Erik Fleming speaks with Harvard historian Michael Klarman and Cornell civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies about the resurgence of white supremacy, threats to democracy, and the human costs of an unforgiving society.
The episode also includes a news roundup and reflections on public scrutiny, institutional responsibility, and the need for empathy and accountability in law and politics.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Eric Fleming, host of A Moment with Eric Fleming, the podcast of our time.
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00:02:00 --> 00:02:06 Hello, and welcome to another moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:14 And so today I have two powerful interviews, two gentlemen who are lawyers by
00:02:14 --> 00:02:16 training and currently professors.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:24 One is a professor at Harvard, and he has written a, he's part of that America
00:02:24 --> 00:02:29 Unfinished essay book that we talked to the.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:36 Co-author or the, as she liked to say, the conspirator that put all this together.
00:02:37 --> 00:02:41 And so one of the other people that wrote an essay, Michael Klarman,
00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 who wrote one on white supremacy.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:52 So yeah, we got him on. And then And Joseph Margulies, Joseph Margulies,
00:02:52 --> 00:02:57 who was a notable constitutional lawyer in his own right,
00:02:58 --> 00:03:05 a defense attorney, criminal defense attorney, and is now a professor at Cornell University.
00:03:05 --> 00:03:11 And he also has written a book called Cast Out, which will challenge your value system.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:17 And we'll get into that in the interview. But this is a really,
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 really great, powerful and great show.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:26 And I hope that you will enjoy it. As always, please let people know how great this podcast is.
00:03:26 --> 00:03:37 Go to www.momenteric.com and, you know, write reviews, donate either one time
00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 or subscribe to the podcast.
00:03:40 --> 00:03:45 Whatever you want to do to show that you support and you enjoy the conversations that we are having.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:50 All right. So I'm so excited that I want y'all to hear this.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:56 So we're going to get right into it. And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:09 Thanks, Eric. Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court to fatally shooting
00:04:09 --> 00:04:13 United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, averting a federal trial.
00:04:14 --> 00:04:18 Todd Blanche was narrowly confirmed as Attorney General after a contentious
00:04:18 --> 00:04:22 Senate battle regarding his independence and role in President Trump's legal
00:04:22 --> 00:04:23 and financial agreements.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:29 U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will fully deploy body-worn cameras
00:04:29 --> 00:04:31 to all field personnel by the end of August.
00:04:32 --> 00:04:37 The Justice Department indicted the former CFO of the Southern Poverty Law Center
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 on federal fraud and money laundering charges The U.S.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 Senate passed a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown which
00:04:44 --> 00:04:48 must now be reconciled with the House and signed by the President
00:04:49 --> 00:04:53 President Trump signed an executive order to reduce the childhood vaccination
00:04:53 --> 00:04:59 schedule advancing a controversial initiative led by the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:04:59 --> 00:05:04 A federal judge blocked the implementation of President Trump's executive order
00:05:04 --> 00:05:08 aimed at tightening mail-in voting rules ahead of the November elections.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:14 Economist and friend of the podcast, Amanda Janew, won the Vermont Democratic primary for governor.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:20 Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated Congresswoman Angie Craig in Minnesota's
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:27 U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar won the Minnesota Democratic primary for governor.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:34 Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley won a contentious Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:39 Rhett Marcus won the Alabama Republican primary for the 2nd District U.S.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:43 House seat and will face the incumbent Shamari figures in November.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 Darlene Graham and Ralph Norman will face each other in the South Carolina Republican
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 runoff for the U.S. Senate.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:54 And former President Joe Biden's prostate cancer has painfully spread beyond
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 his bones, according to his son Hunter Biden.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:12 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. Now it is time for my
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 guest, Michael Klarman.
00:06:15 --> 00:06:19 Professor Michael J. Klarman is the Charles Warren Professor of Legal History
00:06:19 --> 00:06:24 at Harvard Law School, where he joined the faculty in 2008.
00:06:24 --> 00:06:31 He received his B.A. and M.A. in political theory from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, his J.D.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:37 From Stanford Law School in 1983, and his Doctor of Philosophy and Legal History
00:06:37 --> 00:06:41 from the University of Oxford in 1988, where he was a Marshall Scholar.
00:06:41 --> 00:06:47 After law school, Professor Clark Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader
00:06:47 --> 00:06:51 Ginsburg on the United States Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
00:06:52 --> 00:06:57 He contributed an essay to the recent book, America Unfinished,
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 250 Years of Law and Governance.
00:07:00 --> 00:07:04 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 on this podcast, Michael Klarman.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:24 All right. Michael Klarman, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you very much for having me.
00:07:24 --> 00:07:30 Well, I'm really, really honored to have you. It's like I was able to interview
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 Ms. Natapoff last episode who
00:07:32 --> 00:07:37 got all of you all together to write your essays in America Unfinished.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 And I don't think I'm going to get all 62 of you, but I'll get a few.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44 So I'm glad that I was able to get you.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:51 And I know that you're a man of high esteem. You were chosen by the last law
00:07:51 --> 00:07:55 class, I believe, to give the last lecture,
00:07:55 --> 00:07:59 which I think is an honor that the students pick those professors,
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 the last professors they want to hear before they graduate.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 And they get to pick you. So I understand you were one of the four.
00:08:06 --> 00:08:09 So I know that was a great honor for you.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:16 So what I want to do is I normally start off the interviews with a couple of icebreakers.
00:08:16 --> 00:08:20 So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want to respond to.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:26 And the quote is, you need to do something. You don't need to do everything.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:31 I think the country is experiencing an existential threat to democracy.
00:08:31 --> 00:08:36 We've never seen anything like this in our history except for during the Civil War.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:44 And I think the key to overcoming efforts at autocratic rule is for everybody
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 to pitch in and do their part.
00:08:46 --> 00:08:52 No autocrat is physically more powerful than a majority of the citizenry,
00:08:52 --> 00:08:57 but everybody has to understand the threat and everybody has to be willing to do something.
00:08:57 --> 00:09:02 So whether it's giving money or doing the sort of protests that those noble
00:09:02 --> 00:09:06 people in Minneapolis did back in January, or,
00:09:07 --> 00:09:14 I think there's a group that is trying to pressure one of the big banks into stopping...
00:09:15 --> 00:09:22 Loaning money to the private organization that runs many of these DHS holding
00:09:22 --> 00:09:26 pens, a bunch of, you know, ordinary people got together and they managed to
00:09:26 --> 00:09:30 convince a giant bank to stop doing this.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:34 So everybody needs to do their part if it's being out on a bridge brigade or
00:09:35 --> 00:09:39 if it's, you know, contributing money to a group that's trying to protect immigrants
00:09:39 --> 00:09:43 or being having their lives ruined for no reason. Everybody has to do something.
00:09:43 --> 00:09:49 Yeah. I noticed you had said that you're not necessarily the guy that's going
00:09:49 --> 00:09:53 to be out in the protest, but you're going to do your part and you encourage
00:09:53 --> 00:09:55 everybody else to do their part, whatever that is.
00:09:55 --> 00:10:00 So that's, that's pretty cool. All right. So now the next one is called 20 questions.
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:13 13 13 all right do you think there's such a thing as unbiased news or media and why.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:20 Everybody has a perspective i don't think there's any way to avoid having a perspective,
00:10:21 --> 00:10:28 i think there's still a difference between lies and truth so you know the earth
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 rotates around the sun, the earth is round.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 Barack Obama was born in the United States.
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 The 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump.
00:10:39 --> 00:10:43 There are facts, but once you start getting into.
00:10:45 --> 00:10:50 What we should do about complicated questions, like what exactly our immigration
00:10:50 --> 00:10:55 policy should be, exactly how much should we be participating in the rest of
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 the world, how isolationist, how interventionist.
00:10:58 --> 00:11:04 Everybody has a perspective. So, you know, and the political right says that
00:11:04 --> 00:11:08 the mainstream media is biased and it has a left-leaning bias.
00:11:08 --> 00:11:12 In one sense, that's true. I mean, most of the people who work for the New York
00:11:12 --> 00:11:17 Times, most of the people who, work for the big network news companies,
00:11:17 --> 00:11:21 at least until recently, they're very well-educated people.
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 More likely than not, they've been to college. More likely than not,
00:11:25 --> 00:11:29 they're less religious than the average American. And with those characteristics
00:11:29 --> 00:11:33 go certain views about the world. So those people are much more likely to support
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 gay marriage than maybe the average American.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:40 And if they write a story about people who write a story about white Christian
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 nationalists, they're likely to be pretty critical of them.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 So, yes, I mean, everybody has a perspective, but.
00:11:47 --> 00:11:52 We shouldn't go from that premise to the idea that all perspectives are equally
00:11:52 --> 00:11:56 legitimate because Fox News is just propaganda and the Trump White House just
00:11:56 --> 00:12:00 lies to you, whereas the New York Times never lies to you.
00:12:00 --> 00:12:04 If they make a mistake, they admit it. So, you know, complicated answer.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:08 Everybody has a perspective. Yes, there is no neutral position,
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 But there is still fact versus lies.
00:12:11 --> 00:12:15 And we're subjected today more than I think we've ever been in,
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 you know, really in our history, because I don't think we've ever had anything
00:12:19 --> 00:12:23 quite like Fox News, which has the reach that it does, yet feels very little
00:12:23 --> 00:12:24 obligation to tell the truth.
00:12:25 --> 00:12:30 Yeah. All right. So I don't know if you ever played T-ball in your life,
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 but I'm going to tee a question up for you. This is probably going to be easy.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:38 Why is history of American law important?
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 Well, I think history is generally important because I think it's hard to understand,
00:12:43 --> 00:12:48 why things are the way they are today unless you've understood how they came to be that way.
00:12:48 --> 00:12:53 So if I'm trying to understand why, you know, 75 or 80 million people voted
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 for Donald Trump, I need to understand
00:12:56 --> 00:13:02 how so many members of the white working class got so alienated that they were
00:13:02 --> 00:13:04 willing to support an autocratically,
00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 openly autocratic buffoon.
00:13:07 --> 00:13:11 I mean, why would people do that? And the answer is, you know,
00:13:11 --> 00:13:17 some combination of racism, Christian nationalism, and especially kind of.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:23 The extreme neoliberalism of the last 50 years, which has made the working class,
00:13:24 --> 00:13:29 much worse off objectively than their parents and grandparents were.
00:13:29 --> 00:13:35 And, you know, even though African-Americans and Latino-Americans are objectively still worse off.
00:13:35 --> 00:13:39 When they're unhappy with the status quo, they turn politically leftwards,
00:13:40 --> 00:13:44 whereas the white working class has turned dramatically politically rightwards
00:13:44 --> 00:13:45 toward a kind of neo-fascism.
00:13:45 --> 00:13:49 So just to understand how we got to the current state of affairs,
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 I think you need to understand history,
00:13:52 --> 00:13:57 You know, if African-Americans today have shorter life expectancies,
00:13:57 --> 00:14:01 are much more likely to be unemployed, higher death rates for black women who
00:14:01 --> 00:14:05 are pregnant, higher death rates for black infants.
00:14:05 --> 00:14:10 How do we get there? Right. Why is that when other groups that have been discriminated
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 against have prospered? Right.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 Jews used to be treated like dogs and yet Jews have done pretty well.
00:14:15 --> 00:14:19 Italian and Irish Americans used to be treated like dogs. Why is it that they
00:14:19 --> 00:14:21 have not suffered in the same way?
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 And the only way to understand that is to understand the history of Jim Crow
00:14:25 --> 00:14:30 and how pervasive it was, how ruthless it was, and how recently we got away with it.
00:14:30 --> 00:14:34 We got rid of it formally, although in lots of its ramifications.
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 We're still seeing the consequences.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 And I'm writing a book on race and sports, so I often think about these things.
00:14:42 --> 00:14:47 But think about when did integration happen? Well, Jackie Robinson in 1947,
00:14:47 --> 00:14:52 the NFL in 1946, the NBA in 1950.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:57 But, you know, that was hardly the end of racism. You really didn't have any
00:14:57 --> 00:15:01 significant number of black quarterbacks till the 1980s because of the stereotype
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 that blacks couldn't run a team and weren't intelligent enough.
00:15:04 --> 00:15:10 The NFL didn't have a black head coach until 1989, Major League Baseball until 1975.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:15 So we're talking 30 or 40 years before you got that. And, you know,
00:15:15 --> 00:15:19 even today, the NFL is like 60, 70 percent African-American.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:23 There's something like three black head coaches. How can that possibly be?
00:15:23 --> 00:15:27 So, you know, there are lots of ways you can look around American society and
00:15:27 --> 00:15:33 still see the consequences of that racism or the consequences of current stereotype
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 thinking that flowed out of that history of slavery and Jim Crow.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:41 So to me, I'm biased, I'm an historian, but I don't think you can understand
00:15:41 --> 00:15:44 anything without understanding the history of how we got to where we are.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:50 Yeah. So I'll let you in on something. And people that listen to podcasts,
00:15:50 --> 00:15:54 I think I've told this before, but usually when I move into a city,
00:15:54 --> 00:15:58 one of the first places I go is like the oldest cemetery in the city.
00:15:58 --> 00:16:02 Cause I want to know who the founders of that city is, right?
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 It's like, why is this street named? Oh, okay. So that, that,
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 that's the person that's streets named after or whatever.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:12 And it just gives me a connection. Right. And I think that's,
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 that's, that that's what you're conveying to me is,
00:16:16 --> 00:16:20 you got to have a connection you got to understand it's like a jigsaw puzzle
00:16:20 --> 00:16:25 you've got the foundation but you've got to know how to fit those other pieces
00:16:25 --> 00:16:29 and if you don't have that foundation of history you're not you're going to be,
00:16:29 --> 00:16:35 you know lost trying to put that puzzle together so i i i'm a big history guy so,
00:16:35 --> 00:16:39 i i definitely agree with you on that and that's that's why i said it was a
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 t-ball question because I knew you were going to.
00:16:42 --> 00:16:43 Bring that one on home.
00:16:44 --> 00:16:48 All right. In 2007, you wrote a book entitled Unfinished Business.
00:16:49 --> 00:16:54 The Virginia Law Review said the author argues that court decisions tend to
00:16:54 --> 00:16:59 reflect the racial mores of the times, which is why the Supreme Court has not
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 been a heroic defender of the rights of racial minorities.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:07 And even when the court court has promoted progressive racial change,
00:17:07 --> 00:17:12 its decisions have often been unenforced, in part because severely oppressed
00:17:12 --> 00:17:17 groups rarely have the resources necessary to force the issue.
00:17:17 --> 00:17:23 So my question to you is, has anything changed in the nearly 20 years since you wrote the book?
00:17:24 --> 00:17:28 Well, things have gotten dramatically worse in a way that I don't think I could
00:17:28 --> 00:17:34 have predicted. So you can see the roots of the Republican Party's demise dating
00:17:34 --> 00:17:37 back to the 1990s with Newt Gingrich.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:46 You can see the way Mitch McConnell behaved, stealing a Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama in 2016.
