On the life work impact of worldrenowned investor philanthropists and founder of the open Society George Soros mr. Soros is i believe the longest most consistent. And in many ways the most impactful advocate of open society values. In our times and therefore he is also the most consistently attacked falsified. And just plain misunderstood person if our times that means we need some explication. For the library, all of this is not about party politics. Its about a debate. About and four the values. Of open society mr. Soros is the subject of the book that brings us together tonight george soros a life in full a collection of essays edited by our friend peter ostinas the book is really an astonishing array of essays. And for those of you familiar with mr. Soross work and work about him. I think you will find this really revelatory and and so compelling and direct the contributors have a Hoffman Michael ignatius sebastian. Malabi whose work whos essay on reflexivity is masterful orville shell Leon Botstein ivan kastev. And then of course two of our guests tonight. Will be joined by Gary Lamarche senior fellow at the Colin Powell School at city college of City University of new york the former president of course of the Democracy Alliance as well as the former director of us programs for the open Society Foundations. And also Darren Walker the president of the Ford Foundation. The amongst so many other things the first nonprofit in the us history to issue a billion dollar designated social bond to stabilize nonprofit organizations in the wake of the pandemic. Before joining ford darren was Vice PresidentRockefeller Foundation and ceo of harlems Abyssinian Development corporation. And now of course he has led and is leading. The continued transformation of the leading social Justice Foundation in the world bringing it to new levels. They will be joined by the editor of the book our dear friend and the amazing peter. Osnos whose career. From the Washington Post who founding Public Affairs in 1997, which has gone on. To to become the Publishing House for the most amazing array of authors and if you havent read all of it, you must you can borrow it. But peter should wouldnt have me say you can also buy them. And he and on so delighted that susan is with us tonight susan ostas. The book or all of these are old dear friends and all standard bears of crucial now threatened values. Of open society the book itself is available for purchase right outside this all right there right outside the room as well as in our library shop and you are again, of course, welcome to borrow it. I also want to acknowledge the continuing generosity for these programs from this from celeste bartos. Manas is bohani bartos and adam bartos. Were making live from nypl possible. And of course the stavros niercros foundation for their generous support. Of the amazing space that you are currently sitting in. At the end of our conversation peter guerra and darren will be happy to answer questions. Youll find note cards and pencils on the on your seats. I think and staff will be coming around to collect them. Please join me in welcoming. Gerala marsh Darren Walker and peter rostas. Well with the sound. My god, i can go right to questions. Tony did a magnificent job of summarizing. Let me tell you a bit. First of all. Hello, and i think we all agree that an event in person. Even though its being strained and cspan is going to televise it is a very different experience than all that zoom stuff. Weve had to do and we were all spiffed so let me tell you a little bit about how the book. Came about and then well go very much to darren and gera. Both of them oracles on many issues and well start with philanthropy. It was the summer of ive made a commitment to only refer to him tonight as soros not george because that would suggest a degree of intimacy. Thats inappropriate. Um, it was the summer of 2020 soros was turning 90. Ordinarily they would have been a very kind of celebratory event of one kind or another. Well, we were in the middle of the lockdown. And i was on the zoom. With soros ive been his publisher since Public Affairs started which is to say almost 25 years ago of all the books hes done and hes done a bunch. And i said well. Control on george when were on zoom. So george, why dont you write a memoir and he said absolutely not. Its not the kind of thing. He said i might really interested at this stage of my life and looking back much. I knew that no one had successfully done a proper biography there have been efforts but no ones done it and the reason is that theres too much to do for a single biographer the subtitle we came up with for the book we did do was survivor billionaire speculator for philanthropist philosopher political activist nemesis of the far right global citizen. We didnt deal with several other things like father and husband and friend i said why dont we get people who know what theyre really really know. What theyre talking about . To write essays deeply reported on each of these elements that are so important in the multifaceted life and career of soros. But i said theres one condition. And that condition is you cant interfere. The people are going to write it theyre going to write off their insight and their experience and their knowledge and you will read it. When its done you need to trust us to the extent. That its possible to do a job. That is thoughtful and fair. And to his credit he did not under any circumstances get in the way. Which is important to know because in a book like this, we dont want anybody to say that this is sagiography and it is not. I think theres a great deal in it. Its thoughtful in a really important way. Its its a biography a unique biography. Of a really quite extraordinary man a multiple voiced multifaceted biography of a multifaceted man so among the contributors