Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Are we on a path towards significant unmet hunger, problems in food supply and conflicts regarding food? My guest today is Richard Sexton. He's a professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, and he's recently published a new book, it's titled, "Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World". Professor Sexton, welcome to the program.

Richard Sexton: Thank you, Grant. Thank you for having me.

GR: We really appreciate you making the time. So I want to start, as I often do with books, with just sort of laying out some of the basics of the context before we get into the arguments that you make about some of these issues that the title brings up. And I want to just get a brief and basic sense of sort of where things currently stand regarding food and hunger. So first, let me ask you a very, very basic question. How do we figure out or how do we know when a person or a group or an entire people, even a country, is suffering from a hunger problem? Is there some commonly used marker for that?
RS: Well, that's actually a great question and the United Nations is the official body that measures that. And you know, they just released their most recent estimates for 2024 and so they, according to the U.N., there's about 700 million people that face hunger and malnutrition routinely and then in excess of 2 billion that are what the U.N. calls food insecure. And, you know, I honestly don't know all the means that they use to estimate that. I'm thinking they're piecing together, you know, various pieces of information, there's no single survey or anything like that. And so I think they're, you know, doing their best to compile data and come up with that. But, yeah, it's probably subject to some kind of error. But the, you know, there's quite a bit of consistency in the numbers across the years. It went up higher during COVID and really stayed disturbingly higher, came down a little bit this past year, but it's those are the numbers we're seeing routinely.

GR: And that's a big, those are big numbers. I mean, that's a decent sized chunk of the world's population.

RS: Yeah, no, there's, you know, about 8.2 billion of us. So, you know, 700 million is what, about 8% of the world that's facing hunger and yeah, malnutrition, stunting, those are routine outcomes in, you know, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. And so, yeah, by no means have we solved the problem as a global society of adequately feeding our population.

GR: You mentioned sub-Saharan Africa. Are there general areas of the world that are more heavily hit by this than others? I mean, I would assume it's the poorer countries.

RS: Yeah, no, absolutely it is the poorer countries. And yeah, the biggest concentration is certainly in sub-Saharan Africa. There's some parts of Southeast Asia where there's a significant hunger problem and, you know, less so obviously in this country and, you know, Europe and so forth. And so the, you know, the real heart of the problem is in sub-Saharan Africa.

GR: And you mentioned less so in the United States. Is this a problem inside the United States, though, nonetheless?

RS: Oh, sure, but an isolated basis. But you know what the United States has that most other countries don't have, is we have very significant feeding programs. So we have, you know, the SNAP or the food stamp program, WIC, Women's, Infants and Children's program, and then the school lunch program. So, you know, we're very unique in countries across the world that we put in place these programs to take care of hunger and malnutrition. Do they work perfectly? No, they don't. And then, you know, there was quite a bit of controversy with the most recent congressional session about cutting back some of these things. And so it's a difficult question but yeah, we've uniquely addressed that problem in this country with those programs, you know, dedicated to putting food in the hands of the right people. Most other places in the world do not have that.

GR: And I hope this question isn't too abstract. And I'm going to unpack this, obviously, as we go on our conversation, but are the are the food problems in the world primarily in food production and food supply or are they more like social distribution and economic fairness issues? In other words, we have the food, it's just not getting to those people for whatever reason.

RS: Yeah, I think that's certainly a big part of the problem. And so, for example, tariffs are a bad thing in terms of distributing food to where it needs to be consumed. And so, yeah, it's a big income problem, right? There needs to be more food going to sub-Saharan Africa, but those are very poor countries. And so, you know, it's not an attractive export destination for a lot of companies that that specialize in those types of things. And so, yeah, it's at least partly a distribution problem that we're not getting to the food to where people need it the most. But then, you know, a very premise of the book, Grant, is that it's probably going to become a more significant problem over time unless we mend our ways in terms of the actual food production itself.

GR: Yeah. And I wanted to get into that with you. Before I do that, though, there was something in your book that really struck me. You've got a couple of sections on it, and I wanted to ask it directly early on. How much of the problem right now comes from wasting food and who are the biggest waste culprits?

RS: Yeah, great, great question and based on the official statistics, which
is largely coming from the U.N., about 31% or close to a third of the potential food supply is lost or wasted. And those are terms that the U.N. distinguishes. So they say food loss is everything that occurs from harvest to retail, and then food waste is everything that occurs at retail or in the households. And so that's a big number. And the interesting thing is it's kind of similar across both rich and poor countries. We might think to ourselves that, well, in the poor countries, they'll certainly waste less food, but then they have less means of preserving food. For example, refrigeration is rare in some parts of the world, so food is wasted because it's spoiled. Probably in the rich countries we're wasting it because it's just, you know, simpler and easier to buy a little bit too much than a little bit too little and so, yes, we can reduce that. And the UN, the U.S., the European Union, they all say we're going to cut it in half. I don't think for a second that that's going to happen, but certainly we can improve on that. I mean, one way, the low hanging fruit for that, as far as I'm concerned, is freshness, dates on packages, right? So that we need to, you know, have better understanding of what those dates mean and so that we're not throwing things out just because you know, there's a date on it. Maybe it's a sell by date and not a use by date, but we see a date and it's expired and we toss it, right? So we can do better on that. But I do not think that wasting or losing less food is a real answer to the food production challenges that lie at lie ahead of us. But of course, as it becomes more expensive, there'll be less waste and less loss. But, you know, I think it's a pipe dream to say we're going to cut it in half, which is the goal of, you know, a lot of the main governmental bodies in the world right now.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Richard Sexton, the author of a new book titled, "Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World". Yeah, so let's get into that part of the book. First of all, you mentioned something earlier, you said it's going to get worse, these problems are going to get worse. So it's going to get worse if we don't do something different. Why? That may seem like an obvious question, but what are the biggest reasons why it's going to get worse?

RS: Well, one big reason why is climate change itself, right? I mean, the climate has warmed in recent decades, but it hasn't warmed that much. And so based upon all of the forecasts, all the models, the greatest warming is yet to come. And there are a myriad, hundreds of studies across wide ranges of crops, all parts of the world that say that a warming climate is going to be detrimental to food production. I mean, I've got a basic statistic in the book that basically compiles all of this scientific information and then adds in the warmth that our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA is projecting without mitigation, which is 2.8 degrees Celsius or roughly five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and I come up with a 14% yield loss. Some of that can be mitigated by adaptation, but not all of it. And so, you know, that's a challenge we haven't faced in in previous centuries. I mean, another great challenge is pest resistance to traditional treatments, and that's happening right now as we speak. And the dramatic thing that's happening, Grant, is that the next generation to replace things like glyphosate or Roundup, as we more commonly know it, it's not in the pipeline. And so when plants achieve resistance to glyphosate, people are going back and using the previous generation of those pesticides which are harmful in and of themselves. Those are the pesticides that we used when I was a youth on the farm all these many, many years ago. So that's just another example of a challenge. And I'll mention one more, it's very, very important because, through the centuries, what saved us from hunger and malnutrition that a lot of people like Malthus and so forth were predicting has been technological advancements. And I'm blessed to have a faculty colleague here at UC Davis, who's the world's leader on research on productivity advancements in agriculture. And what their work showed is that through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, the productivity growth was about 2% a year, which means essentially we can get 2% more output for a given amount of inputs, land and labor and fertilizer and so forth. But then it basically has been cut in half in the most recent decades, and there's no real evidence that the tide is turning. And that's a dramatic effect, right? Because we can't count on technological advancements to save us as they have in the past, right? A 1% rate of growth isn't sufficient to keep up with the growth rate in demand. And so that's a big, big factor that a lot of people don't understand and know. But then, yeah, so kind of the blithe response to concerns raised by people like myself, oh, yeah, the technology will advance and we'll be fine. That's not true anymore.

GR: Yeah, we'll figure our way out of it.

RS: Yeah.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Richard Sexton. He's a professor at the University of California, Davis and the author of a new book on food and food supply. It's titled, "Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World". So, a lot of what your book is about is debunking, like, myths that are popular and are held by policymakers or sometimes deliberately put forward by others and then also spread by the media. What are some of the biggest myths out there right now about food production and supply?

RS: Yeah, a lot of the myths pertain to, you know, different ways of producing food beyond the conventional means that people think are better for the environment and maybe somehow result in better foods being produced and so forth. And all of these, the thing all of these methods have in common and certainly the list includes organic, non-GMOs, production by of local food, small farms and so forth, is that they're all associated with significantly lower yields, right? And so those are examples of, you know, inefficient ways of producing food that nonetheless, as a society we've embraced and in many cases subsidized. And, you know, the consequence, of course, is less food produced off a given land base in agriculture. And then the really unfortunate thing that results when we're either taking land out of agricultural production completely, which is something we do with what we call the Conservation Reserve Program or moving land into less productive means of producing food, is that we cause the land base in agriculture to expand, and that's what they call indirect land use change and we've come to understand that much, much better in the recent decades. And so if the U.S. produces less food, if the Europeans produce less food, people are going to try to produce more elsewhere. And that results in deforestation of the Amazon, of the forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, in sub-Saharan Africa. And there's no dispute that's about the worst thing we can do for the environment. These virgin forests are great sources of carbon sinks, they remove carbon from the atmosphere. You burn them down and clear cut them, you fill up the soil, all its carbon is released. It's, you know, it's horrible for carbon emissions, biodiversity and so on and so forth. But we're causing that. We're undeniably causing that with our policies in the Western countries, the US, Europe, all of our strategies to produce less food. So, you know, frankly, Grant, I don't get it in the sense that the Europeans want to take 10% of their ag-lands out by 2030. The U.S. has 7% of its ag-lands in conservation reserve and we're proud of it. Well, what do we think is going to happen? If we take land out, it's going in somewhere else in the world where it'll probably be less productive and more environmentally damaging. And that's really, you know, the elephant in the room for all of these policies that we're enacting in the name of the environment. If they cause us to produce less food on a given land base, they are going to cause this indirect land use change and they're going to cause deforestation in some of the most environmentally sensitive places in the world.

GR: Yeah, that's a fascinating connection you're drawing. But let me just back up a minute and say organic food, return to small farms, you're skewering some pretty sacred cows there that you know, among a constituency that is not necessarily entirely on the left, but a lot of it is on the left and that's the group that usually voices concerns for things like the rainforest and international concerns about, you know, less wealthy parts of the world. So there's quite a contradiction built in there.

RS: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's and it's quite ironic indeed, yes. Because we might associate those groups of people with the support for these types of food production systems. But then, yes, those people would, you know, tend to be advocates for the poor and so forth. But yeah, there's no basis to deny the fact that if you put into place production methods that are less efficient or if you simply take the land out of production completely, A: you're raising food prices and those that are harmed the most by that are, of course, the poor in some parts of the world to this day, upwards of half or more of people's incomes go for food. And so when we make it more expensive, we really hurt the poorest among us unequivocally. And then yeah, the response to less food availability and higher prices is to, you know, anywhere in the world =to try to produce more food and then it's now it's resulting in deforestation then we cause, you know, great environmental harms. And so again, the ironic thing is a lot of these policies are enacted in the name of the environment, but probably ultimately end up hurting the environment.

GR: Interesting. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is UC Davis Professor Richard Sexton. Okay, so what are the policies and programs that you would recommend that we should pursue and start pursuing now?