00:17:46 --> 00:17:50 But the idea that the United States would twice elect somebody like Donald Trump
00:17:50 --> 00:17:56 president, or even that we would see kind of the openly white supremacist behavior
00:17:56 --> 00:18:00 of this administration, I think was kind of unpredictable.
00:18:00 --> 00:18:04 I mean, you could imagine the Supreme Court clamping down on race-based affirmative
00:18:04 --> 00:18:08 action. There had been conservatives who wanted to do that for a long time,
00:18:08 --> 00:18:10 but now they've gutted the Voting Rights Act.
00:18:11 --> 00:18:15 You know, we're going to lose a dozen, maybe more African-American congressional
00:18:15 --> 00:18:21 representatives in Southern states. I'm a little amazed that the Supreme Court would do that.
00:18:22 --> 00:18:26 I certainly would not have thought that in 2007. The administration's policy
00:18:26 --> 00:18:32 on refugees is we only allow whites from South Africa and nobody else from anywhere in the world.
00:18:33 --> 00:18:37 The president refers to African nations and Haiti as shithole countries.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:41 President refers to Haitian Americans as garbage.
00:18:42 --> 00:18:47 President, you know, runs social media accounts that portray the Obamas as monkeys.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 I guess maybe I was naive because after all, I am white.
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 I have not experienced what it's like to be in the United States as a black
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 person and maybe black people are less surprised.
00:18:57 --> 00:19:00 But I never thought we could have this kind of regression.
00:19:00 --> 00:19:04 The defense secretary trying to prevent African-Americans from being promoted
00:19:04 --> 00:19:11 in the military, renaming Confederate army bases after Confederate soldiers,
00:19:11 --> 00:19:14 the president saying slavery wasn't that bad. I didn't see this coming.
00:19:15 --> 00:19:22 And I guess I don't think, you know, I deal with young people and I don't think
00:19:22 --> 00:19:27 more than a tiny percentage of my students are openly white supremacist in the
00:19:27 --> 00:19:29 same way the administration is.
00:19:29 --> 00:19:33 I think some of them, you know, have bought a certain narrative that makes them
00:19:33 --> 00:19:36 think race-based affirmative action is hard to justify.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:42 But I don't think that they're racist in the same way that Donald Trump or Stephen Miller are racist.
00:19:42 --> 00:19:46 I think they've grown up in a society that is just very different from the society
00:19:46 --> 00:19:51 that I grew up in or you grew up in. And I don't think that kind of acceptance
00:19:51 --> 00:19:53 of racial diversity is going to go away.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:59 What we've done is we put a very small minority in charge and they see it as
00:19:59 --> 00:20:03 in their interest to appeal to this base, which wants a wider,
00:20:03 --> 00:20:07 more Christian nation. And I don't really see that being the wave of the future.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:11 If nothing else, if we have fair free and fair elections, they're going to get
00:20:11 --> 00:20:14 annihilated in November. I really believe that.
00:20:15 --> 00:20:18 But, you know, we're going to need a new Voting Rights Act, and we're going
00:20:18 --> 00:20:22 to need to get rid of this Supreme Court and get a court that's willing to allow,
00:20:23 --> 00:20:24 you know, they're going after medical
00:20:24 --> 00:20:28 schools, trying to prevent them from diversifying the medical community.
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 We're going to go back to a world where you only have a handful of black doctors.
00:20:32 --> 00:20:36 I just don't see that being the future of the country. Yeah.
00:20:37 --> 00:20:42 So was that what was going through your mind when you decided to write your
00:20:42 --> 00:20:43 essay in America Unfinished?
00:20:44 --> 00:20:48 You know, they came to us, you know, I guess early this year and said,
00:20:48 --> 00:20:53 do you want to write something? And I was giving a lecture at Fordham in late
00:20:53 --> 00:20:56 February, and the lecture was called How Did We Get Here?
00:20:57 --> 00:21:03 So I start by listing the anti-democratic stuff that the Trump administration has done.
00:21:03 --> 00:21:08 So things like going after law firms, going after universities,
00:21:08 --> 00:21:13 refusing to spend money that's been appropriated, spending money that hasn't been appropriated.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:19 Things that are a direct contradiction of basic rule of law and democracy,
00:21:19 --> 00:21:21 the Justice Department going after the president's enemies.
00:21:22 --> 00:21:26 And then I tried to explain it. So I had a top 10 list. I listed 10 ways in
00:21:26 --> 00:21:29 which the administration is a threat to democracy and the rule of law.
00:21:29 --> 00:21:34 And then I tried to explain how we got here. And some of that is derived from,
00:21:34 --> 00:21:38 I was asked six years ago to write what's called the foreword to the Harvard Law Review.
00:21:39 --> 00:21:44 And it was called, what was the title the degradation of american democracy
00:21:45 --> 00:21:50 and the supreme court so this is where i talk about racism i talk about christian
00:21:50 --> 00:21:53 nationalism i talk about neoliberalism i talk about opening,
00:21:53 --> 00:21:56 inequality rampant inequality and.
00:21:57 --> 00:22:02 I tried to write that for this book we were asked to write a thousand words
00:22:02 --> 00:22:10 and i tried to you know to distill my fordham lecture into a thousand word version and it just didn't work.
00:22:10 --> 00:22:14 So I wrote to the editors and said, just do it without me. I don't have anything for you.
00:22:15 --> 00:22:17 And they said, well, we really want you to do it. And I thought,
00:22:17 --> 00:22:18 okay, I'll just carve off the race stuff.
00:22:19 --> 00:22:23 So I don't have to talk about the Christian nationalism and I've talked about the inequality.
00:22:23 --> 00:22:29 So that's what I did. I wrote an essay about the Renaissance of open white supremacy. Yeah.
00:22:30 --> 00:22:35 Do you agree with political scholars that believe that the 2016 election of
00:22:35 --> 00:22:40 Donald Trump was a backlash to the first black president being elected?
00:22:41 --> 00:22:46 I'm sure it was in part. You know, any event in the world has multiple causes.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:52 If James Comey had not started investigating Hillary Clinton's emails again
00:22:52 --> 00:22:56 10 days before the election, I'm pretty sure that we would never have heard
00:22:56 --> 00:22:57 from Donald Trump again.
00:22:57 --> 00:23:02 And my guess is if Joe Biden had been the nominee, he wouldn't suffer from.
00:23:03 --> 00:23:07 You know, the people who won't vote for a woman. I don't think it was inevitable
00:23:07 --> 00:23:10 that Trump would win the election.
00:23:10 --> 00:23:15 I do think that a lot of what made the Trump nominee, Trump the nominee,
00:23:15 --> 00:23:17 is a backlash against Obama.
00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 I think political scholars have pretty much demonstrated that.
00:23:21 --> 00:23:27 There's a very strong correlation between Republican voters who score high on
00:23:27 --> 00:23:30 what political scientists call racial resentment.
00:23:30 --> 00:23:34 So racial resentment is not identical to white supremacy, but the people we
00:23:34 --> 00:23:38 call racially resentful are the people who still believe Obama was not born
00:23:38 --> 00:23:42 in the United States, the people who think that whites are more discriminated
00:23:42 --> 00:23:44 against today in the United States than blacks.
00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 And when you look at the people who have high levels of racial resentment,
00:23:48 --> 00:23:53 and one thing that changed dramatically from, say, the 1980s to the 2010s
00:23:53 --> 00:23:58 is that that group of people who score high on racial resentment used to be
00:23:58 --> 00:24:00 equally represented in both political parties,
00:24:01 --> 00:24:05 and they've mostly migrated into the Republican Party over those 20 or 30 years.
00:24:06 --> 00:24:09 But the people who had the highest levels were the ones who were most likely
00:24:09 --> 00:24:13 to vote for Trump in the Republican primaries in 2016.
00:24:13 --> 00:24:15 So I don't think there's any doubt about that.
00:24:16 --> 00:24:21 But let's be clear, the backlash is probably among a significant minority.
00:24:21 --> 00:24:25 Most Americans actually admire Obama and still, by majority vote,
00:24:25 --> 00:24:29 I'm sure would regard him as a successful president and somebody they would
00:24:29 --> 00:24:32 very much like their children to grow up to be like.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:38 It's not a majority of the country that embraces this racial resentment.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:42 It may be a majority of the Republican Party, and those people are the ones
00:24:42 --> 00:24:44 who put Trump in power. Yeah.
00:24:46 --> 00:24:50 It's maybe a majority group of the minority party. Maybe it's not even a majority
00:24:50 --> 00:24:53 of the minority party, but it's a substantial percentage.
00:24:53 --> 00:25:00 All right. So let me ask you this question. Do you think that because you talk
00:25:00 --> 00:25:06 about the percentage breakdown in the United States from 1950 to now I believe,
00:25:07 --> 00:25:14 And so do you think that insecurity from.
00:25:15 --> 00:25:23 White people is a major factor into why there's this resurgence or renaissance
00:25:23 --> 00:25:27 in white supremacy or even just the racial resentment that's out there?
00:25:28 --> 00:25:32 Yeah, in some way, that's maybe the main factor.
00:25:32 --> 00:25:37 And Obama is just a reminder of how quickly that's happening.
00:25:37 --> 00:25:42 So to use the numbers that you're referring to, in the 1950 census,
00:25:42 --> 00:25:44 the country was 90% white, 10% black.
00:25:45 --> 00:25:49 In 1980, it was still 80% white.
00:25:49 --> 00:25:54 The last census shows that the United States is now about 58% white,
00:25:54 --> 00:25:59 and it's projected by demographers to be majority non-white,
00:25:59 --> 00:26:01 black, Latino, Asian, black.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:08 Within 20 or 25 years, that's inevitable. You could end immigration tomorrow,
00:26:08 --> 00:26:12 which the administration might like to do, and the country will still be majority non-white.
00:26:13 --> 00:26:16 Maybe it'll take a little bit longer. So if you look at all children in the
00:26:16 --> 00:26:21 United States below the age of 18, they're already majority non-white.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:25 So if you don't allow any more immigrants of color into the country,
00:26:25 --> 00:26:28 sure, it'll slow down the change, but it won't prevent the change.
00:26:29 --> 00:26:32 And we can tell that that's a big factor because that's going on around the
00:26:32 --> 00:26:33 rest of the world, right?
00:26:33 --> 00:26:37 So in France and England and Germany, they didn't have a black prime minister
00:26:37 --> 00:26:42 or president, but they nonetheless have a rise in far-right parties like the
00:26:42 --> 00:26:44 neo-fascist alternative for Germany.
00:26:44 --> 00:26:48 I think in France, it's more likely than not that the next prime minister will
00:26:48 --> 00:26:53 be from the party that isn't, you know, they've cleaned up their act a little
00:26:53 --> 00:26:56 bit, but they were founded by neo-Nazis, by fascists.
00:26:56 --> 00:26:59 So yeah, the whole world is seeing that.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:03 Immigration, people looking different, the other.
00:27:05 --> 00:27:09 It's almost human nature, right? If you think evolutionarily,
00:27:09 --> 00:27:12 to see somebody who's not like your tribe is to recognize a threat.
00:27:12 --> 00:27:15 I'm talking about tens of thousands of years ago.
00:27:15 --> 00:27:18 And now, because of that kind of natural impulse,
00:27:19 --> 00:27:25 And buying that with politicians' demagogic incentive to appeal to fear and,
00:27:25 --> 00:27:29 you know, the Muslims are coming to get us, the Mexicans are coming to get us,
00:27:30 --> 00:27:32 people are manipulable.
00:27:32 --> 00:27:36 And that's really sad. And, you know, the Biden administration didn't help with
00:27:36 --> 00:27:40 their immigration policy. You know, the United States should have lots of immigrants.
00:27:40 --> 00:27:44 We can digest lots of immigrants helping the economy, but you can't have what
00:27:44 --> 00:27:49 appears to be chaos at the southern border without people wanting to do something about it.
00:27:49 --> 00:27:54 And there's a saying in politics that if the left progressives don't handle
00:27:54 --> 00:27:55 immigration, then the fascists will.
00:27:56 --> 00:27:58 And that's unfortunately what we've done.
00:27:58 --> 00:28:04 But again, you know, the United States is going to be, I still believe,
00:28:04 --> 00:28:10 you know, one of the world's first successful multiracial democracies.
00:28:10 --> 00:28:14 And it's a it's a difficult accomplishment. And we're going through some terribly difficult times.
00:28:15 --> 00:28:19 We should be glad that Trump is such a buffoon and he's doing,
00:28:19 --> 00:28:22 you know, dozens of things to undermine his appeal.
00:28:23 --> 00:28:28 So when I, you know, I started this podcast during the first administration
00:28:28 --> 00:28:34 and I was saying then that this was like the last gasp of white supremacy.
00:28:35 --> 00:28:40 So my question to you is, why do you think they are bolder now than they were
00:28:41 --> 00:28:44 when they first had an opportunity with their first four years?
00:28:45 --> 00:28:48 Right. That's a great question. I'm not sure I know the answer.
00:28:49 --> 00:28:53 I want to say that Trump won the election in 2024.
00:28:53 --> 00:28:58 Again, every event in the world has multiple causes, but it was the inflation
00:28:58 --> 00:29:02 that I think led a number of voters,
00:29:02 --> 00:29:06 the people who are in the middle, who don't pay much attention to politics,
00:29:06 --> 00:29:08 who don't have strong ideological views.
00:29:08 --> 00:29:13 You know, they voted for Trump because the cost of living was quite a bit higher
00:29:13 --> 00:29:17 and it was higher everywhere in the world. It wasn't higher in the United States
00:29:17 --> 00:29:20 relative to Europe or relative to Japan or whatever.
00:29:20 --> 00:29:26 It was higher everywhere because of the supply chains being disrupted by COVID.
00:29:26 --> 00:29:30 And, you know, that's not a great reason to vote for an aspiring autocrat.
00:29:30 --> 00:29:34 But, you know, lots of people don't pay close attention and they didn't have
00:29:34 --> 00:29:37 those high prices during Trump's first administration.
00:29:37 --> 00:29:41 Now, Trump hasn't solved the problem and those people have largely turned against
00:29:41 --> 00:29:45 him and he's going to get a beating in the November elections, I'm pretty sure.
00:29:45 --> 00:29:48 Why are they more open about what they're doing?
00:29:48 --> 00:29:53 You know, it's a complicated political coalition and, you know,
00:29:53 --> 00:29:57 they see an opportunity and this could be their last opportunity,
00:29:57 --> 00:30:00 right? The country they want, you know, they make America great.
00:30:00 --> 00:30:03 They want a white country dominated by white people.
00:30:04 --> 00:30:08 They want a country with a, you know, Protestant Anglo-Saxon majority.
00:30:08 --> 00:30:14 Those things are disappearing. And I think they probably believe it's now or never, right?
