Historians talk about The Events of The 20th Century and how they compare with what's happening today. This panel was hosted by the Kennedy Library in Boston. It's about an hour and 45 minutes.
Thank you.
Good evening and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Library. I'm John Shadic, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation and on behalf of myself, our library director, Tom Putnham, and all of our colleagues here at the Kennedy Library. I'm delighted to welcome you at this very, very special occasion. Uh tonight we're using the occasion of President Kennedy's upcoming 90th birthday to reflect on the era he helped shape and look back at the second half of the 20th century. And it's going to be a thrilling ride. Before introducing tonight's discussion, I want to first thank the institutions that make these forums possible, starting with our lead sponsor, Bank of America. We're also grateful to the Boston Foundation, Boston Capital, the Lel Institute, the Corkran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, NECN, and WBURUR, which broadcasts all Kennedy Library Forums on Sunday evenings at 8. Pundits as diverse as Henry Loose and Hunter Thompson have branded the years 1900 to 2000 as the American century. During that time, the US helped win two world wars and a cold war, carried out a civil rights revolution and a revolution in science and technology, pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war and the Cuban missile crisis, and put a man on the moon at the end of the 1960s. The first American president born after 1900 was John F. Kennedy. And both chronologically and politically, President Kennedy was at the center of the American century. In a 1999 poll taken by USA Today, Kennedy ranked third behind Mother Teresa and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the person Americans most admired in the 20th century. An ABC News poll taken the same year showed that Americans considered the exploration of space launched during the Kennedy years to be the single greatest technical achievement of the 20th century. Another poll ranked Kennedy's inaugural address as the second most famous oration of the century behind Dr. King's I have a dream speech to remind ourselves again why President Kennedy captured the hopes and aspirations of so many Americans and people around the globe. Let's listen to the challenges he made to the nation and the world on that cold January day in 1961.
Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
now summons us again. Not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need. Not as a call to battle, though in battle we are, but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. Year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, a struggle against the common enemies of man, tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance
north and south, east and west, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
These words reached the ears of Daniel Shaw in bond. Dan was on the front lines of the Cold War as the CBS bureau chief for Germany and Eastern Europe. He covered the Berlin crisis of 1961 and 1962, the building of the Berlin wall and Kennedy's famous Ishben Berliner speech which became a major marker of the US Soviet Cold War tensions. After serving as an army intelligence officer during World War II, Dan became a foreign correspondent first for the Christian Science Monitor, then for the New York Times, and finally for CBS News. He conducted the first ever exclusive television interview with a Soviet leader in 1957 when he interviewed Nikita Krushche in his Kremlin office on Face the Nation. Dan's repeated defiance of Soviet censorship landed him in trouble with the KGB and he was barred from the Soviet Union at the end of 1957. Daniel Shaw is a legendary reporter whose stories have literally shaped the way Americans have looked at major events over the last 60 years. His coverage of Watergate, for example, earned him three Emmy awards as well as a position on Richard Nixon's enemies list and a White House order that the FBI investigate him. An abuse of power featured in the Bill of Impeachment on Nixon on which Nixon would have been tried had he not resigned his presidency. Today, we all know Dan for his trenchant commentaries on National Public Radio. And in his 2001 memoir, Stay tuned, a life in journalism, he tells his story of reporting in the 20th century in riveting detail. We salute you, Dan, for your many awards, for sharing your birth year with John F. Kennedy, and above all, for your honesty and directness in reporting the world the way you've seen it for the past six decades.
Jill Kirk Conway is one of our nation's most thoughtful and revered educators and historians. During her tenure as the first woman president of Smith College from 1975 to 1985, she helped transform American higher education by creating academic programs in line with the new realities in women's lives. Born on a remote Australian sheep farm, Jill was seven before she encountered another girl child and she lived in the Australian outback until she was 11. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother and her brothers to the seapport of Sydney where she was educated and went to university. In 1960, she immigrated to the United States and completed her PhD in history in Harvard. At Harvard in 1969 and as an historian, she became a specialist in American social and intellectual history and the history of American women, teaching at the University of Toronto, Smith College, and most recently at MIT. Jill is the author of a moving autobiography, The Road from Kurraine, which describes her personal odyssey from Australia to America and True North, which continues her journey to the presidency of Smith College. She's also the author of many other books, including Modern Feminism and Intellectual History, written by herself, an anthology of the changing status of women throughout history, women reformers and American culture, the politics of women's education, and the female experience in 18th and 19th century America, a guide to the history of American women. The Kennedy Library Foundation is honored to count Jill Kirk Conway as a member of our board of directors and the distinguished chair of our development committee. And we welcome you back, Jill, to the stage of the Kennedy Library.
Our
third panelist, Tony Lewis, has perhaps done more than any other commentator to illuminate the struggle in the second half of the 20th century to defend and support the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. From the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the civil liberties battles of the 1970s and 80s, the human rights revolution of the 1990s, and now the backlash of the 21st century, Tony has helped us understand the legal, political, and human issues at stake and has inspired us to defend our most basic values. He began his career with the New York Times in 1948, winning the first of two Pulitzer Prizes in 1955 for a series of stories in the Washington Daily News about the danger to civil liberties of the Federal Loyalty Security Program and the way it was administered by the US Navy. From 1955 to 1964, he reported from Washington for the New York Times on the Department of Justice and the government's handling of the civil rights movement. He won his second Pulitzer Prize in 1963 for his coverage of the US Supreme Court. Tony served as London bureau chief for the Times from 1964 to 1969 and then for more than 30 years wrote his famous award-winning column for the Times that became the benchmark for thoughtful commentary on American law and politics. His book Gideon's Trumpet on the right of an ind indigent defendant to be represented by a lawyer is one of the great classics of legal literature as is his study of the first amendment make no law and his book describing the civil rights revolution of the 1960s portrait of a decade. Tony, we welcome you back to the stage of the Kennedy Library.
To guide our discussion this evening, we're fortunate to have Scott Simon as our moderator. We all know Scott for his insights and thoughtfulness as the award-winning host of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday. Since joining NPR in 1977, Scott has reported from all 50 states, covered seven presidential campaigns, and corresponded on eight wars, and lived to tell the tale. He's reported from Cuba on the nation's resistance to change, from Ethiopia, on the country's famine, from the Middle East during the Gulf War, and from the siege of Sarvo and the destruction of Kosovo. Among his many awards, Scott has received the Overseas Press Club Award for his coverage of September 11th, the Peabody Award for his weekly radio essays and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his coverage of racism in a South Philadelphia neighborhood. He's the author of a number of books including Home and Away, Memoir of a Fan, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, and a novel Pretty Birds. So, please join me again in welcoming to the stage of the Kennedy Library Daniel Shore, Jill Kirk Conway, Tony Lewis, and Scott Simon. Over to you, Scott.
Um, I am definitely the junior partner in this crowd in all ways. Uh, and I think perhaps to take a a cue from President Kennedy, uh, it might be best to introduce me as the man who accompanied Dan Shore to Boston.
