Princeton
University Forum Transcript
Forum
Participants:
Anne-Marie
Slaughter - Dean,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, Princeton
Cornell
West -
Professor, Princeton University
The following is a full transcript of
"Intellectuals and the Institution: What's in the Service of the
Nation?" - a public forum held at Princeton University on February 7,
2006. The forum was moderated by
Sean Wilentz, Director of the Program in American Studies.
Fernando Montero: Good
evening. My name is Fernando Montero,
and on behalf of the organizers, I welcome you to this public forum. We
would like to begin by acknowledging the support we have received from
the campus publication and activist center Dollars & Sins.
We would also like to thank our sponsors: the USG, the Program in
African American Studies, the Princeton Justice Project, the Pace
Center, the Council for the Humanities, the Program in American
Studies, and the Woodrow Wilson School. In addition, we would like to
thank The Coalition for Peace Action and the Princeton Progressive
Nation for their publicity efforts on behalf of this event. We also
extend our gratitude to all those across campus who helped us in our
organizational efforts, and to Andrea Sun-Mee Jones for designing the
beautiful posters announcing this event.
Tonight’s forum will address the relationship between intellectuals and
institutions, the academia and government, and the way in which their
interactions are influenced or affected during times of war. For those
of you who might not be aware of the events leading up to this
occasion, I would like to provide this forum with a brief historical
context. Last October, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to
deliver the keynote address for its 75th Anniversary celebrations. This
was the latest in a series of prominent events in which high-profile
members of past and present administrations have been invited to
express their views and to promote their policies at Princeton
University. These include Colin Powell, Anthony Zinni, Robert McNamara,
Giora Eiland, Michael Chertoff, General David Petraeus, George Schultz,
and most recently Hillary Clinton. Many students and professors were
distressed to find that most of these events took place without
meaningful interaction between the audience and the speaker. For
example, General Petraeus was left completely unquestioned and
unchallenged about his then-recent leadership in the demolition of the
city of Fallujah, where several thousands of innocent civilians were
killed and a quarter of a million Iraqis were displa
ced from their homes.
Referring to these concerns and others, an independent,
inter-departmental group of graduate and undergraduate students
composed a letter to President Tilghman and to the Dean of the Woodrow
Wilson School, Anne-Marie Slaughter. The letter was signed by 130
members of the University community and published in the Daily
Princetonian,
prompting responses from Dean Slaughter, President Tilghman, and many
campus publications. Tonight’s occasion, organized by the authors of
that letter, is the latest in a series of exchanges that have since
taken place. The immediate motivation for the October letter was the
address delivered by Condoleezza Rice, and the way in which the Woodrow
Wilson School received her. In her address, Ms. Rice defended the use
of violence in Iraq and elsewhere in ways that violate international
codes of conduct, laws, treaties and human rights. Dean Slaughter
stated that Rice exemplifies the University’s values and celebrated the
Secretary of State’s career as a public servant. Our letter responded
to these actions, and also criticized “a conspicuous absence of voices
external to institutions, voices that can offer glimpses of the
everyday significance of policy”. In the high-profile events of our
school of Public and International Affairs, the persons, actors, and
voices that foreign and domestic policy most affect are persistently
excluded or displaced.
The authors of the letter were pleased to receive responses from
important members of the University community, but found that the
replies misrepresented, overlooked, and ultimately dismissed their
central concerns. We wish to briefly clarify our claims and criticisms,
hoping to provide a concrete basis for tonight’s discussion.
We do not speak from a specific partisan position. Our concerns pertain
to all intellectuals and representatives of all political affiliations.
Ours is not simply a question of bean-counting Republicans and
Democrats, or so-called liberals and conservatives in any given event.
Rather, we are deeply disturbed, if not outraged, by specific policies
and practices of past and present governments, and by the fact that our
University’s top representatives, acting in their official capacities,
publicly endorse those who create and enforce such policies. This
amounts to subservience, complicity, and a relinquishing of
intellectual autonomy. Contrary to some suggestions, our aim is not to
police the University’s guest-lists. We do not in any way deny an
intellectual’s right to publicly express his or her political views.
Rather, we oppose the conferral of Princeton’s prestige on what can
only be described as uncritical propaganda sessions, be they
Democratic, Republican, or otherwise; we oppose the consistent
exclusion of independent and unaffiliated speakers; and we oppose the
facile way this University’s motto is used and abused in order to
exonerate public servants from responsibility for their actions. It is
a fundamental contradiction to "serve the nation and all nations" by
promoting policies that have destroyed cities, cultural and historical
legacies, the environment, and hundreds of thousands of innocent human
lives.
In order to open the debate, would like to propose simple questions for
discussion: What is the role of the University as mediator between
intellectuals and public debate? Does the university have a
responsibility before underrepresented voices, and if so, has it
fulfilled that responsibility?
Without further adieu, it is my honor to put this forum in the hands of
tonight’s moderator, Professor Sean Wilentz, George Henry Davis 1886
Professor of American History and Director of the Program in American
Studies. A scholar of U.S. social and political history, Professor
Wilentz has written extensively about the emergence of the working
class in New York City, as well about the early nation and Jacksonian
democracy. Professor Wilentz lectures frequently and has written some
two hundred articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces for publications such
as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New
York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the American
Scholar, the Nation, Le Monde, and Salon.
As a publicly committed and outspoken historian, he has long reflected
on the issues to be discussed here tonight. In his hands, we trust that
this forum will take place in a respectful and constructive manner.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Sean Wilentz.
[applause]
Sean Wilentz: Thank you,
Fernando. That was a very nice
introduction. We’re here tonight to talk about what really—for me being
somewhat older, with all my grey hair here—is a perennial. It’s an
issue that’s come up in my life in the academy—which is pretty
long—every five years or so. And it’s a question that has to be
readdressed, has to be rejoined all the time because it goes to the
heart of the mission of any university, particularly a university that
proclaims itself in the nation’s service and in the service of all
nations. It goes to two – really two missions or two sub-missions, if
you will. One is the traditional place of a university as an
independent center for free inquiry—no holds barred, everything open—in
the pursuit of knowledge. The other is the idea of a university—it’s
another traditional idea—has an important civic function as well, that
it has a place in the nation in which it is located and the world in
which it lives to provide—to provide its knowledge, to provide what it
finds out of that free inquiry for the betterment of all humankind.
Those are two very noble missions but sometimes –well, they’re
certainly in tension with each other. It’s not as smooth as one might
hope. Why? Because sometimes, the university, in its civic mission, is
perceived to be moving too closely to those in power. By the same
token, there’s the danger that the university will simply secede from
society, will have no civic role. This is a tension. It’s one that is
very delicate, one that is very touchy, one that brings out a lot of
emotion, but one that has to be continually readdressed. It’s a tension
that raises hackles all across the political spectrum, as Fernando
said. And I remember when I was coming up it was all about
universities’ complicity in the war in Vietnam and the ways in which
research in the universities was being used for that war. But it can
come from the other side of the political spectrum as well. I remember
professors in this university being demonstrated against because of
their ideas, because they offended a certain particular point of view.
I remember very vividly criticisms for bringing to campus a political
leader who was deemed to be immoral. That was the president of the
United States, Bill Clinton. Immoral from the left and immoral from the
right. The whole thing could be immoral in a lot of ways in a lot of
people’s eyes. But it was going to that tension, that central tension
and it’s with us again today. So, it is well worth readdressing, it is
well worth clarifying in the spirit of shedding light instead of
creating heat. And we are very fortunate to have the three speakers who
will be here tonight, all members of the greater Princeton community.
I’ll introduce them quickly. First, Anne-Marie Slaughter who is the
Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Speaking second will be the Class of 1943 University Professor of
Religion, Cornel West. And finally, another member of the community,
Mark Bruzonsky, 1973 graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School, editor and
publisher of Mid-east Realities and you can find him on the web at:
www.
Mark Bruzonsky: thank you.
MiddleEast.org
SW: MiddleEast.org. I’m
not only a
moderator; I’m a pretty good guy at plugs too. Now, the format is
loose. What we really want to do most of all is allow for questions and
answers, for back and forth. So rather than prescribe to these
distinguished speakers a particular set order, they may go as long or
short as they like, as pithy or as eloquent as they like. But then
after, I may ask a question of them all for some discussion, just to
get it going. See I’m a [inaudible] as well, those of you [inaudible]
Not enough laughter. And then we’ll open it up for discussion
afterwards. So let me, with great pleasure and pride, introduce my
friend the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, Anne-Marie Slaughter.
[applause]
Anne-Marie Slaughter: Thank
you. Thank you. And my
particular thanks to the students who organized this and to the
organizations who funded it. I’m very happy to understand that that
includes the Woodrow Wilson School. I say thank you completely
sincerely because I was delighted to know that this was going to be
debated. My view is that anything that elevates political debate—debate
of any kind, but particularly political debate—on the Princeton campus
is a good thing. And I know President Tilghman shares that view. When I
was an undergraduate oh-so-long-ago, we actually had a daily
demonstration in front of Nassau Hall to protest the University’s
investment in South Africa. So every day for a year a group of
students—rotating group of students—protested with signs marching
around Nassau Hall, which was a very good thing in my view. I regret to
say that recently when we tried to organize a similar protest against
the U.S. practice of Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading
practices, very few people showed up and that’s a bad thing. So, I’m
quite sincere when I say I think that this kind of an evening is
something that Princeton ought to be fostering and we need as much of
it as we can. So, I’m going first. I’m not going to talk for 15
minutes. I’m going to try to lay out the facts. I think it’s always
helpful to start with the facts. And then I will, I think, highlight
what I see to be the critical issue and then let my fellow panelists
tell me what they think the issue is and then of course I’ll save some
time for rebuttal. So, let’s start with the facts. Let’s talk first of
all about who came at the 75th Anniversary Kick-off and who was invited
because it’s important. We invited Secretary Rice. We invited her back
in May. We did not find out that she agreed to come until late in
August. We also invited Senator Biden to be the keynote speaker on the
second day. We did that because we like to have balance in political
representation, not because of any particular partisan views, but
because we think that way we will have more debate if we have, in this
case, a prominent, obviously THE leading foreign policy person for the
government and a very prominent Senator on the democratic side.
Shortly—I would say two weeks or a week into September and we had about
two weeks to go—Senator Biden said he couldn’t make it and so we
invited Senator Hart who is less prominent now but nevertheless a
strong critic of the administration’s views and we thought he would
give a very good speech on the Saturday. He said he could come
initially and a week in, for personal reasons, he had to cancel. We
were then ten days from the event and we had a keynote speaker on
Friday and no keynote speaker on Saturday. I wish I could say that this
is a rare situation for the Woodrow Wilson School, but when you’re
dealing with prominent personalities this often happens. At that point,
I wrote David Petraeus who was one of our alumni and essentially said
it is time to do your duty for the school. We need a keynote speaker on
Saturday and I—I don’t order Generals around but I—I indicated I
thought it was a command performance and that if he couldn’t come Ann
Corwin, our beloved Director of Admissions and of Career Services, he
would hear from her. He said he would come and he would give a lecture
on ten lessons he learned from his experience in Iraq which I thought
sounded like something we would very much want to hear. He, at that
point of course, was just back and he initially said in addition this
would be an off-the-record speech which I also thought would be very
good in terms of hearing from him, I hoped, about some of the realities
on the ground in Iraq. We then come up to the opening week. Secretary
Rice is coming. I might add that there was a major flap at the
beginning of that week because of a speech I had given at the New
America foundation two weeks earlier that was a very strong attack on
the administration’s policies in Abu Ghraib and also in
Guantánamo.