00:30:14 --> 00:30:17 In the same way I see Trump as an existential threat to democracy,
00:30:18 --> 00:30:22 the MAGA people see the world as an existential threat.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:25 And, you know, what's her name? The press secretary who's leaving just said
00:30:25 --> 00:30:28 that the other day. I mean, it's the Democrats are an existential threat to
00:30:28 --> 00:30:31 the country. I think she really believes that.
00:30:31 --> 00:30:35 But what she's worried about are, you know, we're not going to have all white
00:30:35 --> 00:30:39 people in charge. We're going to have, you know, Muslims who have equal rights.
00:30:39 --> 00:30:45 And we're going to do some serious redistribution like Biden tried to do with Build Back So,
00:30:46 --> 00:30:51 you know, the people at Heritage Foundation with their 2025 project,
00:30:51 --> 00:30:55 they're also, you know, they're going to lose in the long term if we have democracy.
00:30:55 --> 00:30:58 If we have democracy, people are going to vote to tax billionaires and they'll
00:30:58 --> 00:31:02 vote for a wealth tax and they'll vote for all the aspects of Build Back Better
00:31:02 --> 00:31:06 that didn't get adopted. Free community college, free child care.
00:31:07 --> 00:31:10 And they're scared to death of that. So, yeah.
00:31:11 --> 00:31:15 I don't know. I don't think I have a great answer for why they're more desperate
00:31:15 --> 00:31:17 and more focused right now.
00:31:17 --> 00:31:21 You know, the Trump administration did have a lot more constraints.
00:31:21 --> 00:31:26 So, you know, a lot of the people Trump appointed, you know, people like John Kelly,
00:31:26 --> 00:31:33 people like his first chief of staff, Republican senators like Jeff Blake,
00:31:33 --> 00:31:36 you know, the Republican Party hadn't completely lost its mind,
00:31:36 --> 00:31:40 but now they've chased out anyone who has a constraint on Trump.
00:31:40 --> 00:31:47 And Trump only appointed seriously unqualified people who have no backbone and
00:31:47 --> 00:31:48 will not tell him anything he doesn't want to hear.
00:31:48 --> 00:31:53 So you had serious people in the first cabinet and, you know,
00:31:53 --> 00:31:56 you don't have that. Now you have Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy and.
00:31:58 --> 00:32:02 A bunch of people who have no real principles or convictions,
00:32:03 --> 00:32:06 but I don't know that I've given a great answer. I think they're desperate.
00:32:07 --> 00:32:10 Yeah. All right. So I'm going to ask you a personal question.
00:32:11 --> 00:32:15 Sure. You are a white man, highly educated, highly successful,
00:32:16 --> 00:32:17 affiliated with Harvard University.
00:32:18 --> 00:32:20 White privilege is at your disposal.
00:32:21 --> 00:32:24 Why hasn't the rot of white supremacy affected you?
00:32:25 --> 00:32:30 Well, you know, I've never been to try to be empathetic to the people who are,
00:32:31 --> 00:32:35 losing their minds politically. And I do try to be empathetic because I think
00:32:35 --> 00:32:37 lots of them are good people.
00:32:37 --> 00:32:40 Donald Trump is not a good person. He's a very, very bad person.
00:32:41 --> 00:32:44 He's a very flawed person. You could feel sorry for him. He grew up in a family
00:32:44 --> 00:32:47 where I don't think anybody loved him. His father was a horrible person.
00:32:47 --> 00:32:52 But, you know, the average farmer in Iowa who voted for Trump three times,
00:32:53 --> 00:32:56 I think would give you the shirt off their back if you were in trouble.
00:32:56 --> 00:32:59 I don't think they're bad people. I think they're kind of ignorant.
00:32:59 --> 00:33:04 And I think they don't, you know, if they don't understand history,
00:33:04 --> 00:33:07 they don't understand why we have race-based affirmative action.
00:33:07 --> 00:33:12 I've never suffered from race-based affirmative action. I'm at Harvard Law School,
00:33:12 --> 00:33:14 right? I mean, I've had every benefit.
00:33:15 --> 00:33:18 I do think it helps to understand the history of the country.
00:33:18 --> 00:33:22 Sometimes I think if everybody knew some more history, maybe they'd have a more
00:33:22 --> 00:33:25 liberal perspective on some of these issues.
00:33:25 --> 00:33:29 But it's people, you know, the people who support Trump, there's been a big
00:33:29 --> 00:33:34 political shift. So a lot of these people voted for Obama in 2008 and maybe
00:33:34 --> 00:33:37 even in 2012, right? He won Ohio.
00:33:37 --> 00:33:44 He won Iowa. Those are both states with disproportionately large white working class compositions.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:48 And Trump won them both by more than 10 points. So we're talking about a lot
00:33:48 --> 00:33:50 of people who shifted sides.
00:33:50 --> 00:33:53 And I think their view is the world is getting worse for me.
00:33:53 --> 00:33:57 And it is, right? Their life expectancies have gone down, which almost never
00:33:57 --> 00:33:59 happens in human history.
00:34:00 --> 00:34:05 Their children are addicted to opioids. These are people whose lives have gotten
00:34:05 --> 00:34:11 objectively worse. A lot of the working class unionized jobs in the auto industry,
00:34:11 --> 00:34:13 the steel industry, those are gone.
00:34:14 --> 00:34:20 It used to be that every generation, they would double their income and their
00:34:20 --> 00:34:24 children could be expected to do even better. And since 1980, that stopped.
00:34:24 --> 00:34:28 So the world's getting worse for them and they're looking for answers.
00:34:28 --> 00:34:32 And you've got these demagogic politicians who will give them answers.
00:34:32 --> 00:34:34 So the reason your life is worse
00:34:34 --> 00:34:39 is because African-Americans benefit from race-based affirmative action.
00:34:39 --> 00:34:42 And we have Muslims coming in and they're all terrorists.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:45 And the Democrats are trying to take your guns away, right?
00:34:46 --> 00:34:51 Like Obama talked about. And, you know, I'm not in that world, right?
00:34:51 --> 00:34:54 I have a really good, easy life, and I've done much better than my father did.
00:34:54 --> 00:34:58 So I don't think it's anything special about me. I think most of the people
00:34:58 --> 00:35:03 I know feel the same way. I know very few people who vote for Donald Trump.
00:35:03 --> 00:35:07 I have one or two crazy colleagues at Harvard Law School, but out of the 110,
00:35:07 --> 00:35:11 120 people, I'd be surprised if two of them voted for Donald Trump.
00:35:11 --> 00:35:15 They understand he's a demigod and an autocrat.
00:35:16 --> 00:35:21 I am empathetic to people whose world has gotten worse, but they're voting for
00:35:21 --> 00:35:25 a political party that pretty openly makes it even worse, right?
00:35:25 --> 00:35:28 We're going to cut millions of these people off of Medicaid,
00:35:28 --> 00:35:34 and we've cut taxes on billionaires, and we're not doing anything for them economically.
00:35:34 --> 00:35:35 They have $4 gasoline now.
00:35:36 --> 00:35:39 They should vote for Democrats who are going to make their lives better.
00:35:39 --> 00:35:42 But in order to do that, you need to nullify these other issues,
00:35:42 --> 00:35:45 and that's not easy to do. Yeah.
00:35:46 --> 00:35:51 All right. You end your essay with this passage. The present necessarily shapes
00:35:51 --> 00:35:53 how we think about the past,
00:35:53 --> 00:35:58 and the future will determine whether the Trump's, whether the Trump's administration's
00:35:58 --> 00:36:04 present efforts to distort our nation's rich racial history prove successful.
00:36:05 --> 00:36:11 So that leads me to two questions. One, how should Americans think about the country's past?
00:36:12 --> 00:36:17 Well, we should try to understand the reality. We should understand facts.
00:36:18 --> 00:36:22 With regard to race, Americans had slavery almost from the beginning.
00:36:23 --> 00:36:28 And under slavery, a racial ideology developed to justify the institution.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:29 So Blacks were inferior.
00:36:30 --> 00:36:34 We had a civil war. As you know, the civil war was initially not fought to end
00:36:34 --> 00:36:38 slavery. It was fought to prevent Southerners from seceding.
00:36:39 --> 00:36:43 It only gradually turned into a war against slavery. And as Americans came to
00:36:43 --> 00:36:46 condemn slavery, that doesn't mean they gave up white supremacy.
00:36:46 --> 00:36:52 So, you know, white Southerners, when they ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing
00:36:52 --> 00:36:56 slavery, they added resolutions making it clear that abolishing slavery didn't
00:36:56 --> 00:36:58 mean ending white supremacy.
00:36:58 --> 00:37:02 We had a period of Reconstruction where we tried to force some change in the
00:37:02 --> 00:37:05 South. We forced white Southerners to allow black people to vote.
00:37:06 --> 00:37:10 And that worked for about 10 years. We had some genuinely...
00:37:11 --> 00:37:16 Racially egalitarian politicians, true heroes, people like Charles Sumner and
00:37:16 --> 00:37:22 Thaddeus Stevens, who really did believe that any kind of racism was a badger
00:37:22 --> 00:37:24 incident of slavery and it should all be abolished.
00:37:24 --> 00:37:27 So you shouldn't have laws segregating railroads and you shouldn't have bans
00:37:27 --> 00:37:31 on interracial marriage and we should really just be colorblind.
00:37:32 --> 00:37:36 But that didn't last because as I understand it, the history of Reconstruction
00:37:36 --> 00:37:40 is white Northerners ultimately didn't fight as hard for racial equality as
00:37:40 --> 00:37:41 white Southerners fought against it.
00:37:41 --> 00:37:46 So within 40 years of the 15th Amendment, which bars disfranchisement based
00:37:46 --> 00:37:52 on race, 0% of Blacks were voting in the South, 0%, right? Not literally zero
00:37:52 --> 00:37:55 people, there are 100 Blacks voting in Atlanta, but 0%.
00:37:56 --> 00:38:00 So constitutional amendment completely nullified. That didn't really start to
00:38:00 --> 00:38:04 change until after World War II, the war against fascism, Black soldiers fighting
00:38:04 --> 00:38:08 for democracy, risking their lives, coming back, demanding civil rights.
00:38:08 --> 00:38:12 We didn't get that civil rights legislation until the mid-1960s.
00:38:12 --> 00:38:16 But even then, legislation is one thing, and changing attitudes is something
00:38:16 --> 00:38:20 else. How could there be no Black quarterbacks until the 1980s?
00:38:20 --> 00:38:23 How could the NFL not have a Black coach until 1989?
00:38:23 --> 00:38:27 How could there not be a Black president in the country until 2008?
00:38:27 --> 00:38:35 So these things take a very long time to undo and the effort to undo it was
00:38:35 --> 00:38:40 never committed to by all americans only by some americans and since the civil rights movement
00:38:40 --> 00:38:43 there's always been a backlash that you're competing against so richard nixon
00:38:43 --> 00:38:48 running against crime running on law and order ronald reagan running against
00:38:48 --> 00:38:50 welfare queens right there's always been.
00:38:51 --> 00:38:55 A very powerful resistance movement to the racial reform movement.
00:38:55 --> 00:38:59 And now we've gone even further than I would have thought possible in that direction.
00:38:59 --> 00:39:02 We have an openly white supremacist administration.
00:39:03 --> 00:39:06 On the other hand, you know, there's a lot of change going on.
00:39:07 --> 00:39:10 You know, black quarterbacks run the NFL right now. And, you know,
00:39:10 --> 00:39:12 there are two black people on the Supreme Court.
00:39:12 --> 00:39:18 And I don't think they can reinstate white supremacy as hard as they try in
00:39:18 --> 00:39:23 a country that's as diverse and where the young people are even more supportive of diversity.
00:39:23 --> 00:39:29 I still think the United States will be a successful interracial democracy.
00:39:29 --> 00:39:34 I do worry that some of the damage Trump is doing, especially in international
00:39:34 --> 00:39:36 affairs, will be difficult to undo.
00:39:37 --> 00:39:39 I don't know why anyone in the world would ever trust us again.
00:39:40 --> 00:39:43 So what is your vision for America's future?
00:39:44 --> 00:39:47 Well, do you mean my prediction or my hope? Well, I'll get to your hope in a
00:39:47 --> 00:39:49 minute, but what's your prediction?
00:39:51 --> 00:39:54 I think Trump, assuming we have free and fair elections, and it's hard for me
00:39:54 --> 00:39:59 to know for sure, I think the Democrats will win the House and maybe win the
00:39:59 --> 00:40:05 Senate in 2026. I think Democrats will have a very good chance to win the presidency in 2028.
00:40:06 --> 00:40:11 My concern is that I don't think enough Democrats necessarily understand how
00:40:11 --> 00:40:16 bad the situation is and are willing to fight back in aggressive ways.
00:40:16 --> 00:40:22 So I think at a minimum, with a Democratic trifecta, you need to break the filibuster.
00:40:22 --> 00:40:24 Otherwise, you'll never get voting rights legislation.
00:40:25 --> 00:40:28 You need to make the District of Columbia a state. You need to allow Puerto
00:40:28 --> 00:40:32 Rico to have a referendum and become a state because the malapportionment in
00:40:32 --> 00:40:35 the Senate is so heavily in the direction of Republicans.
00:40:36 --> 00:40:39 And you can't do anything about that. You're never going to get a constitutional
00:40:39 --> 00:40:43 amendment to change that according to the Constitution. You can't even change it by amendment.
00:40:44 --> 00:40:47 I also think you have to pack the Supreme Court. I think you could solve a lot
00:40:47 --> 00:40:50 of our problems if you just had a Democratic Supreme Court.
00:40:51 --> 00:40:54 And I think we need a lot of economic redistribution. So we're going to need
00:40:54 --> 00:40:56 to start taxing billionaires very heavily.
00:40:57 --> 00:41:00 We're going to need to do things like Mondami wants to do in New York,
00:41:00 --> 00:41:05 you know, free child care, free pre-K, free community college.
00:41:05 --> 00:41:10 We need to do the same sort of things that the New Deal did in the 1930s,
00:41:10 --> 00:41:12 though, as you knew, the New Deal didn't really apply to Black people,
00:41:12 --> 00:41:14 right? That's an important part of our history.
00:41:14 --> 00:41:18 People don't understand, but Social Security, a lot of the New Deal measures
00:41:18 --> 00:41:22 were designed so that they didn't cover agricultural workers or domestic workers,
00:41:22 --> 00:41:26 which is basically saying Black people are not going to benefit from this legislation.
00:41:26 --> 00:41:28 It was a New Deal for white people.
00:41:28 --> 00:41:34 Same with a great society. So we're going to need really dramatic economic and political change.
00:41:34 --> 00:41:38 And if we did that, I actually think, you know, that that can be reinforcing.
00:41:38 --> 00:41:42 Right. Once the government does stuff that benefits people, they like it and
00:41:42 --> 00:41:45 they'll vote for the party that wants to keep that. Right. Like Obamacare,
00:41:46 --> 00:41:48 like Medicare, like Social Security.
