 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the Ford School. I'm Michael Barr. I am the Dean of the Ford School I am delighted to Introduce this afternoon Kumi and I do Kumi and I met more than 30 years ago When we were in graduate school together were housemates. It's quite a while back and and have been friends ever since and Kumi is As you'll see a Just an incredible human being an activist a civil society leader with a deep commitment to Working with citizens around the world to bring change and it's He's done this in lots of different contexts. He's served as executive director of Greenpeace International He's been chair of the global call for climate action He was the founding chair of the global call to action against poverty and secretary general and CEO of Civicus the world alliance for citizen participation He currently chairs three startup organizations in his home country of South Africa Africans rising for justice peace and dignity the campaign for a just energy future and the global climate finance campaign And as you probably saw from our posters Amnesty International has just asked him to serve as the next secretary general of that global human rights movement a Position he'll take up in August of this year The secretary general is the leader in main spokesperson for amnesty and the chief executive of its international secretariat Amnesty International is the largest human rights movement in the world With a global presence including offices in more than 70 countries 2,600 staff members and seven million members volunteers and supporters worldwide You will have a chance to hear from a kumi first and let me just explain our usual process We're gonna collect cards from all of you with questions people will be coming around to pick them up from you Two of our wonderful Ford School students Larry Sanders and Nadine Jawad Will be responsible for asking the questions with the help of Megan Tomkins-Stang and With that let me introduce without any further ado dr. Kumi and I do Thank you. Thank you Michael friends colleagues ladies and gentlemen Dear brothers and sisters. It's great to be here with you I almost thought The snow will Prevent me from getting here from New York. I'm glad I made it I must start by saying that these days when I speak in the United States I'm a little more nervous than normal and that's Not that much to do with who's the president of the United States at the moment It's more to do with the fact that quite often When I've addressed meetings in the United States and try to sketch out the state of Where the world is right now and I should say this is not peculiar to the United States globally when you tell people what is the state of the world at the moment that Generally, you get people getting extremely depressed and so once I was addressing a group of foundations in New York and I was just saying that you know has we sit here today Every two seconds a forest the size of a football field will disappear that when we look at our oceans according to Newsweek from four years back that in four decades our Oceans could only have algae and jellyfish in it because of the triple whammy of overfishing The dumping of toxics including oil spills and the problem of ocean acidification Which basically is more and more carbon less than this forest and the excess carbon is going into our oceans and Then you know you move away I'll return to climate later And then when you talk about deepening inequality in the world and just as I'm seeing amongst you now as I'm saying that I can see the strain building in your face So then eventually here's a question time somebody normally puts their hand up and says Well, this happened to me at this foundations meeting said dr. Nadu have you heard of Martin Luther King and I said yes, of course He inspired me and many people in my generation in South Africa were resisting apartheid and the second question is Do you know what his most famous speech was called? Anybody? Well, you see I said it as tentatively as you said it thinking it was a trick question So solely said I have a dream thinking It might be another and the response was yes, it's I have a dream But when I hear you speak it sounds like you have a nightmare you know dipping in equality the force of this Disappearing and so on so let me start there by saying that I think one of the biggest challenges of Public leadership and public policy is whether we have the courage to analyze the problems without Sanity sanitizing how serious the problems actually are and speaking truth to power Even if it actually makes people in power with its corporate power governmental power Whether it makes them nervous or not So so just for those of you who are feeling depressed by the fact that we have all these crises without Clear answers to them. Let me just give you some good news before I move on and that is you probably have heard Environmentalists and others save from time to time We need to save the planet or save the environment but quite often that phrase save the planet I'm sure you've heard it at some point. So the good news my dear brothers and sisters is that the planet is absolutely fine Seriously the planet actually does not need saving because think about it if we continue on the trajectory that we are If we continue our addiction to dirty energy Coil or oil coal and gas and we continue with activities such as deforesting our forests and so on the end result is we warm up the planet to the point where our water resources are Damaged our soil is damaged our ability to grow food is damaged and for parts of the world like Africa, which is already hot to start with Literally our people will not be able to manage. So what's the end result of? Being on the path that we are and not addressing catastrophic climate change is that We will be gone the planet will still be and once we become extinct as a piece species The good news is the forest will grow back the oceans of replenish and so on so don't worry about the planet Understand that when we say that we need to avert catastrophic climate change What we are saying is that humanity needs to fashion a new way to coexist With nature in a mutually interdependent relationship for centuries and centuries to come put differently The struggle to avert catastrophic climate change is nothing more or nothing less than the current adult Leadership of the world saying that we are going to take care of ensuring that This planet can go on for our children their children and our grandchildren. So It's very important that we recognize that the climate crisis is much more deeper than many of us are willing to acknowledge Including surprisingly even people in the environmental movement So let me stop there and just Do a little bit of a quiz How many of you if I say 1.5 degrees or two degrees know what I'm talking about Please and then don't feel shy because when I was at a green piece I used to ask this question at every office I went to and quite often 60% of my colleagues were not sure So let's see how many of you if I say one and a half versus two degrees, you know what I'm talking about Please raise your hands Okay, those of you raise your hands keep your hands up Okay, so I'm gonna ask you a second question in a second. Okay, but you can put your hands on So those of you don't know when that figure is talked about One of the biggest Scientific enterprises that our planet has ever seen which is the intergovernmental Panel on climate change which together with Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize several years ago this campaign so sorry What When we are talking about these degrees the scientists have been telling us for a long time now that from the start of the industrial revolution Roughly the time we started burning Fossil fuels, which is oil, coal and gas from that moment into the future the planet cannot afford to absorb more than a 1.5 or 2 degree temperature rise, okay So now those people who put up their hands put up your hands again, please and look at them. So how many of you know Towards that 1.5 or 2 degrees Of where we've warmed the planet up already. How many of you know the answer to that? Okay We are already at we are between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees already okay, and What the science cannot tell us the science just simply says that has things warm up