 Good afternoon. My name is Angela Dillard and it's a rare pleasure to be here to congratulate We Listen on their fall conference and to introduce this afternoon's keynote panel. As the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education from Michigan's largest undergraduate serving college, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, I've had the opportunity to think deeply about the new and developing trends on campuses like our own. I'm most struck by two things. The first is the sense of possibility to be in partnership with students, real and authentic partnerships, the ones that allow us to put ourselves in a position not only to teach young adults, but to learn from them and to learn with them. We Listen embodies this possibility. The second thing I've been most struck by is the potential campuses, especially public institutions, to be the training ground for an education and democratic engagement and civic responsibility. And in what some people call intercultural maturity, an ideal that embraces diversity of thought and diversity of identity, that accepts the fact that there are what we politely refer to as climate issues, especially around race, gender, national origin, while creating adorable apparatus for weathering the inevitable conflict. There is a big public narrative out there that college campuses are insular and protective to the point of coddling. Intolerant of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, crippled by identity politics and inundated by smug liberalism. But the reality that I've witnessed on the ground is quite different as we've struggled here with an environment that year after year brings young people together from diverse identities and backgrounds. Backgrounds that are often culturally, ethnically and socioeconomically distant and distinct from one another because of the realities of residential segregation. In our country, often educated in zero tolerance high schools, they come without a strong set of skills to navigate this diverse and vibrant educational environment. And without a lot of models for how to do so well, certainly not in much of our media and our social media, or sadly in today's increasingly partisan and rancorous political arena. As a nation, we are increasingly divided by a common language. Enter, we listen. To quote Yvonne Yal, the vice president of marketing for we listen, quote, it's important to bring together people with different political ideologies because we listen is changing the narrative that college students can't engage in conversation with those who have different opinions from them. Instead of debating or trying to convince others why your view is right, we instead are encouraging students to find common ground despite our differences and gain a deeper understanding of the values that shape others' opinions. This is an approach that can't be legislated or mandated in a top-down way. And it's not surprising that this impressive student organization has spawned a we listen staff addition. Democratic engagement is like a muscle that needs to be trained and exercised to grow in strength and flexibility. It takes a place like the University of Michigan where we aspire to teach what can't be googled to demonstrate the proposition that information and knowledge are two very different things and to train students in the transferable soft skills, dare I say, liberal arts skills, like intercultural communication, leadership, and empathy among others. That will serve them well as they enter the workplaces and the communities in the future. We are doing this in units like the program and intergroup relations and we listen for our students and our staff and in the Ford School's ambitious conversations across difference initiative which launches this fall and of which today's politically ambidextrous panel is really indicative. I'm deeply inspired by the common mission that brings the Ford School and LSA together and sponsoring we listen in today's conference and that assembles all of us this afternoon for this keynote event. We are honored to be joined this afternoon by University of President, Mark Schlissel who will be making some closing remarks as well as by you and Regent Andrea Fisher Newman, sorry oh gosh I'm so sorry Andrea and by Vice President Tim Lynch who serves as our general counsel and of course by all of you. Finally it's my pleasure to give a tip of the hat to our colleagues in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy on behalf of all of us in the LSA Dean's Office and around the college especially our Interim Dean Elizabeth Cole and then to introduce very briefly today's panelists and for whom you can find larger bios in the Printed Program. First we're pleased to welcome William Christol who is founder and editor-of-large of the Weekly Standard who appears frequently on all the leading political commentary shows before starting at the Weekly Standard in 1995. Mr. Christol led the project for the Republican future where he helped to shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. We're also really very pleased to welcome Neera Tanden who is president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Before joining those organizations she worked as a key member of the health and reform team for the for former president Barack Obama where she helped to develop and pass the Affordable Care Act and then finally today's panel will be moderated by Michael Barr who most of you probably know as the John and Stanford wheel while Dean of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. It's also the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Prophet Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Center on Finance Law and Policy at the University of Michigan and it's my pleasure to turn things over to Dean Barr to get us started. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Angela for that terrific framing of our conversation today and thanks for all of you for being here today for this terrific conference and this keynote event. Let me also thank our distinguished guests from the Regents Executive Officers and President Mark Schlissel for being here today. I just wanted to thank our Provost Martin Philbert who couldn't be with us this afternoon but I really want to thank him for his vision and also frankly financial support for this terrific series that we're conducting and also a big thanks to our Ford School Committee member Jim Hudak for sponsoring and supporting We Listen's work including this conference today. As Angela said this is a kickoff event for us in a program we're calling Conversations Across Difference and part of it is about having the kind of conversations that we're going to hear today. It's us about working with our students and with groups like We Listen to help train and support the activity going on campus that helps students and faculty all of us learn how to listen better to each other and how to talk across our differences and to work together on trust building actually doing projects in the world to build trust and lastly an important part of the Conversations Across Difference initiative is about fostering a real generous sense of belonging. Not trying to draw narrow boundaries around each other but to really bring everybody inside and let me thank Barry Rabe point correctly who is our faculty lead on our Conversations Across Difference initiative for his work in this and of course let me give a special thanks to Ali and to Nick for their leadership of We Listen really doing phenomenal work last year now this year in the leadership chair roles and you'll be able to see their talents asking questions in just a moment so after an initial conversation that I'm going to guide for a while we'll turn things over to all of you you all have index cards to fill out those of you who are watching online can send us questions on Twitter and Nick and Ali with Barry's assistance will be gathering your questions and bringing them into a format that we can ask our panelists together so with that let me just begin our discussion by thanking Bill and Nira for being here both unbelievably busy people flying all over the country to do this but as soon as I asked them to come to this event they both said yes right away and it wasn't because I asked let me assure you it was because of all of you it was because of the work that We Listen is doing bringing people together on campus and around the country it really is a powerful powerful model for our students so let me let me just start with maybe an open ended conversation we're going to do this very informally an open-ended kind of conversation so you both come from very different political traditions and backgrounds maybe I'll ask Nira to start since Bill's trying to get a little water when you think about when you think about Bill what are the when you think about Bill what are the things the areas of kind of common values that you think about or common areas of agreement that you use as a bridge to have conversations with each other yeah I think I think I find that not hard to answer actually which is I think that there are really two areas that I hope we have areas of common ground one is a belief in the core values of a democracy meaning rule of law commitment to free speech support of minority rights I mean these are issues that I don't really think we're in big debate but actually are in real debate in our country and real debate in Washington politics and so I have huge respect for people particularly Bill who his adherence to those principles in this moment are calling on him to sometimes disagree with his party and I think that that is something that progressives really should and I do value and respect and so I think that's particularly important arena and then I think on issues around some issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to foreign policy and opposing authoritarianism and opposing kind of creeping populism that undermines democracy itself that those are two areas where I see where I think that you know perhaps there's a real common ground but I think what a final area and this is related to the democracy point is you know I think that there is a nature to your politics which is really visions of politics that play today and one vision of politics is is based on dividing people against each other and sowing political victory at the through sort of intense division and you know I think all of us have engaged in political fights back and forth but the level of defining some group of people is not really American is is a danger for democracy itself and I think Bill has been great in standing up to for democratic principles but against a kind of politics that that tries to turn us against each other and I think that is fundamentally the most central question in the