who tony mentioned we have to particularly. Well, everybodys good, but we have two were here this evening one is darren and one is gary now together they know more about philanthropy than almost anybody alive with the possible exception. Of george soros himself what i want to do is start really. Darren is the thing. That was so striking to me in your essay. Was the way in which you reframed our understanding of who george soros as a philanthropist . Is carnegie Ford Rockefeller philanthropist gates but the closer you look the more unique the more different. George soros turns out to be as a philanthropist and by the way 35 billion whatever it is that hes put into his philanthropy. Its extraordinary. I mean, i think almost as much as gates and hes going strong. So what was it that you said in this magnificently . Insightful essay that you wrote about soros philanthropy and why he is the unique figure that it is well, i thought that sorrows his place in the narrative arc of american and global but american philanthropy has defined global philanthropy. So sorrows is himself an inheritor of a legacy that Andrew Carnegie and his seminal 1889 gospel of wealth really instantiated among a group of wealthy industrialists with ideas about what they should do with their money. And he Joe George Soros had a really interesting perspective. So what was for sorrows . As an individual he was very much like carnegie or rockefeller or ford. He is enormously complicated and complex. A person filled with contradictions and unlike the rest of us actually well very much. Like rockefeller very much like carnegie very much like henry ford and many others. But what made sorrows . Unusual was that carnegie and and rockefeller especially talked about these ideas of root causes and the role of science in solving mankinds problems and the investment in research and data and commissions and massive systemic reform creation of very in both of their cases institutions that were in in their mold. What was unique about soros is . His his i think his north star was carl popper. I mean was was a philosopher. Rockefeller and carnegie both were both christian men who in their philanthropy talked about the bible. And talked about god and jesus in their writings about their work as a philanthropist. Sorrows was very clear that it was not some godlike not some spiritual figure not some other worldly but a very both intellectual and practical idea of an open society. That was a reflection of his lived experience. And so he he made this this institution. That is the open Society Foundations it is it is rooted in that and the other thing about soros was that he didnt want to be a philanthropist. I mean he i mean the thing about both carnegie and rockefeller ultimately is that they really embraced the idea of philanthropy and both of them embraced the idea of philanthropy in part because they were so reviled in their time that in i mean universally not just by the letter. I mean just universally reviled people dandy rockefeller could not get congress to give him a charter to give away his wealth because the members of congress were so suspicious when his lawyers came to say mr. Rockefeller wants to give away his wealth that they refused to believe that anything good could come out of it. And so philanthropy in part was a salvation of their reputation and it was again, many accused them of the things we hear about today reputation laundering green washing all the ways in which money is used to legitimize people who do bad things in the case of sorrows. He was not looking for that. That was not why he started giving away money, and it wasnt because some pr person told him as with rockefeller if you give away money and start putting your name on things actually and those things are good for society. You will be associated with those things and people will start to like you that was never for sorrows a driver of why he became a philanthropist one of the things its interesting about soros and naming opportunities. Is hes philanthropist whos name is not on any building. Well, its not on the name of his foundation. Its not on the name of his foundation. Its not on the name of the Central European university, which he was the founder of well get to that a bit more. I just want to ask you though. As tony said that Ford Foundation is identified with social justice. And very closely identified. And one of the things i know that you write about is so is the sorrows foundation in its way . Very identified with issues of social justice, which sometimes makes it very complicated Brian Stevenson. You point out in your essay Michelle Alexander. These are people who have truly change the way in which we understand social justice and racial issues. Well, but because before ford, i mean ford certainly was a leader before open societies existed. On focusing on racial discrimination, but it was only in recent years when we incorporated a real justice land and started to use the term social justice and and more recently the idea of social justice philanthropy, but what soros did so assiduously was to do what i call investing in the three eyes ideas institutions and individuals who who go out into the world and proselytize the ideas of an open society. And so when you look at people like Michelle Alexander the soros fellows, i mean in their hundreds of them like Michelle Alexander like Brian Stevenson many others who got individual grants to do their work, so when michelle was writing the new jim crow choose riding a radical book with the soros grant because its hard to imagine. Now because its so normalized but when when michelle introduced the idea of the Prison Industrial Complex and the idea that we were over incarcerating. People had never been people meaning people like you people who read the New York Times people who are pretty