 the United States and around the world. I hope you're in good health. Thank you for joining us to the faculty and staff, current students and alumni, and our speaker, welcome. I am pleased to welcome you on behalf of the Royal Bud Society and the Institute for Global Leadership. This is our fourth installation of our speaker series on creating a more just world. My name is John Mark Gladstone. I'm a second year master of international business student and I have the honor of co-leading the Royal Bud Society. Here's a bit of housekeeping before we begin. Secretary Johnson will give his remarks after my introduction. This will be followed by a moderated Q&A by my co-leader Joseph. After which we will take a couple of questions from our virtual audience. Please use a Q&A function for your submission. In closing, Secretary Johnson will provide us with his final remarks. Thank you once again. Building on the legacy of the late Royal Bunch, this society provides a safe space to discuss issues of race, class, and culture. It also serves as a platform to engage the Fletcher community in considering minority identities and experiences in their careers at Fletcher and beyond. Our experiences before and during our time at Fletcher has made us keenly aware of the desperate need for creating a more just world. This is a challenge of our times. It has been described by the late former national security advisor, Zivno Brzezinski asked, and I quote, staring interactive and motivated by a vague but pervasive sense of prevailing injustice in the human condition. Close quote. I'm sure many would agree that Brzezinski's characterization of vague is in fact not so vague. I haven't as best out on the tragic death of George Floyd and the disproportionate number of African-Americans negatively affected by COVID-19. We also saw that in the cuddling of armed white supremacists who breach the United States Capitol. I am not here to paint a doom and gloom picture. In fact, despite the wrong we see all around us, we also have a unique opportunity to build a more perfect union. I believe doing so requires each and every one of us to first examine ourselves and ask how we might be contributing to the injustices around us through our actions, inactions, and silence. It also requires us to seek the wisdom of those whose heights and experiences enable them to deeply understand the current Zygast and the way forward. As one African proverb says, the young can walk faster but the elderly know the way. It is in this spirit that we have a good fortune and distinct honor of being joined by Secretary J. Charles Johnson. Like many of our past guest speakers, Secretary Johnson is one of my heroes. He stirs up something deep within me. I believe that it is the combination of his wisdom, moral courage, passion for truth-speaking, and good-natured demeanor. Secretary Johnson served as Homeland Security Advisor in the Obama administration. Johnson now practices law in New York City of Paul Weiss and has been affiliated with Paul Weiss often on since 1984. He was elected the firm's first African-American partner in 1993. In private life, Secretary Johnson has also been a regular commentator on different media channels, which include NPR, MSNBC, Fox, and Fox Business. He also serves on the board of several organizations prior to becoming Homeland Security Secretary. Secretary Johnson served as general counsel of the Department of Defense and general counsel of the Department of Air Force. Earlier in his career, Secretary Johnson served as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Secretary Johnson is a proud graduate of Morehouse College and Columbia Law School. He's also the recipient of 10 honorary degrees. He has debated at both the Oxford and Cambridge Unions in England and is an honorary life member of the Cambridge Union. In December 2018, Secretary Johnson was presented with the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award for contributing greatly to the defense of our nation and guided us through terrible times with courage and wisdom. Without further ado, Secretary Johnson, the virtual floor is yours. Thank you very, very much for that generous introduction. Flattery will get you everywhere. There are two things in my preliminary remarks that I want to mark today. One, which it just occurred to me to mention a few hours ago. One is the death of my childhood hero, Henry Aaron. Hank Aaron was, in my judgment, America's greatest baseball player. He was my idol when I was a teenager growing up. I wanted to be Henry Aaron, so much so that I imitated his batting stance and even his swing. He was an outstanding athlete. And the things that I idolized about Henry Aaron in an era when the stereotype of a black athlete was flamboyant, outspoken, flashy on the field and off. Hank Aaron was dignified, steady, graceful, and humble. In the late 60s, early 70s, when I was 12, 13, 14, and an avid baseball fan and player, we all watched Willie Mays come close to Babe Ruth's all-time home run record of 7 and 14 home runs. Mays got past 600, which no other player had done, except for Ruth. And we were all watching to see whether Willie Mays was going to surpass Babe Ruth's all-time home run record of 7 and 14 home runs. