city book of 2001 the probably among educators top read books here. And he served as a consultant to martin for gaines of new york although i am told martin didnt listen to all of the suggestive, which is another [laughter] his ancestors came to new york from southwest germany, poland, ukraine and russia. Hes going to give a little bit of presentation and is going to be interviewing him and having a conversation. And author of awardwinning maximum city bombai lost and found. Finalist for 2005 pulitzer prize. New york times magazine, national geographic, harpers magazine, time and newsweek and has been featured on npr fresh air in all things is considered. Associate professor of journalism at new york university. Hes currently working on a Nonfiction Group of immigrants and contemporary new york. When that comes out tyler will vom and interhim here. He was raised in bombai new york. One thing to do after you watch the debate, if you want to be teared up, google his article melting his pot about one building in queens that tells the story about all the different people that are sharing an apartment building. Thank you, i was asked to give a ten to 15minute interview. Thats a daunting task. I will do my best to summarize it in ten to 15 minutes. In part i was inspired because as i worked on my second book, i abecame across such good material that i couldnt use because the stories, events couldnt take place in the 6 by 4 area that was 5 points and as i assummulated the stories, i really need something, some other way in which to convey them. The re main thing that inspired me was i wanted a narrative challenge. I sweat a word sometimes way too long. I wanted a challenge. The final reason why i wanted to write city of dreams is such a great story. Writing it made me happy telling the story with which, you know, sometimes the stories are terrible, sometimes theyre uplifting but they always teach us something and so i just felt like it was a story that i had too tell. Tells the stories of a lot of immigrants groups that came to the united new york, the focus are on the dutch and english and in 18th century english and irish and 19th century Eastern European and italians, 20th century, italians, Puerto Ricans, chinese and so forth. The book is held together by several themes though i try to do it in a subtle way. I didnt want the reader to be hit over the head with here is what you should be thinking now. I tried to make it subtle and i hope i succeeded in that. There are a couple of themes. This is an image that was probably taken not very far from here of a garment worker, probably an italian garment worker. One theme is that the immigrant experience has not varied much over new york citys history. One thing i found that the dutch werent that different at their core than the english and the english werent that different than the scott, the scotts from the irish, the germans from the italians, et cetera, all the way up to today where the biggest growing immigrant group in terms of proportion is south asians. The story is almost always the same. A hard journey to america, struggle to adjust, very little assimilation, better lives for themselves and their children. We tend to think of the experience of our own ethnic group as unique and, of course, in some sense every ethnic group is unique but in most senses the ones that really matter, the immigration experience is the same. Generation after generation, century after century. Another theme of the book is that antiimmigrant sentiment is as consistent a theme in American History as immigration. Here is an image from the right around 1900 that conveys some of the same ideas that you might hear in the press today. Throughout American History americans have worried about immigrants, feared immigrants, sometimes even hated immigrants, the dutch were very antienglish, they thought that the english would ruin america and the place they had created. The english were very antiirish by the mid19th century new yorkers were anticatholic. Later on those same immigrants not only the ones who had been anticatholic but the ones who had been discriminated against with catholicism become antisemite and so on and so forth up to antimuslim sentiment today. And peoples antiimmigrant sentiment runs a gamut of emotions. At other times condemned because they were too radical. Other times, many times throughout new yorks history, new yorkers have complained that immigrants were part of a secret army plotting to destroy america. Thats something that we heard throughout americas history and throughout new yorks history. The other theme of the book is immigrants are not any different than previous generation of immigrants. We think to tend that todays immigrants are not like my grandparents but in almost every sense, in almost every way, immigrants are just like our immigrant grandparents or great grandparents or even great, great grandparents. The difference is that we certify seef either relatively inriskant surface differences that may matter to us a lot because of our ethics identification or more often than not the result of the past experience of our own immigrants. New york will continue to be the worlds city of dreams. Thank you. [applause] as someone who has been working far too long on a book of immigrants today, i mean all of your achievement, how long did it take you to write this book . Well, if i have to admit it, 15 years. The writing itself maybe four years, a lot of Research Went into it. A lot of feeling i cant start writing until i know more and theres so much to learn and so much to read, so, yeah, 15 years and four of writing. Thank you, that makes me feel so much better. [laughter] im only on year nine of my book. But how did you well, what made you take up you referred to it in your talk, and what was the actual purpose of writing it . You chose a lot of immigrant memoirs and dairies and firstperson accounts and realistic characters in the book, so as a historian, how do you chose one approach or the other or another, lets say, just kind of history or history of the politics about immigration . What i wanted tood more than anything else was write stories that people want to read and so i feel like its always best to let historical actors tell their own stories and thus