It It's It's startling to once again see those pictures of President Kennedy uh, accepting the oath of office and addressing the American people as president for the first time. I was just inevitably reminded of the fact I was I was very young at the time. But I do believe between something like the age of seven and 12, I spoke with a Boston accent. Uh and I did not stand out because of it. I think you find a lot of us at that age simply talked like this. Uh and even began to try and comb our hair that way. uh such was the power of I think President Kennedy's uh image and and I think a feeling that sharpened uh as we grew up that that event represented a generation uh and a country the United States that was coming into a kind of inheritance um uh a nation that had been building towards a great deal that had peoples from all over the world uh who had come here including Jill Kirk Conway uh and and that it was a time in which we were to come into our inheritance in a position of world leadership um in a way that that we would hope also bespoke of our best values. even recognizing the fact that there were some episodes in our history clearly which were regrettable and more that there was at the same time um a steam engine in a sense of American history uh that represented democratic values that represented egalitarianism that represented equality uh that represented a sense uh that it was possible for any man or woman born in this country any man or woman who comes to this country uh to realize something extraordinary and marvelous and magnificent in their lives. Um, and I think as we as we look back on that time and look ahead perhaps to other times, we might uh want to bear that in mind. We have such a distinguished group. I won't uh waste much more time but simply get some questions. Dan, can I begin with you? I'm accustomed to that. Um, and maybe if each of you could tell us in turn, are there things you remember of growing up in the 20th century that are gone now that we could stand to remember? Uh, first let me say that this extravagant introduction of me leaves me almost almost speechless.
And you you'll rally though. But in trying to figure out how one responds in the first place to that lavish praise, I am minded of one who does it awfully well and that's Henry Kissinger uh who when he received a Nobel Peace Prize was a guest at a huge reception at the State Department and a woman walked up to him and took his hand in her two hands and said, "Mr. secretary, I simply wanted to thank you for saving the world.
And he looked back at her and said, "You're welcome
To encompass A Century, although The Century now is almost entirely mind. If you're 90 years old, you you really have come to terms with the century. And it's something of a challenge to try to say in those 90 years in this century uh what typifies it. And the first thing that occurs to me that typifies this century is that people have found different ways of talking to each other. and not only for the better. I happened to see the first experiment in television. I attended the 1939 New York World's Fair and RCA had an exhibit there in which if you stood in front of a camera,
you think I'd know better by now.
And there there was a a camera standing there and people around it and if you stood in front of the camera then your friend or girlfriend whoever 100 ft away could see in a monitor a picture of you. That was the first I ever saw of television. I thought at the time I was interesting uh probably be pretty cute as a as a toy of some kind totally underestimating what television would do to our country. Uh now that I have learned that what television has done among other things is to change the whole way we encompass what used to be called the reality of this of this world. That is that is to say
I watch younger reporters writing reporting today occasionally there is something missing that something that's missing is something we used to call reality. Uh, television has turned communications uh more or less into a a a way of seeing beyond what would call real real things or real information.
In the past couple of years, you may have noticed that a couple of reporters have gotten into trouble uh gotten into trouble uh by faking stories, hoaxes to an extent that I never saw before. I mean, culminating in Grayson Blair, the the New York Times reporter who kept feeding stories every week, and they were phony, they were fake. New York, the New Republic for a year or two had a series of stories by a reporter who made them up. And what makes you think that you can make up something? What's happened to us? And it strikes me that one thing that has happened to us is that we've grown up in this age of television. And in the age of television, things aren't the way they used to be anymore. And it's hard to tell how they are. It also I think has also has made us I don't how how even to put it but television has made us want to run away from reality and find some
consolation in something which we will call kind of reality and what has done I think is to make give us a different generation of leaders. The other day as it happened, I was listening on C-SPAN and they were playing the Nixon Kennedy debate of 1960, which I knew very well at the time, but it all came back to me. What came back to me was Kennedy and yes Nixon both of them spoke with an understanding of the language understanding of the facts that hardly present today among our leaders. Our leaders today will learn from those who teach such things how to present themselves. they'll tell them how to tell little stories that will make them look good and so on. And we've kind of lost the sense of the day of the in our in 20th century days of Churchill and and and people like that. Let me tell you in passing two stories, both of which I think couldn't happen the same way today. They both are my favorite stories uh both of working in the Soviet Union and of working in the United States. Soviet Union. There was this fellow named Nikita Sergeovich,
something of a peasant, rough neck, but intelligent at the same time, and somebody you felt you had to deal with. Uh because he never knew what he would what he would do or say. Uh next, 1956, let me be concrete. 1956 in the summer getting they were getting ready ready to fight a war to liberate the Suez Canal. Britain, France, Israel were going to and the Soviet Union warned that there would be trouble and they might send troops to Egypt if that happened. And with all of that comes October, Gusev comes back from vacation. There were rumors going around that they're going to be some troops being sent to Soviet Union or maybe worse who the Soviets have a nuclear bomb and God knows what they will do under these conditions. and I saw Kustra whom I used to see mainly at at diplomatic receptions uh arrived to a glass of champagne offered me a glass of champagne and I asked him how his vacation had been told me he'd been hunting all the rest and finally I said Mr.
Let me ask you something. Do you think that I could go hunting down in the Crimea? He jealous. Of course, why not? And began to motion to somebody to arrange a trip for me. I said, "No, but but there's a problem I have." Indeed, maybe you can help me with my problem. Asking, "What is your problem?" Actually, I was leaving on vacation tomorrow and my capitalistic bosses back in New York, CBS have told me I may not go on vacation because of a lot of rumors that there's going to be an emergency meeting of the central committee and I don't know what to tell them because nobody will tell me. Ah, you want to go on vacation when?
Tomorrow. And for how long? Uh, two weeks. And you are afraid that in those two weeks you may miss a meeting of our central committee. You're exactly right. Say, sure,
you can go. I mean, it's all right. All right. If absolutely necessary, we'll have the meeting without you.
And now you get Putin and people like you don't get people like that anymore. And then the other other one who was a man who has put his mark on my on my career and that is Nixon. Nixon. I look back on that as one of the more fascinating periods for me in in in in the 20th century and it was like this.
Nixon didn't like some of my reporting. It's all right. Lots of people don't. Nixon didn't like some of of my of my reporting.
And I learned that through his Bob Holdman, his secretary, he was what he was trying to do was to hold a second. What he what he wanted to do was to get the FBI to investigate me and come up with something nasty about me. um they handled it badly with the result that the FBI didn't know what kind of a investigation was being asked for and so they sent people all over the country including even to my home to interview me.