further It will progressively get worse They don't tell you that if we go from 1.2 degrees to 1.3 degrees where they will be ten times or four times you know Temperature increase that we would see So these might the difficulty with climate conversations, which is a game-changer for all our public policy Conversations, let me say that again the reality of climate is a game-changer for all our public policy conversations because it cuts across everything and so These might just sound like And the difficulty with climate is that it's talked about in ways that is so inaccessible For ordinary people to be able to participate in the conversation and that's one of the weaknesses I would argue of environmental activism to date That we speak in a lingo and a language that all of us who are involved feel very good about but actually we're not Spreading that message wide enough So I want to give you a story about being in the Pacific one of the most climate vulnerable parts of the world in July 2015 and I learned a new slogan From the people that I was working with there in Vanuatu in Fiji and in Kiribati One of the first countries that's likely to be wiped out as a result of sea level rise And the slogan they were chanting there was this 1.5 to stay alive 1.5 to stay alive. It was quite chilling to me to hear that Six months later, I'm in Paris at the climate negotiations and I bumped into my my new friends from the Pacific and I was doing a media interview with CNN and they waited for me and the moment if they said rush with us we need you to speak at some Internal rally that was being intended to put some pressure on the negotiators So I get there and I thought oh, you know at least I can shout that slogan That I learned from July 2015 I go 1.5 to stay alive and they say no no no no The slogan has changed What's the new slogan and the new slogan it changed to 1.5 we might survive 1.5 we might survive so my dear brothers and sisters. I just want to say to you that bottom line is our political leaders are in Denial about how close to the climate cliff we are Those who are all day in the audience will remember a five minutes to midnight clock on Nuclear war that used to be shown every now and then we are pretty much five minutes to midnight on climate and therefore we need some fresh thinking and I thought I'll try and ask Martin Luther King to help us with That thinking and I hope I don't mess up the technology Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology It is a word mal adjusted It is a ringing cry out of modern child psychology Mal adjusted now, of course, we all want to live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities But as I move toward my conclusion, I would like to say to you today In a very honest manner But there are some things in our society and some things in our world Which I'm proud to be maladjusted And I called upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself through racial segregation and Discrimination I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry I Never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take Necessities from the minute to give luxuries to the few Leave millions of God's children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society So let me repeat the last but on Economic conditions, so he said I Never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many To give luxuries to the few when millions of God's children are smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society Now he was talking about the US in 1965. I would argue that that wisdom If it was relevant in 1965 in the United States It's become a thousand times more relevant today in the United States But also it is equally relevant pretty much all across the world so We have accepted income inequality at a level which is absolutely Unsustainable. I don't want to embarrass anybody here, but I want to ask you to do something when you get home tonight I want you to go to a website called global rich list Okay Global rich list it's done in partnership with K international and it asks you to put Your annual income and it will tell you exactly from the seven billion people on the planet where you sit Right, and I would tell you that even if you're a student on a if you're a student on a scholarship With about say I'm just gonna take a random figure Say 15,000 dollars a year you spending you'll be horrified where you will be on that list from the seven million people but Leave that for you to reflect as you do it yourself But I just thought I'll take three examples of where we have adjusted as Humanity to things that we never should have adjusted to and income inequality. I would say is the most extreme because basically From a work in anti-poverty Movements I have come to realize that you know, everybody can say that we are against poverty No, there are certain people who actually like poverty because poverty can give you cheap labor and so on but nobody these days standards a yeah, I'm for poverty but Poverty and inequality are linked. We have one pie One economic pie at a national level or a global level how we carve out that pie and distribute it How we use the wealth of societies has to have some measure much greater measure of equity than we have and the way we value work, you know the way we value Labor is highly problematic. I mean in South Africa today. There are people Like myself who had the opportunity when the transition happened to really become super wealthy very very quick because All the international companies coming into South Africa were looking for black partners with credibility, right? So like for example, I was the head of the South African NGO coalition at that time and I had some ridiculous office that people used to come and say a Alliance capital one of the largest asset management companies in the world based out of New York Offered me 10% equity in the South African company because they needed people who were connected We had good backgrounds and so on so many of my comrades Went into this kind of world. So when those offers came to me and a few others We looked at them and said hang on a minute If you give me that 10% equity, that's not black economic empowerment Empowerment that's actually black self-enrichment because I am gonna benefit from it So what I did and a few others did we negotiated that equity 10% equity in this company for non-profit organizations that we were part of right but 99% of the folks did the conventional thing and and became within like two years Just the class mobility was astronomical Okay, but when we look at the quality of life then of these people I can tell you many of them are my friends You know, I was in the trenches with them in the old days. They now in the most elite suburbs and so on and I can tell you They're not necessarily much happier than I am in fact I would argue that they are carrying heavy guilt because there's a part of them because they were involved in the liberation struggle and so on Has a sense of commitment to popular Upliftment, but actually their own personal consumption patterns have got to a point where it's completely crazy So that's the one thing that we've adjusted to we've adjusted to a immoral level of inequality That's that we should actually Push back against the second thing our example. I thought I'll take a security example so, you know when you look at all these tweets between Donald Trump and The person he likes to call rocket man in North Korea and you know, it's to you know to the way it might be projected in the media in the US is that that guy is completely North Korea is completely crazy and You know, Donald Trump is crazy, but not so crazy What of line is to most of the people in the world both of them are equally crazy and Issue and the debate that is happening is completely It shocks some people so, you know, there are lots of people in the world Who actually think that the position that Iran and North Korea are taking on nuclear is actually good Because they saying why is it that the that the country in the world? Who has nuclear weapons that has used nuclear weapons that is not trying to say anything about reducing nuclear weapons Even though they've signed treaties along those lines to actually over time reduce. What? What moral basis do they have to say to any other country in the world thou shall not have Nuclear