United States today which is our whether our politics will continue down a path kind of tearing up the fabric of the country or we'll figure out some path to try to solve these wounds that are seeming multiplying as we speak. I mean I would just thank you for those kind words and I would reciprocate them all but it would take kill another five minutes so I'll just stipulate that they're they're understood to apply on my behalf to to near I also want to congratulate you all on your big victory last night at Northwestern I landed I left Austin yesterday morning and I told someone there that I was a good luck charm in Texas would break it had some loot it had lost like you know five times in a row at Kansas State or something like that and sure enough they won and then I landed here and Michigan was behind and had a nice comeback because I'm old enough to remember when Michigan would have regarded a game at Northwestern as kind of a joke game it's a tiny little five-bit school that's in the Big Ten by as it then was by accident and but it's okay times changed Northwestern has become I guess a pretty good football school and so congratulations on that of course the most important result of the weekend was Harvard's tragic lost Rhode Island on Friday ruining the undefeated season after in the third game I just had one thing to one nearest that I think and I think all three of us actually have this in common which is we all served in government and I do think if you've served in government this isn't universally true but somewhat true that you do have just some more of a sense of the complexity of things and many of these decisions are not black and white in terms of public policy there are pluses and minuses to most policies there are authentic disagreements about both about values but also about just how certain things are going to work or not work and and and so I think it makes one little I certainly personally was this way I came to Washington reasonably yelling but I had taught a little bit including at a public policy school and I was much less certain of what I have not so much what I believe but of my ability to sort of understand how well certain or badly certain policies work once I've been in government for I guess seven years or so in the Reagan and second term and then the first push administration then before I got there so I think that's something that also adds a kind of humility maybe to one's confidence that one is always right about everything and that's why I think a good public policy school actually both at the undergraduate level and certainly at the graduate level that's one of the very important things that can teach people always when I taught at the Kennedy School for a couple of years which is comparable to this obviously there was always students would sometimes I would have said at the beginning I would only have a couple of years where I would say I hope you leave the school less confident in a sense that you know what to do not more confident which is in a way contrary to why people are paying these excessive tuition not here of course just just at the Kennedy School but but but I think that's an important aspect of it of it too but I think having said that one really has to be sort of much more confident in and hardline about if you want certain basic characteristics of liberal democratic government home I would say personally also of the preserving the liberal order abroad and really a respect and this I think you want to get some government to respect for the forms and processes of government and of a civilized society these things don't they can be frustrating they can be overdone things can get too legalistic too bureaucratic to whatever but really you look around the world and you appreciate a lot of these kind of boring due process rule of law you know yeah conflict right sort of basic things that one takes for granted and quibbles about here on the margins but really a country that doesn't have those things and doesn't respect those things can get into a lot of trouble quite quickly I'm going to come back to that theme at the end I think it's really quite important I thought I might spend a little bit of time teasing out some potential differences or areas of agreement in a couple different areas just to to lead us off maybe we'll start with immigration so I'm gonna I'm gonna follow we listens lead and only ask about areas of extreme debate so and work through it and work through it so immigration bill you've you've written a lot about immigration over your career your views I think have evolved quite a bit over your career and I wonder if you could say a little bit about that evolution and then how you think about say the DACA issues today yeah I mean it was never an issue I was that involved in I just that wasn't the part of government I worked in and when I was in government Reagan signed the 86 bill and I was at the education department and then first Bush administration I don't actually George HW Bush administration I don't really recall it being a hugely contentious issue so it's not something I sort of was in the middle of huge fights over and then by 0607 when there were the big fights in Congress I was pretty much with Bush and McCain and the attempt to get a bipartisan bill through I I saw it on that a little bit I think partly there were some problems with the bill I was a little moved by the economists argument that they really and this respect I think I was right to be worried about something that Trump that exploited that there really was downward pressure on working class wages that some of that pressure did come from a lot of low wage immigrants coming in I mean that's just I think a pretty much of a you know economic fact almost I mean globalization plus mass immigration puts a lot of pressure on working class wages in this country and in other advanced countries and I was worried about that and worried both about it obviously in terms of the actual economics but also in terms of the political implications of that having said that I myself have been radicalized to the left on immigration in the last two years because whatever disputes you can have there's no you know there's no magic number that says 1.5 1.7 1.2 is the right million people is the right number of immigrants to have right and there's no magic number that says exactly how they should be distributed or what mix of family unification and certain kinds of skills or other metrics you know you should drive to educate your immigration system by but I think with Trump and with the appeals he made one has to I thought important and I really believe this I mean I just felt this one has to rally to the principle of you know that we're all equal as Lincoln said whether you're in his case the the grandson or granddaughter in our case the great great great great grandson and granddaughter of people who signed the declaration or is he over here before the declaration or whether you came over or whether the son daughter of immigrants or whether you came over as an immigrant said it become a citizen or on your way to becoming a citizen they were all equal we're all equally as Lincoln put it what blood of the blood you know of those who signed the declaration and so that principle really is important I think when Trump for me the moment the POW commented about McCain I think it was one of the worst moments for me for for Trump but really the Mexican judge comment was in a way the most offensive thing he said the one that cuts most fundamentally against American principles the fact that he didn't pay much of a price for that unnerved me about Republican primary voters and I probably become therefore more yeah so say kind of insistent on again whatever policy dispute we can have down the road about numbers and so forth one has to have the principle that of being equal respect for all Americans immigrants or not and then there's a practical matter I'd say I've been somewhat moved by the arguments of some people that actually just as an empirical matter immigrants are doing the downward pressure wages is a slight negative but there's a huge number of positives that immigrants bring and then finally DACA I mean there just needs to be an obvious fairness issue and it's kind of crazy not to legalize and give a path citizenship to people who've been here for 10 or 20 or 30 years yeah so I mean just to just to say a few words in response and I think I think there are progressives who have been concerned about downward pressure on wages that happen from a whole host of third forces globalization technology and I think we should be truly analytic about immigration and what that means and I think the data has sort of changed a little bit on some of these points over the years I think I think the so there's obviously a lot of issues around rhetoric that that bill reference but I think also you know if you look at the policy over the last an year and a half I think what's concerning is a real effort to limit legal immigration and I mean this is the administration I think it's actually been really clarifying that the administration which had a lot of rhetoric about quote-unquote and legal immigration and and Mexican gangs and all that stuff is actually you know it adapted a policy to address to redress and change fundamentally change legal immigration and to be seemingly more hostile to country immigrants from countries that tend to be people of color and more positive towards immigrants that can that tend to be from countries that are mostly white and I think that has to some degree unmasked the racialized nature of this immigration debate and for a lot of people it was always unmasked but you know I think in the the weird thing about the debates we have in Washington is it can be some like obvious point but then you go on cable tv and someone will argue these points and but I think really the fact that the administration has been pushing towards basically immigration policies that seem to indicate that and the rhetoric too that seems to indicate that you know people of color just not as welcome I'll say what was I've been in politics for a really long time I've been in lots of presidential campaigns I've fought with Bill Crystal numerous times on cable during the Obama years I never I mean I've been online I tweet probably way too much but I've never had the experience that I had in 2016 which is like people would go online and basically say that I should go back to India or basically communicate in some form or another than I'm not truly American because I'm Indian or I'm brown that never happened to me until the 2016 campaign just never happened really and I think that that is a I think that you know I think the moment we're in in politics is the country is really struggling over very basic questions more basic