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere came Hank Aaron, behind Mays, through sheer consistency, year after year after nobody really noticed him. Until all of a sudden, Aaron surpassed Mays and then went on to surpass Babe Ruth in April 1974. I rooted for him. I read the box scores every single day. I watched what he had done every single day. And by the time he retired, he retired with 7 and 15 home runs, a record in total bases, at bats, and RBI. But the thing I admired about Aaron so much was how humble he was and how graceful and dignified he was through his entire life on and off the field. Several years ago, while I was Secretary of Homeland Security, I was at a party at the French Embassy. And there were some very special guests there, including Aretha Franklin and Henry Aaron. And when you're at an embassy party, you always think about, well, who did they seat me next to? Which prime minister? Which ambassador? Which cabinet official am I seated next to? As a sign of your own importance. And so I went to the matriarch and I said, could you please tell me where I'm seated? And the matriarch said, sir, Mr. Secretary, I hope you don't mind, but we seated you in between Ms. Franklin and Mr. Aaron. And I said, of course I don't mind. And for the next two hours, I was like a shy school kid who couldn't figure out what to say in the presence of these two great icons. So I did want to mark the passing of my hero, my idol from my teenage years, Henry Aaron. The other thing I want to mention, today is January 22nd. And January 22nd is a special anniversary for me. Everybody, when you're a kid, you do at least one dumb thing that if you could do it all over again, you would do it differently. Every mistake you make should be a life lesson, not something you would do differently if you had a chance, but it's something from which you learn to avoid making the same mistake over and again. But if I had to do one thing all over again and do it differently, it was something that occurred to me exactly 40, 45 years ago today. I was a freshman at Morehouse College and I was still aspiring to be a baseball player. And we used to, we had a dorm where we used to race from one end of the hallway to the other. The other guys, it was the athletic dorm at Morehouse. Morehouse is an all-male school. The most famous all-mermada, most famous graduate of Morehouse is Martin Luther King. His inspiration and mine is over my right shoulder, Dr. Benjamin Mays, president emeritus of Morehouse College. But we used to race each other from one end of the hallway to the other and these big glass windows on either end. And so I challenged another freshman to a race. It was in the evening, we were bored, I had done my homework and we started from one end of the hall and I was winning and I was determined to win. The hallway is about maybe a hundred feet long. And we got to the end and I didn't have a plan for how to stop. And I got to the glass window, braced myself, put my arms up like this and broke the window, smashed the window. And when I did that, I severely cut my right arm. And there's this big scar, which you can't see on my right arm and this hand is partially limited in its movement as a result of the one dumb thing I did on January 22nd, 1976, which hopefully is a learning experience for me. And so everybody does at least one dumb thing. I did my one dumb thing exactly 45 years ago today. Those are my preliminary remarks. I guess you all want to ask me questions about national security or something like that, right? Yeah, I'll hop right in here. And first, before we get started and get to the questions, Secretary Johnson, I just want to say on behalf of the Ralph Byrne Society and the Institute of Global Leadership here at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, it's an absolute honor to share this platform with you in the moment that this nation finds itself in. And so thank you for providing us with we know your time is limited and we appreciate that. In the crowd here, we have mostly Fletcher students. We have some practitioners, some staff professors. I'll just go through a quick set of questions and if time permits towards the end, we'll answer some questions from our crowd. So with that, if you wouldn't mind, I'll just step right in and ask those questions. So the first one, not to give away your age or anything like that, but according to Wikipedia. I'm 63. Well, that's perfect. That was going to skip the year. But according to Wikipedia, you were born in 1957 and that means you're no stranger to civil rights issues and civil rights causes. Could you just speak through sort of what your formative years were like growing up in the 60s and what is it sort of that keeps you grounded and helps you sort of move forward despite the harsh realities and the challenges of being black in the United States? So my awakening, my political awakening occurred in the year 1968 when I was 10 going on 11. That was the year I became cognizant of the larger world around me. A lot happened in the year 1968. Actually, I've been saying for a year now that the year 2020 is the most consequential year in my lifetime, going back to 1968. But actually in retrospect, I now believe 2020 was more consequential than 1968 because of all the things that happened in that 12 month period. But 1968 was a busy year. We had the Vietnam War. We had the Tet Offensive. We had Robert Kennedy's entry into the presidential race. It was a presidential election year. We had Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal from the presidential race. We had King's assassination. We had Robert Kennedy's assassination. We had two presidential conventions. My family got a color TV that year and I remember watching the Republican convention which went first. And the, I still remember the red, white and blue balloons falling from the ceiling, livening color, the election. And Apollo 8, which was a space mission. The first men to orbit the moon in December 1968 and the first images projected back to the planet Earth, of the planet Earth itself. It was a significant year. And from that year, it was an awakening for me of a desire to want to be part of national and international events, sort of. First, I was going to be a great baseball player like Hank Aaron, but there was a latent desire to be part of the larger picture. The other thing that I think motivated me to the trajectory that I was on was Morehouse College. Morehouse, as I mentioned a moment ago, was the only, is an all-male school and it's also the only all-black all-male school in the country. It's an HBCU. I was a terrible student in high school because I was going to be a great baseball player like Hank Aaron. And so I was a C and D student in high school. A C was a gift for me. If I got a C, I never successfully got beyond 10th grade math because I flunked 