weapons and Donald Trump one nice thing about him is refreshingly honest sometimes and just out of naivety He's honest. So like the other day he said on television on this nuclear person when he talked about his conversation with Putin where he never raised the issue about meddling or the Russian expy being poisoned in London or the fact that there was just a fraudulent election but one of the things they say they did talk about is they talked about security issues and He said He slipped out and said, you know, we are determined to make sure that nobody else gets what we got So when you look at it from a justice perspective People like myself are completely opposed to nuclear weapons and we're so thrilled when the international campaign to ban Nuclear weapons won the Nobel Prize prize last year and we are consistently opposed to it We see the contradiction in the way that American citizen thinks. Oh, it's absolutely fine for us to stop North Korea from getting nuclear weapons, but but where's the legitimate basis for the US to have it? So that's the second example. Then I thought I'll take a Like a social policy issue and that's the issue of alcohol versus marijuana so, you know, we've all adjusted the fact that alcohol is pretty much legal after a certain age and We also largely until recently because of good Advocacy and lobbying work and campaigning work, but to a large extent we accepted that alcohol good marijuana that Right, but if you look at it a little bit, you don't have to be a specialist, but you know, when you Drink a glass of alcohol when you open the bottle, you don't know what actually went into it for sure I mean marijuana is a plant that grows there. It has Legal, sorry medical uses as far as know with alcohol. I think only red wine helps cholesterol a little bit Right, so what I'm saying is that we've just adjusted to and I can give you a much longer list and and what public policy Professionals and public activists now need to be asking is whether in fact the net result of their work is largely incremental tinkering and Rearranging the dectures on the Titanic while humanity sinks with the pressure of climate Or in fact, are we willing to ask some deep and difficult questions that actually will Challenge some of the notions that we ourselves have actually mouthed and and so on and by the way I just want to say quickly that any criticism I make it's all it's it's very much a self-criticism because a lot of these Things that I'm reflecting on I have made those mistakes in different moments in my life So when we look at the world today, what we are seeing is a convergence of crises that is In a very short space of time we are seeing multiple crises coming together the ongoing poverty crisis the Climate crisis the poverty Inequality crisis and many other things ram Emmanuel when he was Chief of Staff for President Obama and our Chicago mayor Put it. Well. He said what we have is a perfect storm and then he said in 2008 a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste Right because crises can actually help you take a good hard look at yourself and say well Hang on if we just make this tiny minor changes year and year yet in there. We're not gonna Secure our children and their children's futures for example, so in Africa today Even though the African continent as a whole is contributed lease To emissions and to the climate challenge. We are paying the first and most brutal price on the continent I can give you multiple examples, but sea level rise drought as well as Soil degradation has meant that we are now looking at a new phenomenon That's called climate refugees because when you're seeing those folks trying to jump on two Boats to get to Europe. I'm not saying that climate is the only or even the primary driver But the fingerprints of climate change are very much on the mass exodus we are seeing of people from the African continent so When we look at all of this we have to acknowledge that in fact one of the biggest Diseases we are facing the world is not HIV and AIDS. It's not Influenza, it's not cancer. It's in fact what you could call effluenza So effluenza is a pathological condition where people believe that happiness and a decent life comes from more and more and more and more material acquisition Right to the point of absolute absurdity. I can give you examples in South Africa that will shock you Let me give you an example in India where you know the kinds of things that have become not normal but Frequent enough that it tells you that we've lost the plot completely. You know, there are super wealthy people in India To when the kids get married they take They invite the 300 guests they want put them on a plane fly the plane up Have the wedding in the sky and then land the plane down and that's supposed to be like a really great wedding Right that you know and like that I can walk you through extreme consumption but understand all of these things are taking from nature and It's great and and there's a cost to consumption which I will Refer to now. So when we look at the inequality levels, it's got to a point of absurdity We're like eight people in the world own more than 65% of the rest of the world I'm sure when you look at the US statistics Specifically, I don't know them often, but I'm sure they're not too far away From patterns of inequality in the US which seem to be getting worse and worse So I just thought I'll contextualize the United States a little bit. So I'm sure most of you know that the US is Less than 5% of the world's population, but it is still economically and militarily dominant Economically, it is declining in the level of dominance that he had and it's quite likely within the next decade China will surpass the US as the largest economy but The questions that must be asked by US Citizens as well as policymakers From a perspective of the history of the United States and how the United States Historically its role in the world as a promoter of democracy as a neighbor of peace and so on We have to ask the brutal question is the US on the right side of global justice today and Looking at the disproportionate power the US as How does it exercise this power towards a range of global justice efforts that the world is facing at this moment Whether it's on climate with it's in trade with it's on a range of other Economic issues even currency management and so on I would humbly submit that actually to a large extent and this It would be wrong to place all the blame on the President Trump some of this predates him quite some time and some of these problems I would say Whether it's a democratic Administration or the Republican administration from a global perspective, you know, you haven't seen that much of difference and Right now to be blunt about it Many people in the world when we look to the US as saying what can we expect for the US and by the way? Not just civil society people, but European political leaders for example Huge concerns right now about the current political leadership. They just don't know how to handle the tweets the inconsistencies the brashness and so on so I Put this question down here quite consciously because it I have to say that it's quite shocking Especially for people who come from struggles where we had to rise against racism and bigotry and so on to see a political leadership that tolerates white supremacist and Nazism and simply sees it as deferring opinions from others as we saw around Charlottesville and Obviously, I say that because I'm saying that today Many people in the world in policy circles and activist circles are saying we can't wait for the US anymore We got to move ahead on climate on trade and other things. You see it happening with the TPP Not that I'm a big supporter of TPP and that was an interesting about Donald Trump was every every fifth thing He said you found that you could agree with right, but actually for maybe different reasons Why he would actually? Advocate that so I want to take you back to the dangers the roots of this problem I think was warned eloquently By prison Eisenhower in his farewell address when he said in the councils of government We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence with a sought or unsought by the military Industrial complex the potential for the disastrous rise of mislaced power exists and will persist We must never let the