Nonetheless, the Secretary was on track and we had General Petraeus.
Monday of the week that we were good to go, Secretary Chertoff—whom we
had invited some point back in June, at that point thinking we needed
somebody on the domestic side as well the international side, we were
gonna have three—announced to us that he would be delighted to come.
Now I think you can understand why he announced to us that he’d be
delighted to come. This was now after Katrina and there was an
outstanding invitation at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and he
decided that this would just be a fine invitation to accept. It is not
my practice to say ‘Oh, I’m very sorry. No, we can’t have you now. We
did extend you the invitation but we no longer want you.’ So, we said
‘Secretary Chertoff, we’d be delighted.’ And of course we ended up with
Secretary Rice and Secretary Chertoff and David Petraeus. And the final
fact that I think is relevant here Secretary – uh, David Petraeus,
having planned to talk about ten lessons from Iraq—that week, if you
will recall, was the week that the readiness of Iraqi forces was
attacked by another General on Capital Hill—so General Petraeus decided
he would use the platform to give a rebuttal about the readiness of the
Iraqi forces, which was not the original plan and I don’t think I would
have encouraged him had I known that was what he planned to speak
about. Nevertheless, at that point he made it on the record and he gave
the speech he gave. There were of course questions in the audience, but
that leads me to my next set of facts concerning how we handled the
speakers. Secretary Rice initially wanted to spend an entire day and
eve—um, from noon until about 8 o’clock and she explicitly said that
she wanted to meet with students. She wanted to meet with students in a
completely open round-table environment. And then she would give a
speech and she would speak for twenty to thirty minutes and she would
take questions for at least thirty minutes, if not longer and indeed
her press spokesman emphasized to me that she genuinely enjoyed these
kinds of round-table events. She also insisted that no questions be
planted, that it would be absolutely unscripted. We would never have
planted them anyway, but this was—this came from her. She did spend an
hour before she came on stage with a group of thirty Princeton students
sitting in a room downstairs with, in good Princeton fashion, faculty
members around the edges of the room not speaking. Students got to ask
the questions. It was a very open discussion. She just took questions.
Shirley Tilghman and I sat there and she responded for an hour. I very
much wish that could have been broadcast, but the whole point was to
have a more intimate encounter. We then came up to the stage, however
on Wednesday, she called to say that she had to go back to Washington
and indeed she wasn’t even sure she was going to be able to make the
talk at the time we’d scheduled but she absolutely had to leave—I can’t
remember now whether it was 3:30 or quarter of 4. But what that left us
with was her talk and only 15 minutes for questions which was clearly
not enough time for questions. Nevertheless, I looked out, saw the
protestors standing in the back, saw this vast sea of faces, picked one
from the right, one from the center, one from the left, not politically
but geographically. Who knew? And we got the three questions we got,
which were a—they ranged from questions on Latin America to a question
on Karen Hughs’ trip, unfortunately entirely randomly. We did not get a
question about Iraq which I think many people in the audience wanted to
hear. Similarly, with General Petraeus there were questions. There was
not enough time for questions. There rarely is because people speak
longer than they want and all of these events are in very crowded time
periods. I did take the occasion to ask General Petraeus about Abu
Ghraib because I did not want to see him step down without at least
facing that question. There were other questions we could have asked
him. Same story with Michael Chertoff who spoke, had a tight time
schedule and we had the questions that were open. I think I then want
to turn to—so, so those are the facts of the kick-off weekend and I
quite understand why people looked at this and saw very little
political balance from their point of view, not only in those who
appeared to have been invited, given where we ended up. They were
invited but other people were invited as well. And also given the
topics of the conversations and the curtailing of the time for
questions. At the same time, we of course, last year when we invited
Giora Eiland and Anthony Zinni, we invited Hanan Ashrawi as another
keynote precisely because we wanted to hear from multiple different
points of view. This year we had invited Madeleine Albright as our
first request. We invited her for the kick-off and she decided to come
in April which is then why we asked Secretary Rice for September, so
she of course will be coming in April and it looks like, particularly
after the Alito hearings, that Senator Biden is very willing to come to
Princeton. I suggested to him that he had a little repairing to do of
his reputation in Princeton so he, we think, will be here also in
April. And, of course, on February 24th we have public service day
where there is a full roster of our alumni coming back, pretty much
equally distributed from Eliot Spitzer to Ben Bernacke and people like
Ted Sorensen from the Kennedy administration coming and speaking. We of
course—if you look at—over all whom we invite, it is a very broad
spectrum of people and we want it that way. But I assume that that is
not the key issue. I take the introduction at face value that of course
we’re a university and we should never try to invite people based on
what we think they’re going to say and we should never deliberately
espouse a particular point of view and we should foster debate at all
points. We are here to encourage active debate and inquiry. I assume we
all accept that. To me the debate is really about my statement when
Secretary Rice came, which was on the website, that she exemplified
Princeton’s highest values. I’m going to assume that that’s the issue
that people are most interested in and I think it is the issue that
is—is more worthy of debate than whether we should invite people from
both sides of the political spectrum, as we do. My statement, which I’m
quite happy to stand by, referred to Secretary Rice’s career as someone
who, in the first place, grew up in the segregated South and was
determined to go into government and to be someone who made policy
rather than being on the receiving end of policy. She didn’t decide to
go into anti-discrimination policy or anything else but she did travel
a very long journey from a time in which the idea that she could be
Secretary of State was absolutely unthinkable. It was unthinkable when
I was an undergraduate so it certainly was unthinkable for her growing
up. Equally important, she was a distinguished Professor and Provost of
Stanford but, like Woodrow Wilson himself, she took her expertise from
the academy and put it to work in the service of her government. And
that, to me, is exactly what ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service’ means.
It means that we take our privilege and our knowledge and our energy
and we put it to work in the service of the nation and the service of
all nations and she absolutely exemplifies that. Indeed, I would like
to see many, many more Princeton students following in her footsteps of
every conceivable political stripe. When she was asked why she went
into public service she said ‘well, if you want to have influence on
what your government does, you need to be a part of that government.’
Now, many people in this audience disagree strenuously with what she
has done in office or what her government has done. On my blog, in my
individual capacity, I’ve been known to disagree fairly strenuously
with things the government does, but that does not mean that as a
public servant—as the highest public servant in foreign policy—for a
school in public and international affairs, her career does not
exemplify the values across the political spectrum that we seek to
inculcate when we say ‘Princeton in the nation’s service and in the
service of all nations’.
[applause]
SW: And now another friend of
mine, Cornel West.
AMS: And mine.
Cornel West: Absolutely. Let me
first salute the students
who had the vision and determination to bring this together. I think
it’s a real sign of hope that we have critically-minded students to
ensure that we have these kinds of forums, serious discussion. I know
they also aligned with—it was peace organizations—I see we have sister
Irene and others of them, but Fernando and Bright Limm and all of them,
I salute you. I’m always not just delighted, but elevated when we have
these kinds of forums where we can go at each other intensely,
critically, mediated with respect and civility. I want to thank my dear
brother Sean Wilentz for serving as MC author of—I want to plug his
book his magisterial text ‘The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to
Lincoln’. I think that’s very important because it reminds us of a time
in which this grand institution had such deep complicity with vicious
legacies of moral supremacy and white supremacy. If it were not for the
kind of critical energy unleashed by people in the street, the best of
elites in government and citizens who were part of the Princeton
community, we wouldn’t have the colorful group that we have now as well
as men and women and so forth. It’s important to keep that in mind I
think brother Sean is absolutely right this is a perennial issue. Every
generation has to wrestle with the too cozy relations at times between
not just institutions of higher learning but elite institutions of
higher learning like Princeton that plays a disproportionate role in
shaping the elites of the nation. Whether they deserve to or not, they
do. Now I’m here because my dear sister and colleague Anne-Marie—I
wasn’t there to hear your remarks. I’m sure I would have been outside
protesting, but I was outside of the country at the time. But that’s
fine too. That’s part of the Princeton tradition too. And brother Mark,
I look forward to our conversation. I’m here because I am fundamentally
committed to a Socratic Princeton, intellectual integrity, intellectual
civility but also intellectual maturity. And it means then that
institutions and ourselves will forever fail because the standards are
such that when we’re honest, when we talk about our will to truth are
we willing to be truthful about Princeton’s will to truth. What does it
hide? What does it conceal? When I look at the spectrum of debate, not
just Woodrow Wilson, I’m concerned about the University across the
board. Every figure that comes to this institution must be subject to
sustained Socratic questioning and scrutiny. I mean when I used to
invite my dear brother Edward Said. First thing we’d say is ‘at least
an hour for dialogue. At least.’ Edward said ‘I can’t wait’. He’s a
Princeton man: Class of 1957, the best of Princeton in so many ways,
Socratic to the core. So I was disturbed, for example, when I was in
California the other day and I saw sister Hillary Clinton. I said
‘Where’s the question and answer? Let’s go at the sister. She’s at
Princeton. Anybody who comes to Princeton better be ready for some
serious Socratic scrutiny. That’s what we stand for.’ If Chomsky were
to be here, let’s go at brother Noam. And it’s very important to keep
in mind that when I hear you say two sides, I get a little leery here
cause there’s more than two sides. See, Biden is still too spineless
for me.
[applause]
CW: But I mean that’s just an
orientation. I want him
here. Bring him here. Scrutiny. Let’s hear Pat Buchanan’s critique of
American imperialism. And Chalmer Johnson’s critique of American
empire. Let’s hear Neil Ferguson’s defense of the empire. That’s what
here for. But we also know that once the words are in the air, there’s
also action on the ground in terms of the cross-fertilization of elites
and how they’re formed and that easy road between Princeton and
Washington. And that’s part and parcel. If we were [inaudible] we’d
acknowledge that. Let’s just tell the truth about ourselves. We
disproportionately shape the elite agenda. At the moment it is deeply
conservative. It need not always be conservative. It is today. And
therefore when we bring people in, we want to assure especially those
critically-minded Socratic students, you are going to have a voice to
go at these conservative elites.
Audience member: Amen, brother!
CW: ….no matter what. Liberal
elites [inaudible] I would
like to see more thoroughly leftist folk who are in the wilderness but
whose voices would become more relevant as empire becomes more
crisis-ridden. And I would like to see more right-wing reactionary
folk. Even even more right than the republican party. Because sometimes
the anti-modern, reactionary folk have some truths to tell. Even though
usually I think they’re wrong. But that’s alright.
[laughter]
CW: But it’s the broadening and
the deepening of the
dialogue. We are about Paideia here in the Greek sense, right? The
formation of attention. That shift from the frivolous to the serious.
But a shift from the comfortable to the uncomfortable. Anytime we leave
a forum, like this forum here, if we leave comfortable, if we leave
without being unsettled and unnerved, we’re not being true to the
Socratic Princeton that I’m committed to. And so I do want to
congratulate those that brought us together and I look forward to a
robust and uninhibited dialogue not just about remarks, I think part of
it, but also the larger issue brother Sean talked about earlier and the
various ways in which we can empower and ennoble each other to be more
Socratic, more honest, more courageous and, in the end, more truthful
because the truth is always painful in the Socratic tradition. And
there are some painful truths that need to be disclosed about Princeton
and its relation to Power.