9th grade math and I never caught up. And then I flunked 12th grade math but I somehow got into Morehouse College. And my first year at Morehouse, the year 45 years ago, I just talked about, I had a 1.8 GPA. And then finally I was inspired sophomore year and I got a 3.0. And then for the last two years at Morehouse, I had a straight A, I had 4.0 average. It just, there was a huge awakening. And during that period of time, I had decided that I wanted to be a lawyer in part because I wanted to be a big time corporate lawyer and in part because I wanted to be a public servant of some sort and law seemed to be the path to that. And then I left law school, I'm a left college, went to law school and have in my career since becoming a lawyer pursued both objectives. For most of my career, I've been a partner and a lawyer at Paul Weiss, which is a terrific law firm. But for about a third of my professional career, I've been in public office as an assistant US attorney in New York city, then as a political appointee in the Clinton administration as general counsel of the Air Force and then for Barack Obama as his general counsel of the Department of Defense and then secretary of Homeland Security. The thing that the, my inspiration or my experiences but also frankly, my own family, my own family legacy and those have sustained me throughout the years. I also love classic R&B by the way. You may not know this, but every once in a while I actually DJ and DJ is an updated term I know but I actually host a radio station, host a show on a radio station here in Northern New Jersey, 88.3 FM where I go on and I select my own music and host a narrate for an hour or two. I do that about once every six months. And might we expect Aretha Franklin, the person you sat next to at that event to be on that playlist? Every playlist always has at least one Aretha selection. Good. I did, I was on this past weekend, MLK weekend. All right, 88.3. And it's a segment that I call protest, prayer and peace. And I first did it right after George Floyd did it again this past weekend. Okay, I'll be sure to check that out. You mentioned Morehouse a little bit. Some of us won't be surprised to hear that schools, HBCUs like Morehouse and Howard produce or have produced some of the most influential people in American history. And many are spearheading the many positive changes in American society today, right? We think of Stacey Abrams, Bakari Sellers, Corey Bush and the list goes on and on. Well, that on and on includes one of our newest US senators, Raphael Warnock. Kamala Heck. Raphael Warnock, a Morehouse man. Right, right. And Kamala Harris went to Howard as well. Yeah, she went to another school in the North. Yeah, I have personally told her, I really am tired of hearing about how she went to the Mecca of black colleges. I'm sorry, Howard is not the Mecca. Morehouse Spelman is the Mecca, okay? Just to make that clarification, please. Hope I didn't offend anybody on this call who went to Howard. No, but T'Nahasi Coates might disagree with you there because he called Howard the Mecca. Dick, you can disagree all of us. But for students, for a lot of students who might not understand sort of the prestige and the importance of HBCUs, especially at an international relations program where many might not sort of associate sort of that field with an HBCU. Can you just talk about that importance of the HBCU and how important it's been in our communities and sort of as sort of the Mecca, if you will, as you mentioned, of sort of creating change agents that sort of help structure our social movements? So I'll tell you what it did for me. It was my father's idea because his father was a president of an HBCU. And so this was 1974, 75. My parents decided because I'd grown up in a predominantly white environment with very few idols, except Hank Aaron, that I needed to go to a place where I could experience role models. And so I looked at Fisk and I looked at Morehouse. And then when I was at Morehouse, I also got to look at the ladies across street at Spelman, which is why I decided to go to Morehouse. And it was one of those, there's certain times in your life when you go someplace and the moment you get there, you feel like you're at home. This is for me, I belong here. And that's what I thought like the first time I worked on the campus of Morehouse. And there I found other black men, like me, who were really motivated to study like I wasn't. And Morehouse, everybody has their destiny, their mission, their driven, their ambitious, nobody wears their hat backwards. Everyone is going forward. And we were inspired by the sermons and the speeches from Martin Luther King Sr., Benjamin Mays over my shoulder here, Howard Thurman, just inspirational speaker after inspirational speaker about how you're a Morehouse man, you're special. But also being in an HBCU and environment allowed me to, I don't really like the phrase safe space because safe space has a misleading, I don't really like the phrase safe space, but I was in the majority racially for the first time in my life. And that allowed me to be the true person I was without being part of a distinct minority where I was ostracized, singled out, made fun of, and that allowed me to develop into the person I am today. It was a nurturing environment where I could find myself. And so as I said, I came in to see these students and I left an A student determined to go to law school. And that the HBCU experiences doesn't, it doesn't work for everybody, but it certainly worked for me. Nice, thank you. And just a quick add on to that. What would you say to sort of some of the students of color today who might not be experiencing these harsh realities like you did in the same exact way, but sort of given our current political climate, our current sort of racial issues and racial disparities, what would you say to students of color who might be sort of questioning their experiences and sort of not sure of what to make of the current climate that we find ourselves in? Well, if it's at all reassuring