questions than we've ever struggled about before and one of those questions is who is truly American you know and we can have it there's an expansive vision of that or an inclusive vision of that or I think that in contention is a very exclusive vision of that and and I think that's one of the really core debates and why I think this moment in time in politics is more important than any moment of time that I've been engaged in and why you know these debates are so central and why it's important to try and bridge these debates but also recognize that there are core values that we are fighting for Bill what's your view on that do we have a chance of having the kind of debate that would let us see our common humanity in the way that both of you have described is there a chance of Democrats and Republicans coming together for example around dreamer legislation how do you how do you see this moment we're in right now you know I think I think it's actually a little more chance that up than people would suspect looking at Washington right now of some compromises next year I can sort of imagine scenarios where maybe leadership doesn't even want to but where backbenchers of both parties decide I didn't come to Washington just to be a rubber staff for party leadership or an ineffectual protester against party leadership and you could actually get I mean obviously there there's enough common ground in some of these areas like dreamers that it wouldn't be hard in a sense to it's not like it's intellectually difficult to write the legislation it's just a question of getting the votes and then getting the signature and Trump might sign things next year that he doesn't sound like he would sign today and then after a different election result I do think so I'm off and I really do admire what you all have done here in terms of seeking for a common ground and having you know civil and rational discussion across issues I would also say this is in a way nearest point though that one also has to sort of rule I will say rule certain things out of bounds but one has to be tough against certain things I think so I'm not really interested in going on Tucker also began at the weekly standard in 1995 was a 23 year old extremely talented journalist if you go back and look at pieces he wrote from 95 to 2000 frosts and really wonderful colorful sort of set pieces about the circus of politics and and so forth now he always had this sort of ironic eye always had a touch of paleo conservatism I would say he was too nice to pep you can and from my taste a couple of times but not not a personally bigoted person and not a person who sat around believe me at the weekly standard office or anywhere you know on kind of ethno-nationalist expressing ethno-nationalist sentiments and you see that show today and it's really shocking and that is a problem I mean there's just no question that on the evening on Fox News now you have real your it's making it worse I mean it's always been there there's been these sentiments there people always ask me you know it wasn't the Republican Party always this way Trump's just exposing something that was there of course there's some truth to that but it was there but it was repressed in a sense Buchanan got his 20-25 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and and then faded away and ultimately left the party in 99-2000 and Bush to his credit actually sort of drove him out of the party almost Ron Paul got his votes in 08 and 12 but went nowhere when Trump was a birther in 2011-12 Romney is a mistake in my opinion you know did actually accept his endorsement remember that on on stage but it was like eight minutes and they did it as quickly as they could and they got him off stage and I was on Fox I remember I can't remember if it was that night or the Sunday afterwards maybe actually Sunday and said it was and they shouldn't have even given him that much credibility Romney just should have refused to appear with him and everyone agreed it wasn't but anyway no one was pushing that was a tactical question of whether you have to kind of accommodate a little bit of you know but no one was believed was respectable to make those arguments the fact that that the equivalent arguments today are respectable among a chunk of the media and then of course social media has changed the dynamics and among elected officials is a huge problem and the biggest problem is the president of the United States reinforces that I mean I really you know a lot of things can be unpleasant recessive genes in a population and in a political in a political system and they're always going to be there it's 230 million people there not everyone's gonna be a wonderful tolerant you know forward-looking enlightened person but a president who reinforces those sentiments exacerbates the divisions appeals to prejudice is the president I mean it makes things a lot worse and for me that's always been what's the most alarming about Trump stuff that's always been there but sort of marginalized can become central and very damaging so near how do you think about dealing with that fringe what used to be a fringe argument that's now been brought into this media and and Republican conversation how do you position yourself how do you think strategically about it in terms of how you you fight against views that you think are or shouldn't be in that in that conversation yeah so I think you know like I the way I guess I think about this is there's there's policy debates in the country and we should definitely engage on policy debates in the country but on and sort of core value core issues like you know whether we're all American or whether we should have democratic institutions or whether you're like a free press is a good thing I think you just I mean my take on this is essentially we have to defeat these these ideas at the ballot box or we have to we have to create a an objection and an opposition and I'd say one interesting thing about the country that I'm you know somewhat optimistic about I'll say after after the election our national security team literally looked at Orban in in Hungary because you know there's a right wing populist who took power and then like really a mass power I mean went after the judiciary and you know it's easier for sure when you're in a parliamentary system to overwhelm opposition but one of the things that was really interesting is that when you really study what happened in Hungary is that the you know the the opposition was really overwhelmed shocked depressed diffuse really like are you know obviously ambitious internal debates but mostly receded until and then you know he basically took over started with the attacks on the judiciary and then went after the press and has you know passed the law that basically changed the voting structure so it's really hard to get out now and so you know what happened in our country was very different you know and I think something important to think through which is the day after Donald Trump was elected there was a mass uprising the country the largest the largest protests in our country's history and I'll say as a leader of the progressive cause that was a very grassroots oriented protest there were three protests planned in January one was an immigration march one was a health care march and one was the women's march and we could see online November December the women's march was really just growing and growing women's marches were growing and growing in intensity and I think if you really step back at the last year and a half so many of the debates we're having are really hitting cultural touch points and the fact that we are going to go into the midterms into like you know we're 37 days from the midterm but who's counting and we're now in a big debate about you know essentially sexual assault and the treatment of women I think you know I think that there has been a large skill cultural response to this moment and honestly the women who are coming into politics and the the resistance in the country is really born of women it's women it's a new the new activists are really a lot of college educated women but really mothers coming into politics for the first time and I think it is a reaction to these really core issues you know the people flooding the town halls and health care were people were women who had health care they weren't losing health care they had health care but I think they were basically upset and angry about a politics that is so divisive and so willing to push people against each other and kind of really define you know define some group as acceptable and some group is not acceptable and so and you know I think we're still dealing with all of those issues and may well see the largest I think we'll see the largest gender gap in a midterm I'd be shocked if we did if we didn't and I think that's really been transforming our politics in really fundamental ways so maybe we'll just use that as a segue to talk about what is probably on a lot of people's minds we just had a really rather extraordinary hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee about Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh and you both came into this last few weeks of new information with with different positions about the underlying merits of the Kavanaugh nomination Bill you had written quite favorably about Kavanaugh before these sets of events near had really been strongly in opposition I'm wondering if you could both tell us a little bit about what this process has meant for your views about Kavanaugh and then more importantly about your views on the Supreme Court and its credibility and broader issues about democratic process if you could maybe start with Brett Kavanaugh and move move outward from there and happy to have either you dig in well I would first want to just say a word about the process in the Judiciary Committee I mean I I think over the last year and a half we've seen a lot of instances in which I think fundamentally the Senate is almost becoming much more like the House where it's you know they got rid of the filibud I mean Democrats got rid of the filibuster on judges and then McConnell got rid of the filibuster on the Supreme Court and a Supreme Court Justice and so but the whole the whole effort to just really push this process has been fascinating to me so I will say that my entry into politics really started in 1991 during the Anita Hill hearing so I was a college senior during the Anita Hill hearings and and and I remember going to protest I still remember holding the sign we will remember next November and you know I was really taken shocked by how she was treated even by some Democrats on that but in that committee process there was an FBI investigation or there were three days of testimony there were multiple people testifying and and you