[applause]
SW: and Mark Bruzonsky.
Mark Bruzonsky: Good Evening.
Nearly all of you are going
to remain here at Princeton in the days to come. But though I have
interesting memories of Princeton I will be here with you only for a
few hours tonight before going back to imperial Washington tomorrow. So
I ask you in the few moments we have together to please allow me to
give you my perspective in a clear and admittedly pointed way. In a
sense I’ll also be summarizing what I have learned in about 200 trips
abroad since my own student days. I realize many of you may not agree
with or even accept what I have concluded. But I thank you in advance
for the opportunity to be here tonight to join these two distinguished
persons who play such important roles at this exceptional university
and in our country. Though what happened a few years ago on 9/11 was
certainly not the start of the conflict that now dominates all of our
lives, the impact it has had on our society, including events here at
Princeton, is overreaching. I say it was not the start because one can
trace what happened on 9/11 back to many other critical historical
events from which it was spawned. And since he was the President of
this University before he came to Washington as President of the
country I’ll start by recalling the famous Paris ‘Peace Conference’ of
Woodrow Wilson’s time. Though called a ‘Peace Conference’ the result
was anything but. Back then the victorious Western powers essentially
divided the defeated Ottoman Empire into many artificial nation-states
and sheikdoms that still remain today. Then the legitimizing theme was
‘self-determination’ which, of course, was not really to be of course,
much as today the ad-nauseum but disingenuous themes are ‘democracy’
and ‘freedom.’ It’s crucial to remember that at the time the people of
what we Westerners named the Middle East had been promised Independence
as an Arab Nation only to find themselves sold out by the secret
British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement and then confined in
neo-colonialism termed Mandates and legitimized by Wilson’s own League
of Nations. That 1918 ‘Peace Conference' turned out to be ‘The Peace To
End All Peace' the subtitle in fact of Professor David Fromkin’s
remarkable book about that crucial period which is the precursor to our
own. Or in view of current issues today we could skip forward and start
with the largely democratic and secular attempt to reform Iran in 1953,
one which the CIA then undid putting the Shah back on the throne until
25 years later a traumatized country threw him out. We, the United
States, then took the Shah in, Iranian students then responded by
sacking the U.S. Embassy and taking hostages, and in a sense their
revolution then led to our Reagan Revolution and to today’s Iran. Or
we could start with the region-shaking ‘67 War, or for that matter the
U.S.-sponsored birth of Israel twenty years earlier, or with Jimmy
Carter’s Peace Conference of ‘78, which then became another Peace to
End All Peace, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Lebanese Civil
War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, the invasion/occupation of
Lebanon which midwifed Hezbollah, the anti-occupation Intifada which
midwifed Hamas and which led to the era of suicide bombers, which we’re
in now, all precursors to 9/11 and what has followed since. The
crucial point is 9/11 didn’t come out of the blue and did have causes
and, for many, reasons and even justifications -- as much as American
politicians and commentators refuse to discuss this backdrop and how
the stage was set. Huge numbers of people, in total millions of Arabs
and Muslims, had already been maimed and killed in this ongoing
convoluted conflict laced with superpower proxy wars, Zionist and
Muslim ideologies, corrupt repressive Arab ‘client regimes' and the
never-ending Israeli/US occupation of the Palestinians. And let’s be
clear about this -- among the main reasons most American politicians
and commentators don’t talk about any of this and don’t connect the
vital dots that could lead to both understanding and conflict
resolution is because most of those who are allowed center stage are
either in the pay of special interest groups or have little experience
with the peoples of the region and little serious knowledge of the
culture and history about which they are so incessantly chattering. One
of your own current History Professors, one whom I just happened to
grow up with in Duluth, Minnesota a long time ago, has this to say in
the interview that accompanies his bio information on the Princeton
website: "There are rules of the game in every society. We have to get
inside a foreign culture and understand internally how it works. In
1940 we were confronting what we thought was fanatical emperor worship
from the Japanese. They seemed to have no contact with Western
civilization; they were inscrutable, incomprehensible. Today we’re
describing our current enemy, Islamic fundamentalism, in much the same
way. Whether it’s good or bad, there are ways that Islamic
fundamentalists see the world. To call them terrorists and fanatics is
simply to say they’re different from us and we don’t understand them.
But clearly we’ve got to delve much more deeply. And so in the few
remaining moments and I do have these prepared remarks because I
thought this conference was so important that I should think through
what I would have the one opportunity to say with you. So for the few
remaining moments, let’s try to delve much more deeply with you and to
summarize my perspective about what has happened here at Princeton that
has led to this forum in the afterglow of 9/11. Some may still think
of this as just a speakers controversy here at Princeton, one which the
recent 75th Wilson School anniversary highlighted. But actually it is
far more than that. What has happened here at Princeton I believe is in
the end the result of the serious and growing financial, political and
social pressures educational institutions now face in our country --
pressures which in turn largely determine what kind of people are put
in positions of authority and what kinds of decisions they are
encouraged if not forced by circumstances to make. What has happened
here at Princeton, all the more so since 9/11 it seems to me, is not by
accident but rather by design. Beyond the general pressures facing all
major universities you have today a Woodrow Wilson School fearful of
losing a major part of its endowment and as a result courting power and
money more than ever. For those of you who haven’t see the frontpage
Wallstreet journal article today, that’s just a fortuitous circumstance
that happened. It had nothing to do with this forum. And yes, in my
view—
AMS: You did that beforehand.
MB: I
thought maybe the students were more powerful than I realized, but. In
my view, and with all respect to Dean Slaughter for the positive things
she may have done here of which I may not be aware, Woody Wilson and
Princeton are now playing big time the big money and big power game,
and it all comes at the expense of the rigorously independent
intellectual and educational pursuits that should be foremost in mind
but are not. Furthermore the person most responsible for choosing
speakers, handing out awards, and selecting faculty in the past few
years here at Princeton and at the Woodrow Wilson School appears to me
to be using the University as a stepping stone to future personal and
political power in Washington should that opportunity strike. Others
have done so. Ones who come to mind -- Paul Wolfowitz from SAIS and of
course Condi Rice from Stanford come first to mind. The major problem
though is that when universities, the very places that are supposed to
reflect independence of thought and analysis and true expertise --
become so dependent on corporate, government, and lobby-connected
largess then one of the major centers of honest education and knowledge
in our society becomes severely compromised. That, in short, is what I
think has happened here at Princeton and most of all at the Wilson
School. This situation cannot be remedied by a single forum or by
inviting an occasional “dissident” intellectual like Noam Chomsky to
give a talk. If you really want to remedy this situation there are ways
you can, but very frankly I am sure the powers that be will not let
this really come about. You could for instance establish, and
separately fund, a special maybe student-run program specifically
designed to bring the very best independent academics, social critics,
and expert journalists to Princeton from around the world. And you
could and should make a point of bringing such people together at the
same time as those who hold power. Then, you will have your Socratic
dialogue. Then you will have the worldclass people at a worldclass
institution that can truly educate and discuss and debate the real
issues of our time. But I stress the word ‘independent' for the notion
that the span of major guests should range from senior government
officials to top personalities in the other mirror party competing to
be senior government officials is really quite ludicrous. Such a notion
plays well in corrupted and lobby-infested Washington; but it shouldn’t
be allowed at a world-class university especially with regard to major
international issues. Because when it is allowed not only are all of
you students short-changed at a very special and formative time in your
lives, but all of us as a society are dangerously short-changed for our
collective future. For we don’t need world-class universities to invite
the very same power and money speakers and faculty that the
government-and-lobby think-tanks and political departments invite.
There’s already far too much of that. We do need universities to invite
speakers and to engage faculty based on their demonstrated serious
knowledge, expertise, independence, and critical thinking. It used to
be much more that way. It doesn’t seem it is that way any longer,
certainly not here at Princeton from what I’ve experienced not only at
the 75th which I attended but at the series of seminars that has been
held in Washington for the past year. I also stress ‘from around the
world’, rather than nearly always turning to those sponsored by or
accepted by the powers that be in our country. For to really understand
what is happening in our world you have to both hear from and engage
others who see things very differently and who are outside your own
blinders and restraints, people who are not subjected to or controlled
by the pressures for political correctness and advancement that now so
dominate our own society. Just from my own contacts I can quickly think
of people who could have brilliantly engaged and educated all in
attendance at the 75th celebration. You may not know some of these
personalities, which is just part of the problem, but I assure you they
are all very much valued, respected and in great demand throughout the
world, even if not here at Princeton: Robert Fisk, Harold Pinter,
Mohammed Heikal, Arundhati Roy, Mohammed Mahathir, Amira Hass, Dan
Almagor, Haider Abdul Shafi, John Pilger, Boutros Ghali. The list could
go on. Indeed, for the 75th anniversary where everyone was force-fed a
nonstop diet of self-serving top government officials without even one
single major independent academic or journalist or political analyst,
any of these persons I’ve just mentioned would have made an immensely
needed contribution and in fact changed the proceedings. For there is a
reason our current Secretary of State even now says she was so
surprised by the Hamas electoral victory a few days ago,
[laughter]
MB: right—not to mention her
insistence before Congress
that no one had imagined that anyone would use airplanes as they did on
9/11. The reality is quite otherwise in fact. Many independent experts
knew, predicted, and explained what was to come. She just didn’t talk
to thema nd didn’t call on them. And when it comes to 9/11 no less a
flag-waver than Tom Clancy had written a novel that opens with an
airplane diving into the Capitol during a State of the Union address.
So just what kind of a self-isolating, apologist, and unaware world is
Ms. Rice, even now, living in? And there is a reason why Rice’s
predecessor, also recently honored here at Princeton even after he
perpetrated such a great historic hoax on us all, the third
anniversary of which was just two days ago. And by the way this term
hoax is not mine: "I participated in a hoax on the American people, the
international community and the United Nations Security Council."
That’s what Colin Powell’s own Chief of Staff at the State Department
finally confessed in public just last Friday in fact. The result of
this and many other cruel hoaxes coming from our government is the
dangerous polarization, dumbing down, militarization, and in some very
troubling ways the neo-fascist developments in our own society. This on
top of the disastrous Iraqi invasion/occupation which has caused so
much death and suffering, now cost nearly half a trillion dollars,
squandered so much American credibility, created so much more hatred
around the world, and badly weakened and tarnished our military forces
as well once again. All of these issues should be seriously, vigorously
and continually discussed, debated, dissected and analyzed at this
world-class center of higher education. But instead—whatever the
excuses, and frankly, these are not excuses that I find very credible.
This reminds me of many forums in Washington where many of us just sit
in the audience scratching our heads at the things we’re asked to
believe about why things happened in the way we’re told they happened
and then we find out when we have more information that’s not quite the
way it really was. So instead, we’re been subjected to a parade of
Cabinet Secretaries, Ambassadors and Generals, one after the other, all
part of the same team, and all offered nearly a free ride. This is not
in my view in ‘the nation’s service’ it is in the government’s service.