weight of this combination Endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted Only an alert and knowledgeable citizen citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense without our peaceful methods and goals so that Security and liberty may prosper together. I Hope you'll agree with me that in fact to a large extent this cautionary point made in 1961 by outgoing president Eisenhower has been completely ignored and not taken into account So that in fact that the problem that he has actually won has got worse and worse where we see the power of certain industries and particularly The military establishment being disproportionately powerful in public life So coming back to the US and the question of the consumption patterns so the US Consumes enough resources on an annual basis that could take up 4.1 of Plans the only reason we don't completely over shoot the budget budget The is the fact that many parts of the world Severely underconsume not out of choice, but out of the realities of the economic Situation so if all the people in the world Enjoyed the same levels of consumption the majority of people in the developed world and the elites of the developing countries do Then according to WWF World Wildlife Fund We would need between three to five planets worth of resources to deliver an average median lifestyle for everyone or not So that's why when we talk about climate we say we don't have a plan B But rather than to make the difficult changes that we need to transition from an economy that's driven on dirty brown fossil fuel based energy to an economy that's driven by clean green renewable based energy We don't have a choice. We don't have a plan B because we don't have a plan B If we have one planet and we have to learn to live on it as a human family and Ensure that we have the policy interventions to get there and the bottom line is we still very far away from it so Just to say quickly earth overshoot day took place on August 2nd 2017. You should check this I'll show you a slide right now because basically the earth has an amazing Capacity for regeneration, right? So there's a logic in a year. You have so much that the planet can Collectively give to us and then you need to leave some replenishment time, right? so in the 12 month period by August we have burst the budget For the whole 12 months, but it would have been worse if the entire world lived like how the US consumption patterns are We would have busted budget by 2017 right, so just to have a quick sense of But let me just say the answer difficulty from a policy point of view policy makers Have to make policy From what the current reality is you don't have a choice of sort of imagining something that doesn't exist so for Public policy professionals even in the academia also have the same challenge you have to start with what exists but those if you've been through strategy and Vision you know strategy planning processes. Normally what happens is you start by saying This is a vision of where we want to be. This is what the programs organization Will try to do to get to it and then You start off with the vision, but then Just you have to come back to current reality and current reality Brings your vision lower and lower and lower Because you start looking at all the constraints of moving from where we are to where we might agree to be and so while I totally recognize the tension and I think it's very important that we Recognize that We need to find a pathway to rise about that rise above that what I mean is we cannot allow a maladjusted Reality things that we've adjusted to that we shouldn't have To be seen now as the norm Right. We have to go back and and to do that is incredibly difficult because even the poor and the beneficiaries of some of these intended changes are actually Believing that that is not in their interest because of the media environment and so on which I'll come to in a second So if you take the whole debate around Healthcare, it was quite extraordinary for those of us looking from a distance to see that there were people who were direct beneficiaries of so called Obamacare who were actually sometimes Moved to go and demonstrate against it even though it was not in their interest a problem that I understand That canal West calls inverted authoritarianism, but I think maybe I shouldn't get diverted by that so so So when we think about it in psychological terms The problem that we face today is what you could call deep cognitive dissonance Rather than give you the definition of cognitive dissonance, which I'm sure you all know I Rather just give you an example so you remember that moment when finally the US troops made it into Baghdad in 2004 and Saddam Hussein's Information minister or communications minister was still doing press conferences So he's doing a press conference and they asked him so how long will you be able to resist US military power? Do you think you stand a chance to win this war and so on in the stands and he says what war? What US intervention? We are completely in control. Everything is fine and behind him you've got Buildings burning bombs dropping and so on and I would say that today most of those in political and economic power are Suffering a deep sense of cognitive dissonance with all the facts actually say that it's never going to add up all your Interventions are not going to be big enough to actually secure the positive result We need to avert catastrophic climate change and so on but these resistance to it But I want to say that this is not a problem that only afflicts Those in power but even civil society also suffers from this problem because civil society reflects the broad Trends and currencies in society as a whole and that we some of the most passionate activists that I've met across the world can sometimes also For foul of not being as ambitious and as bold and courageous enough because we are all scared of being I shouldn't say we all Because many of us are scared about being dismissed as loony crazy lefties because if you actually Go against the status quo in a fundamental way Then in fact in this current information age that you in that we are in you can be much easily maligned and and Dispressed so It's therefore important to just reflect a little bit on how those would power control us now Many of us think that the main form of control is Through what? sociologists Louis Althusser said in the 70s that people think that governments control primarily through the use of what he called the repressive State apparatus by repressive state apparatus in an army police the use of formal laws and so on but actually He goes on to say that the more insidious and powerful form of control is not in fact the repressive state apparatus But what he called the ideological state apparatus, which is the framework for schooling and education the framework for religion and importantly the framework for media right now I Lived in the United States for six years when I was actually general of Civicus And I can tell you it was a torture Being able to get news on television on you know normal television news to keep up with what's happening in the world You know because you know world news is something the US did somewhere in the world or something that happened to the US But like big events that happen you hardly will will see it mentioned there were exceptions so When I encounter anti-Americanism in Europe for example during the Iraq war I do one small experiment to ask people How many of you have seen CNN? International 90% of the people put up dance and then I say I'm new if you think CNN International is a left-wing Ultra liberal or progressive news source everybody puts their hands down nobody Would think that in Europe right Especially people involved in movements inside Now he has the thing just to give you a disconnect about you know A part of the world where the US has a greater political alliance with the historically and so on The difference and how widely divergent they see the world so but what I but it comes down primarily Actually to the question of what's put before the people right and as Mandela taught us it's very important to Make a distinction between Racism and the people who perpetuate it right so one of that is the only reason we managed to rise above the violence of the past and make a peaceful transition because we were Mandela and