And when we found out what this was, it turned out there had been missed signals between the White House and the FBI. And so they got together and they had a meeting to find out how we handle this and finally decide well why don't we say that he was under consideration for some job and we had to do a check on him. We should have done it before but that's a mistake you know something like that. What else can we say? And so they did, Washington Post broke the story of Nixon orders investigation of a CBS correspondent and uh waits to see what'll happen. Well, uh, no one believed it. And when the time came to investigate Nixon for possible impeachment, in the end they drew up a list of impeachment articles, three articles. Article two, article two was abuse of presidential power. and under they listed unwarranted FBI investigation of CBS correspondent Daniel Short. There I was for a little piece of history. Well, as you know, Nixon resigned, was pardoned. U they like pardons at the White House,
but and time passed. 20 years later, Nixon now had written several books, was trying to rehabilitate himself. And 20 years later, I was at a dinner with where Nixon was the main speaker. And when the dinner was over, we asked responded to questions. I could not resist going up to him and saying, "Mr. Nixon, you may not remember me, but he put his hand on my shoulder." He said, "Sure, Dan. Sure. Sure. Damn near hired you once.
Let me say that neither in the Soviet, neither Russia nor in this country do we have that type anymore. I mean and I I suspect that it's that what has happened is that in that as we enter into the this new century new century has bred a new kind of person who isn't as interesting as the old one was. And now you find if you want to find something unusual and interesting something where nobody censores it you go to the internet. That is where that is where something new and different is happening in the 21st century. Let me stop there because I like to hear my friends.
Jill, let me try and strike off on that and and and turn to you from the uh singular experience. I I know Mr. Chadic said that you had um grown up in a remote sheep ranch in Australia. It occurs to me if you're a sheep in Australia, Sydney is a remote human settlement. Nothing remote about that place to the sheep, I should think, right? That was home. Uh and and particularly as as Dan and his uh as he wound up was beginning to talk about about the quality of communication because no place really is is remote from a certain point of view today. Uh, I've I've I've been on on top of the Hindu Kush talking on a satellite phone back to people in the United States instantaneously. Well, as as Dan was speaking uh and as Scott asked us to talk about the things we remember growing up in the 20th century that it would be good to recall today. Um I recall two extraordinary things and they both have to do in part with the kind of attention you give to events in the world if communication is difficult and you must pay attention. So uh I was a child living in this very remote part of of Australia uh during the years that the United Nations was being created and one of the things that we could hear uh around 7:00 in the evening was the debates going on in San Francisco about the charter for the United Nations and uh in order to u understand the impact of listening to those events. You have to understand that I'm the child of somebody who was a u an infantry man in in France in the 1914 18 war and all around us lived others who were veterans of that war. So we paid particular attention to both the radio and the print media that brought us um information about the war and its progress, but then about the peace and of course uh for a child of a soldier and uh somebody who'd grown up with people who had suffered very severe wounds and so forth in in the First World War and then watched uh the young people from my part of the outback who never returned from the second. The debates in San Francisco symbolized something absolutely unbelievable because of course uh we were all used to thinking about an international order in which um you took for granted or or dreaded the millions of dead in 1914 18. And then of course we were beginning to learn the total of the more than 40 million uh who lost their lives in 193945. So those deliberations which represented the hope and the dream of creating another kind of international order were absolutely transforming events for um a child in this remote area. It was very hard to hear. You had to crane over the radio with your ear close to the speaker to catch it through the static. that you could hear it. And I think as we look around our world today, uh not only do we not have the statesmen who have the vision, the education, the sense of commitment to the rule of law and to negotiating international conflict. um we don't have I believe any longer a citizenry that really is passionately committed to working for that kind of world. So we may think about the 20th century as a century in which there was incredible violence, terrible international conflict, a a cold war of a balance of terror. But on the other hand, it those experiences led to the creation of institutions I believe uh we should remember and perhaps try again to create uh an intense commitment to because without them uh we face a future of of violence and international conflict that I believe will make the 21st century even worse than the 20th. So that's one story of communication. Another one which I'd like to um
transmit to you just to think about uh during the Second World War, the the mail came to our little uh remote sheep station twice a week. So we got three days of newspapers one day and four the other. And um we had no gasoline because Australia at that time hadn't discovered its oil reserves. The Japanese controlled the Pacific and there was no way to import gasoline. So we had gone back to horse and buggy days. And uh I my job was to read to my father the reports of of the sec battles of the second world war. And he thought he was teaching me geography. He would make me look at the maps of the contending forces and describe the topography and the geography and so forth. And now of course as Scott says um everybody sees those maps instantaneously and they are there in the conflict. But I don't believe that the visual communication of those events now reaches us the way the old print media did because we've become hardened to seeing violence in a way that people had not except those who had been soldiers in my childhood.
Let me turn now to to Tony Lewis um from whom those of us who've read him over the years have learned so much and continue to learn from him. I I should add by the way in about 20 minutes we're going to invite your questions. You might begin formulating them now. their microphones that are placed out in in the audience and and Tony, I know you you thoughtfully have some uh some ad libs that you've scrolled down in advance. Uh I did not anticipate uh but uh which I I they're good so I want you to have a chance to deliver them. But uh we could also try and strike off from something that that uh that Jill mentioned and and Dan I think prefaced as well. There's so many extraordinary ways of communicating personally as well as as corporately um and and publicly these days that we have just simply incorporated uh into our lives. They're um there were extraordinary events that are learned in real time by hundreds of millions, billions of people uh within the same time frame. And yet some people would make the argument there is less and less consciousness of of some of the import and impact of those events than for example Jill you you you seem to have felt during during the Second World War. Uh among your thoughts Tony if you had any that went along those lines. Well I've been listening to Dan and to Jill and watching that film and of course it brought lots of things to mind. Um, I was at the Capitol when Kennedy spoke. I remember the day very well. Cold, as John said. Um, I wish in a way you'd included in the film what I think is the best line in the speech, which is very little remembered, if at all, which was the last line, asking his blessing, but knowing that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own. Um, I actually find it hard to say that without feeling the loss of Kennedy. um and the loss of respect for presidents and the loss of hope. I don't want to be gloomy, but it's not a very hopeful time today, is it? Uh I'd go back farther because I think communication, you said Scott, it used to come from within political leaders and we felt that. I remember listening uh I was old enough uh to uh the last speech of Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 campaign for reelection. As was the habit then of Democratic candidates, the final speech of the campaign was given in the Boston Garden. He had spent the day, he was of course very ill, though none of us knew how ill. Uh traveling through New England in a touring car, an open car with no roof wrapped up in a cape in the pouring rain. and he came into the Boston Garden and said his first words to that crowd were, "I've had a glorious day here in New England."
You know, it wasn't the message. It was just the sense of this man who could, you know, convey joy and power and hope. Um, well, we're supposed to talk about the 20th century and so I want to say a couple of things about that.