to you, I'm not sure what to make of it either. And you said, I suffered harsh realities. We suffer harsh realities today. Regrettably, and this country doesn't like to confront this, there is a strand of our society that is racist, intolerant, unaccepting of black people, immigrants, anyone who's different and is prone to violence, conspiracy theories, fake news, whatever you want to call it. They exist now in 2021. And when you look at the images of the mob that converged on the Capitol, it is, in my view, no different from the mob that tried to prevent school children from integrating the school system in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, the year I was born. It's no different from the mob that tried to prevent James Meredith from attending Ole Miss. And it's just generationally different. But other than that, it's the same mob. It's the same strand of America that is intolerant, unaccepting, unreceptive. And what is different now about this environment, which is so troubling, first of all, for me, it's 12 years after we elected a black president, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. To me, that was, and a lot of other people, that was a huge step forward for our nation. But 12 years after that, and eight years after, having a black president for eight years, this strand of society still exists. And Barack Obama's successor basically peeled the lid off that crowd and told them it's okay to come out in the open, be open and notorious with your racism. And they did in Charlottesville and more recently. And they're not going away anytime soon. It's indeed troubling. And I'm afraid that we are not going to eliminate this segment of our society, but we have to peel away at it bit by bit. We have to peel away those who, and this is something I think King believed in, that you try to look for the best in everyone and appeal to their better angels, which he did, which brought the majority of America along for the civil rights movement. So the thing I would say to young people of color today who are looking for their career, you have to, and this is one of the reasons I don't like the phrase safe space. If you're a person of color and you wanna live in a white world, there's no safe space. There's very little safe space. Every day you have to be prepared when you get up and leave your home and walk into your place of business to step out of your comfort zone and be different and learn how to be bold, be courageous, and you have to do something and work harder at that than your white counterparts don't. You know, the last 11 months in COVID, we all enjoy the comfort of our own homes, our own den, our own living room. But when you're in a workplace with people who are different from you, you're not, you have to be prepared to take risk, be different, and work twice as hard. Thank you for that. And I really appreciate sort of the point about there not being really very many safe spaces, right? Especially coming from sort of my perspective as a student of higher education and higher learning. Some of those points really, really resonate with me. And I wanted to sort of hark back onto a point you made about sort of the past four years, really, where, you know, the ex-President Trump feels kind of good saying sort of peeled back the lid on sort of some of these issues that have been sort of latent in or existent in society. And sort of the past four years have been sort of devoid of leadership and moral courage, truth, and what have you. We now face the need for accountability and justice on one hand, whether it has to do with Trump, his enablers, domestic terrorists, and on the other hand, the desperate need for healing and unifying the country in which we find ourselves deeply divided. Both efforts seem paradoxical. Is there a way to resolve this? And if so, how might you approach this change? It's essentially the same dilemma we had in our nation in 1974 after Nixon resigned and was guilty of impeachable offenses like this president. Gerald Ford, his successor decided to pardon him because he didn't want to put the country through the ordeal of a trial, a criminal trial. He wanted to move on. I believe then that that was the right decision, though his popularity in the polls suffered as a result. And some people think Gerald Ford lost in 1976 election as a result. I think today is different. Today I do believe there should be accountability because there are too many politicians who want to appeal to the more radical elements of Trump's base and believe that is their path to political success. And I'm talking about Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and a bunch of members of the House of Representatives who believe that their political future depends upon outtrumping Trump, being even more outrageous than Trump and appeal to the anger and the prejudices and the suspicions and the paranoias of his base. You can see it coming. You can see those political battle lines already being formed. And so I believe that in the mainstream of political life, we need to renounce the bad behavior of the last four years and hold people accountable for it. So should Senator Josh Hawley be encouraged or discouraged from doing what he did by so publicly announcing he was going to object to the election results, even though there's no evidence of fraud whatsoever. It's simply an effort to pander to Trump's base. Are we gonna encourage that kind of behavior by saying we need to move on, let's not hold anybody accountable or are we going to come back to an impeachment trial and even if he's not convicted, a number of Republicans I believe will vote for his conviction and say to all the rest of them who are contemplating going down that same path, there will be consequences if you do so. Our democracy is at a crossroads now where a lot of politicians are thinking, hey, do I get ahead by behaving like Trump or do I get ahead by condemning Trump? Thank you. And I wanna switch to just quick, I wanna just transition over a little bit to your department, the department