other leaders taught us to make a distinction that our Struggle was never against white people our struggle was against a system of racist oppression right and so being able To make those distinctions are not easy right and I think that right now if we Look at the US place in the world. I would say that That one of the biggest things holding us back is that the majority of the people in the United States are Seeing if you look at the ideological Continuum of your main media outlets with Fox on the far right and MSNBC on the left and Perhaps CNN slightly less to the left than MSNBC, but the CNN that you see is not even CNN International It's a right-wing version of CNN International called CNN headline news, right? So just to put you in perspective All of Europe thinks that's a conservative news source the way it plays out in the US context It's it's on the left So when you so what I urge people to understand and this might sound the wrong thing to say that I say a majority of people in The US are also ideologically oppressed in the sense that what is put before them is actually very limited and they do not get the diversity of Opinion in the mainstream media. So yeah in the United States If we decide here today, we want to set up the ultra-revolutionary magazine We can print it and sell it freely no problem But maybe three relatives and our dog will buy it right and we get very happy we produce it so but the question about understanding media diversity and What is put before people is whether the penetrative media the mainstream media that Penetrates and shapes mass consciousness whether there is enough diversity in that so people can make their own choices About what is happening and I would argue it doesn't exist and that's something that when you put it to people who have of Impatience with the fact that Trump gets elected and so on outside of the US. I'm talking the impatience there Then people begin to actually say well, okay, maybe there's something much more deeper here So I'm not gonna spend too much of time on what is America's role in solving this crisis but I would just say that it's Important that the US shifts on one very important thing and the US has to now move from This logic in the last bullet point do as we say don't do as we do Does that resonate with you at all? Because basically, you know, the US says don't torture It signs up, but they torture and then you know make some justification that I can give a Longlist and you know the example that's always given is and it's a bit erroneous historically, but With regard to Nicaragua American journalists was asking a US political leader at that time Well, how can we as the United States support the dictatorship in some in Nicaragua? under Samosa and The response was Samosa might be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch Okay, is this new to you? I'm sure you've heard that and and that's what US foreign policy has been about unfortunately and even today. I mean the fact that Saudi Arabia now is the biggest ally of the US and no talk about human rights Gender discrimination and so on is highly problematic right, but I'm not gonna spend too much time on that because we've run out of time So I want to just draw your attention to This question of how change happens, right? And yeah, I'm targeting these comments to especially the younger the students in the audience, you know Many of us We've been involved for a long time now are beginning to say actually we got it wrong You know those of us have been trying to push for changes that we've got it wrong because like as my my daughter says to me once I Got stuck in Ethiopia where two colleagues were convicted for a long time in prison for peacefully doing election monitoring in 2005 and I Basically missed Christmas with an eventually when I got to her after Christmas. He said that I hope you don't mind me saying this But you're really useless at your bunch So I say why do you say that she says no you've been campaigning for these guys to get out of prison for so long They spent three years. You've been fighting poverty all your life. It's getting worse. We've been talking about democracy I see democracy moving in backward direction and so on I Mean I tell you I had to take that seriously and and I am standing here before you at the age of 53 To say that The responsible thing for somebody like me to do right now is to say While I might have acted in good faith I must acknowledge that some of the investments of time effort and so on that one made Actually did not deliver the result and that in fact we might need to go back and ask some more Fundamental questions. So if you look at the first column when I say macro me so micro by macro I mean trying to change governance systems by me so I mean trying to change policy Policies and micro is the delivery of projects and programs Now when you look at period of success to get something started and finished Yeah, you know start a project and build a school and get it up and running you can do it in one to three years But if you want to change a policy you get lucky like in South Africa when we were trying to pass a domestic violence act We were able to do it in two years because we had an issue that was very Popularly felt by the people and we were able to push that through but when you look at the investment of money time effort and so on you'll see that Delivery of projects and programs takes the majority of resources and what is this in effect? This is actually quite often treating the symptom of the problem Not actually treating the root cause because policy and governance is good if you take an issue like violence against women Yes, we need more shelters for women who are survivors from violence. We need more counseling. We need To do work with men who are abusers and so on But you put all your eggs in just running shelters and counseling and you don't try and get Legislation pass that protects women in their home and in the public spaces in the country. You're not going to get too much of you know success so The problem is we need to be investing More of our effort and not not in monetary terms, but also in it, you know Intellectual and other terms and we need to increase our effort of asking the question What are the governance changes that we need to make to deliver the results that we need as well as the policy changes? so I think to ask the question what is to be done in conclusion Understanding the role that all of us play as part of the problem is part of the solution, but is only the first step and and I say this Matt McGandy said be the change you want to see in the world, right? We all need to start with asking yourself the question before we even think what is the right policy? What is My place in the world and this is a uncomfortable and unpopular thing to raise But we must all be looking at our own consumption patterns how we live our lives Are we using resources in the most equitable way and so on and so forth? Secondly, we need to recognize that we need bold systemic change that requires courage and tenacity to challenge immoral conventions and orthodoxies that have actually become far too dominant So that means changing the narratives. We need to mobilize principal courageous resistance to the status quo Which includes I will say a Intensification of use of civil disobedience because those with power all seem to have the same medical problem, which is they cannot hear easily so the only way we can get them to hear is by Ensuring there's an amplification of our resistance to them and that often includes some measure of people having the courage to say Enough is enough and no more prepared to put my life on the line and prepare to go to prison if necessary So I want to leave you with the Thomas Jefferson quote, and then I'll end on something more personal You will find this on the Jefferson Memorial Where he says I am certainly not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions But laws and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind as that becomes more developed more Enlightened as new discoveries are made new truths disclose and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances Institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times. So for example, I would argue they are normally of Hillary Clinton winning three million more votes and still