This is surely not ‘in the service of all nations’-- it is a very
limiting and nationalistic approach which just further cuts off
Princetonians from our world as it really is. And this parade of the
powerful, financed by the special interests, simply does not reflect
the real world we all must live in and in which our country must now
desperately find its way anew before it is too late.
[prolonged applause]
SW: It’s now getting on to
8:30. I would love to join in the debate. Right now. But I’m the
moderator.
CW: Jump in, Sean. Jump in.
Jump in, brother. I’ll moderate.
SW: We’ll need a traffic cop.
[laughter]
SW: But that’s Princeton you
see. I certainly want to
allow, give—give Dean Slaughter a chance to—to—to reply and—and say a
few words. And then invite my other panelists to speak as well. Try—go
on for as long as you want. But I will intervene in order to have
enough chance to, you know, give the audience a chance to ask
questions.
AMS: and you’ll moderate.
SW: I’ll be very moderate.
AMS: So, Mark let me start with
where I agree with you.
That seems like a better place to start. I don’t think I—I could not
agree more with your final statement that Princeton—and not just
Princeton—the United States needs desperately to engage with the
reality of the world, the world as it is and the world as it sees the
United States. There is no single more important thing we could teach
our students than to experience this country as others see us and to be
able to actually understand that perspective, not as anti-American or
pro-American but simply billions of lives lived in other places with
other experiences and if we are serious about providing the best
possible education, that is essential. So I completely agree with you
there and I also agree think you’re quite right that we do not have
enough foreign speakers. I can tell you that I have begged Kofi Annan
to come since my first year. Every year at the colloquium we invite
Kofi Annan.
MB: He wasn’t on my list.
AMS: Fair enough. Boutros
Boutros Ghali I frankly don’t
think would attract anything like the crowd and I think Kofi Annan
really does—ought to be—
MB: Yeah, but Boutros has
something to say.
AMS: We can debate it, but my
point is.
MB: We know what Kofi has to
say.
AMS: Fine. My point is I’m
granting your point so if you
want to accept that I’m granting your point rather than arguing. I’m
agreeing with you.
MB: Yes, but by inviting the
wrong person.
AMS: Fine. I would agree with
you that we should’ve
invited most of the people on the list. I think—I absolutely agree that
it is—we ought to be—have more people from other countries in
Princeton. We do what we can. We don’t do enough. So, I would agree on
that point. The want-to-be-in-Washington point I’m just gonna dismiss
because I wouldn’t be inviting these people if that’s what I was trying
to do. It’s the wrong party. I would be inviting—I should have been
inviting all the democratic presidential candidates except for the fact
that I’m not about to go to Washington. I have two small sons and I am
very, very happy here in Princeton. But if I were, it wouldn’t be this
crowd, so we’re just gonna dismiss that because—
MB: Is that a Sherman-esque
statement? You definitely will not go to Washington?
AMS: No, it’s a statement that
I’m certainly not going to Washington in Condi Rice’s administration.
It’s impossible.
MB: I agree with you. You’re
not going in Condi’s administration.
[laughter]
MB: I think you might be going
in some future administrations.
AMS: And if so, why would I
invite the people I’m
inviting? This is a level of debate that I—I think that’s beneath you,
but it’s certainly beneath me. So…
[applause]
AMS: There is a very important
issue here that you raised
and that Cornel raised that I think we should engage, which is I think
we share our ideal. And I’m a former law professor so Socratic is
absolutely. My ideal would be to have any of these people—right, left,
center, whatever—come to Princeton and get grilled.
CW: Absolutely.
AMS: Absolutely. You and I—I
think it would be, it would
be not only extraordinary for—for Princeton, it would be extraordinary
for the country and we would both agree that what passes for debate in
Washington is not real debate. So, if that’s a view of the best, then
the real question is whether second best is worse than nothing. Because
if you accept that some of these people will come and take questions.
Condi Rice wanted to take questions but for a very short period of
time. Others wont’ take questions at all. Now at that point, should we
say—which is a legitimate position—to say ‘Sorry. You want to come to
Princeton. You’ve got to be challenged. Otherwise, we don’t want you.’
[applause]
AMS: That’s certainly a
reasonable position . So, I think
that is a reasonable position and we could take it. Here’s the argument
on the other side: a great deal of the reason that we don’t have actual
debate, at least in Washington and frankly I think in the country as a
whole, is that we are so polarized that we are convinced we already
know what the other side is going to say, what they’re like. They have
horns, depending on which side that you’re on—the right, the left, the
right and the left. You assume you know who they are, what they’re
gonna say and there’s no reason to talk to them because you already
know. Now, I started teaching at the University of Chicago, which many
people thought that way about the left and then I moved to Harvard and
many people thought that way about the right. In both cases, my
experience was actually being exposed to the person in question, seeing
them as a human being, judging not through the media or through the
spin but just encountering that person was a valuable thing that you
could, as many people said to me about Condi Rice. They walked out
absolutely opposed to what she said, but with a different view of who
she was in saying it. Many people found they believed that she was
sincere even if they thought she was deeply deluded.
[laughter]
AMS: So, there’s the issue. Is
it better to hear from
these people, to at least be able to evaluate them on your own terms
and maybe to have your mind changed. Much better to question and grill.
But even just hearing them will give you a sense of who these people
are and made them trigger debates that wouldn’t have otherwise have on
campus. Is that better as a second-best than just saying what Sean
said, ‘we’re gonna cut ourselves off. We’re a school of public and
international affairs, but we don’t like this government and we don’t
like these international affairs, so we’re just gonna seal ourselves
off until such time as we get the kind of leaders we want who will come
and engage with us as we want.’ And I think that is a legitimate
subject for debate.
[applause]
CW: I feel like I’m right in
the middle of this, you know?
[laughter]
CW: For me, [inaudible] Plato’s
Apology. Socrates says
parasia is a cause of unpopularity. Bold speech. Frank speech. Candid
speech. Free speech that goes against the grain and inside
unarticulated assumptions and tacit presuppositions. So it is
suspicious of perspectives across the board, you see. That’s Socratic
in the deep sense. That’s why you don’t wanna think about right and
left. Those categories are just so misleading. Let’s leave that to Rush
and O’Reilly and so forth and so on. Of course, there are those of us
who are unabashedly leftist in the sense that we are deeply suspicious
of elites and hierarchies who don’t want to be answerable to the demos,
who don’t want to be accountable to ordinary people, who don’t want to
be responsible to the least of [inaudible]. I’m evoking the
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. That’s part of my tradition – Hebrew
scripture and the New Testament. But the Socratic mission of a
university is not identical with my own project. I’m just one voice in
that larger university that has a commitment to a Socratic end and aim.
To ensure that we have a wholesale scrutiny and discussion. That’s why
I’m a bit – I understand, I think it’s a very plausible and reasonable
position to say “it’s better to hear them and scrutinize them as
opposed to not hearing them at all,” I understand that. But I think we
need to be hardcore about scrutiny, you see. This is the kind of place
where we have dialogue and debate and contestation. If you want to try
out you propaganda? You want your spin lines? Go to talk radio.
[applause]
CW: Go to talk radio. Here we
have debate. One of the few
spaces left in such a market-driven, celebrity-obsessed culture where
so much of the wealth is at the top and ordinary folk trying to gain
some access to a perspective that makes sense, that speaks to their
situation. Universities and colleges have to be one of the spaces left
where that kind of discussion takes place. The kind of thing we heard
from brother Mark. It was bold speech. It was frank speech. We
appreciated that.
[applause]
CW: And the response from
sister Anne-Marie. It was
honest, heartfelt. And we just beginning to take off on this dialogue
this evening.
MB: Questions. Why don’t we get
to it.
SW: Ok, Good. There are
microphones at either end. Don’t
all go over there at once. Respect your elders. We’re slower than you
guys. Ok? There are microphones at either end.
CW: We got some over here too.
SW: I mean, don’t—don’t be shy
on that end. Ok? Where shall we go? We usually go back and forth. No?
Audience member: Why
[inaudible] starting on the right?
[laughter]
SW: not from where I’m standing
you’re not. From where
I’m standing, you’re far left. See how everything’s relative? Why don’t
we start here and then go back and forth.
Question: Thank you all. This
is for Dean Slaughter
basically. You began with some facts, so if I could just preface this
with some of—the way I perceive the facts and, you know, in the
Socratic spirit, help you understand why this might seem differently to
some people. So, one fact I think you overlooked is that, taking for
example, the 75th anniversary celebration, not a single keynote speaker
was unaffiliated with government or military. Not one. There was not a
single independent journalist. There was not a single political
commentator. In a word, there was no-one who might represent the point
of view that exists outside of both democratic and republican military
and government officials. That happens to include, incidentally,
probably 80% of the world, not to mention a significant part of this
country. The General Petraeus talk, for instance. Now assuming - giving
you the benefit of the doubt that you sincerely believe, in your own
words, that you believe these individuals should be “absolutely
grilled” - take say, General Petraeus. Here’s someone who participated
actively, as commander of the 101st airborne in Iraq, in the demolition
of Fallujah - reducing it to rubble, driving out 300,000 people from
their homes (only about 9,000 of them came back in the end - to
rubble), occupying Fallujah General Hospital in direct contradiction to
the Geneva Conventions, using illegal weapons according to an
American-appointed Iraqi health official - an American-appointed Iraqi
health official - and who is responsible, in large part, for the deaths
of several thousand civilians in Fallujah. Now, if we have a Dean who
is committed to “absolutely grilling” someone like that, what would you
expect to get? Well, the answer to that I’ll leave to the audience, but
what we did get is someone who provided introductory remarks by making
a joke about how amused you were that he responded to an email from you
in the middle of the battle of Fallujah. It’s on webcast. Everyone can
see it. Now, when I hear something like that, I’m inclined not to
believe you that you are committed to absolutely, you know, “grilling”
these people. My question…. I’m sorry for taking so long. I would
like—I would feel much at ease if you, just following up on the line
that Mr. Bruzonsky brought up, without questioning anyone’s
motivations, I would feel much more comfortable if I got from you
tonight in front of everybody, a promise that you are not—that you do
not have ambitions in Washington in the next ten or so years.
[booing/applause]
Question: As ridiculous as it
might be, I would feel much more comfortable.
SW: Can I—Can I—Can I
interrupt. As moderator I don’t think that’s a fair question and I
wouldn’t ask you to answer it.
[applause]
AMS: Thank you. This is not
about me, but I do think your
point about the Fallujah one is a very serious one because quite
frankly I was very disturbed and deeply disturbed about what I see as
the failure to actually prosecute fully Abu Ghraib and the very fact
that we were there. That’s the question I asked. It is a question I
feel very strongly about. It is obviously not the only question one
could’ve asked him. And absolutely, one could’ve asked him about the
battle of Fallujah. And from that point of view, yes I was introducing
him. Part of your job is to introduce people and to try to make things
a little light, if possible. And I was amazed that he answered at 4:30
in the battle of Fallujah, but I think listening to you and thinking
about that, that was—it was a missed opportunity but, more importantly,
it was making light of something that is not to be made light of. I
quite agree with that.
Question: Yes, Mr. Bruzonsky I
was wondering do you
have any further—any other cases and points whatsoever to prove that
there is open politicization or lobbying or selling out within the
administration of this university and the academic community here.