know truthfully she was talking about a harassment case and not an assault case which I think people have sort of forgotten the differences in level of scope truthfully different timing but still and in this case I mean I've been really surprised and I know I mean I really shouldn't be surprised being a year and a half in Washington just that did not even the rhetorical interest in saying oh we should get to the facts and let's open an FBI investigation at the beginning of this process you know normal thing would have been this comes forward an FBI investigation would have happened and then you would have had the hearing and you would have multiple people instead there was a big negotiation about the hearing two people spoke and and only because of the dam broke that we went in this direction so I guess I would say you know what I am sort of depressed about in this moment is just the whole debate is essentially winning or losing this nomination and not really anything about you know does should we get to the facts of what happened should we try to understand the full picture here it was assumed on one side you know that she was that there couldn't be anything to this and only I think honestly and I think this is like a moment of some import I really think it's the fact that two women jam themselves in an elevator and talked about their own experience with assault that made center flag who I think acted principally here to change this dynamic so that we have an FBI investigation um and I you know I think hopefully we get to back to a place where we would you know you investigate matters you don't just think about winning I mean I I think that's like a a huge challenge which is that it's just everything has become like I went like so tribal which is like I you lose and I went I mean I went into his testimony because like no nominee of any kind has ever acted that way but his thing was like I'm going to get everyone to hate democrats and then I will shore up support amongst republicans and he could do that because it's a 50 51 vote so that's like what's deeply sort of depressing and upsetting about it and I hope that we can move to a place where we can kind of get rid of get out of that level of tribalism I mean I hope we learn facts over the next this coming week that you know it would incline a a fair observer an impartial spectator to move in one direction or another I think we'd be better for the country honestly if there were if people could come to a if it became kind of clear that what had happened or that one of the other was not telling the truth or maybe inadvertently not you know not telling the truth because they didn't have recollection or something I do think it's bad obviously it's bad for the court that one reason I was strongly in favor of what Senator Flake did well I think I would if I had to vote I would have voted no is that I think it really would do damn I mean after what Kavanaugh said Thursday just hard to see how he can be viewed as a impartial even somewhat impartial supreme court justice now we've had a million justices who were politicians in the old days more than were we've had Ruth Betty Ginsburg said things I think honestly she shouldn't have said as a sitting member of the court but we've never had anything to the end Thomas we've got very that was a very wrenching moment for kind of you know cultural let's say reasons for many people but Thomas didn't attack the Democratic Party or anything like that he didn't attack George Mitchell the majority leader of the Senate as a Democratic Judiciary Committee Joe Biden made the rules for how it went ahead and questioners no no I mean and Thomas was confirmed with 11 Democratic votes so I thought it was a bad moment for the country in the sense that a lot of people were left very unhappy about an outcome and feeling it was kind of unfair or whatever but he got 11 Democratic senators to vote with him they had three days of hearings as I recall with 18 additional witnesses and it didn't really resolve away the other one felt okay look we've done our best to get at this these conflicting accounts of what happened a decade before no one really felt that way on there for me that was the key point I mean it's really I mean not that the FBI is going to solve everything they report on ink on their entire on their questioning they don't resolve these issues they're not a judge and jury they're a investigative but the idea that Mark George who was said by to have been at this particular thing and to participate it in the assault and was never interrogated by anyone there's just something nuts about that I mean if this were University of Michigan I mean God forbid something which our bad were having but there was an HR complaint or something like that there would be a thorough investigation and people would talk to both sides one of the complaints some conservatives have had incidentally about universities is that on some of these issues there hasn't been enough due process and the courts in fact have found that in some cases because you do need to talk to both sides but okay so talk to them and have if you want to have people stenographers and lawyers present that's fine that's all you can dispute exactly how to do this kind of thing but the idea that you're just gonna go ahead with the hearing and not have people gonna email in some statements from their lawyers and that's it I mean is really crazy so I do think but I think we're in a bad place on it in the sense that I we could well have an outcome that really threatens the institutional standing of the court in a way I don't think Thomas Hill did it did some damage but it was overcome as I'm thinking about this way Thomas Hill was not do one since then we had two Clinton nominees easily approved with bipartisan votes two Bush nominees approved with less bipartisan votes but with no huge ruckus one Bush nominee Harriet Meyers opposed by people like me by conservatives but went on and replaced by a very distinguished appellate court judge Samuel Lido then we had two Obama nominees confirmed unproblematically really and then Gorsuch incidentally confirmed in a you know somewhat heated debate about constitutional thought but nothing I would regard as untoward that I don't think anyone looks at the bench today and thinks oh judge just as Gorsuch somehow was shouldn't be there you know or I mean people would prefer if you're a liberal you know more judges on the on the liberal side and so forth but so that's right for me this is a bad moment you know Mira and I were joking about this joking about this we talked about this before and the institutions have held pretty well in the era of Trump Congress I think less so because the Republican Party's been so pathetic in Congress but the other institutions of American government federalism civil society you could argue this is why we're not hungry really we have hundreds of years we don't deserve much credit for it any of us in this room but you know our ancestors have of previous generations of Americans created institutions which have quite a lot of depth in America and sort of ability to withstand some demagoguery and some appeals to nasty elements of populism and so forth but I do think this has now done the courts I would have put in the category of institutions that were doing well I mean liberals didn't like Trump's appellate appointments and they maybe regretted getting rid of the fellow luster but at the end of the day most of them are very distinguished judges and law professors and no one really you know it was it was the normal oscillation in terms of the character of the appellate judges and even district court judges and then suddenly to have this really if this had gotten rammed through yesterday I think it would have done a lot of damage and it may still do damage a week from now I guess I would say two things about this which is to to make the point is it's not just Trump so I do think a big challenge for these debates going forward is the fact that Mary Garland didn't get a didn't get a didn't get a hearing of any kind and that a rule just was created of a whole cloth which is that you know he was he just because it was Obama's last year he didn't get a vote and I think McConnell's doing that and really that that kind of another example of sort of will to power I get to do this because I control things really makes you know and I think this is the challenge of the spiral which is you know essentially there's a view amongst lots of liberals and progressives and Democrats that Republicans change the rules and we adhere you know they adhere to the Democrats adhere to the rules Republicans change the rules and so that pushes to take even more extreme action I do think that people you know it is absolutely the case that although Gorsuch wants to Georgetown prep and has a remarkably similar experience to Brett Kavanaugh I had a live very was handled very differently but I think that what happened you know it's not just Trump who is doing these kinds of things the other but to take a have a moment of optimism is one thing I I do think is that what's interesting about this moment particularly for me in politics is that there are so many people running for office who are coming from outside the political process they're Iraq veterans or small business owners you're not you know going through the traditional path me some are being like a state legislature and then running for as a member of Congress or people who have had service in the country many people worked you know at the Pentagon or at the State Department or just you know traditional traditional veterans and they're just coming a lot and like the highest number of women running and I do think those people when they go to Congress are going to be focused on trying to solve problems I think it's very much part of their campaigns that they are coming into you know politics isn't the thing that's driving them every day it is to try and solve problems so I do think that there'll be opportunities on maybe infrastructure or other areas where at least you'll see an interest in passing bills that can you know garner support and whether Trump supports those or not you know be really interesting period because it'll be like the first time in many years that you you know if you have a democratic house they're facing a republican president who's running for reelection so I think it'll be very interesting dynamic about whether people want to solve problems or will be in a continual path of just bitter partisanship which is what we've seen so far I mean I yeah I actually very bullish on the what's called the 9-11 generation in terms of younger vets and people also in other aspects of government service and public service coming to Congress and they've been many from both many from both parties