losing the presidency and the whole electoral Electoral college system might have been critically important at that time when it was done I'm not sure that is critically important today Right. I'm not sure. Maybe you think it is But basically your electoral system is one that you promote in different parts of the world. Please stop promoting it Get your system right Because I would say today in the United States There are three types of people that can run successfully for political office the rich the extremely rich and the obscenely rich with a few exceptions Right. And when you have a system that is so polluted by money You're not going to get the results that ordinary people's interests Need you're gonna get the the results that serve special interests Given the richness and the diversity of the people of the United States my second point. I do not believe that Two political parties can give expression To the diversity and richness of the thinking and diversity that we have in the United States Well, two dominant political parties that and and to be honest, you don't even have a two-party system I would say you have a one-and-a-half party system because it's a very high convergence on policy between your two dominant parties So I leave that with you to ponder but I thought I'll end with a story which is Okay, I have to say this carefully now. This is an inspirational story, but it is sad But you have to focus on the inspirational part and ignore the sad part So when I was 22 years old, this is a personal when I was 22 years old I was fleeing South Africa into exile and a few months later I met Michael which is one of the joys of my life. So I'm really happy to be a Michael but Sorry the Dean So I flee so before I flee I was For one year operating underground, you know running from the police and changing disguises and so on and Just a few days before I left. I had a conversation with my best friend at home called Lenny Nidu same surname no relation and he was a very philosophical guy and He asked me a question This is the last time we'd see each other right before we flee into Exile in different directions and he says so comey. What is the biggest contribution you can make to the cause of Justice and for humanity. So I said that's a very simple question Going perhaps, you know giving your life and he said no, that's a wrong answer It's not giving your life. He said it's giving the rest of your life I was 22 years old at that time. My friend Lenny was weird of us. He was the first environmentalist You know, I met and that time I think He was probably like only one of like 2,000 voluntary vegetarians on the entire African continent I mean the guy was ahead of his time is what I'm trying to say Right. So, you know, you would say these things. So, you know, we hugged each other shed some tears and And fled in different directions two years later. I get a call that my friend Lenny had been brutally murdered by the apartheid regime Michael will remember that well because he was one of the people supported me through that and He was brutally murdered. There were so many bullets in his body His parents couldn't even recognize him at the mortuary as with the other people. There were three young women who were murdered with him So obviously when I get the news in Oxford I had to think deep and hard about that distinction he made between giving your life versus giving the rest of the life and simply what he was saying is The struggle for justice with its economic justice social justice gender justice climate justice environmental justice more broadly These struggles are maritans and they're not sprints and those of us who've had the privilege of Education like those of you are receiving at this world-class institution Also have a moral obligation to continue to push and fight and persevere until those Injustices or challenges are eradicated Because we take the example of Mugabe in Zimbabwe if Mugabe died in 1981 right One year after became Head of state history would have recorded him on the positive side of history that he was a liberation fighter and so on but you know 30 years later in power and Is not the person that we want to celebrate in that way and When I look at my own country from the president We have just ousted president Zuma to most of the people in the ANC leadership They have put their own self-interest said of the interests of the majority and there's no question about it so When you hit your low moments Right as I do every other day The thing that keeps me going and that's why I shared with you is this wisdom that The struggle for justice is a marathon. It's not his print. We have to Recognize the difficult policy choices difficult systemic change difficult structural transformations are gonna have to happen if we have a chance to make the world a better place and to save The ability of humanity to survive on the planet So when you hit your low moments either in your academic research when your research not give me the results that you want or When you enter public life yourself just remember That it's an amazing thing To have had the opportunity to understand and analyze the world that your education has given you the opportunity for And I think we all have a moral obligation to use that education for a Genuine public purpose. However difficult that public purpose might be in a very Fragmented unequal and unjust world. Thank you very much Okay, good afternoon everyone. My name is Larry Sanders. I'm a second-year MPP Good evening everyone. My name is Nadine Jouad and I'm a second-year in the BA program and We are responsible for the Q&A so our first question How would you advise human right activists to address climate change and their work in vice versa How can we be successful in framing this work in an intersectional way? Wonderful question, which sort of the second part of it almost answered it and that is the intersectional way now You know that word intersectional you have to give credit rates do It's a very powerful concept, but it's a very very cumbersome word It comes from the feminist movement where they talked about intersectionality, you know, how if you wanted to Make progress on gender inequality. You need to understand our gender intersect with the race class ability religion and so on so similarly I think The leader of the global trade union movement Sharon Burroughs the first woman to lead the global trade union movement put it to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2012 that As a mother as a human being and as a trade unionist she had to make climate a priority Because and this is the most chilling one line a year on climates She said because there are no jobs on a dead planet because a job used to fight for jobs, right? And she said there are no jobs in the dead planet So if you follow that for human rights movement, if there are no jobs on the dead planet There are no human beings on the dead planet in if there are no human beings on that planet There are no human rights on the dead planet so So to be honest with you that I think the main reason that Amnesty sought me out for this position was they want because there's lots of agitation on the base of Amnesty wanting more activism around climate, but I Don't know the answer to the question yet because I haven't Spent enough time of exactly how we're going to do it, but I think it's about Making those connections and Understanding where the issues overlap and not seeing them as two separate silos that exist in isolation to each other Thank you again for being here We have adjusted to a global system of sovereignty where rights are conferred by citizenship Will a new approach to climate change and inequality require a reimagining of the system That's Who's coming up with these questions? So This is a very Fundamentally important question for us in the African context, right? So let me if you don't mind I'll just answer this as the chair of the board of Africans rising for justice peace and dignity which is an African-wide Social movement including religious organizations trade unions and geo social movements as well as cultural Activists and academia So one of the things for us is the nation-state as a construct. I mean We didn't Draw the boundaries the African people didn't draw the boundaries of the African countries decided in the conference in Berlin when European