It really is uh I mean the best way to say it is the way Dickens said it. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Uh it was the century in which we began at last a very delayed last to deal with the with racial discrimination in this country. It was the century as uh somebody John perhaps just said earlier uh in which we began to uh end discrimination against women. It was a century at the very end in which we just began slowly and with some accumulation to deal with discrimination on account of sexual orientation. So I'm talking about our country and of course there are many other good things happen. Medical medicine um huge increase in lifespan really the first the first real medicine in history. the first medicine that amounted to anything. Um, wealth unexampled and so on. And yet we know that it was also the century of Hitler and Stalin. Um, it was, as Hannah Arent said, this terrible century. It was a terrible century. And in the end, that I'm afraid dominates the story for me. Not to be gloomy, but I don't think you can look at the 20th century without feeling that it exposed the worst of humanity, the worst of human beings in many respects. And not just Hitler and Stalin. I mean, they were dreadful on a giant scale, but there were were all kinds of smaller brutal tyrannies. And the other thing that happened and I think this is very important to me and uh I suspect to most of us is that there was a certain um
uh sense of what this country was about. a sense in which I still believe. But it was overcome by awareness of very bad aspects of American history and of American present. The century in which we overthrew a government of Iran, a democratically elected government of Iran with terrible consequences. century in which we elect we overthrew an elected government of Guatemala with 30 years of pillage and ruin and murder and horror for that country following. Um
it was a century in which we perhaps conspired in but at least allowed the overthrow overthrow of a democratically elected government of Chile with murderous uh results. Um, we know that that's possible. We know that it can happen here. And we're living now today, not in the 20th century, but we're living in the 21st century with a government that tortures people and holds them prisoner without trial and without proper charges and with no hope of any proper hearing. And that's being done in our name. I I I don't want to make a political speech, but I think Dan used the word citizens. Uh it struck me when he said it, citizens, because all these things speak for us. You know, when the United States government tortures people, they're doing it in our name, and that's the way the world sees it. So, um maybe one last not very cheerful thing to say. My wife is grimacing there. Um, I'm a great believer in this country and its particularly in its political system which I think of as the Madisonian system. James Madison had this notion that we could have a country, a democracy, a republic as he would have called it that would last because it had institutions that would check each other. We had uh three branches of the government that if one overreached and abused power, the others would correct it and in the end there would be the press that correct it would correct it. Well, we've lived through a period in which there were terrible abuses of power and in which a flabby indeed enthusiastic Congress did exactly nothing to check those abuses of power in which the judiciary was if not exactly somnolent was very slow to respond in which the press was somnolent for years for four or five years. I' I'd be interested in Well, Jill is nodding. I'd be interested in Dan's reaction to that. Um, maybe we're coming out of that now. And I still believe in the system. I still think this is a wonderful country, the best on earth. Uh, but it says something about human beings that the bad things that happened in the 20th century happened and that bad things are still happening.
Let let me follow up a bit with you, Tony, if I could. Uh not despite but in fact because we're at the John F. Kennedy Library. Um and recognizing the important nonpartisan nature uh of this library as a scholarly institution. You you spoke with great affection, I think certainly for John F. Kennedy and for Franklin Roosevelt. There are scholars who would point out that the the foreign policy that you mentioned was not marketkedly different necessarily during those two administrations that that both the Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations authorized foreign intrusions and and tried to overthrow regimes. If the Bay of Pigs had worked out differently, it might have been overthrown. I I just feel compelled to point that out. Wonder if you had a reaction. Fair enough. Well, Roosevelt was responding to uh the most serious I was thinking of Samosa. He might be a son of a [ __ ] but he's our son of a [ __ ] Yeah. Oh, instead of Anastasia Samosa, the dictator of Nicaragua. Uh, true. Um, but after all, Roosevelt's main place in history on the foreign side is the attempt to rouse this country to resist Hitler. A very difficult operation. I mean, the the draft was extended in 1940 by a single vote in the House of Representatives. It was no picnic. Uh it was not easy for Roosevelt to rouse this country to resist Hitler. Uh but you're quite right about uh Kennedy. What's the tragedy of Kennedy is exactly that after three years as president, he understood the very things that we're talking about. He gave a speech at American University that was a speech about peace. And I'm sure Dan remembers that. Jill will remember that. And he gave two two great speeches in his last year on themes that he hadn't understood before. One, the necessity for peace. The necessity for peace. That there's no escape for the need for peace. And two, civil rights, his speech about civil rights in June of that year. Uh because he hadn't been a great believer in that subject. It was his brother, the attorney general, who believed in it. But then he saw what was necessary and he said it and um so he learned and maybe we want presidents who can learn something that would be good.
Let me turn to each of uh each of our panelists and ask since since a lot of what we're talking about seems to be the quality of of leadership I must say uh in the United States and perhaps beyond if there is a figure or one or two figures whom you think in the in the history of the 20th century may have been relatively overlooked which is to I'm going to try and avoid avoid the obvious names and say if we could say not a chief of state uh perhaps not a Nobel laureate um not someone for whom we have a national holiday uh but people who might have been overlooked who nonetheless were absolutely intrinsic to making the 20th century what it was and influencing our lives today.
Everyone seems to be looking at you dead. Yeah. Uh I I was I was hoping not to have to respond to that question in part because I would have to reveal my innate pessimism. Uh we there used to be a time when people shared responsibility for parts of the world and now as you watch the the way the environmental game plays out you begin to say it is possible that we may lose lots parts of the world and it's not possible apparently for people to come together in order to help make that not happen. uh and when it comes to war and I just have to say Iraq and there we are again in the mindless mad uh chase into a country and every day hundreds of people being killed and we don't know yet for what. So I I hoped I could get away with telling you two jokes
but I guess not.
I I suppose that I think um some of the figures of the 20th century in this country who are overlooked or forgotten or thought of as sort of old hat today are some of the great uh leaders of the progressive party in the um 1890s and early part of the 20th century. Y uh people who were silenced pretty much by the Great Depression and who uh uh as a generation faded out from positions of leadership um after the Second World War. But I'm thinking about the uh the great women leaders who created what was called the settlement movement and tried to find a way to bring affluent well-educated Americans together with immigrant communities and who actually created their settlements to live in the slums, the life of poor people. Jane Adams is a good example, but uh there are many other Lillian Wald in New York um a wonderful group of people here in Boston who founded one of the earliest settlement houses. Those people's work was transformed into the discipline of social work and they felt as that happened that their message had been lost because their way of dealing with poverty and with people who suffered from uh lack of understanding of their environment were disoriented as immigrants were now being their word for it was processed. And that their feeling that in a democratic society you lived with and shared the life of poor people and the disabled and so forth had been replaced by a bureaucratic system in which the feelings were left out. So I uh Jane Adams actually did win a Nobel Prize. So, um that there is a uh um I didn't quite comply with with Scott's rule, but um those progressive reformers who saw three things about the country that the the development of its industrial cities and its industrial production had the capacity to create a lower class that was dispossessed of many of the benefits of society. Um they saw that as a challenge and they devoted their lives to trying to figure out how to make a democratic society not acquious in that. The second thing they saw was that um Americans of their class and education, they were all college educated folk, um
appropriated being American to themselves and were as prejudiced against immigrants as they were against uh people of color. and they were wanting to try and create another view of what being an American was that subsumed and took in those impoverished populations. And the third thing they saw and tried very hard unsuccessfully um to bring about was a system of education in which it would be important for young people to live close to people living in poverty and struggling with disabilities. Um they didn't succeed in changing the educational system in the slightest. uh they did succeed for a while in um in their effort to create a new definition of democracy in America. Um but it was lost during the great depression and temporarily revived in parts of the New Deal but disappeared in the affluence of the 50s.