that you spearheaded, Homeland Security. In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, I believe this past Sunday, you mentioned that you fear that the DHS might be outdated in its structure meant to deal with extraterrestrial threats. There's a need for reform at DHS and within our law enforcement agencies. There are also calls for defunding the police. How do you see this challenge and is now the right time to sort of tackle things like defunding the police? Well, first, we can't defund the police. Defunding the police is a rallying cry to mobilize support for a larger effort. We cannot defund public safety. In your community, my community of Montclair, New Jersey, which is about as progressive as they come, you cannot defund public safety. We can certainly shift the emphasis and priorities for how we use taxpayer dollars dedicated to public safety, but you can't defund the police. Okay. Let me explain what I meant when I said DHS is outdated in its structure. The Department of Homeland Security was formed right after 9-11 on the assumption that terrorism was an extraterritorial threat beyond our borders. And at the time it was, with the, put aside the Timothy McVeigh attack on Oklahoma City in 1996, Al Qaeda was extraterritorial. And so the view then was that if you consolidate into one cabinet-level department, the regulation of all the different ways one can enter the country at the land borders, the ports, sea or air, then you've effectively dealt with terrorism because terrorism then was an extraterritorial threat. And so we put into one cabinet-level agency customs, border protection, immigration, TSA, the Coast Guard and a few other things. That model is outdated in the sense that the main terrorist threat now is domestic-based within our borders and domestic-born. The Anti-Defamation League has tracked that for years now. That trend has occurred. Meanwhile, there are not a whole lot of DHS police running around the interior. That's mainly the responsibility at the federal level of the FBI. But everybody thinks somehow that Homeland Security can effectively address something like the Proud Boys or QAnon. We have at DHS a very limited role in the interior. And so what I tried to do when I was secretary was to focus on what we refer to as CBE, countering violent extremism before it becomes a law enforcement matter. So I spent a lot of time domestically in communities, encouraging organizations to help us counter violent extremism at the local level. In my last year in office, we actually got funding from Congress to fund grants for that, including violent white nationalist extremism as well that we took on as part of the mission. That mission, that particular mission has gone off the rails over the last four years. I believe it will get back on track in the Biden administration. Thank you. And at this point, I'd like to open up questions from our audience. I'm not sure if I can, if I have access to look to see if people are raising their hands or if they've been asking questions. But I can sort of get things started while our audience gathers itself or post questions. In the Q&A chat. You quickly mentioned it. I think you hinted at perhaps some opportunity. Our Columbia law grad didn't get a chance to ask her a question. I hope we got back to her. Oh, that's right. That's right. Actually, that would be the perfect place to start. Is Courtney still in the audience? Hope she hasn't left. I can give her an up. Joseph, do you mind now continuing with the questions? I believe Courtney had to open the call real quick. Perfect. Okay. I'll just go on and then the audience will ask questions as they think of it. So the first question I'll ask or this during the Q&A session, right? Is it sometimes said that the conduct of foreign policy is an extension of domestic affairs and domestic policy. In your view, why is it important that we get our acts here at home right? I hadn't heard it put that way before, but when it's starting with the Carter administration, we made human rights globally a priority in every international engagement. When we'd meet with, when we'd have engagements with foreign governments, human rights would always be on the agenda, particularly with countries with a less than perfect track record. We undermine ourselves when we engage in human rights violations here at home. The comeback is, well, you're lecturing me about my human rights record. What about Guantanamo Bay? What about George Floyd? What about Breonna Taylor? And there's no comeback to that. So, or what about how you've reduced, this was the hardest one for me. You've reduced, we've reduced refugee resettlements to near zero in the Trump administration. How can we encourage others in a worldwide refugee crisis to accept refugees into their countries if the United States is not doing so, if we're closing our own borders? So that's why I think it's important that we set an example. If we're going to be the exemplar for freedom and human rights, we have to act as such. We can't just talk a good game. Right. And so from our audience, we have a question from Tim who asks for you to comment on the interoperability issues, SafeCom, FirstNet, and NextGen 9-11. And I assume those are very technical terms that you understand. It sure are. Who asked that, Tim? Yes. Is Tim on? Maybe Tim could explain what he could provide a little further explanation of that question. Anastasia, are we able to give Tim the, are we able to unmute Tim? Actually, I think I can do it. Yes, I'll bring him in one second. Thank you. When you reach a certain stage in life, you're not afraid to admit you don't know the answer to a question or you need clarification for the question. A little bit, Kerry, how are you, sir? Okay, here's my question. This has to do with the longstanding problems of interoperability. Can you hear me? I hope you can hear me. Yes. Has to do with interoperability. In other words, when you have first responders at the federal level and the state level, police for our department, sometimes NGOs, and things like