Because I may not have been here long enough, I’m only a freshman, but
in the past several months—this is getting away from the 75th
anniversary—I’ve heard Seymour Hersh speak here, asked him a question
personally after his lecture, he opened up for plenty of questions and
General William T. Olden former NSA director, if you want somebody
who’s against the policies that this country’s pursuing, my god he said
we should practically arm Iran. And the professor who introduced him
before his lecture and took him out to dinner that very night was a
professor who Dean Slaughter, I believe, called upon to ask the final
question to Condoleeza Rice. Again, maybe I’m missing it, the carpet is
over my eyes but I’m not detecting again what’s the most vital thing
this flyer says we’re here to discuss, whether there’s politicization
inside of this university or whether they’re just going for the second
best. As follow up to that, would you accept what Dean Slaughter is
saying that we should accept maybe whatever we can get from these
people. If they want to polemicize just let them arrive here.
[applause]
MB: The second question—again
you might not like the answers I give but then again I’ll be leaving
here tomorrow
[laughter]
MB: No, I don’t accept what
Dean Slaughter said. She sets
up her own strawmen and then she blows them over, but they weren’t the
points that I made. The issue isn’t second best. What we got was fourth
or fifth best. And we could have had something far, far better. And we
should’ve had something far, far better. It wasn’t just a missed
opportunity. It was a very, I believe, carefully structured event. I
believe what I told you already in my remarks. It’s interesting that
the Dean, for some reason, doesn’t want to answer a simple question
about whether or not she’s using this university as a stepping stone as
some of us believe. That’s her prerogative not to answer it. The
politicization of the university—you ask for proof. Proof is very hard
to come by. That’s why we have courts. We have discovery processes.
There’s not much transparency at this university. We don’t know what
the speaker fees are. We don’t know a great deal about what’s going on
here, but something has come to my attention which I find highly
questionable and so I’ll answer your question with what’s come to my
attention. You have, at this university now, at the Wilson school, a
former ambassador who will be in residence for 5 years to discuss
middle east events and he’s already beginning to arrange middle east
events, literally in the next few weeks. I don’t know how much money
was given to the university. The Dean would know that. I do know who
gave the large sum of money. In fact, the ambassador Kurtzer’s
professorship is named after the person. The person is extremely
wealthy and has a very long history in pro-Israeli, anti-Arab causes. A
great deal of money apparently has been given to the university.
Ambassador Kurtzer who himself is one of the—when I went to Washington
I was a kid. I represented the world Jewish congress. I’ve been inside
this loop, so I know what’s going on. Dean Kurtzer is essentially one
of the people brought in during the Clinton administration,. They were
given appointments dealing with the middle east peace process. It was
largely a payoff by Clinton for those who had helped him during his
campaign. I could give you story after story about this that might
convince you there’s something to this. Let’s just say the president of
the Israeli lobby was forced to resign during Clinton’s first campaign
after his was overheard bragging that he had 12 operatives in the
little rock headquarters of bill Clinton and when Clinton became
president he was gonna be their man. Sure enough, he quickly appointed
many of the people who were working for the near east institute which
had been set up by APAC, the official Israeli lobby. And I could go on
and on about this, but nevertheless the point that you’re asking. It’s
not just does Sey Hersh come and speak here for a few minutes one day.
Or does Noam Chomsky come, as I said. you will get at a university like
this a sprinkle of this and a sprinkle of that. What you won’t get is
the consistency that’s needed. What you won’t get is the right kind of
programming. What you won’t get is the right kind of major events and
keynote speakers. And in the case of middle east you’re now going to be
subjected to Dean Kurtzer’s way of arranging things and he’s already
put two programs on the agenda. The first person that he’s helped
invite is coming I think in a couple of weeks, Dennis Ross. Dennis Ross
was also an ambassador. First he worked for the Israeli Jewish lobby.
Then he worked for the government. Then, within weeks of working for
the government, he went right back to working for the Israeli lobby
where he’s now one of the central figures in Washington. Then Dean
Kurtzer’s coming to Washington and he’s arranged an affair about what’s
coming next in the middle east and about the Hamas electoral victory
and who’s on the podium? The ambassador of Israel, his friend, the
ambassador of Jordon, his friend, and the discredited ambassador of the
Palestinians, but not the Palestinians who have been elected by their
people. But rather the VIP Palestinians whom the Americans and Israelis
have been paying for all these years. Even if they were not his friends
and even if the forum were broader than it is, why in the world do we
need Princeton university to come to Washington to arrange to hear the
same old tired speakers all of whom are friends of each other and all
of whom have nothing new to say and all of whom have led us into this
mess. That’s not what we need Princeton for. That’s happening in
Washington every day from the government sponsored think-tanks and from
the lobbying think-tanks. We need a university to offer us something
serious, independent, new and real. And that’s not what we’re getting
from Princeton.
[applause]
SW: We have 45 minutes and a
lot of people who want to
ask questions and I just ask everyone please, starting now, to keep
your questions pointed. To ask only the question. We can talk about
this—we’re going to be talking about all of this for a long time to
come. [but] In the interest of democracy to give everybody a chance,
I’m gonna ask both the questioners and the speakers to keep their
remarks succinct.
Question: Thank you and thank
you to the speakers. I
have a question for Dean Slaughter. I’m interested in your opinion. I
feel like not so much the circumstances of who is to blame, but the
opinion was most important to me and I feel the answer, if you’ll allow
me to be a little bit rejectionist, of why you personally support
Condoleeza Rice was ‘well, Princeton thinks it’s great that blacks can
make it too’. Or ‘Princeton thinks it’s great that women can make it
too’.
AMS: We do.
Question: But that’s not the
issue and that’s not the
point. I would—my question is to what degree is that not absolutely
condescending when the thing that’s at issue, the thing that’s
absolutely at the heart of the issue of saying ‘we support
representative administrative X’ is what they’re doing within the
government, is what their policies are, is what—what kind of action
they’re taking. There would not be a point to which Princeton would
publish on their webpage ‘we support bill Clinton because he got great
grades at Harvard.’ That doesn’t happen for white men. This is an
attitude towards women. Where we can be—we can be in support of her—in
support of her because she’s [needed], or in support of her because she
dresses great, but I really think that condescends, to a large degree
to what the issue is and what everyone reading a statement of support
is going to think, ‘This is about issues. This is about opinions. This
is about attitudes.’ And I didn’t get the feeling that I understood
what your—besides, what I felt like, more than a sarcastic remark out
of the side of the mouth about policy. That policy would be central.
That policy would be the thing that in fact Princeton would be asked to
make support or non-support of.
AMS: Let me see if I can do
this succinctly. I took, as
my premise, that we all accept that inviting someone does not mean
endorsing their policy. That has to be true in a university. Otherwise
we could not have freedom of inquiry, freedom of debate. We must be
able to invite anyone we like without thereby being assumed to endorse
that person’s policy. So, whether we invite Condoleeza Rice or whether
we invite Madeleine Albright on the other side or whether we invite
sharp critics of the administration like Richard Clarke who stood up
and denounced everything this administration has done on 9-11, does not
have—is not a statement about whether we endorse their policies. I’m
starting with that. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t debate those
policies and we shouldn’t debate those policies in every place we can,
preferably with her. I would’ve been delighted if somebody had asked a
sharp question about Iraq. No one did and I was calling as best as I
could. The question is what did I mean when I said she exemplifies our
highest values. I clearly didn’t mean, we endorse her policies. So what
did I mean? And what I said was ‘we are a university and particularly
we are a school that believes that you actually have an obligation to
put whatever skills or talents you have to work in the service of the
nation and of the world and from that point of view, she has done that
and she has done that and on the way—along the way, she’s traveled a
particularly long road which I find simply indicates her determination
to do this. I think, if more of us believed that we ought to be in
government whether it’s running for office or being in office , then
government might reflect who we are more.
[applause]
Question: I think that
unfortunately the personal attacks
you were making on Dean Slaughter sort of covered a more important
point. I mean personally I wouldn’t mind if Dean Slaughter ended up in
Washington. I’ve read her blog. I think that would be kind of nice. But
think you missed a major problem with—when she mentioned Kofi Annan.
The explanation she gave was that Kofi Annan will fill a room. The
people that you mentioned will not. and I study the middle east and I
didn’t recognize some of the names on your list and that is a problem
to me. And I think that a larger problem when just us power-brokering.
I mean of course we’re power-brokering. We’re partly an economic
institution, but we prestige-broker, right? I mean, we bring in
speakers that all of us are gonna know, that we’re all gonna have heard
of. It’s the same problem that the media has, you know? It’s not just
that the media is corrupt. It’s that they want to, you know, they want
their audience to recognize what they’re talking about and so I guess
my question is what we think that the university can do to do a better
job of bringing students to understand—to come to lectures of people
that they don’t recognize and understand that those are important, not
just bring in people that we’ll all get really excited about and be
like ‘Yay, Princeton’s so prestigious because, you know, Kofi Annan
will come and speak here’.
MB: In a sense, you’ve made the
point I was trying to
make. Apparently I didn’t make it too well. If you’re studying the
middle east in the united states in 2006 and you don’t know who the
majority of the people on the list I gave you are, your university is
mis-serving you badly, mis-serving our country horribly—
[applause]
MB: [inaudible]
AMS: I’m not gonna debate the
question about whether one
should get very recognizable names for very big events. I think for a
big event you absolutely want someone of prominence, whether they will
fill a name. But I absolutely think we bring lots of people here that
people don’t—would not recognize—
SW: Never heard of [laughing]
AMS: Never heard. I mean if I
just went through the list.
[laughter/applause]
AMS: I won’t in the interest of
time, but I have a three
page list of all the people who have come here this fall and half of
them you would have never have heard of and the other half you might
vaguely have heard of. But they of course—they include the current
ambassador from Iran, right? And a foreign minister from Pakistan who
came—they may not attract the same kinds of crowds but they attract a
crowd, a small crowd, who’s very committed and very interested. Those
events are in the bowls downstairs. The bigger name people are in the
big bowls and the biggest name people come when we have alumni here as
well as—as well as our students of the community. But I take the force
of the point.
CW: I think it’s very important
not to downplay the
role of quality and challenge but every once in a while you’re gonna
get—you’re gonna find people who are of high quality and a major
challenge and you do know them.
[laughter]
CW: [inaudible] many times when
you don’t know them at
all, but they’re of high quality and a challenge to the students, to
unsettle the students. You don’t know them at all. They need to be
here. I mean that’s one of the reasons why I am highly suspicious of
public bureaucrats and government bureaucrats because it’s not a
cultural Socratic engagement—
AMS: Can I just—
CW: They’re smart. They’re
brilliant. They’re rarely
Socratic because they’re in a cultural conformity and I’m into
mal-adjustment and non-conformity. That’s Socratic.
AMS: I agree.
CW: That’s one of the reasons
why I’m suspicious. I’m not against them. They can prove themselves.
[laughter]
CW: Some camels get through the
eye of needles.
AMS: We’ve spent—We’ve spent
two decades—three decades in
this country running against government and now I would suggest to you
that’s a large part of why we’re in the fix we’re in. Even what you
said ‘ah, government bureaucrats, right? Who wants to be in government?
CW: No, I’m not saying that.