RS: Yeah, well, the nice thing is my policy prescription is one sentence, and so it's not very complicated. And that one sentence is, we need to produce food in the places of the world where it's most efficient to do so and using the most efficient means of production. And then, the thing is, of course, that will maximize the amount of food that we're able to produce, but it will also be the best thing for the environment and that's the thing that gets missed, right? Because then we will stop the deforestation, we'll, efficient production, you know, by its very definition means the least resource use, right? And so it's not only that we're stopping the deforestation, but, you know, as we economize on inputs, the fertilizers, the pesticides and all of those types of things, those yield environmental benefits as well. So that’s the answer. That's the simple answer because it addresses both the food production problem and the environmental problem.

GR: Right. So on the ground, what does that mean? Does that mean the United States produces more food, Europe produces more food? Do we do more things in Asia? What would it look like?

RS: Well, it would look like the US stopping, you know, subsidizing people, taking land out of production. The Europeans have the goal for 2030 to take 10% of their ag-lands out of production. So, you know, for most crops, the most efficient producer in the world is the US. The Europeans are pretty good themselves for most crops. So for example, they're more efficient at producing wheat than the US, but corn and soybeans, that's our big strength. But yeah, the most efficient places, you know, that list, I mean, Brazil now has become a very powerful producer of soybeans and corn and so forth. But yeah, we want the most efficient producers to be doing it. That's going to stop the deforestation, that's going to make food most plentiful. And so any of these policies that we're enacting in this country, I mean, we subsidize organic production in this country in various ways, but every time we convert an acre from its conventional form into its organic variant, depending upon the crop and the location, we're going to give up between 30% and 45% of the available yield. So every, say, three or four acres we convert from conventional to organic, we got to put one more acre into production, you know, in order to maintain food production. So the, you know, the idea of land use change applies to things like organic, it applies to things like non-GMO. In this country we're quite receptive and open to GM foods, but they're largely banned in Europe, they're banned in parts of Africa, they're banned in Russia. And so that's been a significant impediment to food production as well because those GM variants are associated with significantly higher yields.

GR: So I'm a political scientist, I want to come back and hit you again with this politics question as I was listening to what you were just saying. There are going to be people, political figures, media people in particular, who are going to hear that and they're going to say, ah, this guy is basically just making an argument for big agriculture. And, you know, he's against organic food, he’s against the small farms, and they're going to just switch it off right away. Do you have a response or a counter argument to try to penetrate that?

RS: Yeah, I mean, coming from psychology or behavioral economics, that's called the disconfirmatory bias, right? We don't we don't want to hear about things that challenge our or beliefs. And so, yeah, I agree that this book challenges a lot of these traditional beliefs, but there's really no denying it, right? I mean, the book itself is meant to be, you know, accessible to a broad audience, it's not laden with a lot of jargon and so forth. But the footnotes are there, you don't have to read the footnotes if you don't want to, but the footnotes document what I'm saying in terms of a vast scientific literature, are there. But Grant, you're right that we don't turn on a dime. And so one thing we haven't talked about is biofuels in this country. But it is a fact that based on productivity potential, we're probably using about 25% of our ag-lands to produce fuel, not food, corn ethanol and soybean oil for diesel fuel. If you back up to the beginning of the century, we were doing almost none of that, right? And so, are we going to phase out biofuels? No way, right? That's ,you know, you're the political scientist and that's built in to the economies of big parts of the Midwestern U.S., where there's powerful senators and congresspeople and they're not satisfied with the status quo. We're all burning E-10, 10% ethanol in our cars but they want E-15, they want E-20, they want corn ethanol to qualify as a sustainable aviation fuel. So it's not less, it's more and we need to draw the line someplace because, yeah, since we enacted that policy in 2005, that's when we passed the Renewable Fuel Standard, there's been lots of research that demonstrates once you factor in these land use changes, the environmental impacts of biofuels are more harmful than fossil fuels. And so yeah, we're not going to get rid of it, but we can at least put the brakes on expanding it.

GR: Yeah, that's a good observation and it's probably not unrelated to the fact that Iowa is the first primary. I even think there was a West Wing episode on that. We've just got about a couple of minutes left and I want to squeeze in one, maybe two more questions, we'll see, but, well, I'll leave it with these two things. So that's from the production standpoint, that's sort of big level policy. What about myself as a consumer? Is there anything I should be doing differently to help you, or to help all of us with this big problem you've identified? Do I give up beef, for example? I mean, give me some pointers here.

RS: Well, I mean, we haven't talked about it, and it would probably take more than a couple of minutes we have left. But, yeah, I mean, meat consumption is an inefficient way of converting land resources into production for foods, right? So that if we did eat less meat, it would take some of the pressure off of the food, the food production systems. But the problem is going to be that as we move forward, as some of the poorer places in the world become wealthier, they're going to want to diversify their diets and that includes eating more meats and dairy products. And so, yeah, for a lot of people, the answer is, oh, yeah, we just need to eat less meats. And yeah, that's not a bad answer, but it's not going to happen, right? People are going to want to eat more, not less. And then, you know, another thing I say in the preface to the book is that if you read with an open mind, if you don't let your biases really take hold, you can save a lot of money in your food budget because things that you're paying maybe double what you'd need to pay for, probably aren't doing what you think they're doing. And so if you, you know, if you read the book with an open mind, you might say, hey, I can spend a lot less on food than I'm spending right now.

GR: Well, you've convinced me on a lot of things. I think the one thing I'm going to hang on to is my beef from my small farm because I like the way that tastes and it seems to taste different now. Maybe we could have those other cows eat the same feed, but you've got me part of the way, not all the way, yeah.

RS: Well, I'll consider that a victory, right? And so, yeah, and I know we're running out of time, and so it's not so much the small farms in in this country because they're not that small, but in a lot of parts of the world, they're just a couple of hectares or two, three acres. And those farms condemn people to a life of poverty, and they're not very good ways of producing food. And so that's the bigger problem, not the smaller farms in this country because they're not that small.

GR: Okay, we'll have to leave it there. Richard Sexton's new book is titled, "Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World”. As you've just seen from our conversation or heard, it's a very provocative book and make some very interesting arguments. Richard, thanks again for making the time to talk with me, very illuminating.

RS: My pleasure, thank you, Grant.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is a scholar of Catholic thought. Christopher White is associate director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. Prior to that he was an award winning reporter for the National Catholic Reporter. He's with me today because he's written a new book. It's a new book on the new pope, it's titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". Christopher, welcome to the program, congratulations on this book.

Christopher White: Thank you, Grant. It's good to be with you.

GR: I appreciate you making the time, so. Well, I want to start actually not with Pope Leo, but with the person who preceded him and that's Pope Francis, obviously. You've spent a lot of time following him, watching him, reporting on him. But if you could answer this question briefly, what do you think Pope Francis’ legacy is, at least at an early reading?

CW: Yeah, I think Pope Francis will be remembered as a pope who really saw it as his mission to open the Catholic Church up to the modern world. And he did so in large part by shifting some of the church's major priorities. You had two popes back to back John Paul and Benedict, whose focus (was) primarily on issues of sexual morality, family ethics. And Francis pivoted away from those issues. He didn't disagree with them, but he really focused primarily on issues concerning the poor, the marginalized, the environment and reshifting some of the Catholic Church's global priorities. And in doing so, bringing it I think into a perhaps a more engaged conversation with the world around it.

GR: Okay, thanks. And so let's talk about this process that chose Cardinal Robert Prevost as the new pope last May. As you note in your book, most people with any real impression of the process probably have their knowledge from the movie, “Conclave”. But my first question is, comparing it to that I guess at least, was there that much intrigue and behind the scenes maneuvering, even in a process that is itself behind the scenes?

CW: Yeah. I mean, conclaves always get a tremendous amount of attention because they are, in fact, the most secretive election process on earth. And so there's just a lot of palace intrigue. This year, it felt particularly, the stakes were heightened by the fact that this Hollywood film had come out a few months prior and everyone seemed to have seen the film and had something to say about the process and wanted to follow it closely. The film, I have to say, got a lot right about the actual process. They got the rubrics of the conclave correct. I think it was overhyped in terms of the backroom politicking that's involved. But what it did get right is the fact that it is both the spiritual process where the electors are engaged in prayer and discernment, but yet it is also a deeply political process. And there are serious conversations taking place. And, you know, money isn't being traded or anything of that sort, but there is a sense of you're assessing candidates. And that's where the film absolutely got correct.

GR: So what were the major fault lines or were there major fault lines that emerged in the process that chose Pope Leo?

CW: Well, in a sense, every conclave is a referendum on the pope who came before. And so what the cardinals were doing in the roughly two weeks between the time of Pope Francis's death and the time they enter the Sistine Chapel they were having, you know, honest conversations behind closed doors about what the last pope did well and what is needed in the new pope. And what I argue in the book is that this conclave was really a referendum on Francis's reform efforts to shift the Catholic Church's priorities away, as I mentioned earlier, to a more outward focus and also his overall efforts to make the church more welcoming, more participatory, so less concerned with just the role of the priest or bishops. But where all the Catholics can have a say in the life of their church. And that excited a lot of people under the 12 years of Francis's pontificate, but it certainly alarmed others. And that's what the 133 men who went into the Sistine Chapel were effectively asked to do is say, do we want to continue on this path that he initiated, or is it time for a course correction?

GR: Okay, and I want to talk to you a little bit later about whether you anticipate that there will be some kind of course correction. But let me ask you this different question. You already mentioned that there are politics necessarily in this process. One thing that we have seen in recent decades when it comes to the selection process for Supreme Court justices is a desire among presidents to try to nominate relatively younger candidates if possible. And the reason for that is they want to extend the time of their influence on the court and therefore public policy. And that trend well predates President Trump. I mean, Justice Clarence Thomas is a great example of this, for instance. Were there any similar desires among the conclave regarding that? Let's find a pope who's going to live a long time, in kind of a, relatively speaking, younger pope. I mean, you've got people in there well past 80 that are voting.

CW: Yeah, it's one of those things where there's, no one says this out loud, but there's effectively a sweet spot they're looking for. They want someone young enough to do the job that can keep up with the demands of the office, which in the modern era has included a lot of travel. Popes tend to become jet setters after they take office. They're managing a huge bureaucracy, a 1.4 billion member institution. But as you know, it's a lifetime appointment. I mean, when Pope Benedict resigned in 2013, he was the first pope to voluntarily do so in 600 years. So for the most part you're looking to name someone who's going to be in there till they die. And so, most popes though, most cardinals who vote for popes are reluctant to give that assignment, that job to someone that's going to be in the position for too long because it's hard to have a regime change when you know someone's going to be there for life. And you know Pope John Paul II, who was pope for almost 30 years. And for many people they say perhaps that was a bit too long. So you're trying to look at someone who can, where is that sweet spot? And in the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, who is 69 years old, they certainly aired younger. So you're looking at probably, you know, if he remains healthy at least a 20 year papacy. So they certainly didn't allow his youth to be held against him.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Georgetown University religion scholar Christopher White. He's the author of, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". So with the relationship between popes and politics more generally is a complicated one, but it's inherent because of the things you've already said. You know, it’s 1.4 billion members, you have this high profile. Were there any concerns in the conclave about choosing an American as pope, given that many parts of the world right now have a problematic impression of America? And it's only that whole concern, I imagine, would have only been underlined by the fact that President Trump entered into the process of this decision making through his social media messaging. So were there concerns that you would detect about choosing an American?