this, and they all come into a problem, and not just a problem like we had it on January 6th, but Katrina, a new Katrina might happen. Right. So the problem that used to exist and still seems to exist is, how do we communicate and get that through? I know that there's the human element training, but that's what I'm trying to go to. And here's the real thing I was concerned about, where you, and trying to get a judgment when you were in the position, many times you didn't ask, or you didn't ask, but other secretaries didn't want to establish a standard technological standard because they wanted to rely on the fair market system. So that's what I want to know about you and your thinking, how did you decide on what you would do with this interoperability issue, which is critical? Well, I think we're better than we were, put it that way, although we're not perfect in terms of interoperability. What happens is this, when there's a Katrina or a Boston Marathon bombing or some other disaster, everybody asked, why didn't you connect the dots? You could say the same for January 6th. Why didn't you connect the dots? Why didn't you connect the dots? Why wasn't so-and-so talking to so-and-so? Then what happens is you have a massive theft of sensitive government information, classified information, and everybody asked, how could this happen? How could this happen? Because we gave too many people access to too much sensitive information in an effort to connect the dots better. And so you can put yourself in a situation where an army private can get access to very sensitive top secret information because you're trying to push out the information to more people in more places. And so then you have to recalibrate again to find the sweet spot. But in general, I think we're moving, we have been moving in the right direction. I've been to active shooter training exercises just to pick an example in the Miami-Dade area where we go through an exercise with like five or six different law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local level. And the principal training exercise is how to talk to each other, how to communicate with each other. And so that's a challenge, but and you'd be surprised at how oftentimes there is no interoperability, but we're better than we were. Thank you. I believe Courtney is here for her question. Hi, Secretary Johnson. Yes, sorry about that. I had to hop on a call really quick. But my question for you, we're generally just as a person of color, you know, at a large private law firm in New York and then go in and out of the government. Do you have any advice for other up-and-coming people of color in the corporate space or legal space for how to stay true to yourself, even when you're in spaces that are majority white or not that diverse? Right, good question. So, well, first of all, to stay true to yourself, you have to know who you are. And for me, when I think of who I am, I think of Morehouse College. I think of the man over my right shoulder. I think of some of the other family members, ancestors that I have on my wall here. My great-grandfather, who was pastor of a Baptist church in Bristol, Virginia, who was born a slave. My grandfather over here was President Fisk University. My uncle, who was a Tuskegee Airman. That's who I am. That's the legacy I have inherited. My great-grandfather on my mother's side, who was a member of a Philip Randolph's Pullman Porters Union. That's who I am in my den here. That's those are the pictures that I have chosen to put on my wall. Once you know who you are and you walk into a space where people are very different from you, you have the confidence to be in a position in an uncomfortable situation. So you have the confidence to be who you are in an uncomfortable situation where you have to relate to and connect with somebody different from yourself. For so many of us, it's an easy task every day because in a law firm environment, for example, there are many people whose fathers were lawyers in the same type of firm. There are many people who went to school together who live in the same communities. So they feel very much among themselves. It's easy. For people of color, it's not. And so you have to be willing to every single day step out of your comfort zone, as I was saying earlier. And sometimes you can lose your way doing that. And so it's important to be, to put it a different way, it's important to be grounded. To be grounded in your family, in your heritage, in your church, in your kids, your siblings, your parents, it's important to be grounded. I guess that's how I'll answer the question. Thank you. And if I understand correctly, I think we have maybe time for one or two more questions and then we'll let you get out of here. I'm not sure if the audience has one. Was there a question from Ben Johnson? I, excuse me, Ben Kruger, I'd seen his hand raised earlier. If not, I can go ahead and just ask a question. Ben, are you there? Yes, Ben should be able to ask his question now. Yes, I'm here. I actually just posted a question in the chat. I think related to Courtney's question and what you've been saying before Secretary Johnson, I was just curious, for a brief period of time, I served across the Obama and Trump administrations and the National Security Council staff as an assistant. And since coming to Fletcher, I've tried to think through a lot of the sort of personal ethics and government ethics and how to rebuild institutions to be more responsive to an increasingly diverse constituency across the country. And I'm just curious about your feelings on how to, the ways in which President Trump has stress tested our democracy and been found wanting, what are some concrete things that you've thought of to, you mentioned reforming DHS, but maybe changing how the federal budget works so we can't use Ukraine appropriations to pursue his own personal ends and... Yes, so, you know, there's gonna be, this is gonna drive me a little crazy. Our laws, our system of checks and balances, our constitution, our democracy has some gray