Democrats might be a little more this year than a year easier for Democrats to recruit people to tell them they should take a shot and go through everything you have to go through running for office but that's fine and and I'm glad they have honestly because I think they will be a lot of them will be good good members I've been very a young woman I know it's very staunch Republican and conservative sort of by accident went to a session where they had four or five Democratic women running for Congress on a panel it was no you people was invited it wasn't a secret thing right I think it was a public thing so she went and just and she was really impressed by them I mean she's still a conservative Republican doesn't agree with them on probably most issues but so that I think is a good side and I think there's some good signs this year's a hard year for Republicans but some good signs on the Republican side I would say one of the crazy things about the cabinet I'll think just for a sort of stand back look at point of view is I can see why Democrats are very upset about Garland because you really kind of lost that seat was filled by a Republican appointee Trump appointee I mean it sounds like if cabinet withdrew today Trump would nominate Joan Larson Tuesday or something like that or Amy Cohn-Barrett or or I assume he would nominate a woman he might have been wise to do that three months ago some of us urged urged that on our friends I mean just as a practical political matter it seems kind of nuts that all the Republicans on the court are men and so he'll nominate someone like that it's I think he still has a good chance of getting that person through maybe not before the election but in later or through a new Senate it's not as if they use Senate A it could well be Republican and B it's not as if I don't think they're going to hold someone up who's well qualified for two years if there are 48 or 49 Republican senators they go be tough to do so you know what are we fighting it's one thing I mean I understand we're fighting about and I don't mean to you know judge Kavanaugh feels incredibly unfairly treated he's entitled to make his case and so forth but it is sort of funny that it's not as if people are talking about it as if Kavanaugh is either is goes that you know does not become a Supreme Court justice that somehow the Democrats get to make the next appointment which is not which is not the case worst case you just have an eight-person court for a while you know for two years right I mean you have to be super cynical about it but judge Kavanaugh is uh is is extraordinary in his views on presidential powers unusual unusual for I think that's why I try it was interesting unusual amongst conservative jurists for the view that a president cannot be subpoenaed I mean it is he has a he has a different view than Judge Larson or Judge Barrett or Judge Kilkenby Barrett on the particular and oddly enough weirdly this is the guy chosen for the uh perspective that a president who I don't know facing an independent council could not be subpoenaed by that council would not need to testify is basically impervious to any form of judicial restraint because of extraordinary presidential powers it's unusual I mean just I'm just oddly enough he picked that guy and is fighting tooth and nail for that guy which of course makes no sense two weeks ago they could have even put Amy Comey Barrett she would have had more support on the right than Kavanaugh who's just to be clear is incredibly unpopular for a nominee it's extraordinary the last person as popular or unpopular as Kavanaugh even before this was Harriet Myers and she was bold so it's not you know this is what's I mean I hate to be cynical but of course this is what Trump requires which is for you to think through perhaps there is effort to save his own skin in this determination I mean the nicer version of this was that you know he was a good friend of the guns and highly respected in the DC legal community but it is true I mean every political person I talked to in the week or two weeks after yeah Kennedy's retirement was announced and when the all the speculation was going about the every political person I know said well they're two obvious things a woman would be better than a man now maybe they're not quite ready yet they haven't been on the bench long enough so fine but at least you'd want to take a close look at the at the female candidates who were on the list or maybe not on the list since that's kind of an artificial thing to but whatever Trump had decided to do that to to circumscribe himself for the federal society list but there were plenty of there's several several women on it well qualified well thought of women Scalia Clarks and so forth and two given that eight the current of the the HSS is then sitting had all gone to what Harvard and Yale Law School I think I mean maybe it would be nice to have someone from some other you know part of the country and didn't simply and in fact there was a nice over there were a many well very well regarded jurists Ray Catholic a lot of friends of mine were pushing forward when he made that final four Larsson Alice and I I mean you know who didn't go McConnell's pushed for this younger judge in the sixth circuit I think yeah so there were plenty of people so it is I mean I will say that that fits into your theory that you sort of had to go out of your way to get to Kavanaugh as the as the pick just from the sort of straight assuming they're all qualified assuming they're all perfectly going to be perfectly distinguished justices which I don't think anyone guy so also he doesn't like that yeah so maybe you're right that's why Trump did that huh on that note I'm gonna ask Ali and Nick to start collecting and asking the question from the audience okay thank you both so much so we're gonna go ahead and get started with a question that's particularly salient to us being on a public university's campus and that's regarding the role of universities in establishing robust conversations that bring different ideological viewpoints into the conversation so how do you view the role of the of the university in that yeah yeah I mean I just I'm I'd say when I was in grass grass I could put a philosophy I was never really a libertarian and indeed was intrigued by sort of more conservative let's say I'm not just conservative but communitarian and other arguments that on the limits of pure libertarianism I've got to say in practice I've become much more straightforwardly libertarian I just think once you go down the road of limiting speech except for the obvious extreme cases of it really is a very slippery slope and I guess I don't trust the guardians of our different institutions or political figures or many figures really I mean obviously private institutions have their own rights which public institutions different from public institutions and colleges and universities are different from some business that's having a conference and so forth but I would say even private universities though I think legally they might be in a somewhat different standing I'm very averse to limiting speech except in some really extreme circumstances I just think it's it's dangerous so I think if you just look empirically and we had a couple good articles on this leaky standard Europe where they have tried to do much more in the way of hate speech legislation has mostly backfired and in fact if you look at Europe it's not a very happy story right now of tolerance and of lack of bigotry so I would be I am sort of an old fashioned justice Brandeis sunlight is the best disinfectant kind of liberal on this kind of stuff yeah I sort of took the question more broadly but I mean I agree and essentially the importance of free speech and I'm definitely a believer that the best response to intolerant speech is more speech of a different of tolerance speech although I definitely feel there are moments where Trump's Twitter feed actually like overwhelms me so I think though I think a broader question is how important universities and facts are and this crazy moment in time and I was telling the story a little bit earlier you know I mean I'll just confess that after Trump was elected I definitely had some existential moments about the role of think tanks and the importance of facts and like whether it actually mattered in the debate that you know there are facts on one side and and emotions on another but what's been I I think actually really interesting and important for the role we all play is you know Trump is himself and he's a sort of unto himself but in terms of the debates in Congress facts actually still do really matter and the affordable care act to say Cap has worked to you know worked relatively strenuously to defend the ACA and you know Trump and there were many Republicans in Congress said the versions of the bill that they put forward would not reduce health care coverage that people would keep their health care coverage in fact house Republicans as well as the White House attacked the congressional budget office weeks before they were coming out with their analysis that 23 million people lose health care coverage but throughout that debate at the end you know 65 70 percent of Americans believed that people lose health care coverage because they saw lots of facts and figures that people lose health care coverage and that was a driving force to why the bill was defeated and despite the fact that you know politicians say something over and over again I mean there is a there is a real problem that part of Trump space or part of the Republican Party do just seem to believe what he says but for the majority of Americans I do think facts are really important I think actually the a university adherence to facts and its adherence to data like we have to fight for that more than ever and um and you know I do think ultimately having a persuasive argument and grounding it in reality is you know we have to figure out ways that we communicate with people who are different from ourselves but it is really vital that we stay there I'll just make one slightly more slightly conservative point just so we have a little bit of a tweak some of the liberals here no I mean I spent the Harvard right after I think in January of 17 so right after the president's inaugurator about to be in it's one of these big panels university-wide you know existential crisis of our times what are we going to do about it facts truth all this kind of and it was fine but I couldn't resist beginning my remarks by thanking by you know saying that people at Harvard Law School should be very pleased that they have been teaching of course about the living constitution but not just that critical legal studies was teaching about how the rule of law that's just a fiction that of course you know the