CW: Yeah, I'd say for a long time the conventional wisdom has been that no American is going to be elected pope, you know, and that was for a few reasons. One, there was a sense that among the College of Cardinals, which is a diverse body of over 70 countries of, you know, men from over 70 countries, that America already has enough power in the world as it is. You know, it's a superpower, and they don't need the papacy and the presidency that's just too much, that would be a bridge too far. And I think there's a concern and has been a longstanding concern that in an institution like the Catholic Church that is vastly diverse, where it's growing most successfully is in the global south, that a pope from the United States would, in a sense diminish that the diversity of the global church. And that is why, you know, Cardinal Robert Prevost was in a sense the only American that would have been taken seriously because of his resume. He's a man who spent, he was born and raised in Chicago, but most of his adult life he's lived outside of the United States. The Italian papers referred to him as the ‘least American of the Americans’.

GR: (laughter)

CW: And so I think, you know, it goes to show you, there was some suspicion about an American, but because of his particular resumé, many cardinals chose to overlook that or geography wasn't really the major factor.

GR: And you've met Pope Leo when he was a cardinal, you write about that in your book. What are your impressions of him just as a person?

CW: Yeah, he's an interesting figure, I'd say. The very first time I met him, it was soon after he arrived in Rome to head up this very important office that Pope Francis had asked him to lead. I went in for a meeting with him, and I was just struck by this man who was kind but very, very determined and very serious about the work ahead of him. He asked very detailed questions and he just struck me as someone who walks into any room, any meeting, having done all of his homework and using that particular meeting to do more of it. I went in as a reporter with a list of particular questions and issues that I wanted to discuss. And I was struck how quickly he turned the conversation around and put me in the hot seat to ask me questions. And that really holds true, you know, with many people that I've interviewed that worked alongside him both in Rome and elsewhere, that he's a man of government, a man of governance. He's a real sort of manager. And in that sense, he's quite different from Pope Francis, who was an extrovert and the governance was secondary.

GR: Ah, I see, yeah, that's interesting. So, going back to our earlier conversation and your comments about perhaps a course correction or concerns or referendum on the previous pope, what does Leo's choice signify regarding those fault lines that you discussed?

CW: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the Cardinals in electing Robert Prevost now, Pope Leo, chose to continue on the same path of reform as Pope Francis. Pope Leo is someone who shares Pope Francis’s same pastoral priorities and instincts. He was deeply shaped by his experience of Latin, you know, serving 20 years in Latin America. And I think his sort of vision of church is one similar to Francis where, you know, he sees the church's role as walking alongside the least of these, the most marginalized in society. So I think it's fair to say that he was fully supportive of Francis’s vision of opening the church up to the world around it, becoming a more dialogical institution. But where the major differences is in personality and approach to management. And I think that's why many of the people who were fully supportive of Pope Francis's vision said, okay, we have this pope that in a sense, opened everything up for us and he started all these new processes, but now we need someone who has the real skill set of a manager to come in and institutionalize these reforms for an unwieldy, complicated, I would say often, you know, archaic, antiquated institution. And let's now elect someone with a different skill set. And that's why they chose Robert Prevost, because they thought he blended those two worlds of the same sort of outlook on church life and the world around as Francis, but with a particular skill set geared toward management.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Christopher White. He's associate director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and he's the author of a new book on the new pope. It's titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". So I wanted to ask you, Chris, you know, each pope comes in, they choose a name, they rename themselves. And so what's the significance of Pope Leo's choice of Leo as a name given perhaps maybe previous Pope Leo's?

CW: Yeah. So he's Leo the 14th and taking Leo is a nod most recently to Leo the 13th, who was the pope, who really had quite a significant reign at the height of the industrial revolution. And he wrote this, you know, what the Catholics call an encyclical. It's a fancy, you know, clunky word for a letter that really said, you know, this was at the height of the revolution saying the church has to stand with workers to be on the side of the workers, in the face of, you know, real dehumanization. And it was, it cemented in a sense, this new era of thought in church life, not as sort of modern Catholic social teaching, saying that the church stands with particularly the marginalized, the poor. And it's more complicated than that but that's the bird's eye view of it all. And Leo the 14th said he's taking that name because in this age, we are seeing a new revolution with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. And the Catholic Church is neither anti A.I. or pro A.I., but the Catholic Church's main concern is that the human person be at the center of conversations about technological development. And I think he sees a particular duty in this as we're seeing just, you know, massive technological change to sort of have a moral voice.

GR: Yeah, that's interesting. And probably something is going to tap a nerve as we go on and continue on with this change. You know, I wanted to ask you this question based on some recent experiences I've had. I was traveling in Eastern Europe, and I like to go to Catholic churches. I'm not Catholic, but I find them very interesting and beautiful. And one of the things that I was reminded of is the pride that people feel when a pope is chosen from their country or even just from their region of the world. I mean, I saw portraits of Pope John Paul II in Hungary and Slovakia for instance. Pope Francis obviously very important to Argentineans and South America more generally, he'll be remembered for a very long time. And as I just said, you know, I'm not Catholic, but I wanted to share with you, I don't get quite the same sense that here in the United States, something similar is going on regarding this new pope. There was a lot of excitement about it at first, but I just don't feel the same kind of, I don't know, what it is like almost like a soccer kind of thing that you that I got in Europe. Am I missing something? And if I'm not missing something, why is there a difference in the United States?

CW: I say yes and no. So on one hand, the Pope Leo story is an afterthought for most Americans, I think, because of Donald Trump, who sucks up all of the oxygen in the room, whether you're for or against the president, he is the biggest news story and he is leaves little room for anything else. So I think you're right that we don't detect the same sort of fervor or enthusiasm. That being said, in July, I spent some time out in Chicago launching the book. And there in his hometown, the excitement was quite palpable. You go down the street and gift shops, you know, that sell Chicago merch are now selling Pope Leo gear. You know, I did a number of events where, you know, just people, they're almost giddy at the prospect of his hometown, his homecoming. He's a White Sox fan, so just this week, they had a moment where they inaugurated this chair at the stadium where he once sat and they had a big sort of, you know, hometown celebration in June where I think that 20-30,000 people came out. So in his hometown, you do get the sense of that in the way that you might in Poland, where there's still sort of such energy and almost a cult around Pope John Paul II. Not the same degree here in Chicago, but it's more detectable there than I'd say in New York or Washington.

GR: Yeah, okay, interesting. So he's early in, but what changes have you noted so far, the biggest ones? And what changes do you anticipate from this new pope? Is it going to be this sort of institutional backfilling of Francis? What else might we expect?

CW: Yeah, I think it's fair to say we just passed the hundred day mark. And, you know, the hundred day mark is not anything that's a useful sort of category when it comes to the papacy, because, as we said, popes are elected for life. You know, if presidents are eager to, you know, show that they're capable of getting things done in the first hundred days, popes have for the most part, a fairly different approach to this and Leo certainly is following suit. He's keeping his cards very close to his chest. I monitor his schedule every morning to see who he's meeting with. And he's meeting with everyone from heads of state to heads of Vatican offices, people that would be seen as, you know, natural allies of him and Pope Francis and also those that perhaps were antagonistic to Francis. So he's showing early on that he wants to listen to everyone, but he hasn't made any consequential decisions. We don't know who his team is yet. He's effectively, you know, a president names a cabinet, his cabinet are effectively the holdovers from Pope Francis. He's reconfirmed everyone to their posts for the time being. And so in the coming months, we'll see him start forming his own team. One of the first big jobs he has to name is he has to decide who's going to replace him at the office that is responsible for identifying and vetting potential Catholic bishops around the world. It's a very powerful job. That will be the first real indicator of what he wants in a leader. And we'll see what he chooses, the profile of that person. So, so far, all we're really left to read are his public speeches. He speaks every Wednesday and then Sunday at the Vatican and then he gives addresses throughout the week. And I'd say the persistent theme so far has been peace. He's spoken more about Ukraine and Gaza than anything else. And that seems to be his front burner issue at the moment.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is Georgetown University's Christopher White. So you just made a comparison a few minutes ago to the presidency in talking about the pope. And one thing that strikes me as a political scientist in that similarity is that the person immediately becomes an institution, right? You've been talking about this person, Robert Prevost, but now he's got a different name. That actually speaks to what I'm talking about, you physically rename yourself. Former presidents often speak of their very first security briefing as the moment when this fact hits them: I am not just a person, I'm an institution. There's a wonderful video of President Obama when he travels for the first time on Air Force One. And you can see this just, you know, this just coming together in his head. I was just wondering if you have any reflections on that as it relates to the papacy, because I would think in some ways the hit of, now I'm this thing, is probably even bigger for a pope.

CW: Yeah. I'd say there are two moments that I'll point to. The first we've already seen, it's the moment when the pope appears on the balcony. That happens typically after about an hour after their election. So they don't have a lot of time to prepare. I mean, you know, this conclave was 24 hours and I think it's fair to say from my own reporting in the book that Robert Prevost probably went to bed on the evening of May 7th with the good sense that he might wake up and be elected pope the next day. His chances on that very first ballot were quite strong. Even so, you know, from the time you're elected to the time you're introduced to the public, it's really 60 minutes, 70 minutes. He gave a short speech, it was about 500 words that he quickly wrote himself but there's no chance to talk to advisers. And so you get a sense of the man and his priorities in that first public appearance. He said the word peace nine times. You could just tell that's kind of what was keeping him up at night and that's his chance to introduce himself to the world. We certainly saw that with Francis in 2013 as well. You know, those initial speeches are moments where you make a first impression. But then I would say related to your anecdote of Obama, papal travel, it's just a chance where you see a pope being forced to have these often unscripted moments. You see them with people at every turn and hopefully he will have his first international trip later this year. It looks like it'll be at the end of November to Turkey and possibly Lebanon. And those are the first moments where he will have a press conference, typically on the way back to Rome. Where, you know, he's put in the hot seat and that's when you get another sense of the man and his priorities and how comfortable he is sort of being unscripted and what he's willing to say. So I'm just saying, you know, for now, stay tuned.

GR: Well, one of the things that that struck me as you were talking and the difference between presidents and popes is they haven't had a year or more of a campaign and a team, it's just this guy. And so it's not like he's, yeah, it's interesting that he doesn't have advisers and he's got 60 minutes to come up with what he wants to say. Yeah, that's quite something.

CW: Including, you know, he's asked, you know, do you accept the election? And then the second question is by which name would you like to be called?

GR: Oh, wow.

CW: And so, you know, even a name which has tremendous weight to it, it’s not a tremendous amount of time to give that consideration.

GR: And then you say, let me think about it, I'll get back to you? (laughter)

CW: (laughter)

GR: That's not going to work in that instance. Okay, so we've got about 2 minutes left. I wanted to put one, perhaps two questions to you, depending on how long you spend on the first one. This first one, you may not be comfortable answering, but I really want to ask it. Were you personally pleased with the choice or were you in a sense rooting for somebody else?