space in it. It has some discretion built into it. You can move money around that wasn't expressly appropriated for one purpose to another if you, for example, make a, what we refer to as a reprogramming request of Congress. And Congress, they don't object in certain number of days, you can move it. So a lot of that structure assumes a mature, responsible actor at the top. A president as a commander in chief of the armed forces, for example, has a tremendous amount of authority and autonomy but if you have in the chair, in the Oval Office, someone who is utterly ill-equipped with dangerous impulses and no legal or moral compass, all sorts of bad things are gonna happen. You're gonna see abuses of the pardon power, abuses of the vacancies act, abuses of our constitution, abuses of the spending power. Now there's gonna be this wave of reform and the Republicans are gonna be on the front lines. We've gotta stop our president from behaving like a monarch where he gets to move money around from one department or another and gets to appoint people in the cabinet without confirmation for the Senate, blah, blah, blah. Okay, where were you over the last four years when he was doing exactly all that? We've gotta make sure that the president's transparent and discloses his tax returns. Where were you four years ago when a lot of us believed it was implicit that a president disclosed their tax returns? We assume that the person at the top, the leader we elect we choose is a person who is responsible, who respects the constitution and won't behave in a certain, won't abuse that authority in a certain way, but we're in for a wave of reforms that will hamstring the honest person. So just a small example, when I was in government before I had my own motorcade and secret service protection, if I ever wanted to use a government vehicle to go someplace, there was a mile of red tape that I had to go through to get approval to use a government vehicle for something. And the whole reason for that is that there was one person out of 5,000 who abused the privilege and the rules were written to prevent that from happening again, which hamstrings the other 4,999 of us who are responsible actors. And so the bottom line of all of this is we can further regulate and restrict our government actors and ourselves to prevent another Donald Trump from an abuse of power, but in the process we're gonna make it that much harder for all the rest of us who are honest, conscientious public servants to do their jobs or to aspire to a job in public service where they can do their jobs. And so that's what I worry about in the short term. I'm not sure that answered your question directly but I tried my best. And we're just gonna go ahead with one last question, Secretary Johnson, before we give you the last word and sort of wrap up. And I think this question is from Julie. Hi again, thank you one more time. I was just wondering how would you, how can we, what can we do beyond holding a sign of Black Lives Matter protesting, putting a sign on our window, what can we do and what is the Obama, I mean, I'm sorry, divided administration role of the Black Lives Matter? How can we address it? I think it's lasted with us this long and but I still feel like there's more work to do. Yes, there's more work to do. Stay engaged, stay engaged in the political process. Keep this as an agenda item. Don't let it go to the back burner, like responsible gun safety, for example. There's a tragedy, we're excited and upset for two weeks. The urgency recedes, the gun lobby takes a breather and we go back to normal. So keep the pressure up. If you have three issues, you wanna bring the Washington or if you have three issues, you wanna bring to the next city council meeting, make this one of them, make it a priority issue so that elected officials hear it over and over again. Many I think just, there's an endless string of shootings of unarmed Black men in this country. And when they happen, we all take the streets and then a month later, we've kind of put the issue aside. We have to continue to make this a front burner issue. When was the last time you heard anybody on national TV talk about gun safety? Exactly. Because we haven't had a mass shooting in a while, knock on wood. We will, but gun safety was not an issue, a real issue in the presidential campaign or in any Senator House campaign that I know about because it is receded to the background and it shouldn't recede to the background. We're not gonna effectively deal with public safety with the endless string of mass shootings in churches and schools or even domestic terrorism unless we come up with some more responsible, reasonable gun safety laws consistent with the Second Amendment. Why we can't in this country ban assault weapons is in my judgment, all that is wrong with our democracy where a vocal minority is allowed to thwart the will of the majority. So if it's a consistent issue, that's how things get done. Thank you. All right, Secretary Johnson, one of the members of our society asked a question a couple of days ago, she could not be here with us today, but I wanted to pose this question to you before we sign off. When you talk to students, you often encourage them to find a way to serve one way or the other. And your uncle was a Tuskegee Airman who we all know the treatment they receive. And a lot of... Two uncles who were Tuskegee Airmen. I stand corrected. And a lot of African-American students are looking at, you know, what's going on around us in the count world. And some of us, frankly, are a bit apprehensive about pursuing public service in a country that does not always recognize the dignity of African-American men and women. What would you say to students, you know, like myself, who may be a bit apprehensive and saying, look, you know, sometimes this country is not treating me right and, you know, all I want to do is serve. But what would you say to that type of student? I would say, look at the incoming cabinet. It's the most diverse in history. Senior government positions over the