00:41:48 --> 00:41:51 Those were things that were very popular and Republicans tried to take them
00:41:51 --> 00:41:54 away, but they were never successful at taking them away.
00:41:54 --> 00:41:58 But I think it has to happen very quickly because you never know what's going
00:41:58 --> 00:42:01 to be around the next bend in the corner. It could be another pandemic.
00:42:02 --> 00:42:06 It could be mass unemployment from, you know, the AI bubble bursting.
00:42:06 --> 00:42:10 And once that happens, there's going to be a big backlash. And you may not,
00:42:10 --> 00:42:13 you know, Obama had two years that he could effectively do anything,
00:42:13 --> 00:42:15 the first two years of his presidency.
00:42:15 --> 00:42:19 And even then, you know, if it weren't for Nancy Pelosi being the best speaker
00:42:19 --> 00:42:23 of the House in history, they wouldn't have gotten the Affordable Care Act passed
00:42:23 --> 00:42:28 because people got old feet really quickly and the right, you know, engineered this,
00:42:29 --> 00:42:32 this fake, what's called the tax protesters, uh.
00:42:33 --> 00:42:39 The Tea Party people. Thank you. Which also was more rooted in race than most
00:42:39 --> 00:42:44 people tell you. I mean, they treat it as being a tax protest.
00:42:44 --> 00:42:49 But actually, if you go to these rallies, they have people dressed as witch
00:42:49 --> 00:42:54 doctors pretending to be Obama. And there's very high correlation between racial
00:42:54 --> 00:42:56 resentment and support for the Tea Party.
00:42:57 --> 00:43:02 It's not simply about anti-tax policy. It's also about racial resentment towards Obama.
00:43:03 --> 00:43:07 And now, of course, who orchestrated that? I mean, Trump was the number one birther, right?
00:43:08 --> 00:43:14 Yeah. All right. So finish this sentence. I have hope because.
00:43:15 --> 00:43:19 You know, my students give me hope. Young people give me hope. I am a pessimist.
00:43:19 --> 00:43:24 And I don't mean by nature. I think the United States has done a truly terrible
00:43:24 --> 00:43:30 thing in electing this administration. And I think it is going to be very, very difficult to undo.
00:43:30 --> 00:43:33 As I said a second ago, I don't think the world will ever trust us.
00:43:33 --> 00:43:35 I don't know why they should. I think NATO is over.
00:43:36 --> 00:43:39 I think it'll be hard to recreate public health service.
00:43:39 --> 00:43:44 You know, measles epidemics in the United States in 2026, unbelievable.
00:43:44 --> 00:43:46 God help us if we have another pandemic.
00:43:46 --> 00:43:50 I think we're driving scientists away by the hundreds, by the federal government
00:43:50 --> 00:43:52 cutting their grants. They're going to China. They're going to Europe.
00:43:53 --> 00:43:56 I think a lot of those things are very, very difficult to undo.
00:43:56 --> 00:44:00 To the extent I'm optimistic, it's because I think, you know,
00:44:00 --> 00:44:03 the people who are supporting Trump are the 70-year-old white guys who watch
00:44:03 --> 00:44:06 Fox News, and they're not going to be in charge.
00:44:06 --> 00:44:09 They're not going to be around that much longer. It's going to be younger people.
00:44:09 --> 00:44:13 And the younger people are much more supportive of racial diversity.
00:44:14 --> 00:44:17 The younger people are much more left-leaning in their economic views because
00:44:17 --> 00:44:19 they're going to college and they're not getting jobs.
00:44:20 --> 00:44:22 They're going to demand that something be done about that.
00:44:23 --> 00:44:28 They're turning on Trump. So, you know, in my kids' friend groups,
00:44:28 --> 00:44:32 you know, my kids are in their late 20s, early 30s. My daughter...
00:44:33 --> 00:44:38 I have adopted kids and biological child. So I have both white and black kids.
00:44:38 --> 00:44:42 My white biological daughter, I think, doesn't know anybody in our friend group
00:44:42 --> 00:44:45 who isn't a pretty lefty Democrat.
00:44:46 --> 00:44:49 There were some white men who voted for Trump. Trump won white men,
00:44:49 --> 00:44:54 but those young white men are deserting him because they wanted jobs, right?
00:44:54 --> 00:44:58 They don't want a war in Iran, and they don't want gasoline at $4 a gallon.
00:44:58 --> 00:45:04 And so I do think that the younger generation has internalized a different set
00:45:04 --> 00:45:05 of values, and that's often true, right?
00:45:05 --> 00:45:10 I mean, it's often the case with racial change, with change with regard to attitudes
00:45:10 --> 00:45:15 toward gender roles, with change in regard to attitudes toward same-sex relationships,
00:45:16 --> 00:45:19 that it's not that the older generation changes its mind, it's that you get
00:45:19 --> 00:45:21 a generational displacement.
00:45:22 --> 00:45:26 I think that's actually a view that some scientists have about changing paradigms in science.
00:45:26 --> 00:45:32 It's not that the older scientists are persuaded by something that the younger scientists came up.
00:45:32 --> 00:45:36 It's just the older scientists leave and the younger scientists replace them.
00:45:36 --> 00:45:40 And so, you know, I think that's the story about race in the United States.
00:45:40 --> 00:45:45 You know, it's not that Brown created this change. It's that kind of World War
00:45:45 --> 00:45:50 II, you know, the ideological rejection of fascism, the role of black soldiers,
00:45:50 --> 00:45:53 the great migration, the greater education of African-Americans.
00:45:54 --> 00:45:56 Those things were having an effect on young people.
00:45:57 --> 00:46:01 And I wrote a book about gay marriage. You can see it happening with gay marriage.
00:46:01 --> 00:46:07 Basically, every year from 2000, 1% to 2% of the population increasingly supported it.
00:46:08 --> 00:46:12 And that enables you to go in one generation from 30% of the country supporting
00:46:12 --> 00:46:15 it to 70% of the country supporting it.
00:46:16 --> 00:46:20 By the time of Brown, 50% of Americans agreed with the Brown decision,
00:46:21 --> 00:46:23 which would not have been true before World War II.
00:46:23 --> 00:46:28 And by 1970, it was hard to find a lot of Americans who said Brown was wrong.
00:46:29 --> 00:46:33 I think a lot of that is generational change, and I like the values of the younger
00:46:33 --> 00:46:38 generation better than the values of my generation. Yeah.
00:46:38 --> 00:46:44 All right. So, Michael Klarman, how can people reach out to you other than,
00:46:45 --> 00:46:46 you know, enrolling in Harvard?
00:46:47 --> 00:46:51 How can they pick their brain of yours and pick up any of your writings,
00:46:51 --> 00:46:53 your books, all that stuff?
00:46:53 --> 00:46:58 I am religious about responding to emails. I would just ask to keep them short
00:46:58 --> 00:46:59 because I get a lot of emails.
00:46:59 --> 00:47:05 I'm always happy. I love suggesting stuff to read, whether it's my own stuff or other stuff.
00:47:05 --> 00:47:10 But if somebody emails me and I have a question about something you said or
00:47:10 --> 00:47:12 something that's going on, I'll respond.
00:47:13 --> 00:47:16 As I said, it's hard when you get 10-paragraph emails.
00:47:16 --> 00:47:20 It's good to keep it short and sweet. What's your address?
00:47:21 --> 00:47:28 M, as in Michael, Klarman, K-L-A-R-M-A-N, at law.harvard.edu.
00:47:28 --> 00:47:32 Or you can just go to Harvard Law School and look up faculty and just remember
00:47:32 --> 00:47:35 my last name is Klarman and you'll get it there. Yeah.
00:47:35 --> 00:47:39 Well, Michael Klarman, I really enjoyed this interview.
00:47:40 --> 00:47:44 I am glad that we were able to have this conversation. You were one of the people
00:47:44 --> 00:47:48 I really wanted to talk to, especially reading your essay.
00:47:49 --> 00:47:52 And I know you were limited in what you could do in, I guess,
00:47:52 --> 00:47:57 a thousand words or whatever, but I think you got your message across and I
00:47:57 --> 00:48:01 look forward to your book. So one One of the rules I have is that once you've
00:48:01 --> 00:48:04 been on the show, you have an open invitation to come back.
00:48:04 --> 00:48:09 So when you finish that book on sports, I definitely want you to come back on.
00:48:09 --> 00:48:14 I love sports as much as I love politics, if not more. So, yeah,
00:48:14 --> 00:48:18 yeah, I would love to have you come back on and we'll talk about the book as well.
00:48:18 --> 00:48:21 Well, thank you. That's very kind. I would enjoy that. All right.
00:48:22 --> 00:48:25 All right, guys, we're going to catch you all on the other side.
00:48:44 --> 00:48:50 All right, and we are back. So now it is time for my next guest, Joseph Margulies.
00:48:51 --> 00:48:57 Joseph Margulies is a writer and litigator and professor of the practice of
00:48:57 --> 00:48:59 government at Cornell University.
00:48:59 --> 00:49:05 Civil rights lawyer, he was counsel of record in Razul v. Bush in 2004,
00:49:05 --> 00:49:12 which gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in federal court.
00:49:13 --> 00:49:18 And in Munaf v. Guerin in 2008, which gave American citizens the right to challenge
00:49:18 --> 00:49:21 their detention by the U.S. government.
00:49:21 --> 00:49:26 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest,
00:49:26 --> 00:49:29 on this podcast, Joseph Margulies.
00:49:40 --> 00:49:44 All right. Joseph Margulies. How are you doing, sir? You doing good?
00:49:44 --> 00:49:46 I'm doing very well, sir. And you?
00:49:46 --> 00:49:50 I'm doing lovely. I'm on a roll, man. I had some Harvard professors on last
00:49:50 --> 00:49:55 week. Now I got a guy that beat George Bush in the Supreme Court. I'm just, I'm rolling.
00:49:57 --> 00:50:02 Cornell professor at that. So yeah, I'm seriously, yeah, I'm really,
00:50:02 --> 00:50:08 really honored to have you on to talk about your new book and hold on,
00:50:08 --> 00:50:09 hold on. I'm going to get this right.
00:50:10 --> 00:50:15 I'm going to read the whole title. The book is called cast out a call for a
00:50:15 --> 00:50:18 forgiving society in an age of incarceration.
00:50:19 --> 00:50:25 So we're going to talk about what happens, your thoughts on that book and some
00:50:25 --> 00:50:26 other things that might be related to it.
00:50:27 --> 00:50:32 Right. But before we do that, I do a couple of icebreakers to kind of get the
00:50:32 --> 00:50:38 conversation started. So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.
00:50:38 --> 00:50:42 And the quote is, if you feel pain, you are alive.
00:50:42 --> 00:50:44 If you feel other people's pain, you are a human being.
00:50:45 --> 00:50:52 Yeah, that's widely attributed to Tolstoy. It is the, you know,
00:50:52 --> 00:50:54 the opening quote of my book.
00:50:55 --> 00:51:00 And it is something I believe in my core.
00:51:00 --> 00:51:05 I think that the capacity for empathy,
00:51:06 --> 00:51:13 very different from sympathy, but empathy, that is to see yourself in the journey
00:51:13 --> 00:51:16 of another, is hardwired into our DNA.
00:51:17 --> 00:51:24 It is part of our soul and that it's popular nowadays to deny our capacity for
00:51:24 --> 00:51:29 empathy or to ridicule it and to say it's a bad thing. I think that is horribly misguided.
00:51:29 --> 00:51:37 I think that our capacity to recognize, to see ourselves in another and to see,
00:51:37 --> 00:51:44 and this is perhaps even more important, to see them in us, us in them and them in us,
00:51:45 --> 00:51:55 is essential to our character as humans and essential to the idea of a shared,
00:51:55 --> 00:51:59 humanity that comes together to solve its greatest problems.
00:52:00 --> 00:52:07 So I believe in that very, very strongly. Yeah. All right. So now the next icebreaker
00:52:07 --> 00:52:08 is what I call 20 questions.
00:52:09 --> 00:52:12 Okay. So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:52:13 --> 00:52:17 You want me to say it out loud? Yes, sir. 16. All right.
00:52:18 --> 00:52:25 What is a misconception people often have about your beliefs or values? Oh, wow. That's great.
00:52:26 --> 00:52:27 Wow. That's great.
00:52:31 --> 00:52:36 The most urgent misconception, I think,
00:52:37 --> 00:52:46 is that because I speak on behalf of those who have done horrific things,
00:52:47 --> 00:52:56 people think that I do not recognize or I diminish or I do not appreciate the pain they have caused.
00:52:56 --> 00:53:02 And that, in fact, what I'm interested in doing is excusing their behavior.
00:53:02 --> 00:53:07 And that is a profound error. That is a very serious error.
00:53:07 --> 00:53:16 There is, as I just say in the book, a difference between an excuse and an explanation.
00:53:16 --> 00:53:19 And ordinarily, we don't have trouble understanding that difference.
00:53:19 --> 00:53:25 An excuse absolves. It absolves you of responsibility. but an explanation accounts.
00:53:26 --> 00:53:32 It accounts for how you got from where you were to where you are and to where you will go.
00:53:33 --> 00:53:38 I believe in explanations. I believe in the complexity of the human experience.
00:53:39 --> 00:53:44 That does not mean that I excuse people who have done great wrongs.
00:53:45 --> 00:53:49 I think they need to be held accountable, but accountability should take the
00:53:49 --> 00:53:56 form of a recognition of that entire experience or that entire explanation, right?
00:53:57 --> 00:54:03 Yeah. So why did you decide to write this book at this time?
00:54:03 --> 00:54:05 Yeah. Wow. These are great questions.
00:54:06 --> 00:54:12 There's a sense in which I've been writing this book for decades because my
00:54:12 --> 00:54:16 work, I'm a lawyer, I'm trained as a lawyer, I still practice law,
00:54:16 --> 00:54:20 and my work has always been basically for the same population.
00:54:20 --> 00:54:24 I represent, as a criminal defense lawyer and a civil rights lawyer,
00:54:25 --> 00:54:31 folks who have been cast out because they have done or are alleged to have done horrific things.
00:54:32 --> 00:54:34 These are the people we identify as monsters.
00:54:36 --> 00:54:38 And my great frustration as
00:54:38 --> 00:54:43 a lawyer has been my inability to communicate the humanity of my clients.
00:54:45 --> 00:54:49 The fact that I know in my soul that in all the ways that matter,
00:54:50 --> 00:54:52 I am no different from him and he is no different from me.
00:54:53 --> 00:55:00 That if I had traveled his path, I would be sitting behind these bars and he
00:55:00 --> 00:55:02 would be interviewing me or she.
00:55:04 --> 00:55:10 And the law is a very difficult tool to try to communicate that because of the
00:55:10 --> 00:55:14 restraints imposed on you by the architecture of legal practice.
00:55:15 --> 00:55:21 And so I, and because there are no other books that really grapple with the
00:55:21 --> 00:55:26 problem of the shared humanity of people who have done great wrongs.