CW: I think I was one of the few journalists that was making the case that Robert Prevost was a real contender. And I have to say I took a lot of flak for that from a number of colleagues, those that thought that I was, in a sense, playing up the idea of an American pope for an American audience. And what I had detected in the ten days or so leading up to the election is that people just didn't see him as an American and geography wasn't going to be a strike against him. And if you remove that from the equation, he ticked all the boxes. And so in that sense, I felt vindicated. I think he has tremendous assets and gifts, and I think he has the potential to be a great leader. So in that sense, yes, I was pleased. As an American, I'm delighted as well. I think at a moment in which we see increased isolationism and sort of resistance to sort of the multilateralism that sort of defined the post-World War II era, to have an American as pope who believes in those things, I think is a very necessary counterweight at the moment.

GR: That's a really interesting observation, I hadn't thought of that at all so I think that's a good place to leave the conversation. That was Christopher White and again, his new book is titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". I'd say it's very informative and it's also a very good read. Chris, thanks again for making time to talk to me. I really enjoyed this, really learned a lot.

CW: A real pleasure. Thank you, Grant.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today has written a book that's very near and dear to my heart. It is a screed against noise. Chris Berdik is a reporter and a writer who has a new book out, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back.” Chris, welcome to the program and thank you very much for writing this book.

Chris Berdik: Well, thank you. Grant, thanks for having me on.

GR: We really appreciate it. So I have to say right off the bat, in recent weeks, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm looking for it, paying more attention, but I've heard or I've read a few stories about the problems with noise. So I was wondering, is the concern about this a new emerging issue? Is it something that the media and the public is now looking at more, or am I just looking at it more, you know, looking for it?

CB: Yeah. I mean, some of it may be that you're keeping your eye out for it now. You know, noise has been around us, you know, for as long as we've been around. And it's been a thing that we complain about for nearly that long. You know, but the thing that's been happening and why I feel like, you know, I felt like this was a book to write now is, you know, we are in a growing planet with more and more people producing more and more noise, living closer together, more roads, cutting through our rural areas. And while there is more planes overhead, there's just a math equation going on here. And then the other part is that, you know, as we've been doing this, we've been sort of sonically shortsighted about how we plan our cities, how we build our buildings and create our spaces. We haven't thought about the sonic implications of all of this. So, you know, it's not a new problem. I do think it's a growing problem.

GR: Sonically short sighted, I love that phrase, I'm going to remember that. Thinking back, was there a historical turning point or inflection point in the problem with noise, you know, where you can go back and say, okay, now it starts to become a problem?

CB: Yeah, I would say that's a complicated question, actually, because, you know, we don't have a global decibel meter or anything like that to sort of say, okay, this is when, you know, we went up ten decibels worldwide. You know, there are plenty of places that are probably quieter now than they were a hundred years ago. You know, I'm from Pittsburgh, and we used to have steel mills up and down the rivers there, and they've all disappeared, you know, but what we e do have, you know, like I said, we have a diminishment of quiet areas, a diminishment of places where we are not set upon by noise. And we also have, I think, now some sort of digital noise to go with our audible noise. I think this is something that is important to keep in mind that this is not just a metaphor when we talk about, you know, the online cacophony that we're dealing with now. Our brains have to sort through all of that, all of those signals and it is an exhausting thing. I think they kind of accumulate.

GR: Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that aspect of it. I mean, I have sometimes kind of feel like I have many traumatic reactions when my cell phone goes off because it just kind of just startle(s) me. Well, let's, you know, let's get into some of the problems that that you deeply dive into in your book. First of all, what are the problems with noisy environments for people? You know, what does it do to us?

CB: Yeah. You know, there are a few things that it does to us. And I'll sort of start as I do, you know, with the inner ear. And this is where decibels, which is how we commonly understand noise which I think is kind of overly narrow, but this is where decibels really matter a whole lot. At this point, noise is just brute force acoustic intensity that can damage your inner ears, whether you like the sound or don't like the sound. If there are enough decibels, what starts to happen is that the connections, the nerve endings between your inner ear anatomy and your brain, they basically explode. They're filled with too much glutamate, which is kind of the signal, the neurotransmitter that is, you know, taking what is a vibration coming through the air and turning it into a signal to your brain. It's too much of that, those nerve endings can't handle it. And then what do you start to do is you lose the fine grained pieces of being able to hear, to be able to distinguish your friend's voice from another voice, to be able to hear a noise. You know, when people say that they can hear you but they can't understand you, this is what starts to happen. And then after that, you start to really lose your hearing and you start to need hearing assistance. So the World Health Organization estimates that about 2.5 billion people on the planet will have hearing loss through noise and aging by 2050. So that's the hearing part. But then at a lower decibel level, you start to have disturbances of sleep and chronic stress building up from noise exposure. You don't even need to wake up for your hearing to pay attention to noise in your sleeping environment, because hearing is a defensive mechanism, a defensive sensory system, your eyes are closed, but you're hearing is still awake. And you know, at around 45 decibels worth of say, transportation noise, you start to lose the restorative piece of sleep so when you're sleeping your heart rate goes down, your blood pressure drops. But those perk up again when noise comes into play and over time in a chronic way, that builds up has impacts on increasing cardiovascular disease risk, increasing hypertension, a range of issues that go well beyond hearing.

GR: It's interesting now that you say that, and I'm thinking back again on my own experiences, but there was a time when I was working temporarily but regularly in a city environment which was different for me in my life. And I would always be about two weeks in, you know, it would just sort of hit me like a wall of stress. And I think it might have been having to do with the noise. It's very, very interesting to think about that. So there's levels of problem here for humans. It's psychological, it's the health that comes from some of those things. And then it's actually your ear and your hearing itself. So it gets you on all these different dimensions.

CB: Yeah. It really infiltrates, you know, it starts in your ear, then starts to, you know, cause a whole lot of distraction issues, which we haven't really discussed, but that's a big one. Distraction and being cut off from people create stress. And then, of course, the sleep deprivations that contribute to a number of health problems.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the reporter and writer Chris Berdik and we're discussing his new book, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So in your research on this, did you find that some kinds of noises are worse than other kinds of noises? I mean, I understand what you're saying about decibel level and the destructive effects it has, but I guess I'm thinking more psychological, you know, any kind of any kind of patterns there?

CB: There are a couple of patterns. You know, I would dig into these noises, as some people have, talking about their acoustic properties like, are they tonal noises? Now, what tonal noises means is that there's a single frequency band that has the most energy to it. So if you think about a high frequency whine or buzz or a low frequency rumble, research has shown that those types of noises, you know, are very disturbing to most people, that they, you know, can't ignore them, that, you know, especially the low frequency tonal sounds can penetrate walls and travel far distances and you feel them in your chest, you know, that kind of a thing. And, you know, that is a big piece of it. You know, the, how long do these sounds go on for and what is the timing of them if they are at night versus during the day? You know, context is a huge deal. We love to listen to bird songs when we're walking in the woods and it's all part of the experience there with the leaves under your feet and the greenery that you can see and the smell of the fresh air. But some people that have tried to use biosphere like nature inspired sounds in indoor spaces like workspaces have found that birdsong, people can't stand it. They get distracted by it. You know, they don't want to have to hear birds chirping when they're facing a deadline and they're sweating an important project so, you know, it's not just the sound, it's the sound in a particular context that matters a lot.

GR: Yeah, that's interesting. And I don't want to turn this into a half hour of a therapy session for me about noise with you. But, this feeds directly into this as I'm thinking about it, one of my pet peeves in life is noises that I can't control, which kind of relates to your birdsong in the workplace kind of thing. I mean, if it were up to me, I'm speaking, you know, tongue in cheek here, but I'd make wind chimes, I think, a felony. And playing music at a beach or a campground or while you're hiking along a trail, I think I might make that a capital offense. But I'm thinking about this, there's an aspect to this I want to ask you about. I'm fortunate to live where it's pretty quiet, relatively speaking, except in some of my neighbors, you know, break out their power tools for working on the yard. And then I also spend a lot of time in another place that's super quiet, but that's a luxury that a lot of people don't have. Is there a social justice element to this problem with noise do you think?

CB: There is. You know, the research is new on this. They have looked at it in the aggregate, which is looked at census track data, you know, demographics, and compare that to noise exposure based on transportation noise. There's been a big national study of transportation noise exposure. A lot of it is model based on, you know, how many airplanes are going over what the flight routes are, where the highways are, etc. And the research on that level shows that when you are in a wealthier and whiter census tract, you have less exposure to that noise. On a more kind of granular level at the city scale, people have done a lot of research into communities that were previously redlined, which was the practice in the 30’s and 40’s to assign risk for investment into certain areas. And it was, you know, often based basically on, you know, the ethnicity and the racial background of the people living there. And those studies, city after city, have found that in formerly redlined communities, they have more noise pollution in addition to other pollution.

GR: Yeah, I would think it might even extend to how the buildings are built. You know, someone has the money to live in a much more expensive apartment complex. I'm guessing the walls are thicker, the soundproofing is better.

CB: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the other part of it. You know, there's an issue of exposure and then there's this vulnerability side. So, you know, if you are in a more affluent neighborhood or just have the means, you will have better windows and walls and soundproofing, you'll have more green space around you to block the sound and also to give you a kind of an acoustic respite.

GR: Yeah, yeah. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Chris Berdik. He's a reporter and writer and the author of, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back” and we've been discussing the book and the issues that it raises. So before the break, we were talking about humans, the impact on humans, but there's also a lot of impact on animals that are important. And tell us a little bit about some of the ways that noise has a negative effect on animals.

CB: Sure. So there is some research into how very loud sound can cause a certain amount of hearing damage to animals, but that is somewhat limited. The sort of larger issue is how noise that humans bring into the environment, in particular, say, shipping noise in the oceans, that sort of constant noise shrinks their sensory worlds. That is something that, you know, we don't think about because we're not under the water very long, typically, as long as our breath lasts, I guess. But down there, especially when you're in the depths where the light doesn't penetrate the sounds of those places are very important to aquatic species that need to hear one another to communicate, to find their way when they're navigating, migrating, I should say, to find food, to avoid predators. Animals have to listen. We up here, if we're bothered by noise, we put on our noise canceling headphones where we get in the car and drive somewhere quieter, but animals don't have that luxury. And so the big problem a lot of people, the conservationists have talked about is, they term it sensory smog. So this is both from our noise and our artificial light, just making the world that these animals navigate smaller. And that's a big problem.

GR: Yeah, sensory smog, okay, I'm going to add that to sonically short sighted, this is great. I had read somewhere too that that kind of background noise like you were talking about with shipping in the ocean, but also above ground, really interferes with animals’ abilities to mate because they use sound, and the one thing I think I remember reading about this was frogs, you know, that they use sound in order to mate, the calls that they put out. But for animals, that are living close to traffic, you know, they just can't find each other anymore.

CB: Yeah. I mean, they will, the research has shown that the birds near roads will try to sing louder and similar with the whales, when the shipping goes by, they'll try to call out louder and stay above the background din. But there's a limit. The whales can only shout so much, the birds, likewise. And some species, will just go quiet because they're waiting it out. Like, you know, we might when an airplane flies over too close when we’re in the middle of our conversation, we just stop.