ruling class portrays isn't such things abstract or or or neutral principles that was all left way behind in the what 60s and 70s I mean you're a law professor I would say law and fuller and all that stuff and I've worn all the hip stuff I mean maybe they were right though Trump agreed with them Trump agrees that the rule of law everything's a matter of power everything's a matter of it's not really a matter of facts or of evidence and I also congratulated the literature departments of Harvard for being pleased now that they had a president who agreed with them also that simple minded notions of truth and all that are out of date and now it's a question of narratives or like the the modern historians and I I'm overstating obviously but I actually do think they've gotten to the deep state yeah but I do think well the deep state was Trump picked up from left wing political scientists actually which was I'm not a stupid idea incidentally about countries like Turkey and Indonesia which is kind of what it was actually meant to explain so but there is a way which I do think so nearer is being a little upbeat before about the kind of people running for office I'm a little upbeat about a certain recognition I'm both the right and the left of you know what I mean let's cool it a little bit with all the super clever you know derived from Nietzsche and Heidegger and Foucault and whatever you know postmodernism and cleverly showing that people's perspectives dominate everything and let's remember that if you a it's probably not correct theoretically I don't think but b if you want a sort of decent society where people can actually work together and live together there is something to be said for a slightly more old-fashioned view of truth and facts and evidence and I think you see some of that on both sides I'm upset on the right on the other hand and here's why I'm not I'm not quite as complacent for all the reaction among me and my friends against Trump there's a certain intellectual strain on the right which is goes beyond banning now that's really somewhat hostile to liberal democracy and not in a sort of very theoretical way which is fine I mean sort of you have to understand the price we pay for modern capitalism alienation you know there's a there's a very sophisticated critique on left and right of certain limitations of modern liberal democracy which is fine but a genuinely willing to go the next step and sort of throw out the baby with the bathwater and you see that among some thinkers and I worry that that could become attractive we could get in a spiral where this would be like the 20s and 30s where what happened in the world of the intellect paralleled what happened in real politics which is everyone just got sick of kind of old-fashioned boring liberalism liberalism with a little l you know and and everyone got entranced by all kinds of narratives that were contemptuous of just things like due process rule of law tolerance and so forth that would be a very bad place to go yeah and I'll just say briefly on this because I know we want to get to other questions I think we should really think consciously about what's happening in our country and also in other countries that it is not you know it is not that these forces are just happening in the United States in a vacuum they're not just happening intellectually in the United States in a vacuum the intellectual arguments that you're seeing are are even stronger in Europe there is much greater contention between a you know I think Trump is sort of a weird figure and his apparently being in love with Kim Jong-un and but really in regards to Putin and the sort of the support for Putinism but in Europe you know there is a much broader you know war within the public in terms of its their supports for authoritarianism and the mixture of just virulent you know open racism and xenophobia with these things and I think just to say this like we used to think Berlusconi was the craziest person in Italy or in Europe actually and now they're you know they're a literal fascist in the government of Italy and you know there is no reason I mean I think the most important thing for all generations to recognize is that we have too often believed democracy is just status quo and that will always be this way and I believe this the 21st century is going to be a deep contention between authoritarianism whether it's from China or Russia and sort of the the liberal democratic norms that we all believe in and I think the fact that we've just been sort of lazy about these things for generations really since the Cold War has allowed you know Putin a lot of success in his efforts to delegitimize democracy around the world and I just was just adding things I mean I very much agree with that no but this is appropriate for an academic environment I think in addition to the norms which are the obviously one has to hang on to and really reiterate and defend I would say going back and thinking more in the way the founders did and others other founders of other liberal democracies post World War II and Germany and Italy and elsewhere Japan thinking seriously about the institutions and the structures and I think there are aspects of this that fit into more liberal policies honestly in terms of well just and other aspects that fit into more conservative policies in terms of limiting for example the scope of government but thinking seriously about well what are the institutional structures we have both in government and out of government in terms of the free market civil society not for profit institutions colleges and universities that provide bulwarks against you know a wave of demagoguery sweeping over the public sector hopefully for only a few years but maybe for more than a few years and other countries don't have such bulwarks and I think so it's partly a matter of the attachment to the norms it's partly a matter of the actual institutional infrastructure so to speak which we're pretty fortunate to have not that we should take it for granted you know and which other countries I would have said I actually am surprised at how weak they've turned it's turned out to be though in some of these other countries yeah that's worrisome I think all right so this question asks about the role of the press in our democracy so a few weeks ago Chuck Todd penned a piece speaking to the role of the press in the current state of affairs and in response David French of the national review wrote that news organizations should assume more responsibility for where we have come what's your take on this in light of the confirmation hearing notwithstanding the fact that Todd and French agree on the value of the free press in society and also how students at the university level should be consuming news in this era of quote unquote fake news that's very big question so I'll just say one or two things I mean I do social media is a big phenomenon or let's just put it more broadly the combination of the internet and the mobile device and the instantaneity of information and of transforming or transmitting information and opinions and the ability for those to be sometimes based on fake news or to be fake news and that is a big change I I guess I'm generally a skeptic when it comes to people saying you know everything's changed technology's moving faster than it ever did I grew up in the 60s and then in school in the 70s when that was just total cliche you know everything's moving so much faster than that did our parents were so out of it they lived such complacent lives you know and we're the ones were really in this middle stream of modernity and technology was total nonsense total nonsense my parents my grandparents went through infinitely more social change than I did they fought they met much greater challenges obviously with the depression and the war here in the US to say nothing of people who were in Europe and elsewhere at the time and they were the technological changes in transportation communication and all that actually I would say weirdly from about 19 I don't know 65 to 95 you could argue there was relatively little change in people's actual everyday lives and things kind of chugged along I do think though that the the change of the communications now is awfully big and it's gonna look you can't stop it and you don't want to stop it and it has like all technological changes good and bad effects and I'm not sure we've caught up to thinking through how to try to maximize the good effects and minimize the bad effects I remain fairly libertarian in the sense that I'm not really comfortable with some of the efforts to shut down things or really have private actors or public actors limit things in some radical ways but I'm also open to you know there is a big problem that stuff and I've seen it myself and certainly said it you know people just believe believing things well educated people people are weekly standard cruises which you know upper middle class readers are the weekly standard who want to spend a week seeing some nice part of the country of the world and also have some panel discussions with Fred Barnes and me and everyone you know I mean telling me things that are just false telling me this is why this is why it freaks me out a little but these are not absolutely you know disillusioned white working class voters and who'd never talk you know don't know anything and aren't in touch with whatever and who are therefore fall for this kind of propaganda I mean these are well educated people who are pillars of their community in many case I mean you know physicians lawyers businessmen and women who then tell you something and you say well that that's just not true I mean you know it's there's not much controversy about the fact they weren't three million illegal voters in the in the 2016 and no I saw it on tv and I had a friend of mine sent me an article about it and you know in there the the ability to you know cut and paste fake news articles the facebook problem and so forth it is a real problem and I I don't know what to do about it but I think we do you can't minimize it yeah I mean I think the great irony here is the fake news is is really not promoted by the I mean the rise of fake news is it definitely happens a little bit unless there's a lot of kind of insane fake things happening I mean I'll just say laugh and joke about it but you know I I was I was a little bit in the weeky week stuff so I was monitoring very closely what happened every day the Friday before the election right the Friday before the election drudge has like a gigantic banner basically alluding to a Pete sex ring in a in comet pizza which is literally five no seven blocks from my house and the whole idea of this was because there was an email talking about ordering a pizza they built in there was this narrative moving that