Tony, I think I would I'm not sure whether they they quite qualify for your uh requirement of being unknown. No, I would not unknown. Just Oh, well, they're not unknown, but they're certainly not up at the top of popular knowledge. And that would be two Supreme Court justices, Louisie Brandeise and Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. Yeah. Um, Brandeise came from well originally from Louisville, Kentucky, but uh, much of his life here in Boston where he really did like Jane Adams and company. Uh, he he worked for the poor in the less uh, advantaged very successfully. Then he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Uh, was confirmed after very severe battle. um sparked in considerable part by anti-semitism um the resistance I mean um and um made an enormous difference in the translation of the Supreme Court from its uh bad old days to a more enlightened view of freedom. and Holmes um the one true poet we had on the Supreme Court um who I I'll quote as best I can from memory one opinion of his uh that will indicate why I think as feel as I do about him. The case was called United States against Schwimmer. Rosikica Schwimmer was a woman who came from Hungary to this country as an immigrant and she loved the United States and wanted to become a citizen but she couldn't because at that time the citizenship uh formula required you to swear that you would take up arms in defense of the country and she was a pacifist so she wouldn't swear that so she sued and the case went up to the Supreme Court and she lost and Holmes desented and he wrote a desending opinion in which he said he didn't agree with her views about war and he had a very passionate feeling about war. He had fought in the Civil War. Now we're talking this case was decided in 1930 roughly 1930 he fought in the Civil War and was wounded three times gravely but he believed in war and in fact after he died they found hanging in his closet his Civil War Union Army uniform. But he said, "If there's any principle of the Constitution that requires adherence more than any other, it is freedom of thought. Not freedom for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate and reverting to the opinion that keeps this petitioner from her citizenship." The Quakers have done their part in making this this country what it is. And I had this is the last line of the opinion. And I had not thought before now that we regretted our inability to expel them because they believe more than the rest of us in the sermon on the mount.
A as we invite uh people to step up to the microphones and ask questions, I'm actually going to have the timmerity to offer a name myself, which is Jackie Robinson, who could have played here in Boston. you know, he had a try out here five months before he was signed by Brooklyn. Next month will be the 60th anniversary of his arrival in the major leagues. And I was struck over this past weekend as there was the um reenactment of the march across the bridge in Selma. How many of those what we think of as the original civil rights marchers in the 1960s said they had it in their mind, in their heart when they very bravely walked across a bridge, the scene of Jackie Robinson walking out onto the field when he integrated Major League Baseball and having to put up with the booze and the cat calls and actual physical intimidation. So, I'm going to I'm going to add Jackie Robinson to that list. Um,
we want to invite your questions there. Did you want to ask a question, sir? Please stand. And I I might take the license to repeat them for our folks up here. This question is for any of the panelists who have the courage to deal with it. And um it's my impression that in the 20th century a news story such as the one that I'm saying is not being covered and in which there is a blackout it seems in the media would have been handled quite differently and that is the fact that the Republican party now owns most of the voting machines and that there is no accountability about this. the rest of us are supposed to believe in their fairness and decency. I don't see this very crucial, very fundamental, pivotal point addressed in the media anywhere and at any time. There is compelling evidence that Ohio was won by George Bush due to Republican election machine fraud. And why is this never dealt with? That's my question. Um, the Diebold Corporation, um, I'm not sure they're owned by the Republican party. I think a number number of investors have also contributed money to the Republican party, but I don't mean to preempt your question. Is there anybody who had a I I just wanted to comment that I have indeed read two pieces on the question of the ownership of the voting machines in uh, print media over the last couple of weeks. So I do believe it is being reported um though not as uh Republican ownership of the machines but influence over the makers of them. I just like to comment that anyone who differentiates between Debold and the Republican party is under a delusion.
Yes sir. Thank you. Uh I I have a question I think that by its very nature may go most directly to uh Mr. Shore, but certainly I'm welcome input from anyone and and that is this and and I don't want Mr. Lewis to run away with the idea that that uh he has made me feel negative today. I I I came feeling that way because I live in America today. But my question is u you know the what used to be called the fourth branch of government press. Uh I I've heard some pessimism of where we are. So what if anything can be done to move the press in a direction where there is still some semblance of investigative journalism uh with all due respect to people in the panel but I just don't see the generation after you Mr. Shaw that I grew up with the people who were your peers and colleagues over the years. And to me, you represent the last of that line, which is primarily what brought me here today. What can we do to turn investigative journalism around? Get people's attention about what they need to think about in this country, public affairs. I I I don't want to be entirely negative. So, let me say this was a good week for me to hear that question. Had been last week, I would have been stumped for an answer. But this week there there is one answer. Walter Reed Hospital. Walter Reed.
Investigative journalism still lives. It's not everywhere. It's not all the time. But as I look from the prominator of 90 years down on the younger people today, there is still investigative reporting. Don't lose hope. Let me let me ask uh Yeah. Yeah. I was going to turn to you anyway, please. Yeah. Uh I I just say I agree with Dan. I I said earlier in my remarks that the press had slumbered and for after 9/11 for about three years, it really did slumber. But it came out of that slumber, I think, with the New York Times uh reporting on the secret order from President Bush to the NSA to the National Security Agency to tap our telephones without invi direct violation of a criminal statute. Shocking to me. Um and uh the Washington Post reporting on the secret CIA prisons overseas. Um, I think both of those were exemplary examples of uh investigative reporting to which of course we would now add what Dan said, Walder Reed. So I I don't think it's dead. Let me let me just follow up to uh lest we have a revery of times gone by. Wasn't it always a bit of a challenge to get good investigative reporting done? I mean, I don't recall hearing any stories about major publishers or heads of networks saying, "Oh, a major investigative piece that threatens established powers and our advertisers go to it." I mean, hasn't it always been a bit of a battle or wasn't it always?