GR: And what about plant life and the planet more generally? Because you've got this argument that it's, you know, it's affecting everything. I mean, I don't want to be again too cheeky, but in the 70’s and the 80’s there was this big concern about you have to talk to your plants, you know, but don't yell at your plants, you talk to your plants. So tell us what you found in that realm.

CB: Sure. I know that there is research directly into how sound directly impacts plants. My research really looked at how sound it affects plants in an ecosystem sort of way in as much as, you know, nothing changes in isolation when we're in nature. There was a study in New Mexico at these natural gas wells where some of them had noisy air compressors to kind of keep the pressure in the gas lines, and some of them didn’t. And the researchers had noticed that at the noisy wells, these two birds, there was a jay bird and another bird, I can't remember the species of it, but these two birds were steering clear of these particular noisy wells. And then they thought, well, these two birds are really important for spreading the seeds of the plants in this area, these trees. So then they put out about a hundred or so plots they demarcated around the noisy wells and the quieter wells and they watched them for 12 years. And over those 12 years, they found that at the noisy wells, you know, there was something like 80% or 90% fewer tree seedlings because the birds had stayed away, they hadn’t spread the seeds. So these things ripple out in ecosystems.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Chris Berdik, and we've been talking about his new book. It's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So we can't turn back the clock on everything, we kind of have the world we have now. We can't shut all of these things down, we can't shut shipping down. So I guess I wanted to ask you to talk a bit in the last part of our conversation here about what we can do to manage it and to make it better. How can we be more, you know, to go back to, sonically sophisticated? And let's take this at the individual level first, and then we'll take it out to, you know, in terms of planning and building and the social level. But first of all, how as we as individuals can do a better job of not making ourselves crazy?

CB: Yeah, well, I always say that the first thing we could do, and this is very easy, is to take better care of our ears. Before I started researching this book, I didn't protect my ears whatsoever, using power tools, going out to loud concerts and things like that. Now, I am much more careful following the advice of all the audiologists I’ve been talking to, all the hearing researchers. You know, you start with the little foamy ear protection you can buy them by the bag at CVS. But there's also even a little bit of a step up there. Musicians earplugs, these cost about $30 a pair, but what they do is they block about ten decibels worth of sound at every frequency level so you can hear the music, let's say you're going to show, just as clearly as you would without them, but just a little they take the edge off of it. So I use those a lot and I think you know, the research shows that outside of work environments where hearing protection is sort of required in the loudest environments, Americans use hearing protection about 8% of the time when going out to do loud things. This is a study I think a 2018, a nationwide survey. And so, you know, there's a lot of room for improvement there. And I think we're seeing some of it with a lot of the new devices that are focused on hearing, you know, like the AirPods, Apple AirPods Pro 2. These things kind of have some hearing protection built into them. But yes, we could do a lot better job there. That's the first part.

GR: What about just, I just think also making it important to be in quiet spaces. I mean, is that, is just something like an awareness of that important here too?

CB: Yeah, I think so. I think taking the time to be in those quiet spaces. And, you know, I had to chuckle when you were talking about the folks who now are hiking with the Bluetooth speakers. Because it seems to me to be sort of beside the point where when you're out there, you should take the time to enjoy that quiet. Have a moment to give your ears and your brain that peace of restoration.

GR: So let's bring it out. What can we do more societal and more in terms of how we construct our world to make this better?

CB: We can do a lot more to be sound aware when we are designing our products and our spaces. One great example is with restaurants. These became much noisier in the last 20 years or so because restauranteurs decided they wanted to prioritize kind of a modern industrial look. They took away all of the upholstery and drapes and they put the kitchens in the middle of the dining areas and jacked up the music. And you know, the result was that, you know, people can't talk to one another when they're having a meal. And this has been noticed more and more in reviews and people have elevated it in the Zagat surveys, you know, noise is the number one complaint, it's not bad food or high prices. So what can we do about it? Well, you know, there are now tools that allow people to simulate these spaces before they're built, before they're all put together and dealing with the noise is a bigger problem. To actually, you know, put in the parameters. You have certain materials, a certain number of people and you're going to have your music at this level. What's that going to sound like? And you simulate it and if it's a problem, if people can't have a conversation then you can add sound absorption bit by bit. So you still have the buzz of a kind of a nice, lively atmosphere but it's not the kind of thing that's going to, you know, make you have to sit there in silence while you eat. And so these kinds of tools can be used for restaurants for office spaces, you know, all these places where noise is a problem. It's just part of thinking proactively is kind of how I put it.

GR: Yeah. That's fascinating about the restaurants and the construction of them, the interior, because I have noticed in my life and I thought maybe I was, you know, losing my hearing, but I don't think I am yet, I'm sure it's not what it was when I was young but it's become impossible in many restaurants if there's a table of ten to have a conversation with someone who's not directly in front of you, you just give up. You pretend you hear them when they're talking and you just, you know, go ahead with what you're doing. Well, let me ask you this, are there any countries that are kind of ahead of the curve on this and are doing more than other countries or maybe thinking about the United States? Are there any states that are doing innovative things or is this just something that's in its infancy, this kind of sound awareness?

CB: Well, it is in its infancy. And I would say that in Europe, they have started to focus a lot more, they've already been focused on noise, you know, in a comprehensive way that, you know, they are, they require cities of a certain size throughout the European Union to create these five year noise reports that kind of track where the noise hotspots are in their cities, typically based on transportation noise sources. And they also, if they're a big enough city, ask these places to designate quiet areas, places that have, you know, much lower decibels and to protect those places from noise encroachment. So that is, you know, been a great source of awareness. The question is, what do these cities actually do beyond putting these noise maps together on paper? You know, and when it comes to quiet areas, what is the purpose of a quiet area if all you have is a handful of them in the sort of deepest parts of the largest park on the outskirts of your city? Maybe there's more that you could find that, you know, places that are not just based on decibels but are based on, you know, the greenery of the place there or that people have reported that they find it relaxing in different ways. And there's been some effort to kind of make them more accessible. So there's you know, some places have started to recognize that soundscapes are important and not just decibel levels. The question is, what are the tools that can be used to improve and assess these soundscapes? Those are all very much in their infancy. Those things, you know, the decibel is easy, it's just one number. A soundscape is much more complicated.

GR: Yeah, well, it is complicated. And it is something that I think we're going to need to keep thinking about. That was Chris Berdik and again, his new book is titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”, very important book on a very important topic. Chris, thanks again for making the time to talk with me, I learned a lot and again, thank you for writing a book like this.

CB: Grant, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today appears to be something of a political soothsayer. Nancy Rosenblum is a Professor of Ethics in Government and Politics at Harvard University, and the coauthor with Russell Muirhead of a book called, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. Professor Rosenblum, welcome to the program and congratulations on this obviously timely new book.

Nancy Rosenblum:  Thank you, Grant. I'm happy to be here.

GR: Well, we're glad you made the time. So let's just start with some basic term definitions. What exactly is ‘ungoverning’ and where does its recent form get its start in our political history?

NR: Well, I think that is, it really is unique to Trump's first term. That is, there are many ways of governing democracy well and many ways of failing to govern democracy well, uncompromising this and, you know, people who are clients not representing their people and so on, we can all think of failings of government. But ‘ungoverning’ is literally the attempt to destroy the capacity for governing. It's vandalizing the machinery of government, and it's unprecedented. And it's so unfamiliar, that we gave it this name and it's literal. ‘Ungoverning’ is not evocative, it's a term designed to say that you can have elected representatives who are out to destroy the capacity to govern.

GR: I love that phrase, vandalizing the machinery, I’ll have to remember that. You know, I kind of thought, you surprised me there, because I kind of thought you were going to say Ronald Reagan, because some people have looked at that administration and said, you know, although Reagan wasn't as aggressive as he might have sounded as a candidate there, I know there are people in the civil service that still will talk about that time as one of the, sounds a little bit like ‘ungoverning’ the way you've defined it.

NR: Yes, we do talk about the prehistory of assaults on the depth and width of what government does. I mean, conservatism has always tried to constrain the business of government. And Reagan, you know, didn't develop that famous sentence that said, you know, somebody knocks on your door and says, I'm from the government, I’m here to help. And so he and other Republican presidents along the way have tried to go backwards, right? To undo certain kinds of regulations, to undo certain kinds of policies and ways of doing things. But they still remained essentially conservative, right? They were not Trumpist-like attempts to destroy the administrative state and to stay so vividly and to have a populist army behind them to do it. Don't forget, you know, Trump, is not a normal Democratic candidate, he is the representative of a radical social movement that he helped to create and that supports what he does. So in all of those ways, previous Republicans and conservatives, no matter how much they wanted to take apart this or that from Roosevelt's administration, didn't begin to make the kind of dent that we're seeing today.

GR: Well, President Trump has been compared to a lot of other leaders around the world, particularly some of them in Europe. So one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, is this a distinctly United States phenomenon or do you see ‘ungoverning’ elsewhere where you could identify it?

NR: Yes and no. And that's a hard question to do in just a few sentences. But I'll say this, there are in other places successful populist presidents or heads of state, right, that rode populist anger into a position of some sort of autocracy where they basically started to take away the elements of democracy, right, and some are still trying and some have succeeded very well. None of them have wanted to destroy the state. Because all of them had some sort of understanding that apparently Trump and his people do not, that you have to be able to govern if you want to be a successful autocrat. You have to be giving your people enough things, right, that there's stability in the society that you're not overthrown. And also because you want to rule, right? You can't rule by fiat in the modern state. So Trump is unusual in his declaration and his carrying out of the declaration to deconstruct the administrative state and to want to have personal rule without the apparatus of a government.

GR: Okay, I'm getting the distinction you're making there. And so, is the main, this may seem like a dumb question but I'm going to put it out there, is the main problem for this then the politics of chaos? How would you identify what the deepest problems are with someone who wants to do this?

NR: Well, I think one problem is that you have the politics of chaos. And let me say upfront why that's so difficult for people, which is that we all have in our lives run by security of expectations. And when all of our security of expectation about our economic well-being, about our health, about the security of our nation from other strong nations, about our work, about whether somebody is going to take away our citizenship, when all of these expectations are violated, or we fear that they're being violated, what happens is you lose your sense of political agency, and that's the end of democracy, when people lose their sense of agency. But I think the first part of what you said, you asked, is it chaos or is it, what was the second choice?

GR: I was throwing it up for you. I mean, you know, is there something else there?

NR: Yes, there is. And I think that what is responsible for this insecurity of expectation and what is clearly chaos is the desire for personal rule. Disrespect for the requirements of any office, whether it's Congress or the administrative state, the secretary of state or the presidency, is a desire for personal rule. That's really a very unusual thing and certainly unusual in the United States, where presidents, no matter how radical they might have been, or a conservative they might have been, understood that they occupied an office and that this office had a certain constitutional status, right? And that they had to (a) very great extent, operate within the limits of this thing called an office. And Trump has no interest in the office and no respect for it. As everybody said, what he wants is personal command, personal rule. And the interesting story here is how he managed to get it and why it's getting worse.

GR: Yeah, we'll come back to that. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Harvard University government and politics professor Nancy Rosenblum, and we're discussing her new book titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. You've kind of already answered this, so I guess I'll frame it maybe as a potential general pushback on what you're saying. I'm wondering, is this phenomenon really, ungoverning in a general sense, or would it be better thought of as, for lack of a better term, selective ungoverning, meaning the undermining of certain government functions that are previously supported and maybe bolstering some others like, you know, immigration enforcement? So it's a really, it's more about what government is doing or not doing, and not just government doing things generally.