knowledgeable and had never really thought about it because the issue of criminal justice had been put through the lens of this war on crime and war on drugs and all of the bad things that these people do in society. So when you look at the individuals when you look at the institutions like ceu but think about the literally thousands of organizations around the world that george soros has funded has initiated has even if they may have existed they might have been started by ford or but the sorrows money made it possible for them to really take off this this could be a discussion. Really literally that could go on for a week. Were just touching the surface and well come back to some of the things that you just said, but i wanted to say to garra is among other things the unique lead qualified because hes done both things. Is raised money. And hes given out money so he knows the two sides of the equation as the first. Director of the open society us programs as the former president of atlantic philanthropies, which was a extraordinary the institution because feeney who started it said im going to end up living in a box and he did he gave away all these quality quite about it sort of a box. It was a very very nice virus, but well actually, but anyway gera presided over atlantic philanthropos to spend down foundation. He was also as i said instrumental in creating us programs, but what i wanted to ask you gary is the evolution of the soros approach when he started osf as i understand it as we describe i think in some detail he intended it to be a Sports Service spender. He so no need. To look after his descendants beside from whatever he would give them. He wanted this to be something that he did in his lifetime. And here we are. Georges nine source is 90 and this foundation will go on. Can you describe a bit from what you know over how that evolved in his head . How is spend down foundation a Legacy Foundation . And then very briefly the difference between raising money and giving it out. Which would you prefer . More honest living the raise money i think than to give it out, but its harder to raise money than to give it out. People. Give out money are always complaining about how hard it is, but thats a highclass problem to have so first i say, its very nice to be here. Its nice to be live event, which i its only second live event. Ive done since the pandemic and i forgot how deeply i missed looking into an audiences face. The face is that people scrolling their smartphones . Um, its its nice to be back in this kind of setting. Its also nice to be here with darren whos been my friend in collaborator for 25 years and the person who introduced us brad lander the city controller now sitting right in the front row. So, thank you brad for that. Its very Fruitful Partnership over the years. I wanted to say, you know, ill answer you a question more or less, but i think that when i was listening to darren talk about how gates and some of the others in carnegie and rockefeller, you know have been thought of as kind of laundering there fortunes, you know, and there was a great deal of skepticism in the early 20th century about the dawn of philanthropy because you know progressives at the time people like many of us were very suspicious of these fortunes. They thought it was antidemocratic, you know to have such a unaccountable, you know institutions and and i i think they had a point soros on the other hand kind of went in the reverse source. Actually. I had the experience i write about i wrote the politics chapter in the book, which you wont talk about much tonight because i did the philanthropy for 11 years. It wouldnt really been appropriate darren did a beautiful job in writing about the philanthropy, but i had experience of going with soros to a bipartisan dinner of senators early in my tenure in the mid 90s and before the foundation really got underway and a serious way before his reputation developed as it had and he was respected by all of them is kind of a guru because a person who is very good at making money and that often gets you a lot of respect in this society and the more he did his philanthropy and its true that he had no concern about his reputation in the same way as other people the more his reputation got more complicated. He took on the thing to understand about george more than anything else. I think is enormous appetite for risks. So i have this theory i think darren would probably agree but im interested in perspective that people will give out money tend to do it in character with the way they made the money right so bill gates is a technologist. Everything is a problem to be solved. I mean hes i think evolved a bit on that, but that was the way he looked at it. I worked for chuck feeney whos been mentioned here. He was a retailer. He made his fortunate dutyfree shops in airports. He liked the built environment like to kick the tires of things. He liked tangible things george soros as sebastian reality malibu writes beautifully about his chapter, you know made his fortune through an enormous appetite for risk good not for the faint of heart and that is the way hes done his philanthropy, you know, he is very often what it was a sari avo in the mid 90s or whether it was dealing with clinton and the Republican Congress is attack on immigrants in the in the mid 90s. He has had an appetite for for doing things that he hadnt even planned to do, you know and one of the things about soros i think is that he he doesnt care. For his reputation and he has been willing at least certainly in the early years to be out in front of everybody else. So when you talk about Michelle Alexander and Brian Stevenson the criminal justice work when we started that work in 1996, no other foundation the United States was dealing with criminal justice. He had no Mcconnell Clark foundation had be