there was a you know pedophile pizza ring that was connected to Hillary Clinton which was insane and in all these conversations with we've had multiple conversations with facebook over the last year and a half and I asked them how many how many people saw that story via facebook and it's millions of people see a crazy lunatic story like that so what I would find instructive is if don trump would attack actual fake news right but that's not that he's not attacking like that kind of lunacy he's attacking NBC news the well not the last three journals much but sometimes I like the New York Times and the mainstream pillars of institutions that are designed to actually give us a common set of facts do I agree with all these things all the time is is there too much opinion in news you know I would even say myself there's way too much news analysis and not enough news gathering but the idea that we have politicians who just literally argue the press is a constituency group that they are attacking or don't that they don't feel as part of their what they need to deal with is a gigantic red flag for America and you know I think it's another reason why we are living in deeply perilous times and you know we can't it's like the idea that we just find it acceptable that we have a president who just literally goes to rallies and people start screaming about how CNN should be in jail or banned you know if that happened in another country we'd be like hello where's the why are why are we funding them via state department dollars right but it happens here and we're we we accept it I mean I just I very much agree with that I would I do think it's a matter of actual public policy I think the right answer on most of the actual media organizations is a kind of you know free market free press kind of answer maybe we can think about you know changing the economic playing field a little bit to make it easier for people to uh for newspapers to survive and for magazines and all that it's the editor of a magazine I'd be happy if that were the case but that's that's complicated to I think the Facebook situation the social media situation is actually a very important government I mean genuine public policy issue which I don't and there's been interesting debates and there's begun to be some interesting debates about it I guess I would say Facebook Google to a slightly lesser degree but still very important I this is Amazon I think it's a different kind of question and it is just unnatural that so much happens on one particular platform which both wants to say it's a platform but isn't just a platform obviously and but wants to legally be treated as a platform when it's to its advantage so that we're not liable for anything we're just a platform you know but actually we're also feeding you stuff that you've shown and they're deciding right they're deciding yeah so I mean that's a very unusual situation I think it's not comparable to NBC CBS ABC PBS CNN being on Comcast I mean then you can watch wherever you want to watch there could still be problems with fake news ditto with going online to read you know columns probably from the weekly standard or from the nation but I'm leaving aside the Google algorithm issue which I think is lesser you know there's you can find what you want you can be what you want Facebook's a little unique and in its pervasiveness and if we came down from Mars and looked at it I think I think we would think this is sort of weird in a liberal democracy the police and dispersion of power and authority and diversity of sources of opinion and I think it's it's I don't know what to do about it you don't want to be one sort of utility and I think trust there are a million different interesting issues but I think it's actually a pretty important public policy yeah and I mean like we have problems here but in other countries I mean people have been basically murdered by mobs of people who are just literally motivated by a Facebook you know crazy Facebook postings right so it's it's you know something to be concerned about so just in the interest of time this will be the second to last question given the fact given the fact that so many people are non-voters and are disillusioned with the system do you think that in addition to promoting bipartisanship we should as a nation invite more independent and the third party voices into mainstream discourse do you want me to start coming um so I you know I think the challenge of the structural is we live in a we if we had a parliamentary system I you know basically say just to be fast about this I basically be fine right but I think the challenge we have is that in the system we have now it is a little bit winner take all and when people I mean we've now gone through two elections where the vote total in states who Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania votes for Jill Stein were larger than the difference that Hillary lost by and obviously everyone remembers Florida and the number of people who voted for Ralph Nader in Florida and you can say that those people are like voting outside the system or they didn't like Hillary whatever you want to say but in the system that we have right now my deep fear is that people are essentially voting the opposite not just different the opposite of their interest when that happens if we could figure out a system in which to have vibrant third parties that would be you know that would be basically fine to me and parties should be tested and but I think the challenge we have is that we are now living with two examples of the consequences of that decision I mean I am open to the notion that the two-party system which I think most of would say has served us well for many decades and even more than a century almost two centuries has become more problematic and I am open to the notion in 2020 if it's Trump and Bernie Sanders we should I would probably try to support an independent candidate who might be able to even win so I am open to analytically to the notion that the two-party system could get rocky here in the rickety in the next few years having said that as a practical matter I would advise people to fight within the parties for now just for the reason near us as and because that's still where 98% of our elected officials are coming from I think and there are reasons why more extreme people do better in primaries for obvious reasons and more motivated they can be gotten out to vote more but that needn't be the case in fact I mean there are instances where the opposite has happened and I would say to the Democrats credit a lot of their nominees in 2018 in my district north of Virginia where I live were not the most radical candidate often a more mainstream candidate and so that a lot of that was due to the mobilization of women who actually want women representatives but they don't necessarily want left-wing representatives so a lot of the women who are running at least in Virginia which I know a little bit about are pretty moderate I would say women so I would sort of recommend to people that was the title of what they want and if they want to sort of explore third parties and the dependent candidacies either the state level the national level but I think in the short term one reason I'm focused on fighting for Trump within the Republican party is it may fail and I may be out in some you know going back to the Democratic party of my scoop Jackson youth or or or or going to help start some new wig party like some of my friends want to um I think it's a catchy catchy term right that way. It's so loud it's in. But you don't want to write off you don't want to write off one of the two major national parties American politics has benefited a lot whatever you think of the problems and etc from having two national parties that were not European style authoritarian right-wing parties or authoritarian left-wing parties it's kind of what American acceptance is and what the actual social science term means actually used by sociologists and political scientists and so you really don't want to if as a conservative as a Republican you don't want to write off the Republican party to become that kind of party it may happen and that would be bad I think for the country but you don't want to just let one bad election sort of shape it for the future so I would generally I'm I'm sort of more in the market of in the business of encouraging people to fight within both parties at least for the time being just briefly in this you know the difference between the U.S. and and European parties which are multi-party systems is both the Democratic and Republican party are basically coalition parties I mean the structure is not actually radically different then in fact if you look at France and their elections it's basically like two parties in one and the Democratic party and two parties in one and the Republican party so it's not like views aren't represented of course the primaries are the places to do that but I think I think there's a health actually to being able to formulate a broad coalition to govern a country as diverse as ours great then I'm going to go ahead and ask the last question at the beginning much anticipated and hyped last at the beginning of the conversation you both established a shared respect for values and democratic principles what advice do you have for having these kinds of conversations with those who don't seem to agree I'll let her stay away from cable news I'll answer it this way but I'll let you really answer it and I'll just give you a comment I was just in a debate panel at Austin actually two days ago and this kind of question came up and someone on the panel this was mostly conservatives on the panel was this is it what we see now it's going to get worse and worse I mean this is this is the future Trump's America Trump's kind of politics and I really don't believe it or I don't want to believe it I suppose and I mean we're just kind of going back and forth on it and I said well let's step away from you may be right about congress I think this I said to him or about political elites and maybe even the states which I think have been healthier in some ways are going more in this direction certainly Texas will be a case study of that with more partisanship but I don't know I just look at my kids who are you know in their early 30s and and their spouses and I don't know it doesn't feel to me like they're living in a bitterly divided country where they don't know anyone who differs with them politically it's just not the case or people have very very different backgrounds so I do think I'm sort of more hopeful about younger Americans now my kids are not in you know perfectly representative socioeconomically obviously so so maybe I'm capturing just a little slice but I get around some and I it doesn't feel to me like