NR: Well, by our definition and understanding and I think it's sort of generally accepted now, it's ungoverning. It's not that this president who wants to personally rule doesn't do things, he does things right? He raises tariffs, he goes to meetings with world powers, he drops bombs on people, he tries a major effort to militarize deportation and immigration, he does do things. We say that is not governing because it's not through any of the apparatus or within any of the rules or constraints that make a government. What we have is a ruler. What we have in discussion of, the ancients would say, what we have is a tyrant. And the evidence of what I'm saying is if we look at what he has done to the people and the institutions that do the business of governing and always have, that is the Department of Defense or the attorney general of the United States or the Social Security office or any area of policy is dedicated, is made by Congress in a general way, and then enacted by the agencies of our government. And all of that depends upon that apparatus of the Congress making a law and the independent, and the agencies deciding how you actually implement this law with open hearings and so on. All of this has been eliminated.

GR: Now, obviously, Donald Trump is going to be the big culprit in your story and has been in our conversation so far. Are there other culprits here who are culpable and how we've got to this spot?

NR: Well, you know, that's a difficult question to answer. You could say the people who voted for him. It's unclear, especially now in his second term, how many of his, except for very core MAGA followers, imagined that he would be doing what he's doing now, by taking away Medicaid or deporting their neighbors without finding, you know, without any rule of law and without determining that they're criminal, which had been his promise and so on. So we don't know whether, what kind of support he has for what and the polling is very variable. And so do you blame voters when their representatives act in ways that they did not expect them to act? So that's one question. But clearly, there has been leaving the electorate aside, an enormous amount of support for Trump from various quarters. The most important being a long and developed history of wanting to undo the Roosevelt administrative state on the part of conservatives. The Heritage Foundation and the person who now runs the Office of Management and Budget that put out this Project 2025 and so on. And these people wanted to deconstruct the administrative state. They wanted to do it, some of them from money, right? Because if you can raise the money by eliminating programs, you can give them tax breaks. Some of it because they wanted different kinds of technology and so on involved. Some of them because they wanted Christian nationalism. But you had various very powerful social and economic forces out there that thought they stood to gain from the Trump administration. And some of them are now nervous that they're not going to gain and some of them clearly feel that they are. But I say this to say that this this idea of deconstructing the administrative state, shrinking government, giving the president what's called the power of a unitary executive has been advanced for probably 20 some odd years by important factions of conservatism, but shouldn't be called conservatism, but what was called conservatism in this country.

GR: Yeah, I remember during George W. Bush's administration, we heard a lot about the unitary state. You didn't mention members of Congress, and that surprised me in sort of identifying who might be culpable in this. I mean, they're not standing up for the institution.

NR: I could name two other major sources and they were elected by Trumpist populists. They have at this very slim majority, they are completely obeisant. They go along even if they disagree and we know that because they'll say so. Because they're afraid, because they're afraid for their positions, that if they deviate from Trump, he will have the power with voters to get them dis-elected, unelected. So clearly, the Republican Party, as it stands now, which is no longer a conservative party, it is a party in thrall to Trump, is part of this. Now, what's interesting, if I can just say one more word about the Congress, is that he has really emasculated Congress. Many of the measures that he's taken have been refusing, impounding, refusing to spend money that Congress authorized, destroying whole departments like the Department of Education, the Congress made, right? Making appointments, all kinds of interim appointments so that he doesn't have to go through the business of congressional approval. Congressional approval for people no one in the world would have approved, like Hegseth as Secretary of Defense or Robert K. Junior as Secretary of Health and Welfare. I mean, so Congress is culpable, the republican Congress is culpable. And then the Supreme Court did something in 2020 that has been very important. They gave Trump and presumably other presidents immunity for prosecution from any act that they did, any official act that they did as president. And Trump now has this immunity. He can do anything he wants as President. And I can show you some instances of how he's done this, but maybe you want to move to something else.

GR: Well, we'll come back to some of those things in the second half of the program. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Nancy Rosenblum. She's a Harvard University government and politics professor and the coauthor of a new book titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. I wanted to come back to what we were talking about before the break there in terms of who you see as most to blame in this regard. And I guess the way I want to frame this question is, are Democrats blame free? Do they have any culpability in where we are today?

NR: Well, they certainly didn't win the election to that extent. That's the requirement for getting Trump in power. I don't think that there are any Democrats who approve of or want what's going on now. So can you say that that a party that was crippled by the fact that their president had to, you know, leave office under the gun very shortly before election, that probably made a terrible miscalculation in the candidate that they ended up with, that was actually delivered to them. But when we say blame, we usually mean something about intentional or moral blame. I don't think the Democrats intentionally lost or have any moral culpability for what we may think of as extremely destructive, anti-democratic, anti-liberal actions on the part of this regime. What the Democrats do now is going to be, you know, hard to watch, and I would doubt whether it will be very successful for quite a while.

GR: Well, yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, because it struck me as I was thinking about the arguments in your book, if they take on what you're talking about directly, they're almost going to have to put themselves forward as, or at least be vulnerable to the characterization I'm about to make, as the party of government, the party of the state. And I don't know whether that's a label they want to put on themselves at the moment, given the current political climate. I mean, how do they get out of that box? They tried being the party of democracy in 2024, and that didn't seem to resonate with enough people. So if they become the party of government and the party of the state, I don't know if that's going to do it much better.

NR: Well, I think that's right. So I think the problem for the Democrats will be how to identify those areas in which people want government and that they want government, not the way it's always been before Trump, they want government that's reformed and more responsive and doesn't try to do too much and does a lot of deregulation that, you know, they would have to do to identify what kind of governing, who wants, where. And that's why I think that this next, the elections coming up, this one in the next and so on are going to have to be mainly talking to people in the states. And that the presidential candidate, you know, has got to depend on their success to win. But I would not be surprised if the Democrats are brought back to office, because, you're right, they're identified with a government that people rejected for different reasons. Some because they were too liberal, some because they weren't really terribly conservative or Christian. I mean, there are all kinds of reasons. And even if Trump, they're abused of their infatuation with Trump, it's not clear that they will vote for the Democrats. So this is, I'm not an election person, but I think this is a hard row and I won't be surprised if the Democrats don't. Of course, it will also depend on what happens to Trump if indeed he has an election and there are many political scientists who think that he may very well obstruct another election. If he dies in the meantime, he's an elderly man, will the Republican, will Vance be able to compete with an attractive Democratic candidate? There's no way to answer your question, but it will be a rough road. And your initial skepticism is well put.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the Harvard professor, Nancy Rosenblum. So, you know, you track the origins of this in Trump's first term, we're seven months into a second term that has just seen a whole flurry of different kinds of activity and you've been describing different aspects of it. Is this just something that's been turned up two or three notches, or are we seeing something in recent months that's different and new? What's changed?

NR: Well, I think his capacity to really deconstruct the administrative state and evolve things has changed dramatically for political reasons and then for others. So some of these things I've mentioned, I think there have been three developments that make this a whole different landscape than it was four years ago and one has to do with the appointments he's made. And, you know, we always say that what he wants is loyalty, what he wants is loyalty, people who are submissive. Well, yes, he wants that, but he wants something much more. He has picked people for his administration who incarnate ungoverning, that is, who hate the institutions that they've been assigned to lead. RFK Jr., as I say, is the best example of that. You really want someone there who is an anti-vaccine person or anti-science to put federal money away from the sciences and health? Or an attorney general who's hostile to the Constitution? Or somebody in charge of national security and intelligence, who doesn't want intelligence, who looks at things ideologically? So Trump is announcing by his appointments and the Congress, by going along with his appointments, that he is out to destroy these things. He appointed someone to head the Department of Education, whose philosophy was get rid of the Department of Education, I mean, so that's one thing. The appointments that we've watched have told us an important story, that this is about wreckage, not about governing. I think there's a second and probably a third real change. And that there's been a real change in the law since he was first there. I mean, I mentioned before that the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity of a kind of blanket kind if a president is fulfilling his official duties as president. And many, many people from these associations like Heritage and so on, have spent the last four years looking at the law and figuring out how he could get around things. I'm going to give you one example, all right, the president is in charge of foreign policy. That’s where the imperial presidency has always lodged its authority. So Trump has translated a lot of things that are domestic into foreign policy things, right? That's clearest with his deportation business, he's no longer just saying that he's getting rid of criminals and immigrants and then going at the border. He's saying that this is a foreign invasion. When he goes after demonstrators in Los Angeles, he says this is an alien, the Alien and Sedition Act applies. So one of the clever things he's done and so far done successfully is to say, well, they say I can do anything I want as president and this is what presidents do. So I think the legal doctrines combined with the courts have allowed him to sweep things away. And he has said, he says and I have in article to power, that means I can do anything I want as president. He thinks that and he's proceeding on that path. They've also, by the way, developed legal strategies for bringing these cases to court, even where they think they don't have good advocacy, you know, position, constitutional or legislative positions, but they have figured out, and we know that Trump himself is an expert at this, figured out how to how to appeal and appeal and appeal and these cases go on forever. And by the time the case and the Department of Education gets resolved, finally, there will be no Department of Education. And when you’re deconstructing, you can't go backwards. But what's done is done. And I think that's the saddest thing of all.

GR: Well, one of the things that also struck me that might fit your characterization there regarding foreign policy is tariffs, too, and the way that they're done. We only have about a minute and a half left. I wanted to make sure I got this last question in because it relates to something you said right at the end there. After these things are unraveled, you know, it's harder to, it's hard to build Humpty Dumpty back together again. Setting aside the partisan politics, if we could, just how does the administrative state recover? I mean, what needs to happen? It would take I guess, a president and a Congress that are really engaged in building things if all you're saying is correct. So how do you see that happening? Is that is that a generational effort?

NR: Well, I think you're right, I think that you're right. You know, I've talked to a lot of people who have been either fired from administrative agencies of one kind or another or are still working there, but working under fear. And it's unclear how you would reconstitute the tens of thousands of people who have left and are going to leave government, people who know how things work, how to make things work, right? How to obey the law in making things work. And you're losing these people in a massive way. If he has his way, it's going to be hundreds of thousands of federal workers. And some of them are relatives or relatives of mine. And it's so, how do you get them back? Is a younger generation actually want to go in government? I mean, I think but even if they do, even if you can reconstitute a population, you know, a population of federal workers who are knowledgeable and who understand the processes it's going to be hard to repair.

GR: Well, we'll have to leave it on that depressing note. That was Nancy Rosenbloom. And again, her new book is titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. She wrote it with her coauthor and colleague, Russell Muirhead. Professor Rosenblum, thanks again for making time to talk with me. Very interesting topic, thank you.

NR: Thanks for asking such great questions.

GR: I appreciate that. You're listening to Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. My guest today is the lawyer, law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz. He’s with me to discuss his new book, decades in the making, titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harm while Preserving Essential Liberty”. Professor Dershowitz, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book. It's your 56th, I believe?

Alan Dershowitz: It is, thank you so much. I've already written my 57th, so I'm on the way to hopefully to 60, that's my goal.