monarchy sat together and and that's why when you look at a map of Africa You see many of our countries as very straight lines No, that's why they literally no seriously They they sat in Berlin and they they drew and they said you take that we take that you know That's just called the scramble of Africa and it was like a divi ng up, right? So now today most of the nation-state on the African continent do not make any economic cultural linguistic environmental or any other sense but We live in a nation-state reality And this is a good example of the problem. I was trying to say about you know You have to start with what exists that even if you say we want to make really bold policy changes and so on You have to start so what we're saying is yes We recognize the nation-state system still is the dominant system, but we are wanting to rise above that, right? so for example I jokingly said in 2001 After the European Union adopted the euro. I said, you know if Europe can have a euro I don't see why Africa can't have an afro and I wasn't talking about their style I was talking about one common currency right because because basically all our currencies are really weak maybe South Africa is a little bit okay, and and and and by the way the African Union just had a meeting all the heads of state and and The there's a proposal and actually they're calling it the afro So they say Ramaphosa calls Ramaphosa the new president of South Africa say Ramaphosa calls for afro is on the social media today So so so that's a very astute question Which I'm not fully capable of answering because of time constraints as well, but basically I Think the nation-state configurations that we got Will change over time just so we know it's always changed, right? It's not like You know you go back and look at what the map of the world over countries and empires and all of that over time existed They're dominant and and and they've moved on so So I think the difficulty is we have to be careful though about How what battles we pitched? We pick at what time at what moment because I think right now We need to push for greater social economic and political integration and especially The issue of climate change Should lead us to a much more collaborative governance like so for example You know Canada and the US and the US and Mexico rather than talking about walls and so on should be thinking about you know How do we actually build? Big concentrated solar power plants for example that could serve both countries That's a kind of but by the way to be fair to Trump one day he tweeted that he thinks that the wall could be a solar wall And and and then they showed a picture of the solar wall on the daily show which My fellow country men Trevor Noah runs and and they had it in an angle and and Trevor knows is wow That's perfect. I just can see all those people getting over that thing because it was done in such an angle that it Made it easier to jump over so but the bottom line is this is the kind of question That I think people in your generation need to be asking you all should be saying You know are you from North Africa? Middle East okay, but like you look at North Africa. I don't know. Well, you know the geography It's totally arbitrary all those boundaries have joined, you know like Do people know a country called Botswana? Okay, let's just take that Botswana Where the language is Satswana there are more Satswana speaking people in South Africa than in Botswana and the neighboring You know where Botswana and the the province from South African neighbors. They want people they want people culturally They're just cut by a line and they speak the same languages. They have the same culture and so on but colonialism just You know chop them up now different parts of the world is gonna be slightly different But let me just make one point Why did the European Union put so much of effort into building a more united entity because They recognize as individual countries in Europe rich and dominant as historically and maybe presently they are They recognize that if they did not aggregate the power pull together the power that they'll never be able to compete with the US and China Right for us in Africa. It's the same question that we are even weaker than Europe was you know, so That's why you know, if you look at an aid How aid is given how rich countries can buy policy decisions in African countries because they get a age package and so on It's awful, right? And so unless the African continent can be more united and act together We're not gonna make progress, but I think that principle will apply to different parts of the world like for example I would say Anybody from the Caribbean the enemy just check before I say it Okay, nobody like for example, we should probably have a federation of Caribbean states You know and and aggregate that power, right? But try and ask any head of state to give up being a head of state. It's not a easy thing So it's back to you next question Does the global erosion of democracy create new challenges for human rights advocacy and how will you address in your new role? Yes and no Yes on the face of it. It does create small challenge, right? But If you take Trump's position on climate, right? When you look at it at first glance you say, oh my god, it's a disaster. It's embarrassing We are one of the biggest emitting nations in the world Historically, we've emitted the most and now our present takes a position. I would argue that I don't argue this too publicly but but because of Trump taking this position in fact climate activism has increased considerably in the United States, right? There are More than half the states in the United States have signed up to it already They said we don't care what the federal government is doing We're gonna deliver about 400 municipalities in the United States have signed on to deliver on that about 250 biggest Companies in the United States not some of them that we really need and those that are close to the Koch brothers for example, but But what has happened actually is that it's it's Created a new energy from below. Of course it would be better if the federal government, you know Takes a position. So what I'm saying is I know you asked it specifically with human rights You know There is a Chinese wisdom Where there's a character it's called why chi there's a debate exactly how it plays out But it means both things it means crisis and it means opportunity and so I think in the crisis of Some of the backward movements on glow on human rights There might be opportunity there because as things you see it's easier to motivate people to Sacrifice to contribute to get involved and to do something when they think the situation is serious Having said that I don't think we want to say that it's good for the situation to be serious But what I'm saying is we don't have an option We have to turn that crisis into an opportunity and turn it into something good because we don't have it You know, I mean we can't throw up our hands and say things are getting worse We have to say okay things are getting worse. How can we actually use that opportunity and do something creative to make it better? Okay, this is a shorter question. What do you read for your news world and world briefings? What do I read what do you read for your news and world briefings my news? Okay, so that's a very good question Actually, because right now it's changed a bit. So so I'm Reading Three things that I'm very focused on Africa, right? So so there are three and and and it's interesting. They're all online publications You know because I find that the online stuff Especially when I know where it's coming from who's doing it the evidence is clearance on so I use There's something called Africa online, but in South Africa we have a wonderful satirical online Magazine which I recommend to you. I'll actually call the Maverick the daily Maverick where it's very deep analysis and and so on for the US I use two sources political and Real clear politics.com. I'd like real clear politics especially for Checking of polls and elections. It's all by the way I still I was trained as a political scientist and the only thing that can tell you that I'm a political Scientist and I'm still quite anal about polls and tracking You know trying to see how it's gonna come out and so I can still tell you when Obama won It's