00:55:27 --> 00:55:28 There's a lot of books about innocence.
00:55:29 --> 00:55:32 There's a lot of books, generally speaking, about prisons in general.
00:55:33 --> 00:55:39 But there are very few books, there are no books, that take the worst cases.
00:55:40 --> 00:55:43 As you know, the book is built around the lives of six people,
00:55:43 --> 00:55:48 all of whom did something really horrible and asked what brought them to this
00:55:48 --> 00:55:52 day? What brought them to this day? What happened?
00:55:53 --> 00:55:59 And in that telling, we come to see us in them and them in us, right?
00:55:59 --> 00:56:02 And leads to the conclusion, which is my personal philosophy,
00:56:02 --> 00:56:07 which I've held for many years, is that there is no them. There is no them. There is only us.
00:56:08 --> 00:56:09 I am him. I am him. He is me.
00:56:10 --> 00:56:12 And that's the motivation for the book.
00:56:13 --> 00:56:18 So I have been in law enforcement.
00:56:19 --> 00:56:22 I've done six and a half years in law enforcement.
00:56:23 --> 00:56:29 And one of the things I used to tell the guys when I was in jail was that the
00:56:29 --> 00:56:32 only difference between you and me is that you've got a blue jumpsuit on or
00:56:32 --> 00:56:35 an orange jumpsuit on, and I've got this uniform.
00:56:37 --> 00:56:40 It's like I could have very easily have made a mistake and been in the same
00:56:40 --> 00:56:46 position you're in. Or you very easily could have not been accused of what you've
00:56:46 --> 00:56:49 been accused of, and you've been working alongside me.
00:56:49 --> 00:56:53 So, you know, I totally get what you're saying.
00:56:53 --> 00:56:57 I think a lot of people, I think you're in tune with the fact that a lot of
00:56:57 --> 00:56:59 people don't, and we're going to dive into that a little more.
00:57:00 --> 00:57:05 But yeah, to me, that should be a basic concept.
00:57:06 --> 00:57:08 And so I'm going to ask you this question, even though you've kind of answered
00:57:08 --> 00:57:14 it in the previous two other questions, but I love the way that you phrased
00:57:14 --> 00:57:17 it. So explain who the whatabouts are.
00:57:18 --> 00:57:24 Yeah. So as I was working on this book, I would talk to people.
00:57:24 --> 00:57:28 I'm writing a book, and it's not really about forgiveness. I'm not saying people
00:57:28 --> 00:57:35 should be forgiven. I'm saying that our society has become really grotesquely unforgiving, right?
00:57:35 --> 00:57:42 We are uncaring and ungenerous and unyielding, and we cast people out for when
00:57:42 --> 00:57:45 they stumble, right, without recognizing that any of us could stumble this way.
00:57:46 --> 00:57:50 And people would say, yes, that's so true. That's so true. It is awful what we do.
00:57:50 --> 00:57:54 And then they would stop and they would say, but what about,
00:57:55 --> 00:57:57 and everybody has a what about,
00:57:57 --> 00:58:02 Everybody has that person or that category of people that they think,
00:58:02 --> 00:58:04 no, that person is not one of us.
00:58:05 --> 00:58:11 That person has done something that I cannot do other than cast them out.
00:58:12 --> 00:58:16 And so it was, and it's different people for different folks, right?
00:58:17 --> 00:58:21 Back when George Floyd was murdered, for a lot of people, it was Derek Chauvin.
00:58:23 --> 00:58:29 The police officer who drove his knee into the neck of George Floyd on tape
00:58:29 --> 00:58:31 for the whole world to watch for over nine minutes.
00:58:32 --> 00:58:35 He was there. What about? I would say to my students that I don't believe in
00:58:35 --> 00:58:37 demonization and there is no them.
00:58:38 --> 00:58:41 And all my students would say, yes, yes. But what about Derek Chauvin?
00:58:42 --> 00:58:48 For me, for the longest time, it was Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist,
00:58:48 --> 00:58:54 who just behaved horribly when he,
00:58:55 --> 00:59:01 denied the truth of the Sandy Hook shootings and said that the grieving parents,
00:59:01 --> 00:59:03 it's horrible, horrible what he did,
00:59:05 --> 00:59:10 were actors who were putting on a show as part of an effort to control,
00:59:10 --> 00:59:11 take people's guns away.
00:59:11 --> 00:59:14 I mean, it was a horrible behavior, this horrible behavior.
00:59:15 --> 00:59:20 And I had to really ask myself, well, what about for me personally,
00:59:20 --> 00:59:25 what about Alex Jones? Is he, is he the other? Is he a monster?
00:59:26 --> 00:59:31 And for some people, it's others. And I don't know Mr. Jones. I've never met with him.
00:59:31 --> 00:59:39 But I dug deep into the psychology of the conspiracy theorist and what the seduction,
00:59:40 --> 00:59:45 of being perceived as a messiah and a truth teller to so many people,
00:59:45 --> 00:59:46 what that must do to someone.
00:59:47 --> 00:59:51 And I came to the conclusion that if I'm really honest, and as hard as this
00:59:51 --> 00:59:53 was for me to admit, I could be Alex Jones.
00:59:54 --> 00:59:58 I do not view Alex Jones as the other, which is not to say I excuse what he
00:59:58 --> 01:00:00 did. What he did was wrong, and he needs to be held accountable.
01:00:02 --> 01:00:06 That's that misconception that we were talking about.
01:00:06 --> 01:00:15 Everybody has their whatabout, but if you are truly honest and open to understanding
01:00:15 --> 01:00:19 what happened, I see him in me and me in him.
01:00:19 --> 01:00:22 I do not view myself as other than Alex Jones.
01:00:23 --> 01:00:27 It's painful as it is for me to say that. Well, you know, it caught me off guard
01:00:27 --> 01:00:32 when I'm reading that. You said, my whatabout was Alex Jones.
01:00:32 --> 01:00:36 I was like, oh, OK, let me let me see where he's going with that one.
01:00:36 --> 01:00:42 But I mean, I agree with you about, you know, what he said and all this stuff.
01:00:42 --> 01:00:48 And he he has a tone for it in a way, but it wasn't a criminal civil.
01:00:48 --> 01:00:51 And so I guess that's what threw me off, because it was like you had been dealing
01:00:51 --> 01:00:53 with all of these criminal cases.
01:00:53 --> 01:00:57 And then your what about was a guy that said something stupid. Right.
01:00:58 --> 01:01:06 And so but but I get it. And, you know, I may have a few whatabouts.
01:01:06 --> 01:01:10 I may need to have some therapy counseling with you on that and try to purge
01:01:10 --> 01:01:11 me from some of this stuff.
01:01:12 --> 01:01:17 There's nothing wrong with having the whatabout. It's what's wrong is refusing
01:01:17 --> 01:01:22 to entertain the thought that he is me and I am him, right?
01:01:23 --> 01:01:29 To even entertain the thought that I could be him, he could walk in my shoes
01:01:29 --> 01:01:31 just as easy as I could walk in his. Yeah.
01:01:32 --> 01:01:36 So, you brought it up that America has become an unforgiving society.
01:01:36 --> 01:01:38 In your opinion, why do you think that is?
01:01:39 --> 01:01:43 Oh, I think it's a combination of things. There's never any single thing,
01:01:43 --> 01:01:48 but we have long embraced...
01:01:49 --> 01:01:56 Individual blame as explanations for when things go wrong, whenever anything goes wrong.
01:01:56 --> 01:01:59 This is throughout society. It's not just in the criminal legal system.
01:02:00 --> 01:02:05 We look for someone to blame as though it were one person's fault.
01:02:06 --> 01:02:10 And ideally, it's someone that we can cast out.
01:02:10 --> 01:02:18 That is, we can single them out and hold them up for a particular kind of ostracism and calumny.
01:02:18 --> 01:02:23 And in the criminal legal system, we can literally, not just figuratively and
01:02:23 --> 01:02:27 metaphorically, but literally cast them out as though that will purge ourselves,
01:02:28 --> 01:02:32 of this demon, this monster. That's how we deal with it.
01:02:32 --> 01:02:37 We're not comfortable looking at systemic or root causes.
01:02:37 --> 01:02:41 That's just not our style. What we do is look for bad actors.
01:02:43 --> 01:02:48 That's really behind the enormous growth of the carceral state.
01:02:50 --> 01:02:55 In the way that it has just exploded and we've become the incarceration capital of the world,
01:02:56 --> 01:03:03 and it has intensified that impulse to look at you know single bad actors has
01:03:03 --> 01:03:06 intensified in this moment of hyper polarization.
01:03:07 --> 01:03:14 So we are living in a time when instead of asking ourselves whether a person
01:03:14 --> 01:03:16 who believes something very different than I believe,
01:03:17 --> 01:03:23 could be acting in good faith, could be just like me, if I were walking in his shoes, I would,
01:03:24 --> 01:03:30 see the world as they do. Instead, we attach moral judgment.
01:03:30 --> 01:03:35 They're bad people because they, e.g., vote for Donald Trump,
01:03:35 --> 01:03:37 or they're a member of MAGA.
01:03:38 --> 01:03:45 Or they're a democratic socialist, whatever the enemy of the day is, the nemesis of the day.
01:03:46 --> 01:03:54 This kind of reflexive, hypercritical, hyper-judgmental approach is increasingly
01:03:54 --> 01:03:57 hardwired in the way we see the world.
01:03:57 --> 01:04:00 And that's very, very dangerous.
01:04:00 --> 01:04:04 As a society, that's just a bad way to view the world.
01:04:04 --> 01:04:09 Yeah. And, you know, and that explains the title of the book,
01:04:09 --> 01:04:13 Cast Out. And I remember getting into a debate with a friend of mine and he
01:04:13 --> 01:04:18 was, you know, we were talking about the carceral system.
01:04:18 --> 01:04:23 And, you know, I was explaining to him, I said, there's really three types,
01:04:24 --> 01:04:29 but we don't use the system that way. Right. So there's jail where it's like,
01:04:29 --> 01:04:32 that's your temporary holding until you go to court.
01:04:34 --> 01:04:39 But then where we got into it was the difference between penitentiary and prison.
01:04:39 --> 01:04:43 Right. Because the wording says that it's different.
01:04:44 --> 01:04:48 Penitentiary, especially when the system first started in the United States,
01:04:49 --> 01:04:53 you know, no matter how cruel you think it is, it was only supposed to be for
01:04:53 --> 01:04:57 a time certain, and you were supposed to be literally penitent for your sins.
01:04:58 --> 01:05:04 You were supposed to come to some absolution and then go back out to society, whereas a prison,
01:05:05 --> 01:05:09 It's like, you blew your shot. We wanted you to be a citizen.
01:05:09 --> 01:05:13 It didn't look like it's not going to work out for us. You're too much of a
01:05:13 --> 01:05:16 threat. So we're going to exile you to this place.
01:05:19 --> 01:05:27 But in the political jargon, it's become penitentiary and prison become synonymous.
01:05:27 --> 01:05:35 And I think if we just went back to that, I think that would improve the system.
01:05:35 --> 01:05:39 It wouldn't fix it but it would improve the system if we understood there's
01:05:39 --> 01:05:41 a place where you've got to do some time,
01:05:41 --> 01:05:46 and come to some absolution and then there's a place where because i'm i'm not
01:05:46 --> 01:05:48 in favor of death penalty so it's like
01:05:48 --> 01:05:52 to me that's the people that go to prison the ones that you think you should
01:05:52 --> 01:05:58 execute those are the ones you say well we you you can't be back in society anymore,
01:05:59 --> 01:06:04 yeah and you know and so that's that's kind of my mindset of that but.
01:06:04 --> 01:06:10 When you're talking about the society being unforgiven, it doesn't matter if
01:06:10 --> 01:06:13 you just went to the county jail for some people.
01:06:13 --> 01:06:17 It's like, you know, it's like, oh, you did that. You know what I'm saying?
01:06:17 --> 01:06:21 And they want to put a pall on you. And that's why a lot of us in the political
01:06:21 --> 01:06:26 arena was like saying when people are applying for jobs, that's the first indication
01:06:26 --> 01:06:27 they're trying to get back in society.
01:06:28 --> 01:06:32 So why would we put a box or question on an application saying,
01:06:33 --> 01:06:34 have you ever been arrested?
01:06:34 --> 01:06:39 Or have you been convicted because at that point even though the law says,
01:06:40 --> 01:06:44 technically you can't discriminate against somebody like that you know good
01:06:44 --> 01:06:49 and well that if you mark that box yes your your your chance of even getting
01:06:49 --> 01:06:53 a second interview is out the door right so you know we,
01:06:54 --> 01:06:59 anyway we'll get into that a little more i want i want to ask you this question about environment.
01:06:59 --> 01:07:04 You make the case that a person's environment doesn't necessarily define them,
01:07:05 --> 01:07:08 but their tolerance for trauma can impact them.
01:07:08 --> 01:07:11 Go deeper into that. Wow. Yeah.
01:07:11 --> 01:07:14 So I don't think that environment is destiny, right?
01:07:15 --> 01:07:21 If we believed that, we would have a hard time explaining why the great majority
01:07:21 --> 01:07:26 of folks who are raised in horrific circumstances,
01:07:26 --> 01:07:30 do not become embroiled and ensnared in the criminal legal system,
01:07:30 --> 01:07:32 and do not commit acts of violence.
01:07:34 --> 01:07:34 So,
01:07:36 --> 01:07:44 when you are trying to account, again, not excuse, but account for the path
01:07:44 --> 01:07:45 that a person has followed,
01:07:46 --> 01:07:51 you have to look deeper than the fact that they grew up in a very poor,
01:07:51 --> 01:07:55 very violent, blood-soaked neighborhood, right?
01:07:55 --> 01:07:59 So I write about Eric Matthews, for instance, and he's the first story in the
01:07:59 --> 01:08:03 book, first chapter in the book. And Eric has become a very good friend,
01:08:03 --> 01:08:10 is a remarkable guy, and spent 30 years in Angola, the Louisiana State Prison at Angola.
01:08:11 --> 01:08:14 Eric grew up in the St. Thomas homes before they were torn down,
01:08:15 --> 01:08:20 when it was literally one of the most violent, dangerous neighborhoods in the
01:08:20 --> 01:08:23 country, a really rough time.
01:08:24 --> 01:08:28 And I talk about how living in that environment, what he would describe to me,
01:08:28 --> 01:08:34 I'd go to Angola and we'd talk and he would describe how when you were living
01:08:34 --> 01:08:37 in that neighborhood, there was never a moment in which you,
01:08:38 --> 01:08:41 didn't think that something was about to pop off, right?
01:08:42 --> 01:08:44 It was just the constant level of threat.
01:08:46 --> 01:08:50 You may get home safely that evening, and in fact, nothing may go on.
01:08:50 --> 01:08:57 But the level of stress and cortisol and hyper-awareness affects you.