the memoirs are really you cant trust memoirs. People embellish and that makes things complicated. You learn to use your judgment and you hope and you hope to get things right and so that was my main concern, keep readers with finding the story gripping and i hope i succeeded. One of the gripping stories is the story of felix and you have 1853 draft rioting which were mainly irish against blacks and Republican Party and there were over a hundred and fame uis [inaudible] irish immigrant, we dont want to fight, fight and fight by the nigger, we think we are too good a race for that, the irish immigrant which not to long ago the own people had been discriminated against and now leading the fight against someone else. But own career of felixs career took a turn. Talk to us about that. Sure. Felix is quoted in dozens of history books as the epitome of the causes of the new york rise, irish immigrants who dont want to be made the equal of African Americans and see, believe that the war and emancipation are going to do that. And so hes cited as an example of this racism and certainly you cant deny that that sentence is full of racism. Yet what happened to him which hasnt been in any books written before is fascinating, you know, the he writes that in 1962, a few months later lincoln signs the emancipation and they join by the tens of thousands and, yes, the army has a lot of trouble the army decides that only whites can be the officers of their unit but they have trouble finding white serve as officers for black soldiers, strangely what i discovered, one of the soldiers who volunteers to lead one of their one of the regiments is felix, which struck me as very strange and he does this first in South Carolina and then in savannah, georgia in 1864 and 1865 and 1866. After the war he moves to washington, goes to law school at George Washington where i teach and then and then after the war he gets a job as a u. S. Attorney in of all places jackson, mississippi. And in jackson, mississippi he his job is primarily to prosecute bootleggers and klansman and here you have felix who up until 1862 was not the kind of person that would have much sympathy for African Americans. Now becoming a prosecutor of those who persecuted them. So i thought that was a great story. The book is with great stories. The book also made me realize that the personal hero of mine was richmond, had trouble so some of my students in the room and one of the things i like to do on the first day of class, i like to take them to the Staten Island ferry. Here this great celebrator of diversity, of the humanity of new york of all things new york, but in 1842, notoriously anticatholic and antiirish and theres much discretion about election violence, who knows what will happen in the election, you have this passage on page 192 on the book, on election day in the war, election in new york. Each faction attempt today prevent the sporters of the other from casting their ballots. The fight was bloody and horrible in that extreme reported the harold. Men were so beaten about the head that they could not be recognized as human beings. Detachment by police but native invaded the fixed war. [inaudible] they moved uptown to his home. Quote, had it been the hypocrite head that had been smashed, instead of the window we could hardly find it in our soul to be horrible. So you make this connection with election violence in the past and the fact that even a person as humane felt compelled to issue against immigrants. Its hard too appreciate today how both how protestants americans felt their nation was and how much they felt protestant and how much they saw catholicism as a threat and so because americans, so Many Americans thought that prosubstantiatism is what defined america, what made America Great, what gave us our freedoms, they described in american democracy, look at the world, the only place they have any are protestant nations. Obviously they are reading history oddly to come to such conclusions, nonetheless, thats what they believed. And so they thought catholic immigrants as a threat to them. In this particular case what whitman is specially upset about is something that we can all imagine we get upset about is the Public Schools and there was a big fight in this period. Catholic immigrants coming to new york and sending their kids to Public Schools were shocked to find that the curriculum of the schools were oo protestants and required to read King James Bible and participants of catholic children objected to that and instead of saying, i see your point, maybe we should, you know, allow catholic children to read from a catholic version of the bible and so forth, american protestants said, no, we must keep the schools protestants because thats what makes America Great and if we take that out of the schools, our children and our nation will suffer and people felt very strongly about that and thats that was what inspired whitman. The conflict in the book of shining moments and tolerance and speaking up for religious liberty. One of the most famous cases is where peter tried to band from moving and group of local mideastly english people in [inaudible] why along with the conflict has had tradition of tolerance and welcoming adversity. But in the book i was told that most of the people who find them eventually be recant. Yes, so peter also was not a very tolerant person. And for him even varieties that the dutch didnt like were out of line. He wanted to ban lutherans from amsterdam and you really have to let the lutherans come in. We need as many people in here as soon as possible. You cant keep banning people. He allows the lutherans to stay but restrictions on practicing religion and their form of protestantism without having minister be the head, that seemed that would lead to anarchy. Protest and say, you know, this really isnt right what youre doing banning all the groups and in particularly vanishing the quakers and the first example of a demand for religious tolerance in what becomes the United States. And as you know the part of the story people dont tend to know is he gets well, i disagree and he goes to the people who signed it and says, you either recant or youre ban too and so most of the people who signed it end up recanting and disavowing rather tha