GR: All right, you're within shouting distance. So this is what I would call a big book, even though it's concise. And I wanted to start our conversation by quoting something from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's forward to the book, just to set the context so that our listeners will have a good understanding of what you're doing here. He says the book provides new ways of looking at an old problem, which is this: how without sacrificing too much or too many of the values that society seeks to protect, for example, individual liberty, can society prevent the occurrence of events, behaviors, activities that will harm components say members of the society? And indeed, this sounds to me like the problem that James Madison is wrestling with and his famous Federalist Paper Number Ten. So it's a question of giving government enough but not too much power and of giving it the right kinds of power in the right moments. So you begin your book with a discussion of prediction and prevention, and I wanted you to tell us about those concepts and how they structure your argument.

AD: Sure. Governments are always trying to anticipate the future. This goes back to the beginning of time. The Bible talks about how you anticipate violence by young children and prevent it. So we've always done that. The problem is we haven't had a jurisprudence or a framework for analyzing whether we're doing it correctly. It's the essence of human lawmaking that we will always make mistakes. In this case, we will make some mistakes by predicting things that will not happen or by failing to predict things that will happen, both are bad. Failing to predict what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s cost 50 million lives. Over-predicting what Japanese-Americans might do in the 1940’s resulted in 110,000 Japanese-Americans being falsely confined in camps for things they would never have done. So we constantly make mistakes and the question is, do we error on the side of protecting liberty, do we are on the side of safety? These are hard questions and we have to address them.

GR: And it reminded me a bit of what I see often in the medical field about tests and screenings where you have false positives, false negatives and you're weighing those two things. Are you for all on that at all?

AD: Exactly right. Take, you know, for example, colon tests, you know, you can take your colon test and some doctors recommend them telling you there are a lot of false positives that you might be told you have colon cancer and then the second exam will show you don't. But if you fail to do it, then maybe you'll have colon cancer and you won't know about it. And so there are always the tradeoffs and the balances. I fight with my grandson all the time, my grandson is a cardiologist fellow at a major university, and he thinks I'm over medicalized and I think I'm under medicalized. So, you know, at age 86, I want to make sure it all goes right. But he is in favor of fewer tests and I'm in favor of more tests. He doesn't think, for example, old guys like me should have a PSI test of the kind that, PSA that President Biden didn't have and failed to pick up his cancer. I say, yeah, tell me false, I'm happy to live with that. And so, you know, these are reasonable disagreements. Now that involves cancer, but what about if it involves nuclear attacks? What if it involves terrorism? What if it involves keeping people in jail, denying them bail for something they didn't do? These are all very, very, very difficult questions.

GR: Yeah. And just those examples that you gave me, it reflects the variety of things that we might want to prevent that you take up in your book and is really quite striking. It runs the gamut from presidential assassinations to global environmental catastrophe. So what I wanted to do for a good chunk of our conversation here together was to take a few of these and have you tell us how your framework leads you to conclusions on them.

AD: Sure.

GR: And so I wanted to start actually with the presidential assassinations and you discuss attempts on the life of Andrew Jackson, you take that all the way through to Donald Trump. So how do we think about the balance there? What's the right place to strike?

AD: Well, here we have a situation where a presidential assassination is cataclysmic. It can change the world. Look, Lincoln's assassination changed the history of our country. We've had more attempted assassinations that almost any other Western democracy, starting with Andrew Jackson. And, you know, that was a failed attempt. Franklin Roosevelt, 100 years later was a failed attempt. Harry Truman was a failed attempt. They tried to kill Gerald Ford. But there have been too many successful attempts, you know, Garfield and obviously Kennedy and Kennedy's brother and the thankfully unsuccessful attempts on President Ford. How much power would you give the Secret Service? Certainly, they messed up a year ago when they failed to anticipate somebody going on the roof in firing range of Donald Trump. That was an easy one to the stop, but many others are far more difficult and would involve intrusions into the lives of people. We have are called red flag laws which take away guns from people, guns that are protected by the Second Amendment based on predictions that maybe they will misuse those guns. So these are decisions we make all the time and what we lack is the jurisprudential framework analyzing the cost of one kind of error versus the cost of another kind of error. And in my book, “The Preventive State”, I try very hard to suggest for the first time really in history, literally for the first time in history, a book that presents a jurisprudential framework for what we've been doing for thousands of years, making predictive decisions, locking people up, killing them, doing things that deprive people of freedom based on uncertain predictions.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and we're speaking with law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz, and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. So you talk about creating this jurisprudence framework and I wanted to push you a little bit on that and tease out what, so, I understand that this is you know, we're looking at estimating risks of bad things and then estimating the risks of bad things that might happen from trying to prevent those bad things, but how do we go about measuring this stuff? I mean, it seems to me that the devil is going to be in the details here. How do we measure the cost?

AD: Well, the question about crimes that have already been committed, we don't always get the right people. And so we have to ask ourselves, what if we make a mistake? What kind of mistakes do we prefer? And we've come up with this aphorism, better ten guilty go free than one innocent to be wrongly confined because we know life is probabilities. It's interesting, I had an interesting insight the other day. My wife and I were, believe it or not, in Monte Carlo. And so what do you do if you're in Monte Carlo, you gamble. And you know, I ended up losing $30 at the table. I found myself being a card counter. How was I card counter? When I saw them hand out a lot of, you know, a lot of face cards with pictures on them kings, jacks and the queens, I would say, oh my God, you know, there are fewer left in the deck let me bet this way. Life is card counting. We're constantly making decisions based on what we see happening around us. It's called, you know, Bayesian Analysis in mathematics. And so we're always making these probabilistic decisions. We're never completely certain about almost anything and we're always going to be making mistakes. And law is the science of how we assess our mistakes and where we balance mistakes of one kind versus mistakes of another kind. But we tend not to think of it in terms of probabilistic considerations and that's what I try to do. I used to teach a class at Harvard College and law school class on mathematics in the law probabilities in the law. And, you know, we introduced all kinds of mathematical formulas and conceptions into things like probable cause, proof beyond a reasonable doubt and other obviously probabilistic determinations.

GR: I wanted to ask you a question about a couple of the things that you write about where recent examples have been in the news. And one that struck me was that your discussion of harmful police interventions and you include police shootings in that. And it reminded me of the shooting of Breonna Taylor, the 26 year old African-American woman who was killed by police in Louisville. It was recently in the news due to the sentencing of one of the officers involved in the shooting. And so how do you go about weighing some kind of balance like that?

AD: Well, it's very hard. You know, it's the middle of the night, it's dark, people are shooting at you, you value your own life more than the life of somebody who might be a criminal. And you(‘re) going to err on the side of protecting yourself and your colleagues over protecting the lives of somebody who might be firing at you. And so the law has to make a decision as to how to treat it if it goes wrong. There's a leading Supreme Court decision on that, which was right in that decision. A young man robbed or burgled a house and he was running away and he was climbing a fence and he would have escaped had he climbed the fence, but he didn't have a gun and the police shot him in the back and killed him. And the Supreme Court said, no, that was in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It's better to allow some people to escape than to kill somebody who was not going to harm anybody else, even though he had committed a previous crime. So the court has struggled with that on an ad hoc basis without coming up with a complete jurisprudence for it. And, you know, we're at a stage in our development where maybe we're not ready for a complete, thorough final jurisprudence. But in my book, “The Preventive State”, I at least lay out what I think is the beginning of a jurisprudence and let's continue to have debates over time.

GR: Yeah, it reminds me, the way you just described that, it also reminds me of the breaking off of police chases and cars, yeah. When do you stop that and under what conditions…

AD: Yeah, and do you do more harm than good when you try to chase down a car and you're going 110 miles an hour and the risks to civilians and citizens. Look, the book, “The Preventive State” deals with the widest range of actions that governments take, ranging from, you know, inoculating people against communicable diseases to doing what the United States did in Iran a couple of weeks ago, a preventive bombing of nuclear sites. That's why this is the most important book I've written of my, you know, 58 books. But interestingly enough, the New York Times refuses to review it. They have never reviewed a single one of my book since I defended Donald Trump. They reviewed almost all of my books before that. But once I defended Donald Trump on constitutional grounds, I have been censored and canceled by the New York Times and by other institutions, which is why I'm so pleased to be able to be on your show and get directly to readers who can then buy the book directly from Amazon instead of having to go through the filter of the New York Times, which censors and decides which books it wants people to read. I'm on Chilmark in Massachusetts now on Martha's Vineyard and the Martha's Vineyard book Fair starts next week. They won't have my book because I defended Donald Trump before I defended Donald Trump, every one of my books, I was the most popular speaker at the book fair, but now they won't allow me to speak about my book. That's why I have to go directly to sources and directly to readers out there to urge them to read the book and not allow institutions that are against Donald Trump, by the way, I'm not a political supporter of Donald Trump, I'm a constitutional supporter, but I have to be able to get directly to the readers. So thank you for having me.

GR: Well, the book really is about other things than this. And so I'm kind of surprised to hear your stories about getting shut out of those. You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with the lawyer, law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz. We've been discussing his new book, it's titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. So you mentioned before the break about getting shut out of certain venues here on this book. And that kind of leads directly into something I wanted to ask you about, which concerns the institution where you where you taught for so many years, Harvard. And so you also examine problems of offensive or dangerous speech. And again, that's been in the news recently as Harvard has argued its case against the Trump administration for cutting off its federal research funding. And it seems to me, I'm thinking about that through the lens of your book, you've got two different free speech claims that are running up against each other in that instance. I mean you’ve got, in a sense, you've got the concerns of Jewish students who are at Harvard, but then you've got Harvard's concern about telling the faculty what they're going to teach or are going to act or what they're going to do with their DEI program. So any insights there about how we go about balancing that and thinking about that one?

AD: Sure. The key is to have a single standard, not to have a different standard for Jewish students and for black students and gay students. If you can say things negatively about gays and blacks, then you can say it about Jews. But if you can't say negative things about certain groups, but you can say about others, that's a clear violation of the spirit of the first amendment. Look, Harvard has not done a particularly good job, particularly some of the schools, the divinity school, the public health school, the Carr program on human rights have all become very, very biased. The divinity school, worst of all, it not only tolerates hate speech against Jews, it actually teaches it. The dean of the divinity school at graduation compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and they gave the valedictorian speech to a man who was arrested and prosecuted for attacking Jewish students physically. So you know, there are limits to what universities should do. But for me, the greatest limit is the single standard. You have to have one standard for everybody, you can’t have double standards that invidiously discriminate against certain groups. But DEI and intersectionality, which are taught at places like Harvard say you should have a double standard. Intersectionality says there are two groups in the world, the oppressed and the oppressors and the oppressed have no rights, the oppressed have all the rights, the oppressed ones have no rights. So they justify a double standard, but universities can't do that. And we learned that lesson in the 50’s when the federal government did intrude against University of Mississippi, University of Alabama that were teaching white supremacy and segregation and academic freedom didn't prevent the university from saying no, that violates civil rights laws. And what's being done at some universities today violates civil rights laws. So an appropriate balance has to be struck.