a primary against Hillary. I can still tell you how the results played out in Texas and so on and the different primary systems and so on but but I I've now also trying to do something that was advised by a Younger activist at home as a student activist told me You want to be connected with reality in our country? You need to watch some soap operas So first I thought it was a joke and then the person said no, it's not a joke. He said find two or three Locally produced soap operas which are which are very good. By the way, they are now started watching two of them No, no because what they do is the script writers are Writing one week behind reality. So it's actually very Topical the and and it's in a frame called inverse infotainment and edutainment and so actually Just to see how because you see the the is a thing, right? I mean I Come from a working-class background, but I ended up getting a road scholarship and landing at Oxford, right and and that Can corrupt you, you know No, you can forget your roots and you can and and to be honest and Michael can tell you I thought to be a good student at Oxford. I need you to write long sentences with big words Right. No, no, because that's I have to say consciously. That's how People around me were you know and and then thankfully there were some more sane people said no You have to write shorter sentences and people where people can understand, right? But but but just to say that And this is my appeal to the students here your education is a very powerful weapon, but it I can actually Lead you to greatness or it can Deliver mediocrity meaning that by mediocrity I mean you can get a stable job You can end a stable salary and have the car in the house and the Garden and the kennel for the dog and a few things, right? But the point of making is that It's important to remind yourself consistently where you're coming from and to Recognize that the news environment is changing so rapidly. So people of your generation I learned that you all are called digital natives and we are called digital immigrants Right, right. No, no, because what comes to the younger generation? Intuitively in terms of how you process information and so on. It doesn't come in that same way to us, you know Let's leave you there. I think this is our last question. It's all we have time for My me warmer. Okay, we'll see how long Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'll tell you You're the guest Can you tell us how you are so successful in building coalitions across causes countries cultures? What would you want young policy professionals to know about how to build coalitions effectively? So this question of a building coalitions I would say that it if I'm brutally honest, it's a really hard work, you know, it requires Firstly the ability of the people that are bringing people together to tolerate difference right Firstly, you have to tolerate difference because coalitions are going to bring You should not be setting up coalitions. Everybody think exactly the same. You know, what's the point? You know, just rather just merge and set up one organization, right? So So you want to accommodate difference without Ending up with the lowest common denominator, if you know what I mean, you know, there's no point setting up a coalition where You know, like where people agree on the most minimalistic things and then that's your agenda And I will give you a practical example Which is probably the best thing to say the kind of attitude that you have to have right So when I was a chair of the global call to action against poverty Which we launched in 2004 or 2005, but we started the work in 2004 You know, that was the one where Borno and Galdorf and all we involved We were doing these big concerts and thousands of tens of thousands of people came inside, right? so when we were Two of the key constituencies where the women's movement and the faith-based movements There were others as well labor movements and so on but I just want to talk about these two movements, right? So We end up after one year of campaigning having won some successes got the debt of 18 of the poorest countries cancelled and so on we have a coming together to talk about the next phase Now the good thing about when we did it for the first year We kept the policy asked to less than one page So we were able to articulate in broad and inclusive terms without going into too much of detail Now one year later the movement now is like in it every continent. There's large numbers of people involved and so on and we have a meeting in Monte video the capital of Uruguay and I still don't remember it I thought like people gonna actually start fighting with each other and guess who the religious folks and the women That you can guess what the issue was. It was the question of So the women's movement was saying they wanted in the text that the global call to action against poverty is committed to reproductive rights for women The religious movement were saying we don't want any reference to they don't say reproductive rights They say we don't want any reference to abortion, right? And these are two of the big constituencies in the coalition if if one of them left it would have been a disaster So what we did was we told five people from each of the movements go into that room Don't come out until your work out a solution But we knew that we need to send some facilitators in there to keep the conversation cordial and so on. I was one of the people that was playing a small role so kind of long story short in the end they came out hugging each other and smiling and so on and Like everybody was excited. So how did you all solve it? So what happened was the women's movement said, okay? We we will live with The global call to action against poverty is committed to reproductive health Right, it was less than what the women's movement wanted It was much more than what the religious community wanted But both of them could live with that compromise and both of them felt that each other had moved to So it's about I think managing difference and respecting the difference, right and and and also always saying that The challenge of a coalition is whether we can bring people together across differences Where we focus on the things that we agree on and always there's a much more things that we agree on than we disagree on Right, but then we also consciously should be saying and that we respectfully We agree to respectfully disagree on the things where there's difference But we continue to talk and educate each other about why we hold those different positions I mean, you know archbishop Desmond Tutu You know, you would think as the Anglican archbishop of South Africa You know, you would have a very clear position on Saying to people you shouldn't have pre-metal texts and and so on but at one point in South Africa We absolutely needed him to to go on television and do an ad that's saying I Call on young people to you. I call on people to use condoms because the HIV AIDS pandemic was so bad So even him when he went on television, he said I Call on you to abstain from sexual activity and tell you in a committed long-term relationship You would have probably said marriage and then he said However If you choose not to then please use a corner But now that might sound like it's not a big deal. What I'm saying is that People can move out of the comfort zones But that's because the HIV AIDS movement were working so closely and in the HIV AIDS movement, you got the LGBTI Q community you got a diversity of use But because they work to to to respectfully they used to invite him to the events they used to brief him properly So then they went and said we need you to take the statement even though It's a way out there if it's comfort zone if I'm comfortable to do it. So coalition is Is is is not easy, but it's critically important No one I'll tell you right now when I went for the amnesty discussion in around without the interview I said I'm very clear That amnesty even if it becomes ten times bigger than it is and is ten times more effective on its own Will not deliver the results that we need We have to have the ability to work with others and find the intersections with other movements Thank you Thank you, Kumi, and everyone please join us and join Kumi and I do for a brief reception Afterwards in the Great Hall Thank you again