01:08:59 --> 01:09:02 He grew up remarkable, had no involvement in the criminal legal system,
01:09:02 --> 01:09:08 never been arrested, never had no cases at all, you know, co-valedictorian in
01:09:08 --> 01:09:13 high school, served in the National Guard, joined the military, right?
01:09:14 --> 01:09:16 On the surface, a very successful guy.
01:09:17 --> 01:09:20 But you have to dig a little bit deeper, and there was another piece that's
01:09:20 --> 01:09:26 hidden, and that was the trauma that he was experiencing at home that compounds
01:09:26 --> 01:09:28 the circumstances of his life,
01:09:28 --> 01:09:33 and was creating a kind of hyper-
01:09:34 --> 01:09:41 Taut wire that was just always on the edge of just snapping, right?
01:09:41 --> 01:09:50 As he goes through life superficially to all who know him in a sort of casual way, man, this is Eric.
01:09:50 --> 01:09:57 He has escaped from the clutches that ensnare so many young black men.
01:09:58 --> 01:10:03 And so these expectations, you know, He's a deacon in the church, right?
01:10:03 --> 01:10:10 He's going to make it. He's the symbol of those who—and they didn't see the
01:10:10 --> 01:10:14 pain and the strain that was—and occasionally, he would just erupt.
01:10:14 --> 01:10:19 It was just—right? Because what he needed really was somehow to process all
01:10:19 --> 01:10:23 that had happened to him. And I talk about all that had happened to him in the
01:10:23 --> 01:10:26 book, and I don't want to reveal too much.
01:10:27 --> 01:10:33 And he snapped and lost it on one occasion, as he had before,
01:10:33 --> 01:10:39 and erupted and beat a child that he loved dearly to death.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:47 His environment was not destiny, but the combination of his environment and the life he lived—.
01:10:49 --> 01:10:53 Allows me not to excuse, and Eric does not excuse what he did.
01:10:53 --> 01:10:59 He is immersed in his guilt and remorse and the pain that he feels.
01:10:59 --> 01:11:04 But I understand it. I understand. And if I lived his life, I think I probably
01:11:04 --> 01:11:08 would have snapped long before he did. He was 22 when the crime happened.
01:11:09 --> 01:11:11 I think I would have snapped long before that.
01:11:12 --> 01:11:17 Eric is not a monster. Eric is me. Yeah, I know he's involved in the ministry
01:11:17 --> 01:11:20 there at the prison and all that.
01:11:21 --> 01:11:26 Oh, and Angola. Yeah, that's a very interesting place.
01:11:27 --> 01:11:29 Yeah, that's a whole other, right. Yeah, you could.
01:11:30 --> 01:11:33 People have written, but you said people have written books about prison.
01:11:33 --> 01:11:36 That's one of the books that's been written. That's right. That's right.
01:11:36 --> 01:11:41 But, you know, I think about the young man that just got elected or got the
01:11:41 --> 01:11:44 Democratic nomination in Wisconsin, David Crowley.
01:11:45 --> 01:11:50 David Crowley, his parents, both his parents were drug addicts. Oh, I didn't know that.
01:11:50 --> 01:11:54 Yeah, he grew up he grew up in the projects in Milwaukee.
01:11:54 --> 01:12:01 And so when you talk about people like Eric Matthews, there's David Crowley in there, too.
01:12:02 --> 01:12:08 And fortunately for him, obviously, he's gotten to a place where now he's been
01:12:08 --> 01:12:10 an elected official for a long time.
01:12:11 --> 01:12:15 And he's and he's channeling his trauma through public service.
01:12:16 --> 01:12:18 Right. He found an outlet for his.
01:12:18 --> 01:12:24 Right. So that's like you said, you never know what will trigger somebody.
01:12:24 --> 01:12:28 But you've got to give people an outlet. And yeah.
01:12:28 --> 01:12:33 All right. So now in telling the story of Lucas Walling, you talk about the
01:12:33 --> 01:12:37 allure of white supremacy to those that are incarcerated.
01:12:37 --> 01:12:42 But why do you think it has the same appeal to those outside the correctional system?
01:12:44 --> 01:12:50 That's another great question. Lucas, all the people that I write about,
01:12:50 --> 01:12:54 they follow a different path to the worst day of their life.
01:12:54 --> 01:12:59 And the reason I, they're not all the same story, in other words, right?
01:13:00 --> 01:13:05 And Eric, for instance, is about growing up in this particular kind of neighborhood.
01:13:05 --> 01:13:11 And one of the women that I write about, Lisa Montgomery, is about mental illness
01:13:11 --> 01:13:14 and the particular trauma that she suffered.
01:13:14 --> 01:13:21 Lucas is really about the seductive power of fury and rage.
01:13:21 --> 01:13:28 And as a result of what happened to him when he was young, he just was so angry.
01:13:28 --> 01:13:32 And so it was really self-loathing that he directed outward.
01:13:32 --> 01:13:38 He was going to be the person that deserved to be hated as much as he hated himself.
01:13:40 --> 01:13:44 And for him, when he was in prison, white supremacy gave him an outlet for that.
01:13:44 --> 01:13:49 Fury, right? It told him that, yeah, it's a good thing to be angry.
01:13:49 --> 01:13:52 All these people on the outside who were telling him how you got to get over
01:13:52 --> 01:13:56 your anger, you got to get over your rage, you got to stop fighting all the time.
01:13:56 --> 01:13:59 That was just the opposite when he was in prison, right? And it was like,
01:13:59 --> 01:14:03 oh no, that's exactly what you got to be. And you got to be only more so,
01:14:04 --> 01:14:06 right? So it was very seductive.
01:14:07 --> 01:14:11 Other people are drawn to it inside and outside for different reasons, right?
01:14:11 --> 01:14:18 So there's a lot of, and this is true for a lot of gangs, not just white supremacy,
01:14:19 --> 01:14:23 or a lot of things that have a gang-type structure,
01:14:24 --> 01:14:28 a type of surrogate family, a type of surrogate brotherhood,
01:14:29 --> 01:14:33 a sense of belonging that folks lack in other circumstances.
01:14:34 --> 01:14:36 That's very common.
01:14:37 --> 01:14:42 A lot of folks, it gives them an outlet for a pre-existing racism.
01:14:42 --> 01:14:46 That's part of the white supremacy, right? So what Lucas would say is that.
01:14:47 --> 01:14:55 It was great because it tells you that, you know, whatever sort of latent racism
01:14:55 --> 01:14:57 that you feel, well, here's a label for it.
01:14:57 --> 01:15:04 Here's a name for it. And it has a sort of great deep historical pedigree and so on.
01:15:05 --> 01:15:09 Now, I mean, I should say, Lucas, through a great deal of work on his own when
01:15:09 --> 01:15:13 he was inside, came to the conclusion that it was all a bunch of baloney,
01:15:13 --> 01:15:18 right? And he repudiated it, and he's now diametrically opposite of it.
01:15:19 --> 01:15:22 But I understand it. He understands it.
01:15:23 --> 01:15:28 It made sense to him when he first came in. First came in, he was 17 when he
01:15:28 --> 01:15:33 was arrested, 18, I think, when he was convicted about a very, very bad homicide.
01:15:33 --> 01:15:36 A little guy, little geeky guy.
01:15:36 --> 01:15:40 And for him, white supremacy was.
01:15:43 --> 01:15:44 A kind of,
01:15:46 --> 01:15:53 family and membership and belonging that he had never had before.
01:15:53 --> 01:15:58 And so it was a very, and it's a great outlet for his, you know,
01:15:58 --> 01:16:00 this fury that he felt all the time.
01:16:02 --> 01:16:06 And that can exist inside, outside, everywhere. Yeah.
01:16:07 --> 01:16:13 Donovan X. Ramsey said, All events are the result of countless others,
01:16:14 --> 01:16:17 big and small, coming together at a particular moment.
01:16:18 --> 01:16:21 Even though you use that quote in the context of the Attica uprising,
01:16:22 --> 01:16:26 isn't that really the overarching theme of this book? Wow.
01:16:27 --> 01:16:29 I'd actually never thought about that, but yes, I believe it is.
01:16:31 --> 01:16:35 No event simply speaks for itself, right?
01:16:35 --> 01:16:40 And especially not the events that we look at and we say, holy cow,
01:16:40 --> 01:16:44 that's utterly inexplicable. The only way we can explain it is because he is a monster.
01:16:44 --> 01:16:47 Monsters do inexplicable things, right?
01:16:47 --> 01:16:54 When we say that an event like this is inexplicable, what we really mean is
01:16:54 --> 01:16:59 that we haven't made the effort to understand it. And we haven't traced the arc.
01:17:00 --> 01:17:03 And Donovan Ramsey was talking about that in terms of the crack epidemic,
01:17:03 --> 01:17:10 but you're right. It is true for, it's true for Alex Jones and it's true for
01:17:10 --> 01:17:13 Stephen Miller and it's true for Donald Trump, but it's also true for all these
01:17:13 --> 01:17:15 really, really serious.
01:17:15 --> 01:17:19 It's true for the riots at the Capitol on January 6th, but it's,
01:17:20 --> 01:17:22 it's also true for the crimes and the guys that I talk about.
01:17:24 --> 01:17:28 In your closing chapter, you wrote, yes, the journey from here to there will
01:17:28 --> 01:17:30 be more difficult. than we all might hope.
01:17:31 --> 01:17:36 However, current leadership experts are stressing empathy and accountability in the workplace.
01:17:37 --> 01:17:41 If that is the trend, then why would the journey be difficult?
01:17:43 --> 01:17:46 It's really seductive to demonize.
01:17:48 --> 01:17:54 I agree with you. There is a narrative that is encouraging us to think empathetically,
01:17:55 --> 01:18:01 but folks are resistant to it. It's very easy.
01:18:04 --> 01:18:07 To—hatred is seductive. Hatred is—and,
01:18:09 --> 01:18:15 building walls is really seductive. And we are engaging in that. We do it literally.
01:18:16 --> 01:18:21 We do it geographically. People are separating out into their own little colonies.
01:18:22 --> 01:18:27 Blue are moving to blue areas. Blue areas are getting bluer and red areas are getting redder.
01:18:27 --> 01:18:35 And our ability to sit down and commune with people who think very differently,
01:18:36 --> 01:18:37 is getting more difficult.
01:18:37 --> 01:18:43 That's why one of the chapters is about a guy who, in Missouri, was on death row.
01:18:44 --> 01:18:51 And I sort of tell the story through the experience of two correctional officers,
01:18:52 --> 01:18:53 who were in prison with him.
01:18:53 --> 01:18:58 And they were wonderful people. I loved spending time with them. Delightful.
01:18:58 --> 01:19:02 Worked at Potosi Maximum Security Correctional Center near St.
01:19:02 --> 01:19:04 Louis for a long, long time.
01:19:05 --> 01:19:10 They are extremely conservative folks with Trump flags out in the front yard.
01:19:10 --> 01:19:15 I mean, they think that the 2020 election was stolen, that Donald Trump won.
01:19:15 --> 01:19:20 We had a great time. We had a wonderful time. And they felt very strongly that
01:19:20 --> 01:19:24 Brian Dorsey should not be executed and said as much to the governor.
01:19:26 --> 01:19:29 So, people surprise you if you let them.
01:19:29 --> 01:19:35 But unfortunately, we are not inclined to let them now. That's why I think it's difficult. Yeah.
01:19:35 --> 01:19:38 So, what do you want readers of this book to take away from it?
01:19:39 --> 01:19:43 What I want people to take away is the idea that.
01:19:46 --> 01:19:50 The picture you have in your head about us and them,
01:19:52 --> 01:19:57 and the monsters that are out there that we need to be protected from,
01:19:57 --> 01:20:01 that those ideas need to be broken down.
01:20:02 --> 01:20:09 And that once you understand someone's story, if you truly understand their
01:20:09 --> 01:20:11 story, what brings them to where they are,
01:20:12 --> 01:20:18 in all its nuance and complexity and richness, you see them in you and you in
01:20:18 --> 01:20:23 them, and then you come to realize that there is no them, there is only us,
01:20:24 --> 01:20:28 that that is true for everyone, right? That that is true for everyone.
01:20:29 --> 01:20:35 Those who you are inclined to view empathetically and those who you are inclined
01:20:35 --> 01:20:40 to view as your whatabout it is true for everyone and so,
01:20:40 --> 01:20:44 and you can do this you can you can come to this empathetic realization,
01:20:45 --> 01:20:50 and so i view it as a hopeful book it is a practice is it like meditation is
01:20:50 --> 01:20:57 a practice it is a practice of seeing me and them and them in me every single
01:20:57 --> 01:20:59 day that's what I want people to take away.
01:21:00 --> 01:21:06 All right. So this is a challenge that I've been offering all the guests this particular year.
01:21:06 --> 01:21:10 Finish this sentence. I have hope because.
01:21:11 --> 01:21:13 Wow. Thank you for that.
01:21:15 --> 01:21:25 I have hope because I believe that people want to be connected.
01:21:26 --> 01:21:33 They want to see the shared humanity in each other.
01:21:34 --> 01:21:38 And ultimately, I think that will save us. Yeah.
01:21:39 --> 01:21:43 All right. Well, Joseph Margulies, thank you for doing this.
01:21:43 --> 01:21:45 And thank you for writing this book.
01:21:45 --> 01:21:52 And the book, again, is called Cast Out, A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration.
01:21:53 --> 01:21:55 How can people get this book? How can people reach out to you?
01:21:58 --> 01:22:01 The book is available on all the—it'll be published September 15th,
01:22:01 --> 01:22:06 but you can pre-order it on all the independent and regular websites,
01:22:06 --> 01:22:11 the bookseller.org and Amazon and all the other outlets.
01:22:11 --> 01:22:15 You can go to any bookstore and pre-order it, and they'll have it delivered to you.
01:22:16 --> 01:22:22 I believe in supporting independent booksellers, so I encourage folks to look
01:22:22 --> 01:22:26 at those outlets, but it can be purchased anywhere.
01:22:26 --> 01:22:31 Just do a search for Cast Out, a call for a forgiving society, and you'll find it.
01:22:32 --> 01:22:36 Reaching out to me, I'm happy to respond to it. Well, I don't respond to the,
01:22:37 --> 01:22:41 hate mail that you get sometimes, but I'm not a big social media person.
01:22:41 --> 01:22:49 But my email is jm, as in Joseph and Mary, jm347 at cornell.edu,
01:22:49 --> 01:22:53 C-O-R-N-E-L-L.edu, as in Cornell University. That's me.
01:22:54 --> 01:23:01 Well, again, Mr. Margulis, I really, really am honored to have you on the podcast
01:23:01 --> 01:23:05 to talk about this book. I think it is very, very timely.
01:23:06 --> 01:23:12 And, and it, you know, it just, anything that kind of makes you reflect on yourself,
01:23:13 --> 01:23:15 I think is a noble exercise.
01:23:15 --> 01:23:21 And like I said, I can, being in the political world, I can really get caught
01:23:21 --> 01:23:24 up in the, in those whatabouts, right.