last several administrations, except for the last one, have been increasingly diverse. The thing I would say is it's important to have a mentor. I've had mentors throughout my entire career. It's important to have someone who takes a special interest in you and brings you along, cultivates you, trains you, encourages you, advises you in the right direction. It's important to have mentors. They don't have to be somebody like yourself. They could be somebody different from yourself. I believe that people in public service leave the experience very often more gratified in people in private corporate life who make 10 times as much. As a cabinet officer, as the leader of a cabinet department of 250,000 people, I made what a second year associate of Paul Weiss makes, 26 years old. But I'm sure it was a far more significant, eventful experience, obviously. So that's what I have to say about public service. The last thing I wanna say, which I say often to young people, you're not gonna get anywhere unless you raise your hand, unless you volunteer. I have this debate with my kids all the time. Oh, dad, I can't email that person. He's too important. That would be improper of me to write, my daughter's at MSNBC. That would be improper of me to write Vika Brzezinski myself. I can't do that. I'm out of bounds if I do that. And I say, Natalie, I got 10 people a day who I don't even know who write me. And here's my cover letter. Here's my resume. Can you help me out? So it's not inappropriate because there are a whole lot of people your same age who are doing the exact same thing. And they have no reservations whatsoever. They take it to excess, but you have to be willing to raise your hand. And as I've said so many times over the past hour, step out of your comfort zone. The best example I can think of of that is a young man by the name of Daniel. Daniel lives in Brooklyn. He's a young man of color. He's now 15, two years ago, he was 13 and it was Christmas. It was Christmas Eve. And I was sitting here at this desk and I have a phone that is a replica of my work phone in New York City. So when my phone in my office rings, this phone rings. It's a neat invention. Looks like you're at work when you're not. And it was Christmas Eve and I was sitting here at this computer and that phone rings. I usually don't pick it up if I can't identify the caller because it's usually some person calling to tell me that they have a satellite dish in their brain and they can't figure out how to get it out. Can I fix that? But the phone rang and it was this 13 year old on the other end. And he said, I'd like to speak to Mr. Johnson. And I said, okay, who wants to know? And he said, my name is Daniel and for Black History Month, I have been assigned to write a paper about Mr. Johnson and I'm calling him to interview him. So this young man who was assigned to write a Black History Month paper about a figure in Black History thinks this person is still alive and I found his phone number, why not call him? A whole lot of other people would say, oh no, I can't do that. I can't do this, too important, he's too busy. This kid just called me, he found my phone number on the webpage and he called me up on Christmas Eve. And I asked him, he was very nervous and I asked him, well, when is your paper due? And he said, tomorrow. I said, tomorrow's Christmas. He said, no, no, I'm sorry, I meant February, it's due February. And so I immediately appreciated the audacity of this kid. I said, anybody this brave deserves an interview. He deserves what he's asking for. So I gave him an interview on, I said, I'll tell you what to do. Call Mr. Johnson's assistant on Monday and I'm sure she will help you out and get you an appointment with Mr. Johnson. Okay, so MLK day, two years ago, this kid shows up an hour early at my office with his mom because he's too young to ride the subway on his own. He's got a suit and tie on, he's got shined black shoes. He was so excited when I started showing him the stuff in my office, he fainted. He just fainted. And then we revived him. He did his interview with me. He brought his tape recorder. And then, in another act of audacity, he invited me to come to his school to hear his presentation about me. Mr. Johnson, would you come in? And he of course won the prize. He got first place because he had a PowerPoint and everything. And it helped that I was the only subject for Black History Month who was alive, not dead. And he has maintained his relationship with me. He's now 16, he's six feet tall. And we spoke by Zoom yesterday because every six months when he gets a break from school or whatever, he emails me just to stay in contact. And most kids, almost all kids who were teenagers would never have had the audacity to do that. But as a result, he knows me. I told him, he want me to lecture to your school. And he said, of course. And so he gets to look good because he brings somebody like me into his class. But he had the audacity to do that. A lot of other people wouldn't. Well, that's just one example involving a 13-year-old, not a grad student, but too often. He said, there are some people who take it to excess. They go too far, it's obnoxious. But my point is that don't say to yourself, oh, this person's too important, I can't bother this person. We're not too important. We're not too busy very often to mentor somebody to take the time to show somebody younger than ourselves a better way and to help that person. Never assume that we're not. And with that, I'm glad John Mark and us here at RBS hadn't had the audacity to reach out to you. And we're very appreciative of you accepting and sort of providing your perspective today. So before we go, we'd just like to give you the last word if you have any last words. Otherwise, we're gonna- That was my closure. Sorry, Daniel was my closure. Yeah, it's hard to topple that story of Daniel. So thank you very much. And I know the crowd is really appreciative of you as well. And with that, have a great weekend. Okay, thank you. Thanks everybody. Have a good weekend.