Now and then you you you'll find you'll find a case in Indianapolis, United Fruit Company. This goes several years back, but I'm digging through. Yeah. Um,
there was a United Fruit story that the reporter was working on. He was told to stop working on it because the United Fruit Company threatened him with some kind of suit. We still see the marvelous examples of what happens mainly with big newspapers. Mainly with big newspapers. uh that I don't think is necessarily what you get countrywide. I do think that in local television stations more often than not. I haven't heard them very often, but I I get I get the result of that that very often than not uh you get a news director saying uh this thing you want to investigate sort of how much will it cost us? How many how many days you have to spend doing it? Yeah. Well, maybe three, four, five. We can't afford that kind of thing. Forget it. There is an awful lot of that today. Wasn't when you were at the times, Tony, maybe in your younger days at the time, wasn't it a great journalist, Scotty Restston, who had the Bay of Pigs invasion story and didn't run it because he was asked not to by the government? It's more complicated than that. Um but um both Cuban stories uh it it was Tad Schulz, Times reporter who learned about the Bay of Pigs invasion that it was going to happen and he wrote a story pinpointing the date u lots of detail and uh President Kennedy called the chief of the Washington bureau Scotty Restston and said please don't run this story and uh Restston told him to call the publisher Oal Drifus in New work and um eventually the story ran but was toned down somewhat and moved down from the top of page one to the bottom of page one. Well, six months later, Orville Drifus, the publisher, was at a White House reception and President Kennedy said, "I wish you'd run that story the way it was the first time." Because of course, if we had, there wouldn't have been any Bay of Pigs invasion. And um and then the second I was there not not on that occasion but I was party to the second story which was the Cuban missile crisis when Restston was the person who learned about it. And um um he was asked by the president not to run the story because it would spoil the uh what he planned which was a television address to the nation the next night. Um and in the end the times agreed to hold the story. I think it was right to hold the story. Yes ma'am. Uh my question is for uh Jill Kerr Conway and I am interested in your uh reflections having the toe perhaps still in Australia and living in this country um on the what's happening in the two countries and and differences and similarities that you would see uh between the two countries. And my second question is uh what are you writing now? Well, first of all uh it's important for people to understand when thinking about Australia and the United States that that they have very similar themes in their history. They have vast areas, vast land masses settled by a migration of people dispossessing um an indigenous population. And um the the great difference between Australia and the United States is that Australia has no Mississippi, Ohio, any of the great rivers that were the internal communications of this continent. If you try to imagine how the United States would have been settled without that transportation system, it's it's an interesting problem. And of course, the center of of the land mass is arid and uh a very very fragile environment. Um but Australians are every bit as proud of their Australianness, every bit as chauvinistic in fact about uh distinguishing themselves from other people. Very proud of a democracy which has many of the problems that we see today. Um and of course um app propo of what Tony was just saying. Um there has been uh as a result of of migration to Australia of people claiming political asylum a tremendous abuse of the law. Uh Australia keeps um immigrants who have come seeking asylum in concentration camps in the center of Australia. Many families have been there five, six, seven years. Children have been born there. Uh so there is the same kind of abuse of legal system uh that we've seen going on here. Um the the major difference I think is that Australia um having no way of fostering family migration and the settlement of of a farming population which people the North American continent. um had to rely on government for many things. The railroads, telephones, the these were all state monopolies and that the state today is still the largest employer of Australians. So that um the ability to create wealth as a family recently arrived through your own labor was much limited and the land was occupied by very large um land grants for pastoral purposes. So it does it has a kind of tough agrarian mystique but it's of dispossessed people who couldn't own things and are kept poor by the monopolizing of land and so forth and that has given Australia its radical political tradition longest ruling party since confederation has been the Labor Party and so on. So that's that's the major major difference and it's an economic and and uh geographic one. Um to my horror uh the Australian political mentality um is uh going exactly in the same direction as the United States. Uh President Bush's uh single proudest uh backs slapper is uh the prime minister of Australia, John Howard. Um and uh the unfortunately there is popular support for him for his treatment of immigrants uh because um Australians are in a in many senses still racist in attitudes to people with dark skins, people who come from Central Asia, people who have different religions and so on. And that's because it's been an isolated continent with with little contact for many people with the outside world until relatively recently. So there are many many similarities and of course Australians will never forget that they were rescued from occupation by the Japanese in the 193945 war by the Americans and uh no Australian prime minister probably would last very long who really roughed up a US president. that just they are a principal source of of defense. Um if you look for a democracy that's different, it's Canada and Canada has this huge neighbor uh from which it must always differentiate itself. so that its political system, its values and its codes are in many ways formed out of setting themselves off from the United States and Canadian commitment to peace and so forth. Uh also is geographic. If you live between the United States and the Soviet Union through the Cold War, you need to be a pacifist because you're going to be killed anyway if either side starts fighting. Um, so if you're looking for a democracy that's a counterpoint to the United States, look to the north, to Canada, and maybe to New Zealand, which is similar. What am I writing now? I'm writing a book about aging. I'm 73. I'm constantly astonished by the people who say to me when I see them, you don't look your age. And I know perfectly well that I do. Um, so I'm interested in what it is they're saying to me and um I'm interested in the history of how we came to define a population over 60 or 65 or whatever it is um as unproductive uh because of the development of the modern pension system. Of course, Bismar created the pension system in uh the unification of Germany in order to to wed the population to the new German state. Uh pensions went to citizens who were over 60, but people's life expectancy was 58. So, it wasn't a big commitment. Um uh but it is in Germany at at that time that people above 60 were defined as nonproductive. And now we listen constantly uh to what are supposed problems of social security which I think are fake. um a and the worry about having a small population engaged in productive work and this huge uh mass of baby boomers who are going to be apparently non-productive. Um we have Daniel here who's 90 still working hard and Tony who's 80 still working hard and so am I and I think it's necessary to change people's definition of this age cohort. So that's what I'm writing about.
Let let me chance a modest follow-up question about Australia on the off-hand chance that that the answer may imply something. Why is it over, it seems to me, the past 20 years, when so many film directors want to cast a role as a quintessential American, they wind up choosing an Australian actor. Why does that happen? It is because um the stereotype of the Australian male which Australian film actors often embody and I'm naming no names but they um um is one that fits with a certain kind of Hollywood movie definition of maleness. Uh if you wanted somebody tormented or filled with existential angst, you wouldn't choose an Australian actor.
Yes, sir. So, forgive me for this, but um I'm wondering if it's not if it doesn't happen in the next two years, I wonder how long it will be before some future panel of our congressional leaders today will be lamenting the failure to bring an article of impeachment against President Bush without embarrassment.
How long do you think this will take before we can talk about a failure to bring that article?
Tony, do you want
I I I can go ahead and I I don't really have not that I have a a very useful answer. Impeachment is not a political reality when you have just to take the fact that the Senate is almost equally divided between the parties. Um and um the answer to your question, which is a perfectly legitimate question, let's deal with it just in terms of Iraq. That's that's what it's really about. If things continue to go downhill in Iraq um and they're not corrected by congressional pressure or some other DSX machina um then there will be regrets of the kind that you're talking about. I don't know if it'll be a specific regret about impeachment which as I say is not politically on right now but there will be a sense of how did we allow this to happen? How did it go on? The war has gone on longer than World War II now. It's it's it's or as long as it's it's simply mad from my point of view. How can we be fighting this war endlessly with no results? I I just don't I I really don't understand it and lots of other people don't and there will be very severe regrets unless somehow it's cured. Yes, sir. I wanted to ask the panel in general. uh you asked uh for people in the 20th century who were uh perhaps overlooked, but I'd like to ask from a leadership standpoint, what missed opportunities you look back and see in the 20th century. I mean, I think of people like Henry A. Wallace maybe or I don't know. I I'd like to to hear the panel think of leaders that they knew or knew about or were around and view as a missed opportunity. Like the Red Sox not signing Jackie Robinson. That's a good one. I I ran the the numbers once. You know, they finished second or third in the seven years that they declined to sign him. You have to think that they would have won at least a couple more pennants if they'd signed Jackie Robinson. But I
uh missed opportunities in the 20th century.