01:23:24 --> 01:23:27 And, and get caught up in, in judging people.
01:23:28 --> 01:23:33 But, you know, everybody has a lot of times when I interview some guests,
01:23:34 --> 01:23:36 I dive into their origin story.
01:23:36 --> 01:23:43 Right. I call it their superhero origin story and and and try to find out why do you do what you do?
01:23:44 --> 01:23:50 And so I think that's even appropriate for people that we don't think we would
01:23:50 --> 01:23:54 ever meet in society, people that we'll read about on the news and have this.
01:23:55 --> 01:24:01 You know, people are amazed about the young man, Mangione.
01:24:01 --> 01:24:07 Oh, yeah. You know, and he just pled guilty this week, you know,
01:24:07 --> 01:24:13 but there were literally people out there with signs that basically said,
01:24:13 --> 01:24:15 we understood what you did.
01:24:15 --> 01:24:20 There's some that even said, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd do the same thing.
01:24:22 --> 01:24:26 And just the pain that he personally went through and the pain that a lot of
01:24:26 --> 01:24:29 these other folks are going through with the healthcare system,
01:24:29 --> 01:24:35 that's the kind of stuff, you know, like you said, you're not trying to excuse bad behavior,
01:24:36 --> 01:24:38 but there's a reason why people do what they do.
01:24:40 --> 01:24:43 And your book challenges us to dig and find out what that is.
01:24:43 --> 01:24:47 So again, thank you for doing this, writing the book, and thank you for coming on the show.
01:24:48 --> 01:24:52 Happy to be here, and I appreciate the time. I was, can I just make one more
01:24:52 --> 01:24:54 remark just in response to what you're saying? Sure.
01:24:57 --> 01:25:01 I love what you just said, and I would just say that what I have come to learn
01:25:01 --> 01:25:08 over many years doing this work is that the most precious gift that one person
01:25:08 --> 01:25:12 can give to another is their story, right?
01:25:13 --> 01:25:19 Because their story, their history is who they are. It is how they came to be.
01:25:20 --> 01:25:24 It is the answer to the question, why do you think what you think? Why do you do what you do?
01:25:26 --> 01:25:32 The answer is, well, let me tell you my story. And it is so deeply personal.
01:25:33 --> 01:25:40 And when someone entrusts you with their story, they are giving you a gift of
01:25:40 --> 01:25:43 inestimable value, right?
01:25:43 --> 01:25:47 Because they don't know what you're going to do with it. You may not listen
01:25:47 --> 01:25:51 to it. You may not respect it. You may not treat it with dignity.
01:25:51 --> 01:25:55 You may not treat it with grace. You may not treat it with understanding. You may mock it.
01:25:56 --> 01:26:00 It is a gesture of extraordinary trust.
01:26:00 --> 01:26:06 And I love, I love spending time with my clients, spending time with the folks
01:26:06 --> 01:26:11 I wrote about in this book, spending time with everybody, and just listening to their story.
01:26:11 --> 01:26:17 And if they are willing to share with me, I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate.
01:26:17 --> 01:26:22 And the least I can do is be respectful of it, And that is to understand it
01:26:22 --> 01:26:27 in all its complexity and not to just treat folks as one-dimensional.
01:26:30 --> 01:26:35 The kind of Hollywood versions you see or irresponsible journalistic versions
01:26:35 --> 01:26:39 which create these sort of hall of mirrors, phony person.
01:26:39 --> 01:26:41 I don't know. I mean, that's not who people are.
01:26:42 --> 01:26:47 If someone entrusts you with their story, they have given you a great gift and
01:26:47 --> 01:26:49 you have an obligation to treat it with respect.
01:26:50 --> 01:26:54 And I love it when I hear, doesn't matter, left, right. I don't care.
01:26:54 --> 01:27:00 Young, old. I'd love to sit down with Mr. Mangione and just learn his story.
01:27:00 --> 01:27:02 Just learn his story. Yeah.
01:27:03 --> 01:27:07 Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and end it on that.
01:27:07 --> 01:27:10 But thanks again for doing this.
01:27:11 --> 01:27:13 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:27:25 --> 01:27:31 All right, and we are back. And so I want to thank Michael Klarman and Joseph
01:27:31 --> 01:27:33 Margulies for coming on the show.
01:27:34 --> 01:27:38 Incredible interviews, powerful, powerful interviews.
01:27:39 --> 01:27:45 And I hope that you understand that there are people out here who are trying,
01:27:45 --> 01:27:50 trying, trying to make America better, whether it's through their writings.
01:27:51 --> 01:27:54 You know, go get America unfinished. If you haven't already,
01:27:54 --> 01:27:58 go get cast out. by Mr. Margulies. Yeah.
01:27:59 --> 01:28:05 Powerful, powerful stuff. And I enjoyed the conversations with both of them.
01:28:05 --> 01:28:11 And hopefully, you know, we can get them both of them back sometime,
01:28:11 --> 01:28:14 you know, in any future endeavors that they get into.
01:28:15 --> 01:28:21 I did want to get into my commentary. And what I'm going to do is I'm going
01:28:21 --> 01:28:26 to read a story, and we'll go from there.
01:28:27 --> 01:28:33 So the story starts. Jason Arday, the former Cambridge University scholar,
01:28:34 --> 01:28:38 whose remarkable rise to stardom was followed by a rapid fall from grace in
01:28:38 --> 01:28:41 recent weeks, has died, his family said.
01:28:42 --> 01:28:48 Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse in the years since he accepted
01:28:48 --> 01:28:50 a role at Cambridge, his family wrote in a statement.
01:28:51 --> 01:28:56 The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentleman who
01:28:56 --> 01:28:59 always wanted to see the best in everyone.
01:29:00 --> 01:29:04 The Metropolitan Police of London said an ambulance was called on Friday afternoon
01:29:04 --> 01:29:09 to a South London residence connected to Mr. Arde after a report that a man
01:29:09 --> 01:29:11 there had been found unresponsive.
01:29:12 --> 01:29:16 The man was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said, without confirming
01:29:16 --> 01:29:19 his identity in keeping with British police practice.
01:29:19 --> 01:29:25 The death was being treated as unexpected, but was not believed to be suspicious, the police said.
01:29:25 --> 01:29:29 We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news, Professor Deborah Prentice.
01:29:30 --> 01:29:35 Cambridge Vice Chancellor said in a statement, Our heartfelt sympathies go to
01:29:35 --> 01:29:39 Jason Arday's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.
01:29:39 --> 01:29:44 Mr. Arde, who was 41, grew up in a working-class quarter of South London,
01:29:44 --> 01:29:48 the child of Guyanian immigrants.
01:29:49 --> 01:29:52 Earlier on, he was identified as having learning difficulties.
01:29:52 --> 01:29:56 He wrote in his memoir that he could not speak until age 11,
01:29:56 --> 01:30:05 could not read until age 18, charting a remarkable trajectory from nonverbal preteen to PhD.
01:30:05 --> 01:30:09 Mr. Arday, who had written and lectured on racism in higher education,
01:30:09 --> 01:30:14 became Cambridge's youngest Black professor in 2023 when the university hired
01:30:14 --> 01:30:20 him for a prestigious post and established chair of education at the school's Jesus College.
01:30:21 --> 01:30:26 Last month, a public firestorm over Mr. Arday's career erupted after a blog
01:30:26 --> 01:30:31 post accused him of plagiarism in his dissertation and embellishing his personal story.
01:30:32 --> 01:30:36 Was written by a scholar known for work suggesting that black people were genetically
01:30:36 --> 01:30:39 predisposed to be less intelligent than white people.
01:30:40 --> 01:30:45 Scrutiny intensified ahead of the publication of Mr. R. Day's memoir by Simon
01:30:45 --> 01:30:49 & Schuster as journalists found more inconsistencies in the story.
01:30:49 --> 01:30:51 He resigned from Cambridge last week.
01:30:52 --> 01:30:56 Allegations about Mr. R. Day's work circulated within Cambridge for years,
01:30:56 --> 01:31:01 but the institution disregarded repeated warnings about possible duplication
01:31:01 --> 01:31:06 in Mr. R. Day's work, according to the academic integrity site Retraction Watch.
01:31:07 --> 01:31:11 The elite university initially defended Mr. Arday, but in a letter sent to faculty,
01:31:12 --> 01:31:17 it promised an independent investigation of his hiring and called the case an
01:31:17 --> 01:31:18 aberration and troubling.
01:31:19 --> 01:31:24 Some faculty had supported Mr. Arday. Others signed an open letter questioning
01:31:24 --> 01:31:28 the university's handling of the allegations and criticizing it for crafting
01:31:28 --> 01:31:33 a media narrative focusing on his youth, his race, and his transformative potential.
01:31:34 --> 01:31:38 Nick Clark, who has known Mr. Arde since childhood, described him in an interview
01:31:38 --> 01:31:43 last week as a caring person, would go out of his way to make others feel comfortable
01:31:43 --> 01:31:45 in everyday social settings.
01:31:45 --> 01:31:50 Mr. Arde was modest when discussing his career with his friends and Mr.
01:31:50 --> 01:31:53 Clark, but those who knew him personally, took pride in his accomplishments.
01:31:54 --> 01:31:59 He has always been that kind, caring, friendly character, he added. That's Jason.
01:32:00 --> 01:32:03 We are in shock to have lost his amazing father, partner, brother,
01:32:03 --> 01:32:06 uncle, and son, Mr. Arday's family said in his statement.
01:32:07 --> 01:32:13 The intense attention took a toll on Mr. Arday, he wrote in a blog post upon
01:32:13 --> 01:32:14 resigning from Cambridge.
01:32:15 --> 01:32:20 The years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level,
01:32:21 --> 01:32:23 of public scrutiny and personal attack, he wrote.
01:32:24 --> 01:32:29 Adding the relentless accusations, speculation, and public commentary had taken
01:32:29 --> 01:32:33 a profound toll on me and on those I love.
01:32:34 --> 01:32:38 So that came from the New York Times.
01:32:39 --> 01:32:42 And as stated, Jason Arday was...
01:32:44 --> 01:32:49 A rock star in the academic world. He was like 37, 38.
01:32:50 --> 01:32:56 He became a professor at Cambridge University in England.
01:32:58 --> 01:33:04 Which made him the youngest professor ever there and definitely was the youngest
01:33:04 --> 01:33:07 professor at that point.
01:33:07 --> 01:33:15 And, you know, it's, you know, it's not the first tragedy we've seen or we've
01:33:15 --> 01:33:19 heard of among black professors and administrators.
01:33:20 --> 01:33:27 You know, we had young ladies who were administrators who died of health reasons,
01:33:28 --> 01:33:31 you know, stress from being fired from the job.
01:33:32 --> 01:33:41 You know, we've had professors who have been accused of plagiarizing work and all that stuff.
01:33:42 --> 01:33:45 You know, but it kind of goes back to the interview I was having Mr.
01:33:45 --> 01:33:50 Margulies. It's like, you know, people make judgments and say things about folks,
01:33:51 --> 01:33:53 and they don't really know the whole story.
01:33:53 --> 01:33:59 And they don't quite understand the struggles and the journeys that people have.
01:33:59 --> 01:34:07 They just have this blatant mindset that somebody like him shouldn't be in their spot.
01:34:07 --> 01:34:12 He had to have cheated to get there. And so they were trying to dig up anything.
01:34:12 --> 01:34:16 Now, I don't know if he actually did plagiarize something or not.
01:34:17 --> 01:34:22 You know, they got the sister at Harvard for changing a word or a paragraph
01:34:22 --> 01:34:23 or something, I don't know.
01:34:24 --> 01:34:28 You know, it's just, but when they, when it's somebody black,
01:34:28 --> 01:34:31 they coming, just understand.
01:34:31 --> 01:34:39 And those of us that are in my generation that, you know, have lived their lives,
01:34:39 --> 01:34:42 worked their careers, all that stuff, raised their kids.
01:34:44 --> 01:34:49 You know, we've been through that. Our parents went through that, right?
01:34:50 --> 01:34:54 Some of our grandparents didn't even come close to the opportunities we had, right?
01:34:55 --> 01:35:02 And so, you know, what we're trying to do is warn our children and our grandchildren,
01:35:02 --> 01:35:06 about what to experience and how to navigate.
01:35:06 --> 01:35:09 Now, hopefully, with people like Mr.
01:35:09 --> 01:35:15 Klarman and Mr. Margulies and others who are reminding us of our past and reminding
01:35:15 --> 01:35:21 us of our better humanity and the trends of leadership that's happening,
01:35:21 --> 01:35:28 that our children's journey further into adulthood, our grandchildren's journey,
01:35:29 --> 01:35:33 and generations to come after that, We'll not have to experience or go through
01:35:33 --> 01:35:37 what we've been through, what our parents been through, what our grandparents
01:35:37 --> 01:35:39 and so on have been through, right?
01:35:41 --> 01:35:49 It's time to stop, especially when the counter is what we're seeing in Washington, D.C., right?
01:35:50 --> 01:35:57 So we literally had a young man who's in the middle of a war zone jump off an
01:35:57 --> 01:36:05 aircraft carrier because he's been deployed on that one aircraft carrier for 280-plus days.
01:36:06 --> 01:36:13 That is unheard of. That is, so they unwittingly now are like a Guinness Book
01:36:13 --> 01:36:15 World Record thing for endurance.
01:36:16 --> 01:36:23 These sailors have been out for 280 days, right?
01:36:23 --> 01:36:29 And so a young man tried to commit suicide, and his wife basically reached out
01:36:29 --> 01:36:34 to the press, I think it was a young lady on MS Now, and told the story.
01:36:35 --> 01:36:40 And of course, oh, no, it's fake news, whatever it is, until it was like,
01:36:40 --> 01:36:44 no, that happened. These folks are out here on this boat. This boat really is
01:36:44 --> 01:36:46 out here, and this boat really has been out for 280 days.
01:36:47 --> 01:36:52 Just to put it in perspective, in a normal deployment like that,
01:36:52 --> 01:36:56 they would have made port call at least six times.
01:36:57 --> 01:37:05 That boat would have docked somewhere safe six times if this was a normal deployment.
01:37:06 --> 01:37:12 Because you got to get supplies. You got to clean the boat, the aircraft carrier.
01:37:12 --> 01:37:15 You know, you got to get fresh water in there and all that kind of,
01:37:15 --> 01:37:18 you got to do all the stuff to maintain
01:37:18 --> 01:37:22 that massive infrastructure that's floating out there in the ocean.
01:37:23 --> 01:37:26 These guys went 280 days straight.
01:37:27 --> 01:37:32 And so, Eric, what's the correlation with Mr. Arde? So the correlation is that
01:37:32 --> 01:37:37 Mr. Arde was pressured into taking his own life.
01:37:39 --> 01:37:45 Because people were trying to hold him to a standard. And nobody is holding
01:37:45 --> 01:37:50 the people who are making the decision to strand our sailors for 280 days on
01:37:50 --> 01:37:53 an aircraft carrier. Nobody is trying to hold them to any kind of standard.