I’m saying in high quality dialogue at Princeton. I highly encourage
people to go into government.
AMS: But they’re not
bureaucrats.
CW: What do you mean they’re
not bureaucrats?
AMS: In other words,
to-to-to-to say we ought to have
high quality people, not government bureaucrats is exactly—it is a
small instance of exactly the point. Republicans first, but democrats
too running against the government, so if the result is nobody wants to
fund the government, nobody wants the government to do anything.
CW: No, no, no, no.
AMS: Absolutely.
CW: No, there’s a longer issue,
but you can’t—
AMS: No, but it’s a serious
one.
CW: Socratic intellectuals are
not major causes of low quality among government bureaucrats.
AMS: I didn’t say that.
CW: There’s a larger, more
complex story we can tell. But
I’m not—I don’t think is running against government, it’s just when we
want high dialogue to challenge our students, if you look to government
bureaucrats, it’s going to be difficult. That’s all I’m saying.
[laughter]
CW: I’m not saying I’m writing
them off and so forth. I’m not running against government.
MB: How diplomatic.
CW: That is true across
ideologies. It’s true of every
regime. That’s what intellectuals do. They’re suspicious of these folk
who tell lies and don’t want to expose the truth.
AMS: That’s what I mean.
CW: But bureaucrats have been
doing that since the beginning of time.
[applause]
CW: that doesn’t mean all of
them are unworthy. But they know what they’re involved in.
[laughter]
CW: I mean, let’s me honest
about this.
SW: But I just worry about all
those professors who tell lies too, but--
CW: Absolutely.
SW: That’s another story.
CW: That’s right, my brother.
SW: I’m suspicious of my
colleagues, but I think everybody is—nobody is above suspicion. Ever.
CW: Absolutely, absolutely.
SW: Cause we’re all human
beings and that’s just the way we are. But I think—well, I’m gonna shut
up.
[laughter]
SW: I just couldn’t resist that
part….
Question: Well, I guess the
last 5 minutes you’ve been
basically discussing possible answers to what I was going to ask, but
I’m gonna ask it anyway. Starting off with Mr. Bruzonsky distinction
between being a servant to government and being a servant to the
nation—there’s a difference there. It’s a very provocative statement
that I’m sure—let me—not everybody here, but lots of people here will
agree with me—with that statement that was extremely provocative, but
actually to some of us it’s common sense. I would say, for example,
that the only real public servant that this country has had in the last
two or three decades is Edward Said. So, with that concept of what it
means to be a public servant, the way your string of speakers in the
Woodrow Wilson celebration, in prior years as well—the way it’s been
constructed, the process of selection, the criteria and the way they’ve
been treated—you say wanted more discussion, and that you would have
stringent questions. But the fact is that it never happened. It wasn’t
there and what we see is simply a string of speakers who came to give
propaganda of their policies. But given my provocative statement, I
don’t see any of them as public servants. The definition of the concept
of public servant is not applicable to them. They’re definitely
government servants, which is a different thing. So then this makes you
look—because you picked them and everything—it makes you look like
you’re being servant to the government servants which is a completely
different route from being a servant to the nation, which should be the
long-term topic of this forum.
AMS: I have a suggestion. You
talk to the Robertsons and I’ll stand back.
[laughter]
AMS: No, I think there are many
forms of public service.
There are public servants in non-government organizations and we have
lots of those. Journalists, critics of various kinds, activists and
there are indeed public servants in the private sector who are working
hard to address public problems if we think what they’re doing is
serving the public good. So, public servant is a much wider category
than government servant. I personally believe that government service
is a distinct and I think most important form of public service. By no
means the only form but I do think, as I’ve said repeatedly and as I
think after Katrina it’s hard to deny, you can have all the dedicated
public service you want in the non-profit sector and indeed in the
private sector but without a strong effective committed government that
represents the people fairly, it doesn’t matter. So I feel particularly
strongly about government service and I did so long before that ever
became an issue on the pages of the Wallstreet journal. Nevertheless,
we recognize a much broader range of public service and we invite
people from that spectrum to the school. I agree they were not there on
the 75th but I’ve tried to explain why, in part we didn’t have the
range of speakers we wanted and I’ve also said I think for a school of
public and international affairs on its 75th anniversary, named after
Woodrow Wilson having a Secretary of state and we originally thought a
senator and another cabinet member was entirely appropriate. I just
wish they had to—they’d engaged much more forcefully with the audience.
MB: If I could just—just a
brief comment: I would be
much more inclined to accept what I’m hearing from Dean Slaughter
tonight if I didn’t live in Washington, if I hadn’t attended many
seminars and forums that take place in Washington. Almost every one—in
fact, every one that I can think of reflect the same pattern that took
place here on the 75th and I bet, if time permitted, and we looked at
the speakers lists and we looked at how it was handled, we’d hear about
a lot more excuses about how it just wasn’t possible to get this
speaker or this speaker and things changed and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,
the pattern is very clear. And if time permits we could actually just
go through the record and look at what the school has done in the
past—say since 9-11—and I think you would find that what happened on
the 75th was no aberration. It was very much part of a pattern.
AMS: I’d be happy to take the
challenge. Any day. Go through one by one.
MB: I hope I can come back and
accept that challenge. And
I hope this time the Woodrow Wilson school will actually put it on
their calendar and will actually contribute to it, because neither was
done in this forum.
SW: Um, that’s not true is it?
AMS: Well, according to the
organizers we contributed.
MB: Not according to the
organizers with whom I had lunch
today. It was one roadblock after another including the fact that they
wanted to use the picture that the alumni magazine had already used and
that the Woodrow Wilson school had already put in many places of our
Dean with Condi Rice and they were refused permission to even use the
picture.
SW: Um, can we move on? It’s
getting late.
Question: Dr. West, do you
think that extreme
intellectual liberalism can turn the Socratic system of dialogue into
an essentially anti-establishment monologue just based against the
establishment and how do you think that this sort of intellectual
liberalism should balance an institution like Princeton with various
internal bureaucracy but also what you call the rule of truth?
CW: I appreciate the question.
And very quickly, but I
won’t put it in a nutshell. Anything you can put in a nutshell belongs
in one.
[laughter]
CW: I’m not talking about
Socratic. I’m talking about a
variety of different perspectives across the board. So, extreme
liberalism, extreme conservatism, extreme Leftism, extreme Judaism,
extreme Christianity and so forth, a set of voices alongside a whole
host of voices so that we all are exposed to a variety of perspectives
that unsettle us. Do I want Princeton to become a bastion of
anti-establishmentarian dialogue? Absolutely not. Do I spend much of my
life engaged in anti-establishmentarian projects outside of Princeton?
Absolutely.
[laughter]
CW: Very different. As a
citizen of this community, I
acknowledge the rich tradition that it represents. As a citizen I also
acknowledge radical traditions that are preoccupied with wealth,
privilege, male supremacy, white supremacy and so forth. That’s why I
started invoking this brother’s text. Not because he’s my [?partner?
opponent?], but also because it’s those kinds of movements that makes
these kinds of cases more Socratic. See what I mean? I mean, Edward
Said is not by himself. He’s part of a movement of a struggle for
self-determination of an oppressed people, but he expresses that vision
in the united states and he is simply one voice to be scrutinized among
others and needs to be criticized by Israeli intellectuals of the
right, of the center, of the left and so forth and so on. That’s the
conversation in the broad context at Princeton. You see what I mean? So
You have different identities in this regard.
SW: James Madison’s also in my
book. And He went to Princeton too. And the dialectic, if we can use
that word.
CW: Yeah, you can still use it.
SW: Thank you. I thought that
you thought so—of
oppression and democracy, high, low, all of that, it’s all together and
left and right are never pure. They’re always in contact with one
another. That’s my little editorial.
Question: I indeed agree that
the center of the debate
here is the statement that Condoleeza Rice exemplifies—I forget the
exact words—the Woodrow Wilson and, as a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson
school, I was anxious to hear the explanation of why that’s true. And
the explanation made me sad. The explanation is that she’s in public
service, that she had a quest for power, she followed it and she got
into the government. Now that—by that definition Tom Delay exemplifies
the Woodrow Wilson school, Haulderman, Erhlichman, Mcnamara and 100
officials that I knew, worked with who are in jail.
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): I have
always felt that what
exemplifies the Woodrow Wilson school—I hope felt this—is excellence
and honesty and public service of a quality, not power and abuse of
public service.
[applause]
AMS: I agree with that and I
find it a powerful statement
and if—there are certainly people who have served in government that I
would—well there are some people I would not invite and there are
certainly other people whom I would not praise in the same way. So,
clearly you’re right that simply serving in government itself is not
exemplary of the values that we serve and to the extent that I thought
it was as clear as you think it is and that many people think it is
that Secretary Rice in your view is someone who has lied and betrayed
those values, then I think that’s a much closer question. The
difficulty here is precisely separating out personal political views,
institutional views and policy questions. We could have a long debate.
I think personally that much of what Secretary Rice has done since
being in office as Secretary of state has been actually trying very
hard to turn the administration in what I think is a better although
still far from in my view—my personal view—perfect direction. So there
is an area there where my judgment and I think more generally the
judgment in society—in other words there’s not been anything proved in
court like the Watergate officials you are talking about—does
shape—does enter in here and there I think I can understand holding the
views you do, you read what I said very differently. What I can tell
you is that I think we share those values. I think—I do not think
Secretary Rice is perfect. I don’t think—I think the same could be said
of many government officials in the Clinton administration. But I do
think, as I said, that she is sincere in doing what she thinks is right
that she has tried in many ways I think to fight a fight that I think
needed to be fought in Washington and that above all I don’t think it’s
just the lust for power. I think quite honestly she is someone who was
in the academy, had a wonderful job in the academy, went to Washington,
went back, went back to Washington again to shape government because
she believed she could make a difference. And part of what I’ve been
arguing all evening is that you can rail at government but if you
really want government to reflect your policy views it’s not just about
voting for your candidate. It’s about actually being there. When
Richard Clarke was here he ripped apart the bush administration and at
the end of it I said ‘you have been in government for over 25 years.
You’ve just torn apart this administration. Would you tell this
audience to join this administration at this moment?’ and he said
‘absolutely. I went to Washington in 1973 when I was completely opposed
to everything the government was doing in Vietnam and I wanted to be
part of what I could do within the government to make a difference.’
And in that sense, I understand your point of view but I think Condi
Rice is closer to that ideal than perhaps you do.
SW: Let me just say we have
about 15 people and about
15 minutes. So, that gives you 30 seconds each. Really, really,
really—question, answer, bingo.
Question: Woodrow Wilson wrote
about Princeton in the
nation’s service. He also wrote about the American revolution as not a
repudiation of the British way, but as a protection of it, a
preservation of it. now today, a hundred years later the Americans and
the British ride of white horses into the middle east against terror
but isn’t the terror in the middle east our own doing? The Socratic
method is a search for the truth. Well, what is the truth? We don’t
have to look far. Americans per capita use 3 times the amount of energy
as any Western industrialized nation and 10 times as much energy as a
third world country. The other fact is that the middle east is rich
oil.
SW: Sir, with all due respect
can we get to the question?
Question (cont'd): Isn’t this
really a question of British colonialism in the middle east a dividing
of the middle east for resources.
AMS: Are you asking me?