the country is as divided or as bitter or as worrisome in its condition as as our political class and certainly as Washington I mean I so I think the more the country can assert a certain kind of common sense sense of community and of willingness to talk to one another we can overcome some of the hyper partisanship and hyper polarization which I think is somewhat due and Neera's right wasn't just due to Trump is somewhat due to sort of somewhat I don't know artificial rules of the game almost in Washington that have led in this direction more than they need to have now if I'm wrong and the country itself is deeply ribbon and deeply divided and and you know and there are some some there's some sociological evidence that you know people live more in groups that agree with them more apart and all that kind of sorting and all that kind of stuff but there's some truth to that maybe so maybe I'm wrong in which case we're in worse trouble than we than we think but I would not say just traveling around America I feel like this is a country that is nearly as bitter or divided as you would think by looking at at Washington so I think you know I guess my view of this and I guess I could be totally wrong as well but I think essentially people people there there are large swaths of people who feel like they aren't heard and feel like the political system and and like you know institutions aren't responsive to them and you know we'll see a test of this but like you know I I um Connor Lamb has ran for as a member of Congress for Pennsylvania 18 and I should just advertise that he is a cap intern at one point and I talk to him a lot about his race and I mean I think this is like a genuine question about how politics will go into the future he basically uh knocked on 200,000 doors you know he spent all this time just knocking on people's doors he saw a lot of Republicans a very Republican district and he genuinely believes he went to those people and like listened to them and and a pretty good swath of people who haven't voted for a Democrat and a very long time voted for him and Beto O'Rourke is running this campaign which has been very much designed over the last year and a half he's going to the reddest parts of the state he's going to every part of the state but a big part of what he does is he goes to red parts of the state and says you know he listens to people he runs down halls he hears from people he has his own views but he is like very consciously trying to listen and I personally think that the Democratic nominee and H20 will have to have that kind of talent the ability to go to people who don't think like you do listen to them and not just agree with them convince them that you may disagree substantively but like we're in this country together and I think there are a whole range of candidates right now and we'll see what happens uh 37 days but there are people who are not you know the candidates who are running in purple and red districts who are Democrats who are coming from outside the political system are not running as bitter partisans you know they are running as people who are outside the political process who are willing to hear from anyone and try to actually address problems and I actually think when they go to Washington they will really fight to actually push these bills so you know I think at the end of the day like a lot of people feel like politics isn't producing results to them and we as institutions have to answer to that like we have to actually deliver results for people and they haven't seen a lot of change and they haven't seen improvement in their life and you know the next president actually has to produce for them or I think it could get worse so I do I do think that this act of listening and hearing people is a vital act of politics and one that I think good leaders get and really good leaders get that Bill Clinton you know won white working class voters a long time ago but won them and a lot of that was like he was going to parts of the country that hadn't seen a Democrat a long time and he listened to them. I think that's a great note to end on please join me in thanking the panel. We have a special treat now and I just want to invite President Mark Schlissel up to the podium for some additional remarks. So hi everybody thanks Dean Barr for the introduction I want to give a thanks to Dean Angela Dillard too for giving me meaning in life and now that I know my job is to teach what can't be googled so I really love that. I also want to give a shout out to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell or local congresswoman who slipped in the back in her humble fashion a little bit late but thank you for coming Debbie as well and of course all the U of M students and faculty and staff that are here today along with our special guest Bill Crystal and near attendant who just seem much more peaceful here in person than on television so it's really great but really for your dedication to having these kind of conversations across difference. It's especially hardening that students are here from all three of our campuses which speaks to the terrific efforts of everyone that we listen to be brought and inclusive in recruiting students to their group. This what this conversation wasn't what I expected I expected it to be perhaps a little bit more incendiary perhaps there to be more disagreement maybe I was projecting my sense of the public sensibility right now but these are really preeminent spokespersons on different parts of the political spectrum and listen to what we heard you know we heard areas where there were agreement and we heard areas where there was respectful disagreement we didn't hear people talking over one another we didn't have a commentator inserting their own preferences and prejudices and he allowed the experts to speak way more agreement than I thought there would be and way better than television so thank you very much as a university president I've learned to take compliment take compliments where you can get them is what you got to do but all around our nation college campuses are struggling with something that really should be second nature and that's the freedom and comfort to discuss contentious and challenging topics you know perhaps it's a symptom of the times an era of great political polarization as we heard and one in which the media offers us the ability to tune into news and commentary of a defined political slant maybe it's because of a mixture of politeness and fear not wanting to offend fellow students with ideas that go against their perceived mainstream on campus or fearing the social consequences of doing so I first learned if we listen a student group last year doing one of my fireside chats that I have each month with students Allie of course who's here today at another student came to my office hours later that semester and shared the progress that they've made with their new organization they brought together students of differing political philosophies not just from U of M but now around the state and here around the region and hopefully around the country they sponsored difficult conversations here on gun control abortion free speech and immigration they're taking their message to the nation's capital and demonstrating that college students most certainly can engage in honest and thoughtful discussion of some of society's toughest problems and in fact they are willing to step up and propose solutions through these policy creation seminars I also thank dean barn his colleagues here at the Ford school for taking action to respond to one of our university's greatest challenges how to promote discourse across difference in an era of extreme political polarization the conversations across difference initiative is grounded in the highest ideals of the mission of the University of Michigan it enhances our academic excellence by bringing speakers to campus and implementing curricular elements that teach the value meaning and importance of citizenship in our society and one of the requirements of good citizenship is we consider issues of the day from diverse perspectives I've always believed that hearing ideas we disagree with challenges our own ways of thinking it helps us sharpen our own beliefs and it helps us grow engaging across difference teaches us how to work through problems in groups and how to express ourselves in ways that can bring about positive change but first we must listen there's no shortage of opportunity to address major challenges in our modern world to demonstrate that we can disagree without demonizing and debate without demagoguery to solve problems using the breath of our collective human talents drawing from the experiences and the intellectual power of people of all backgrounds and ideologies I'm hopeful that your work here will also make a difference by encouraging greater turnout in this November's election Michigan students will have the opportunity to act on the knowledge and perspectives you and our speakers have shared today and over the past several months in the last midterm election only 19% of eligible college students voted and that number was even lower on our own campus I know that the Ford school our College of Literature Science and the Arts and many of the students here today have worked with our Ginsburg Center to help U of M win the big 10 voter challenge the challenge is a non-partisan initiative to encourage students to exercise the right to vote and to change the trend that's led to voter turnout for people under age 30 being historically low compared with older segments of the population already hundreds of Michigan students have gotten registered this cycle October 9th is the last day to register for the November elections here in Michigan I was reminded again of the importance of your work on my way into the auditorium right outside here is a portrait of the namesake of our School of Public Policy Gerald Ford during his final State of the Union in 1977 Ford spoke of a country that two and a half years earlier was deeply divided and tormented that was the state of our union when I was a college student he expressed hope and confidence in the future of the then 200 year old nation and reminded us that the future of our union in fact relied on us embracing unity the state of the union is a measurement of the many elements of which it's composed he said it's a political union of diverse states an economic union of varying interests an intellectual union of common convictions and a moral union of immutable ideals I want to thank all of you for accepting the challenge engage across difference by joining together to listen and to learn you also inspire and you demonstrate that no divide is insurmountable when we share the important aspiration of a more perfect union thank you all very very much