01:37:54 --> 01:37:59 And in the United States of America, we elect people to hold those folks to a standard.
01:38:00 --> 01:38:07 That's called the United States Congress. That's their job, to hold the executive branch in check.
01:38:08 --> 01:38:10 To say, hey, what are we doing?
01:38:11 --> 01:38:14 You know, we let y'all play the war games and all that stuff,
01:38:14 --> 01:38:16 but you still got to come to us for the money.
01:38:16 --> 01:38:20 But now if you're going too far, if you're not, first of all,
01:38:20 --> 01:38:22 you didn't ask us for permission to do this.
01:38:23 --> 01:38:26 We're just going to keep reminding you of that. So now that you're doing this
01:38:26 --> 01:38:28 thing, you got to do it right.
01:38:29 --> 01:38:37 And again, Mike Johnson, the worst Speaker of the House ever in the history of the United States.
01:38:37 --> 01:38:44 Ever, only because he doesn't know what power he has, or he's abdicated it.
01:38:44 --> 01:38:49 So, he could be in good graces with this incompetent man who is leaving his
01:38:49 --> 01:38:52 sailors on a boat for 280 days.
01:38:55 --> 01:39:02 280 days. You're going to put pressure on this brother about his academic credentials
01:39:02 --> 01:39:05 to the point where he took his own life at 41.
01:39:06 --> 01:39:09 But you're not going to put pressure on this 80-year-old man who's got folks
01:39:09 --> 01:39:12 stranded for 280 days on a boat.
01:39:13 --> 01:39:17 You're not going to check him. You're not going to call him to the carpet.
01:39:17 --> 01:39:21 You're not going to drag the Secretary of Defense in there and explain to us,
01:39:22 --> 01:39:29 why this boat hasn't even made one port call in 280 days. Why is that?
01:39:30 --> 01:39:39 You know, and they seem like they get a rush or a thrill at gaslighting the American public.
01:39:39 --> 01:39:44 Oh, everything's fine. We've got control of the strait. So why are we still over there?
01:39:45 --> 01:39:50 If everything is back to normal, no nuclear weapons, the straight home movies
01:39:50 --> 01:39:52 is open, why are we still over there?
01:39:53 --> 01:39:57 Why are these folks on a boat for 280 days if everything was normal?
01:39:58 --> 01:40:05 And then that 80-year-old man got on a microphone and said he wished that they
01:40:05 --> 01:40:07 could be out there longer.
01:40:08 --> 01:40:14 We just sat here and had a conversation with two legal scholars using the word empathy.
01:40:15 --> 01:40:19 And the president of the United States, after these guys have been reported
01:40:19 --> 01:40:26 to be out for 280 days with a poor call, said, I wish they could have stayed out there longer.
01:40:28 --> 01:40:35 You wanted grown men and women to be on one of the largest structures ever built.
01:40:36 --> 01:40:39 The history of mankind, an aircraft carrier.
01:40:40 --> 01:40:46 This thing is big enough for jet planes to land and take off and have cannons
01:40:46 --> 01:40:51 and missiles and all this stuff and to hold 5 human beings.
01:40:52 --> 01:40:57 You wanted them to be out there longer than 280 days without a clean shower, without food.
01:40:58 --> 01:41:02 That's where your mind went. That's where your mouth opened up to say you wish
01:41:02 --> 01:41:06 they could have been out there longer and nobody is holding this man in check.
01:41:08 --> 01:41:12 Nobody is questioning him. You want to question a young man who overcame personal
01:41:12 --> 01:41:20 adversity to be a scholar, question his credentials to the point now where he's no longer with us.
01:41:21 --> 01:41:27 But this man who allows men and women who took an oath to defend this nation
01:41:27 --> 01:41:31 and the constitution, foreign and domestic enemies.
01:41:32 --> 01:41:36 No, he gets no check at all. He can just do what he want to do.
01:41:37 --> 01:41:44 Yeah, we got news for that, brother. So I send my condolences to the R.A.
01:41:44 --> 01:41:50 Family. And I pray that those of you all who are in the academic arena,
01:41:50 --> 01:41:52 those of you who are in the corporate arena,
01:41:53 --> 01:41:59 don't ever let these folks get you to the point where you take yourself away from us.
01:42:00 --> 01:42:05 Don't do that. Get some support. Hell, call a press conference.
01:42:06 --> 01:42:10 Do whatever act of defiance you got to do. Don't ever surrender to them,
01:42:10 --> 01:42:12 especially with your life.
01:42:13 --> 01:42:20 We know people go through this. If you know somebody or you are thinking that
01:42:20 --> 01:42:25 you have these ideations, 988.
01:42:26 --> 01:42:32 Dial that number, 988. Do not let these folks take you away from us.
01:42:33 --> 01:42:39 If you have any concerns, dial 988. get some help, talk to somebody, right?
01:42:40 --> 01:42:47 But now for this guy who has been given the title of commander-in-chief by virtue of his office,
01:42:48 --> 01:42:53 if he has that kind of disregard for the people who serve under him,
01:42:54 --> 01:43:00 if he has that disregard for the citizens that he is supposed to represent around the world.
01:43:01 --> 01:43:06 If he has that kind of disregard and the people of his same political party
01:43:06 --> 01:43:11 will not stand up to him and check him on that, then they all need to go.
01:43:12 --> 01:43:15 And we can't do anything about him till 2028.
01:43:16 --> 01:43:20 But the folks in Congress that are not, get rid of all of them.
01:43:21 --> 01:43:25 All of the Republicans got to go. If none of them are going to stand up to him
01:43:25 --> 01:43:28 and condemn him for what he said and just did.
01:43:29 --> 01:43:35 280 plus days on an aircraft carrier with no port call. These folks don't have food.
01:43:36 --> 01:43:41 280 days. And he says, I wish they could have stayed out there longer.
01:43:42 --> 01:43:46 And no Republican is going to say anything about that. Then you need to go.
01:43:46 --> 01:43:51 Especially those of you who literally served. I know there's some people that
01:43:51 --> 01:43:54 went to West Point that's in the Congress right now.
01:43:55 --> 01:43:57 Black folk. You ain't say nothing.
01:43:57 --> 01:44:02 I understand y'all ran for other things, but you're still in Congress right now. Nothing.
01:44:03 --> 01:44:07 Got a black man running for governor in Florida. Nothing.
01:44:08 --> 01:44:11 You got a black man sitting in the U.S. Senate in South Carolina.
01:44:12 --> 01:44:16 He busy talking about who might be his colleague from Michigan or who might
01:44:16 --> 01:44:20 be his colleague from Minnesota, but he ain't got nothing to say to the president.
01:44:21 --> 01:44:25 Please don't let it be anybody from South Carolina on their boat. Y'all got to go.
01:44:26 --> 01:44:31 So if you don't have the moral turpitude and courage to do your job,
01:44:32 --> 01:44:37 your job is to check the president, even if he is in the same party. That's your job.
01:44:38 --> 01:44:42 People criticize the Democrats for doing it too much. Are you going to hurt
01:44:42 --> 01:44:44 the president chance to get reelected?
01:44:44 --> 01:44:47 If he's doing something foul, I got to check him.
01:44:48 --> 01:44:53 Might cost me my job. If the president's popular, if I'm a member of Congress,
01:44:54 --> 01:44:57 calling the president, hey, you can't do that, I might not get reelected.
01:44:58 --> 01:45:00 But the election is not the end game.
01:45:01 --> 01:45:08 Doing the job is the end game. If you do your job, the politics will fall in line. Period.
01:45:09 --> 01:45:13 If the people want to go in another direction, regardless, so be it.
01:45:13 --> 01:45:17 You offered yourself, They chose to vote for somebody else. Keep it moving.
01:45:18 --> 01:45:21 It's not the end of your life. It's really not.
01:45:22 --> 01:45:28 I can bear witness to that. I can bear witness to depression and pain.
01:45:28 --> 01:45:30 I can bear witness to all that.
01:45:31 --> 01:45:35 But when I was elected, it didn't matter who the governor was,
01:45:35 --> 01:45:40 how close I was to that individual, how much I respected and liked them.
01:45:41 --> 01:45:43 If you were doing something that was going to hurt my folks,
01:45:43 --> 01:45:44 you were going to hear from me.
01:45:45 --> 01:45:47 If you were doing something that was going to hurt black folks,
01:45:47 --> 01:45:49 you were going to hear from me and a few others.
01:45:50 --> 01:45:54 That's how that works. It doesn't matter about Democrat or Republican.
01:45:54 --> 01:45:58 It matters that all of us, once we take the oath, we have responsibilities.
01:45:59 --> 01:46:04 And if you can't check the president because he's a member of the same party
01:46:04 --> 01:46:07 you are, then you don't need to be in the job.
01:46:07 --> 01:46:12 You need to put on an outfit with an elephant on it and some pom-poms and just
01:46:13 --> 01:46:15 stand in front of the White House and shake your pom-poms.
01:46:16 --> 01:46:19 We don't need cheerleaders. We need leaders.
01:46:20 --> 01:46:25 And if you are not fit to do that job, if you are not courageous enough to stand
01:46:25 --> 01:46:28 up to the President of the United States and say, Sir, you're wrong.
01:46:29 --> 01:46:34 Sir, you can't do that. Sir, that's illegal. Then you've got to go.
01:46:35 --> 01:46:39 If that means 435 Democrats for the next two years, so be it.
01:46:39 --> 01:46:44 You've earned that right for not being man and woman enough to stand up to the
01:46:44 --> 01:46:45 president when he needs to be checked.
01:46:47 --> 01:46:54 Needed to be checked at 12.05 on January the 20th, 2025.
01:46:54 --> 01:46:56 He needed to be checked dead.
01:46:56 --> 01:47:01 And you won't do it. But you want to say the Democrats are this and the Democrats
01:47:01 --> 01:47:07 are that and the evil people and how they want to transform our children and,
01:47:08 --> 01:47:10 they want to make us all communists and all that stuff.
01:47:11 --> 01:47:15 But you ain't done nothing that you said you were going to do. Gas is going up.
01:47:16 --> 01:47:19 Price of eggs going up. We're at war.
01:47:20 --> 01:47:23 Y'all told the folks, we aren't doing none of that. Everything's going to be
01:47:23 --> 01:47:27 better with us. Two years in, not so much.
01:47:28 --> 01:47:33 And then you don't even have the gumption to tell the president no when he needs
01:47:33 --> 01:47:35 to be told no on a constant basis.
01:47:36 --> 01:47:42 I was talking to Professor Klarman. Why do you think he's doing all the crazy
01:47:42 --> 01:47:47 stuff now and he's not doing it, he didn't do it the first term, or as much as the crazy.
01:47:48 --> 01:47:52 It's because nobody is telling him no. Nobody.
01:47:53 --> 01:47:56 And then the people that tell him no, on the Democratic side,
01:47:56 --> 01:47:57 he's trying to put in jail.
01:47:58 --> 01:48:03 That's not how America works. We can have a debate about how it's working,
01:48:04 --> 01:48:07 but that's not how the American system of government works.
01:48:08 --> 01:48:15 It is written that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are co-equal.
01:48:16 --> 01:48:20 All of them have the ability to check the other one. But if the Supreme Court
01:48:20 --> 01:48:23 says you've got immunity, if the Congress says.
01:48:25 --> 01:48:33 Say anything at all. All of you have abdicated your constitutional obligations, all of you.
01:48:34 --> 01:48:40 We got people committing suicide because they felt their integrity was questioned.
01:48:41 --> 01:48:47 And nobody acts like they got any integrity at all in the United States government.
01:48:48 --> 01:48:51 And it's all your fault. If you're a Republican, you're in charge.
01:48:52 --> 01:48:55 You control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court.
01:48:56 --> 01:49:01 So all this is on you. Every last thing, whatever good thing happens,
01:49:02 --> 01:49:04 but definitely every bad thing that happens.
01:49:05 --> 01:49:08 And you have no empathy, you have no integrity, you have no accountability.
01:49:10 --> 01:49:15 If this was a world where we're looking at resumes and looking at actions,
01:49:16 --> 01:49:22 there'd be 435 Democrats in the House and 36 new Democrats in the Senate.
01:49:23 --> 01:49:27 That's the only way that's really going to happen. Because if you bring anybody
01:49:27 --> 01:49:30 else in, out of this group, like Ken Paxson, really?
01:49:31 --> 01:49:33 People saying he's still got a chance?
01:49:35 --> 01:49:43 This boy out here in Ohio, he's married to a, he's married to the U.S.
01:49:43 --> 01:49:45 Senator's daughter and he's throwing hot water on her.
01:49:46 --> 01:49:51 The kid is, the child is terrified of him. But he got a chance to win.
01:49:52 --> 01:50:00 Telling you, we've got to do better, us as a society. We got to do better.
01:50:00 --> 01:50:06 We cannot allow these people to continue to claim to be our leaders because
01:50:06 --> 01:50:08 they haven't shown the ability to do so.
01:50:09 --> 01:50:13 November 3rd, you can fix some of that. You can fix it in the House,
01:50:13 --> 01:50:14 you can fix it in the Senate.
01:50:15 --> 01:50:19 And that'll be a step in the right direction because then you will have a Congress,
01:50:19 --> 01:50:23 that will act like Congress and check the president when he goes too far.
01:50:24 --> 01:50:31 That's it. He gonna say some nasty things. He gonna get on his true social and do all that. So what?
01:50:32 --> 01:50:36 We literally had to explain to governors, we're not your friends.
01:50:36 --> 01:50:41 Once we all get sworn in, we're not loyal to you.
01:50:42 --> 01:50:45 All right, I'm gonna make these guys. No, no, you ain't gonna make us do nothing.
01:50:46 --> 01:50:52 We can negotiate. We can compromise, reason out something, but you ain't going
01:50:52 --> 01:50:55 to make us do nothing because that's not in the job description.
01:50:56 --> 01:51:01 But you can't tell by these folks who's in Congress now, not the Republicans.
01:51:02 --> 01:51:07 They ain't get that memo. All they wanted was something to put on Instagram,
01:51:07 --> 01:51:11 I guess, in their life. I served in Congress.
01:51:12 --> 01:51:18 Again, condolences to the R.A. family. May y'all have peace and comfort in this hour.
01:51:19 --> 01:51:25 And to my fellow citizens, vote these people out November 3rd. Get them out.
01:51:26 --> 01:51:29 Send them a message that you want your country back. Get them out.
01:51:30 --> 01:51:33 Let's start doing the right thing.
01:51:34 --> 01:51:38 Not the popular thing, not the convenient thing. The right thing.
01:51:38 --> 01:51:41 Let's truly rebuild this nation in the way that we want it.
01:51:42 --> 01:51:48 And that starts November 3rd, 2026. That's all I got.
01:51:48 --> 01:51:50 Thank y'all for listening. Till next time.