Question (cont'd): Anybody, I
mean is—the question is, is
the debate—the so-=called debate—that goes on in politics—not really
just a battle for the hearts and minds and not really a Socratic
debate—and speakers that are prominent and come to Princeton and talk,
aren’t they really battling for the hearts and minds on just a
different level? Is that a Socratic debate? Isn’t the truth well known?
MB: I’ll answer quickly by
saying what’s going on in the
universities today, what goes on in the media, what goes on in the talk
shows, even talk radio is very much part of what of the—it’s
propaganda, it’s setting the stage, it’s getting the public to back
you, it’s getting the congress to back you. That’s why we have lobbies.
It’s not just the defense industry and drug industry. There are foreign
policy lobbies that spend a lot of money and a lot of time to get
people to think about things in certain ways. So all of this is part of
how a society, in our case an imperial society is able to pursue those
policies. And if you’ll notice, we’ve just been asked to give huge war
funds to the pentagon and funds are being taken away from just about
everything else in our society.
CW: There’s no doubt that the
middle east would have a different history if they had an abundance of
artichokes rather than oil.
[laughter]
AMS: They’d be better off.
CW: [inaudible] We’re talking
about power. We’re talking
about resources. We’re talking about corporations. We’re talking about
profits and we’re talking about sustaining ecologically dangerous ways
of life that most of us are complicitous with. Yes.
SW: Sir.
Question: I must disagree with
the idea that somehow the
focus here should be Dean Slaughter’s comment about Secretary Rice or
even Princeton’s supposed favoring of administration figures or
establishment figures or however you want to term it. I think the more
important question here is something that was brought up in an earlier
question about the students at institutions like this and across the
country and our attitudes and the way we interact with figures of
authority. Professor West, you brought up the concept of celebrity
worship. I would say that this forum, as excellent as it’s been, is in
fact a form of celebrity worship. And I think—
CW: You’re not worshipping us
though, are you?
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): No, but I
mean there wouldn’t be this many people in the room if you weren’t—
CW: Oh the numbers. But that’s
not worship. That’s showing’ up.
Question (cont'd): Well, but
the problem is that despite
what you can say about, you know, Socratic dialogue that does not occur
among people of my age and does not occur outside of fora like this
which are dominated by people like yourself and Dean Slaughter. And
that’s a wonderful thing. It’s great to hear these statements from
people like yourselves but my question is how can you really inculcate
the sort of desire for critique and desire for spontaneous critique
moreover not simply a reaction to already established figures in
younger people?
[applause]
CW: [inaudible] I find though,
my dear brother, that in
my travels across the country, there’s a number of different
organizations of young people some of whom don’t know who I am but are
involved in high quality Socratic reflections on their situation.
[inaudible]...Black colleges, I was just there this past weekend. Think
tanks all around the country. The challenges in Seattle. A few years
ago, the young people—they didn’t have celebrities leading that march
against corporate globalization. Those young people were vanguard
activists, good citizens in that regard. So I don’t want to—when I hear
‘we young folk have no Socratic energy’. see, no I don’t believe that’s
true. The students who brought us together involved in Socratic
activity. do we have enough? Absolutely not. Now, given the fact that
we live in a market-driven celebrity obsessed culture, the question
becomes are there gonna be enough so-called celebrities? Remember
Socrates was [really?] on stage by Aristophanes, right? He was already
a celebrity in that sense, well-known publicly. He used his celebrity
for critical ends and aims. That’s the choice that every citizen has,
every person has. You can revel in it or you can give. And it’s a
challenge in that regard. So the question is if you can bring a number
of people in, fine. But then when you bring them in, you demystify all
kinds of talk about worship. You got some names that are well-known:
Marie and Mark well known too. You [don’t won’t/won’t] forget about
this brother. But we’re here for the dialogue. We’re not here for the
worship, uncritical acceptance, allegiance, blindness and so forth. No,
this is for dialogue. If we can bring more in, fine, but we’re just
showing up. And once you get here, dialogue begins.
Question: A first-year graduate
at the Woodrow Wilson
school I was very troubled to read the Wall Street Journal article this
morning not, first of all, because I fear for the future of my
fellowship—
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): ….but
secondly because I’m very
troubled by the direction that the school appears to be going in. I can
to the school with a background in local government and international
development and I have found precious few opportunities for me here in
terms of coursework. And I know that this is a feeling that’s shared by
a lot of fellow students who have the same background and you said you
invite people like me to come the school, but we’re not being fed. And
I want to know if this is, you know, this is the direction that the
school is going in because it seems to me that it’s becoming more of a
school of foreign service or a school of security studies. The course
offerings for this past semester really, to me, resembled something
like the bush budget where there was quite a few in the security area
and not enough in what—in my mind, public service is a lot more than
that and I just—I wonder what your response is to that.
AMS: Well, I’m glad to hear it.
We’ve hired, I think, 15
people since I’ve gotten here. Of those, I would say 6 to 7 have been
in international relations and the rest have been across the board and
this year we voted in a new certificate in urban policy, in urban
planning and I created the policy research institute for the region
which is entirely devoted to regional issues and local government. I’m
very sorry to hear about the specific courses but my definition of
government and the Woodrow Wilson school’s interpretation of government
is local government, state government, federal government and
international government. So this is not a statement about needing to
go to Washington or needing to go to the state department. We have a
particular emphasis, at the graduate level, on federal government
careers and foreign affairs but that covers pretty much the entire
federal government these days and that’s only—that’s a particular
emphasis. I remain as committed to training people for all levels of
government and that also assumes that they’re not gonna spend their
whole careers there. They’re gonna spend time in NGOs. Some may go into
the private sector. So, to the extent there is a problem, it is a
temporary problem and one we want to rectify.
Question: So, I would like to
ask each of the four
panelists a simple yes or no question. The question is have they read
from cover to cover the book called ‘Empower the People’?
AMS: No.
CW: [shakes head]
MB: So easy: no.
CW: Are we missing out on
something?
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): Including
the moderator.
SW: No, I must concur with my
colleagues.
Question (cont'd): In this book
by Tony Brown, 1998, he
talks about the illuminati. I would like to ask [inaudible]. Why do I
not hear anything about this group and if they know anything could they
please comment on it in light of the comments of getting to the truth.
[laughter] Thank you.
MB: I’m afraid that’s really a
subject for another conference and probably not at Princeton.
SW: We talk about illuminati in
courses and it’s actually
interesting but I don’t—I think it’s not as germane to this panel as
some of the other questions. So I think we should move on.
Question (cont'd): And are the—
SW: Sir, I think you’ve asked
your question. Can we move on please? Thank you.
Question: Sorry I’ll try to be
quick. My question is
directed to Mr. Bruzonsky. I hope I didn’t butcher your name. I admire
a lot of what you’re—you’ve been trying to do, taking a very different
position from the other two speakers however you’ve made some very
serious accusations about Dean Slaughter and the administration being
players in a political and financial power game and I don’t think
you’ve backed up those claims with evidence. There’s a fantastic book
by Todd Gitlin called ‘the twilight of common dreams’. He talks a lot
about the far left and how it’s ripped apart the liberal consensus with
this kind of paranoia and fear that—fear that more moderate people on
the left are, you know, part of this power game. And I think you’re
kind of playing into exactly what he’s describing. I also think that
it’s inappropriate to try to ask Dean Slaughter to renounce any desire
to go to Washington. I think she’d be a fantastic politician but then
again I like Joe Biden, so…
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): ….so I was
hoping you could explain—
MB: I think Dean Slaughter
would do very well in
Washington., I just don’t think she should use Princeton as her
climbing ground and deny the kind of educational experiences that are
needed here in the process.
AMS: What makes you think she’s
using it as a stepping stone?
MB: I also agree with you. I
have not provided you the
facts that you need. Time doesn’t permit that today but I’d be very
glad take up Dean Slaughter’s offer. Let’s in fact do a content
analysis of all the forums, all the foreign policy forums that the
Woodrow Wilson school has sponsored since—let’s just take 2001 as our
starting point. But that can’t be done solely by the Dean of the
Woodrow Wilson school. That’s going to have to be done by a bunch of
independent analysts who are gonna have to look at this is in a
serious, scholarly, academic, objective way. It’s going to have to be
properly funded. It’s going to have to be properly set up. The Dean
said she accepts the challenge. Let’s see what she does about it.
[applause]
SW: We’ve got three minutes.
Go.
Question: May I suggest the
people on the podium make their answers shorter.
SW: Excellent point. Excellent
point. Excellent point.
Question (cont'd): Before the
war in Iraq, and I say Iraq
because I’m verbally imperfect and politically incorrect, but anyway I
think we used to say Iraq. In 2002, the peace movement in this town had
a protest in the streets and we had about 30 people there and then two
months ago we had another protest. In 2002, 20% of the population of
this country was against the war and 80 were in favor of the war. Now,
the statistics are exactly reversed and only 30 people showed up again.
And all we were armed with was a bunch of candles. Now, we have some
very well-written people up on the podium and maybe for people like me
that are verbally imperfect we could move this dialogue from this nice
warm room where you’re falling asleep [outside] onto that cold street
with some placards. And if you have some point of views, which I think
are great, let’s get them out in the street and out of this room. And
we can see the impact that Cindy Sheehan has had as far as the peace
movement and there’s a lot of other things right here that we’ve
discussed. One of them I’d like to see is the trillion dollar
accounting error that the pentagon has. But that’s my personal—I don’t
want to—
[applause]
CW: I remember in September, my
brother—let me just look
at you while I’m talking. Could you kindly turn around a little bit?
Cause I like to—Socratic dialogue has a visual dimension to it.
[laughter]
Question (cont'd): Say what? I
don’t hear either.
CW: I say, Socratic dialogue
has a visual dimension. I
like to look at your eyes and you look at my eyes cause eyes are the
windows of the soul. Not think about this, in September, over 400 of us
were arrested in front of the white house, including Cindy Sheehan.
Primarily Jews, Muslims, Christians. It was a very deeply religious
delegation. No coverage, other than sister Cindy Sheehan. That’s taking
it to the streets. We were in jail for 13 hours. Not a long time, got a
lot of reading done and dialogue, but still. That’s action. See what I
mean? Now that ought to serve as wind in one’s back to other fellow
citizens who are not simply changing their minds but also accenting the
rights and liberties that are the result of unbelievable sacrifice and
service on behalf of foremothers and forefathers who were citizens to
keep the fragile democratic experiment alive. So when I hear what
you’re saying ‘get into the streets’. Yes! It’s already taking place.
Sometimes we know about it. Sometimes we don’t. but there are a number
of fellow citizens of all colors and genders and sexual orientation who
have already done precisely what you’re saying in the name of public
interest and common good.
Question (cont'd): Well—and I
know and we had one in
New York in 2003 and they said 100,000 people showed up. Well, I’m
telling you there were a million and a half there. The streets were
crowded from downtown up into the 70s. and I wouldn’t go along because
I have a breathing problem so I went as far as the 60s, but we had at
least a million people there and the news wouldn’t [?put out anything].
so I know what we’re up against, brother. I hear you.
CW: [but there’s also been a
shift.]
Question (cont'd): But we
should be out in the streets in
the cold with nice written placards of gentleman like yourself who
write very well, not like myself. You’d never see my writing. And more
of it. As much as possible. And Princeton seems to be a kinder, gentler
town so we can get away with more maybe.