Jill, I'll talk about one. Um, I think that the efforts during the New Deal uh to create um a a variety of different cores of uh unemployed workers, young people, artists, musicians, painters, dramatists. um was a a kind of government sponsorship of the arts uh of melding together a population um to be involved in the country as opposed to their particular region and that they provided an experience that was more than just economic. And when I work, I do work now um on the problems of inner city schools, school dropouts and so on. I wish that we had some noble notion of how those young people could be employed, educated, pulled out of the situation where they live. Let me that's a missed opportunity I think. Yeah. Let me just add, although it may sound partisan, the difficulty with trying to figure out what to say about missed opportunities is that the fact that they've been missed means in many cases you don't know that they were there. For example, what opportunity this country miss in a large part of past 20, 30 years and not sending out to make sure that there are no hungry children
or that there'd be schooling or that be that that how how do we know what we've missed? You have a sense that we've missed an awful lot.
Yes, ma'am. This is a question for the whole panel in which I will preface it by saying I believe deeply in our country and have great hope to be able to continue to be optimistic that we have a future. But I have been intrigued since the beginning of this conversation that it has never once been mentioned that perhaps part of the great fear and the lack of a solid citizenship feeling that they can do anything is the introduction of the use of atomic warfare. the fact that we were the first nation to drop an atomic bomb and that the greatest fear I do believe that overshadows I'm a teacher and I teach young people that overshadows everyone's mind is this tremendous threat worry
and possibility which often turns into a belief in probability of the use of atomic weaponry, ourselves included.
Let let me let me try and turn the question um just a little bit in that it uh it seemed towards the end of the 20th century uh late 80s early 90s that the that the threat of a mutual annihilation between uh the United States and Western Europe and uh the Soviet Union and Eastern satellite countries. Uh you would never want to say it was over, but it seemed it seemed to be greatly diminished. Um and and now it would it would seem to be that the perhaps the greater fear um in the minds of many people around the world is the possibility of an individual device uh being set off. Um anybody have any any thoughts about the atomic now I guess it would not necessarily to be just atomic but nuclear and cobalt spectre. I I think the question is a very good question u because um we're not at the stage u of fear that gripped this country and I forget what the exact dates were but there was a time when we all were told to dig shelters in the basement and all that uh but it's a reality that there's reason to fear and what are the reasons I think a prime reason is that the great nuclear powers, United States, Britain, France, Israel, um did I leave out Russia? Yes, Russia. Um have not done what they prom well, not Israel, but the United States, Britain, and Russia promised in the non-prololiferation treaty that they would reduce their nuclear arms down to zero. They've done nothing of the kind. And as long as this huge weaponry, absolutely overkill weaponry, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these weapons exist, uh it's hard to psychologically to say that Iran should not be able to build weapons. And it's hard to get together to stop Osama bin Laden or some other person from having those weapons. Which leads me to say that the question is really how can we get the world to act together on this? We're in a time which is different from u an earlier period when the one that Jill spoke of as she sat listening to the radio in uh Kurraine. um
when we thought there was hope in international accord or international action to people and countries working together. Now we're in a unilateral phase when the United States just goes off on its own. When the United States is so dominant a power it has I read this in a in a manuscript the other day 700 military bases in 60 countries around the world. It's just staggering. Um, and we don't want to pay attention to these other folks. We we don't put collaboration at the top of our list of musts. And you're not going to be able to deal with the problem you're talking about until there is collaboration.
Not
directly responsive to that question. We're going back to the overarching theme of this meeting tonight, which has to do with centuries and what happens between centuries. And as I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that the 19th century was on the whole a century of consolidation. little principalities, little duchies came together and they gave us Italy and they gave us Germany and they gave us a a whole and then finally they gave us a United Nations where thanks to the United States the Soviet Union it was hope that they would help to police the world. What we're now in at least in the latter part of of this century of on the last century is we're in an era of disintegration. countries that were countries are falling apart. You were Slavia is now how many countries everywhere you look you said we can solve this by partition partitioning it making a larger thing into a smaller thing. I don't know if that's good or not, but I do have a feeling that this country was better off when it was heading towards some kind of union instead of dis disintegrated into small pieces. Um, yes, sir. Uh, the the panel tonight was styled as reflections on the 20th century and and unlike some of our panelists, I've only gotten to experience about half of that century. But as I think back on that half century and I think about 45 years since President Kennedy's assassination and I sort of look at the current situation, I say what would he find most astonishing about what has happened in that 45 years and I would point to two things in order to ask a question. The first is, and I may have my facts wrong, but it's my impression having grown up in that period that the percentage of bright graduates of leading institutions who are interested in careers in public service has absolutely plummeted in the course of 45 years. And the second reflection I have that what's really different today from 1963 is that the gap in this country let alone around the world between the rich and the poor is at a level which is absolutely astounding. And the lack of public discourse or action to do anything about that during my lifetime is absolutely astonishing. And I wonder and my question for the panel is is this something that will turn around or is this a permanent feature of the American landscape where people just are satisfied with their ability in a winner take all system to make a lot of money and be insulated from that uh at high levels of of public office or will that change? Will there be a backlash?
Yes, chair, please. Well, I'll have a go at that. It's certainly true that the number of college graduates interested in joining um government service is at a very low point at the moment. It is quite similar to what it was in the 1950s and it is actually President Kennedy's call to young Americans to build a better society that changed that and brought a great flood of talented young people to Washington. Um, I believe that the um appeal of working for the US government will reassert itself as soon as the young see that there's something that relates to their ideals and beliefs that they could realize through um public service. Um, and you should know that throughout the 19th century, um, it was thought of as really quite strange for anybody of means and education to want to work in the government. And Theodore Roosevelt was an absolute maverick to everybody who knew him when he decided to become police commissioner of New York and then eventually uh, to run for the presidency. So, it's um it's a fairly common theme in American history with um periods of deep involvement as occurred during the New Deal and and in the Kennedy era about the gap between rich and poor. Um again, this is a global phenomenon. It's it's not just the United States. um it's it's happening uh in most modernized societies and of course it's always existed in what we call the lowincome unmodderernized societies. So um absent some major economic crisis like the great depression which led to very serious efforts to try and rebalance um the distribution of wealth. uh I I don't see what's what's going to change it because it's actually long-term trend which has been interrupted at various points as a result of economic disaster.
I I should point out we had a we had a story on our program recently uh where some economists expressed the view that one of the one of the biggest contributors at least in in in western society sounds like a very unpopular thing to say towards towards fostering greater economic inequality is uh is the expansion of the workforce. So that rich people are marrying rich people now and that uh a couple of generations ago uh you tended to marry between economic classes and uh and now as I perhaps don't need to say at the Kennedy Library uh Harvard grads are are marrying and having families with MIT grads
very highly trained engineers. President Summers. Um let let's just take um let's just take a couple more questions before Yes, sir. Um, I actually have a relatively simple question, but as someone who um only experienced the last quarter of the uh of the 20th century and um is hoping to experience more than a quarter of the 21st century, um I I just need to ask and I think this is to everyone, but in particular to you uh Dan Shore, um if there is any mitigating factor to your pessimism, if there's anything that gives you a little glimmer of hope and sort of related to that, given all of your um profound and intimate knowledge of history and experience with history. To what extent do you believe history to be somewhat cyclical? Would this conversation be the same if it was taking place 10 years ago? Um, and would it be the same 10 years from now?
Um, help me out here. Uh, is there what gives people on the panel glimmer of hope or more than glimmer of hope and an expanding sense of history? Are are they saying the same things here tonight that they might have been 10 years ago or and do they believe that history is Oh, and 10 years from now. Yeah. 10 years from now. Well, Dan, when you're back here when you're 100
repeated Yeah. Um, what do you see on the horizon that gives you cause for hope right now? Uh, and how do you think your answers might be different in 10 years? That's probably not stadium. Or to what extent do you believe history to be cyclical? And are we just at a very right now? To what extent is is history cyclical and we just happen to be at at a certain time now and 10 years from now it'll look different. Would you think less of me if I say I don't know?
I I I have to tell you this is a very rare moment. I I I almost want to mark the position of the planets to uh journalist who doesn't know that's treason.
Jill or Tony? Well, I I just say yes. I think there's hope in the system. Uh Madison's first uh reliance, he said, was on the vote, and we just had that. So, there's a certain reliance. there's a demand for change from the public for whatever reasons primarily Iraq probably um I think there's less as Jill has already said I think there's less reason to hope for change in economic disparity both because it's a worldwide phenomenon because the way elections are run in this country now despite every effort at reform one more feudal than the next um it's money that drives elections and then them as has gets Joe. Well, I can think of some negative things to say which might might cheer everyone up. Um if I think of the quality of leadership of this country um from the end of the civil war uh to the election of Theodore Roosevelt, it was a series of non- entities uh people who were absolutely in the pockets of of uh various kinds of of uh large economic interests, people of undistinguished minds and little command of language. Um, so I wouldn't think that um you should be too worried about what we experience today because it has changed in the past and I'm sure it will again.
The second thing I'd like to say is um I spend a lot of time uh these days uh around the the philanthropic world and I'm very impressed by the groups of young people mainly very highly educated engineers and people with a strong finance background who are calling themselves new entrepreneurs and they want to make money by doing good and they are trying to invent new styles and modes of business which will produce profit and create wealth but which will solve social problems and they're a small movement at the moment but I think they will grow larger and so that gives me a lot of hope. Let me
let me ask our our hosts here because I know we also have some broadcast times to hit. Uh we've got some people lined up. Can we take a couple more questions? Sir, you are so gracious. If you want to approach the panel later after sitting down and ask your question when we're off the air, by all means. Yes, ma'am. I have a question for you. Uh, Joe Conway, I've read your biography and that of Sandra Day Okconor. Very struck by the similarity of the rural ranch isolated life. One, have you met her and talked? And two, do you see that background in any other women leaders? Uh first of all, yes I uh I do know Sandra de O' Connor. In fact, we corresponded with one another when she was working on her memoir. Ah um there is a great deal of similarity in our backgrounds and and the experience of being a girl growing up in that kind of male world and having to uh hold your own in it and be as tough as everybody else is a an excellent training for life. It's hard to create it for many women because we we can't duplicate the circumstances. Um I think that the other question that's raised by uh your query is um what are the backgrounds that produce women leaders? uh what gives them uh gets them started and uh there are four basic things. One is loss of a male relative. Uh the big surge in women's activism after 191418 uh came from women who had lost fathers or brothers or lovers in in uh the war. Wow. And they were living for that person. So they felt entitled to break the rules about being female. The second thing is um highly developed intellect at an early age so that um the child gets absolutely obsessed by some subject and doesn't hear the messages of the society that maybe that's not something she should be doing. The third thing is uh the uh availability of new options. Um the 20 million dead in the Soviet Union during the Second World War created opportunities for women engineers, women doctors, women lawyers, so forth that had never existed before. And it's part of the change in the workforce and demography of the Soviet Union. Um and finally the fourth thing is um experiencing um great adversity disruption of family life in some way or another in in childhood. So that um early the message comes that you got to do it on your own. So it's not just the ranching country. There are many kinds of of adversity adversity situations where you learn to get mobilized and do things. Great. Thank you very much. Yes sir.
I was um I was wondering about uh as a person of my age, I guess I'm following suit. I am less than any of the other questioners. Uh Mr. Simon and Mr. sure brought up two ideas that are all important and inescapable for my generation uh movies and television. Um, I was wondering about uh all of your ideas on the impact not only upon the um degradation perhaps of our language in America from the use uh of television um but also on uh the impact of our citizenry uh or those things on our ability to be capable citizens um as well as on perhaps the arts and humor which I I think humor has been a motif uh throughout this whole panel. Um as well as humor being part of that mastery of language which Miss Conway not noted.
Uh Dan, do you think because of television and perhaps other sources and influence that uh that gathered steam at any rate in the 20th century or in case television obviously invented of the 20th century there has been a a a degradation in the quality or dimmonition at any rate in the quality of our language? Uhoh
hadn't thought of that. Um,
I I I I have nothing to tell you. I'm not sure. I haven't studied that. One could argue the other way that uh uh you have television on all the time and children are growing up in a living room and with television on and they're learning words perhaps. I think I better stop while I'm behind. You know, one thing that that I understand from people who've interviewed over the years that didn't happen, there were a lot of people who predicted in the 1920s with the rise of radio and then and then continuing on to television that we would lose our regional accents and uh and that hasn't happened for one reason or another. Uh Tony Jill,
I should say that um because I teach college students and graduate students um that we we do see there a real decline in people's grasp of of just the the basic structures of language, syntax, logic, so on. and and a much circumscribed vocabulary. Um, but by creating writing centers, finding new ways to teach people uh how to acquire those rules and and deploy them effectively, it's usually possible to correct by the time people get into graduate school. So when I read the papers of my graduate students today, I'm blown away by their language and their grasp of of syntax and and logic and so on. But looking at a freshman paper is always a little um occasion for being a bit downcast. So uh I I have to ask again though uh the impact on being citizens, responsible and capable citizens. What is the impact of those media on that? I I I I would just say that um the people I teach feel citizens of the world, the most important thing for them is the environment. Um they don't look to the US government to help deal with that. They they think of of that as a a global movement that they must be part of. Uh so they're citizens in a different way. I'll just echo that in a word if I may just to say that I've done teaching I've taught as an avocation for many years uh part-time and I think the students are wonderful better than ever and u so I'm very optimistic if I look at students it makes me feel happy
we have to leave you uh we have to leave you thank you very much for your kind attention it's been an honor to be here part of this panel thank you very
Thank you.