SW: There’s a flashing from Fox
News that there are 14 people in this room.
[laughter, applause]
SW: We have time for 2 more
questions I’m afraid, so….
Question: Mine’s a two-part
question. The first part—
SW: Oh, no. One-part question,
please.
Question (cont'd): Alright,
then just for Dr. Bruzonsky.
Maybe I’m too much of a realist, but is it too much to assume that in
order to act—enact in true intellectual policies that we have to engage
a very—a government that might not be as pure as we would like it in
terms of corruption and special interests. It seems like that in
order—from your stance, that in order to truly make a difference or
remain true to our ideals we have to abandon a government that is very
much realist and at times bogged down by issues of corruption.
MB: Well, that’s your
definition of the government.
That’s not my definition of the government. I went to Washington after
Princeton and after NYU Law School. I’ve never seen a government less
competent, more duplicitous, more creating its own environment through
more deception and more propaganda. I’ve never seen anything like this
in Washington and that seems to be the general consensus, frankly,
among a lot of people whether you hear it or not on Fox News.
[applause]
Question: This evening we’ve
talked a lot about rigorous
and [inaudible] debate. I remember seeing the weekend of the 75th
anniversary celebration. [inaudible] the university’s just totally
fawning embrace of one of the chief architects and propagandists for a
war that’s a totally unjustifiable war of aggression. So there seems to
be a real disconnect from our desire for debate. The kind of thing we
see in this newsletter which repeats the—it’s on the university
website—which didn’t even acknowledge the protestors. So I guess my
question is are we going to see in the next issue of this Woodrow
Wilson newsletter a point-by-point rebuttal of Secretary Rice’s speech.
That would go a long way, I think, to having a real debate which we’re
not having. There were 100 protestors, you know, camped outside Jadwyn
gym, yelling and screaming. I don’t call that rigorous, good and solid
debate. The university’s just not promoting that. And especially with
an administration that refuses to engage in debate. What’s wrong in
saying to them ‘whoa, we don’t want you. Go find your VFWs and your red
state audiences. If you want to speak to us, you’ll have to engage us
in real questions.’ [inaudible] and I think that will begin to turn the
tide against this complacency and this acceptance of this
administration. Not a question. A statement.
[applause]
Question: I guess I’m the only
one still standing.
SW: Ok, last person standing.
Audience member: can we have
just two more?
CW: Maybe we can have all three
of you in a row.
SW: But quick.
Question (cont'd): My quick
question is that—from what
the three of you have said, there seems to be two different ways of
looking at this. One is Princeton for the Princetonian students who are
here and fostering debate on campus among the students. And one is
Princeton in the rest of the world and especially what you were saying,
sir, about how all of the seminars and things in Washington have
repeated over and over the same sort of you know blah-blah not real
debate. Whereas, for us, we aren’t in Washington so when we get to
have, you know, Condoleeza Rice come here, does that foster debate on
campus among the students and what do you think is more important in
terms of what you said, Dean Slaughter, is it more important to have
those people come and let that foster debate among the students or is
it more important to have the personality be engaged on stage by—and
shown that, you know—and debated with them personally. Is it more
important for Princeton to engage them or is it more important for
Princeton to engage amongst itself and for the students to, you know,
then go out to the rest of the world?
[applause]
Question: Despite our mere
youth and our status as
undergraduates, we have been able to notice how exclusive our
definition of the nation can sometimes be, how many voices are
displaced or silenced and persons are silenced and displaced despite
their crucial role in the nation. And I think—actually I want to
ask—whether you think the Woodrow Wilson school is not excluding and
silencing those persons, voices and actors as well. For example, in the
conference you organized last semester called ‘re-thinking the war on
terror’ which prided itself on being critical about this university’s
policy, there was absolutely no representation of those who were most
affected by this quote-unquote ‘war on terrors’ policies like, for
example, the patriot act and the extension of the powers of the police
by which illegal immigrants are being deported from this very community
and they are illegal immigrants who some of us happen to work with in
the dining hall, who are running many important parts of this
university, perhaps the conference ‘re-thinking the war on terror’
itself. So that is my question. Just to reflect on the exclusion of
those voices and to reflect on the title, the very title of our debate.
Question: Dean Slaughter, this
is directed to you. I
guess I’ve been actually the only Woodrow Wilson student tonight, at
least graduate student.
CW: There was one other sister
over on the side.
AMS: There’s some.
Question (cont'd): It’s not an
actual question. First I
want to say that—I want to thank you for what your doing with the
administrations in the ways that you can to protect the endowment. It
does make it possible for me and other students to come to Princeton
and not have the financial burden to not have to go corporate after we
graduate. So I do appreciate that. But at the same time I was very
disturbed by comments and the 75th anniversary and I would say the
greatest moment of my time in these two years at Princeton was when I
stood with 14 other students in the very last row in Jadwin auditorium
protesting. There is Socratic dialogue going on on this campus very
much among students and professors. I want to make one suggestion which
will not solve all the problems of what we’re talking about at Woodrow
Wilson but an example is Professor Cornel West with his dialogue going
on right now with key leaders that come to our campus where he deals
with them, he presses them with questions that are to the point and
respectful. Could we have some type of programs like that amongst
any—any type of programs where you or other faculty would use socratic
method instead of being talked to. I always like going to lectures. I
want to hear questions and that’s not to say that there won’t be
questions and answers later among students, but when you can create a
script where you ask for questions to be sent in by email by students
so you can create a theme for you or other professors. And you can get
to the point that students really—and also the community—want to hear
from these different views that come to campus. That’s just a
suggestion. Thank you.
[gap]
CLOSING STATEMENTS
MB: ….a lot of things that we’d
like to know, we don’t
know. A lot of things that should be transparent at this university,
aren’t. I would hope the Dean is serious, that she does want to pursue
these things, but to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t expect to
hear about it. I don’t expect the things we’ve discussed that might
happen here are going to happen here. I think, pretty much, after this
forum things will go back to normal with a little bit of some other
speaker will be invited and some attempt will be made to say that
there’s balance, but the forces that be are pretty strong. They know
what they’re doing. They’re going to continue to do it.
CW: That’s a little cynical,
don’t you think?
[laughter]
CW: He said it’s called
realism. No, I’m a democrat. I don’t believe that—
MB: Socratic realism.
CW: But, sentimentalism is the
bank holiday of cynicism. I’m neither sentimental nor a cynic. I’m a
democrat.
[laughter]
CW: I’m a blues man. I hear
what you’re saying. Your
challenge is strong, but the kind of Socratic activity—though not as
much as we’d like taking place among students as well as faculty—does
lead me to think there’s still a chance that a change could come about.
There’s still a chance that some kind of transformation could come
about. And there’s certainly still a chance that Anne-Marie Slaughter,
as Dean of Woodrow Wilson, can play a fundamental role in that regard.
I still have that kind of faith which is not a Kirchegardian leap of
faith. It’s a real democratic sense that we have a capacity if we do
what it takes. Princeton will never be able to serve the nation and the
nations of the world well unless it serves its students with Socratic
challenge. That’s the fundamental end and aim and it is not Socratic
method. It is an art. That’s very different. It’s not a tool to deploy.
It’s not a algorythm to use or a formula to follow. It’s a
self-invested, self-involved mode of inquiry that constitutes a way of
life and we’re about the art of questioning. That’s very different, in
that sense, you see. And that’s, in the end, the raw stuff of
democratic expansion and refinement and so forth.
[applause]
AMS: So, I agree with that last
sentence. One of the
things I certainly carry away with me is a sense that we do want to
create—as in response to the last question—more opportunitites for
genuine debate. Even if we’d had the half hour we thought we’d have
with Secretary Rice, it still would have been better to have a kind of
conversational format where people pose questions and so I think I take
that away and I also want to reiterate what I started with which is
that I’m very pleased that this forum was organized. I think there need
to be more like this. The most uncomfortable moment of the night was
the request that I disavow any desire to go to Washington. And I’ve
been sort of mulling—why? Why was that so uncomfortable? I have no
shame at all about saying that yes, at some point, I hope that I can be
in government and I hope that I can be in a position where I’m
contributing to foreign policy. I came to Princeton because that’s what
I wanted to do and I went to the Woodrow Wilson school because that’s
what I wanted to do and I went to law school because that’s what I
wanted to do and then I ended up practicing law and I didn’t like that
so much. So I ended up in academia. But there is no shame in saying you
want to serve in nation, in foreign policy or domestic policy in any
way. Indeed, we seek to encourage that in all of you. Not that you
should all go into government, but you should serve in some way and, if
you want to serve in government, that is a wonderful thing. So I have
absolutely no reason not to say that is something that I hope to do. So
why was that such an uncomfortable and inappropriate question? Because
there’s an accusation there that is not about ambition. Ambition is
fine. It’s about integrity. It’s about whether or not you are
improperly using something in the service of your amibition. Now that
is a serious charge. And one, if true, would be very serious indeed and
something—it would be a very serious charge. And I think what has been
good about this evening has been, from my point of view, being able to
hear things as I did when you asked your question that I had not heard
before in the same way and I understand how that looks to you in a way
I, frankly, had not. And the point about fallujah where I actually
heard something and understood how something I intended one way sounded
to another. And I’ll think about that. It may change my behavior. Even
if it doesn’t change my behavior, I’ve learned something valuable.
That’s what’s good about tonight. That’s what we need more of. That’s
what we need more of in the ocuntry in terms of real debate. It’s very
imp[ortant to have that kind of—to be able to have that kind of
debate—to avoid ad hominum attacks and, more deeply, to not [sic]
presume good faith until good faith has been disproved. That’s what I
meant when I said I thought it was valuable for people at least to see
and hear people they strongly disagree with because, in my experience,
many of those people—not all, and there’s certainly limits to your
amount of tolerance—but many of those people—many of those people that
I disagree with incredibly strongly on policy issues—are not bad
people. They are people trying to do what they think is right by their
rights. We have zones of disagreement, but it’s not about their
integrity, their good faith, their efforts to actually, in many cases,
accomplish the same goals that I have, but by different ways. That, to
me, is what we have lost in this country so fundamentally, which is the
ability—in Washington, in the public, in the media—to debate on the
issues and actually presume good faith which—it’s much less dramatic. I
could bring you all to your feet with a raving attack. It’s much less
dramatic to actually engage in that kind of debate but, ultimately,
it’s necessary and it’s important. [addressing MB] Your kind of attacks
on the personal side have no place in that debate, but the issues you
raise, [addressing CW] you raise, the students raise about what is the
role of a university? When should you invite a public figure? When
should that be beyond the bounds? Because there’s certainly some public
figures I would never invite. Those I think are very legitimate issues.
I’m very pleased to have had the chance to debate them. I take things
away so that makes it a valuable evening. I will absolutely participate
and sponsor similar evenings. I’m looking up at Janet Dickerson in the
office of student life. I hope we see many more of these and I hope
that the wooodrow wilson school is a place where as many different
voices can be heard and I hope we can make it a place of more actual,
Socratic, sustined debate. Thank you.
[applause]
SW: I want to thank you all for
coming. Thanks to the organizers and a very great thanks to the
panelists.
Transcript by Stephanie Wavle.
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