GR: So I wanted to have you kind of zoom out from these specific examples and tell me whether there is, in your view, some kind of, I don't know, rules of thumb or some kind of hunches that we can follow when we're trying to actually weigh these things. Because, again, the devil is in the details in a lot of these. And so, do you have any sort of places where you start, you just gave me one what the single standard sort of that's a way to guide our thinking there. Are there are other ones that you’ve put forward?

AD: Yeah. The other is always err on the side of freedom against safety. You have to give weight to safety, but as Benjamin Franklin said, those who would give up essential freedoms for a little bit of safety deserve neither. And so we always err on the side of, we should always err on the side of freedom, we generally err on the side of safety. And then the other thing is we have to articulate everything, nothing should be done in secret. Transparency is the key to everything. Let me give you an example, in the book I talk about, would you ever use torture to prevent a mass terrorist attack, say, attack on New York City with a nuclear bomb that would kill 100,000 people? Would you ever use torture? And the answer, of course, is they would, but they would do it secretly. They would never expose it. And so in my book, I talk about maybe having to get a torture warrant, having to go to the chief justice and having to get approval of all three branches of Congress before you do it. I'm against torture, but it would be used if it could prevent mass casualty attacks. We already did use it following 9/11. 9/11 was a failure of prevention. And as a result of the failure of prevention, we overreacted and gave government too much power. The same thing was true, Pearl Harbor was a failure of prevention. And after that we overreacted and put 110,000 Americans of Japanese origin into camps. So one of the virtues of prevention is it stops us from overreacting if we fail to prevent.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. So when I was looking at your writing and the chapter on global catastrophe or global warming, one of the things that struck me in thinking about how difficult that would be is that, and I think it, you know, affects all these categories is, oftentimes the very terms of the debate are subject to debate. We don't even agree on whether something is a problem and for whom it is a problem of what qualifies to think of it in certain ways. And so what do we do there when we can't even really, you know, you and I might weigh things differently, but we may not even be able to agree on what we're talking about in the first place. How do you get a shared language in your jurisprudence that way?

AD: Oh, you're absolutely right. There are people who don't believe in global warming, there are people who think that these are just natural phenomenon that have occurred over the last millennia. So it's hard to get a conversation like that. All I want to do, and in my chapter I say we have to, again, balance, you know, the extremists on both sides are wrong. We can't do everything in the world to prevent global warming if it causes massive unemployment in this country and if it raises prices to an extent that we can't afford. So we have to strike appropriate balances. And you’re right, it's very hard to do if we can't even agree if there is global warming, and so that's probably the most difficult chapter. There are other areas where we definitely can agree on the harms. The question is how much are we prepared to sacrifice in order to stop those harms? And there's a big difference between a single crime and a mass terrorist attack or between inoculation and preventing the spread of COVID. There, there was great disagreement also about the science. And all it was necessary to do is have a transparent debate and reasonable people could disagree. I'm not in favor of compelled vaccinations except in the most extreme cases. And in my book, I quote George Washington's letter to his troops in which he said, we might not lose the war to Great Britain, but we might lose it to smallpox if we don't get inoculated. But that's not a paradigm because presidents can't tell us what to do. They are commanders in chief of the army, they're not commanders in chief of the citizens.

GR: Well, I did want to ask you a question, you mentioned earlier about the fallout that you've had from some of your, you know, legal dealings regarding the president. I wanted to ask you about President Trump more generally. You know, many people see him as currently as a threat to democracy. They're quite worried about it, particularly this second administration, the one that we're in the middle of. What do you make of this concern? Are we in a constitutional crisis?

AD: We're not, we're in a constitutional conflict. President Trump has pushed the envelope further than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now, I'm not old enough to remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, but Republicans thought we were in a constitutional crisis then. He was expanding the power of the federal government dramatically, expanding the power of (the) executive branch of the government with administrative agencies and working with very brilliant lawyers to try to constrain Congress and constrain the courts. He wanted to pack the courts. People thought that was a constitutional crisis. We survived that, we'll survive this. We have the flexibility in our Constitution to resolve these issues. Now, this president, unlike two prior presidents, this president has never said that he would disregard the definitive ruling of the Supreme Court. Andrew Jackson did, and so did Abraham Lincoln and maybe Thomas Jefferson, there's a dispute about that. But we're not in a crisis, we're in a conflict. And so far, the framers of the Constitution get the best of it and gave us the mechanisms to be able to avoid turning the conflict into a crisis.

GR: You know, I want to squeeze in one last question. We've just got a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to say very briefly to that, I just got done teaching this summer course with high school students that are getting college credit. And I asked them that question, are we in a constitutional crisis? And the whole class said yes. The only no votes were myself and my graduate assistant teacher (laughter). So I don't know if there's a generational thing there about that, but I just, I think the guardrails are still holding up, but it is a source of concern.

AD: I think there is a generational dispute. People who are old enough to remember that we've been through this before. Segregation, Brown versus Board of Education, people thought of that as a constitutional crisis. Our Constitution is the longest enduring constitution in the history of humankind. And I think it will endure even longer and we’ll make sure that this conflict does not turn into a crisis, at least that's my great hope.

GR: So in about a minute left, I have to ask you this question, because you end on a very, with a very intriguing sort of post chapter where you write about the ancient rabbinic approach to prevention. And I wanted to hear what we can learn from that.

AD: Well, you know, the rabbis almost always ask the right questions and very frequently came up with the wrong answers because they had different values. But back during the rabbinic times and even in the Bible, we thought about prevention. The Bible talks about how you treat a recalcitrant child who may turn out to be a criminal. And the answer was terrible, stone him to death. No, no, don't stone him to death, teach him. So the Bible, the rabbis, the priests have always come up with brilliant questions, and we ought to take those questions very seriously. But with experience, we have learned that we have better answers. It's always a work in progress. And my book, “The Preventive State” is designed not to end conversation, but to start conversation and hopefully conversation through the generations. If there's one book for which I will be remembered, you know, over the next hundred years, I've written, you know, close to 60 of them, this is that book because it asks the most important questions.

GR: Well, I'm glad I had a chance to talk to you about it. That was Alan Dershowitz, and again, his new book is titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. It's an important book, a deep book, but it's also an interesting read. Professor Dershowitz, thanks again for making time to talk with me, I really enjoyed this.

AD: I enjoyed it, too. Thank you so much for having me on.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations and the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. We're just over six months into John Mannion’s first term in Congress, so it's a good time to check in with him. A lot has happened in Washington since that time. He represents New York's 22nd congressional district, which contains all of Onondaga and Madison counties and portions of Oneida, Cortland and Cayuga counties, including the cities of Syracuse, Utica and Auburn. Congressman Mannion, welcome back to the program. How are you holding up?

John Mannion: I'm holding up, absolutely. You know, I signed up for this, I couldn't be prouder to represent the place that I love and the place that I've called home for a very long time. So it is, I would say, my classroom experience and my state legislative experience and having good people around me have all been essential to, you know, us getting off the ground. And, you know, my line is that being in the classroom for almost 30 years, I know how to work with juvenile behavior.

GR: (laughter)

JM: And participate in it apparently also.

GR: Yeah, I’ve got to ask you about that. But first, as someone who grew up in Washington, D.C. area, before the advent of universal air conditioning, I have to ask you, how are you adjusting to a D.C. summer?

JM: Well, listen, I loved winter because I would walk around with just my suit coat on and I would get a lot of attention. People would be like, oh, that's the guy from Syracuse, right there. So I've lost a little bit of that attention and now I'm just resigned to the fact that my blood's a little bit thicker than most of the folks that I serve with. And when I walk from one place to another in between buildings, I'm probably going to have some sweat on me by the end. So I remember to bring a handkerchief or some Kleenex and towel myself off, but it is, I will take an upstate New York level of heat and humidity any day of the week now, I can tell you that.

GR: (laughter) Well, we've had a bit here, too. So let me ask you, you just alluded to this when you first started speaking, you appear to have found your voice or I guess maybe your yell in recent weeks on the floor of the House of Representatives and also at an anti-Trump rally that was up here in the district. It does seem a departure from your style as a state senator. So I'm just curious, where is the change coming from?

JM: Well, we're in a different space in this country right now, you know, so, you know, as far as the audio being caught on C-SPAN, you know, I mean, that was not my intent at all. But what we're watching are a series of unprecedented acts and the following and checking off the boxes of Project 2025, which is all extremely concerning, I think, to the vast majority of people in the 22nd District. Now, Trump is going to have his true believers, and certainly many of those will believe that these are part of the targeted attacks against him. But when we talk about, you know, the release of January 6th insurrectionists, the blanket pardoning or the defiance of court orders, also the demonizing of the judges, many of whom were appointed and approved by a Republican president, Republican legislature. So all of these things are unprecedented. And I served in Albany in the majority, and I just didn't cede my power to the governor and allow for executive actions to rue the day. So I did a lot of back door and front facing negotiations because there were certain things that absolutely did not work for New York 22. Now, that's the state level, this is the federal level. People are terrified and they continue to be. And the feedback that I have received over and over again has been very positive in my pushback. Did you stand up for the Constitution and stand up for the institution of the House of Representatives, like, you know, when it comes to appropriated dollars? Initially, what the president did was throw out these executive orders that are beyond his powers to be able to do so, to stop appropriated dollars. Now, what I would give the legislature credit here, even though I disagreed and voted no, is they did put through a rescissions package where they did follow, you know, in a narrow way they can do that. That's what that's what should be done and that's what our democracy has done in limited instances. So I reference Albany because they didn't just stand there and go along I wasn't just a team player to be a team player. And I expect that of my Republican colleagues. I expect them to do the right thing, stand up for the institution and stand up for the co-equal branches of government.

GR: Have you had a chance to actually meet face to face with President Trump yet?

JM: I have not. I've been in the same room with him of a couple of times, but I have not met face to face with him.

GR: Okay, all right. This is still very early days, you know, as I said, we're just past six months, and you are in the minority party, but have you been able to push forward and get any traction on legislation so far? Any progress there?

JM: So, per our previous question, you know, I'm doing two things. I'm doing my, you know, standard operating procedure here of co-sponsorship of bills, submitting bills through committee. And then I'm also doing what I said I was doing, which is when things are unprecedented and unlawful, un-American, violate our norms, I'm calling those out. So we have, you know, I voted against the bill, the reconciliation bill for a number of reasons, increasing the debt, you know, passing tax cuts to the wealthiest, cutting SNAP and cutting Medicaid, which is going to have a massive impact and we can talk about that. But I've submitted multiple pieces of legislation or co-sponsored them. One of the most recent ones that I'll be submitting is a local journalism grant. We actually passed something similar in the state to make sure that our smaller local journalistic institutions can survive. It's just essential to make sure that there's reporting and truth on really, you know, issues that are that are local and beyond. I did it in the, I co-sponsored something that ended up in that bill was the reason I mentioned it, which was an enhanced tax credit for semiconductor chip manufacturers. I am not the lead sponsor on that, I was a co-sponsor on it. But it is going to help to make sure that we do onshore semiconductor chip manufacturing in this country and that we do it, you know, as we know here in Clay, New York. So, I’ve got another piece of legislation that is similar to John Katko legislation that didn't ever get over the line related to employment of our veterans, the name of it is Onward to Opportunity Act. It's along the lines of the Great Veterans Program at Syracuse University to enhance, you know, career development, post military service as our veterans, our heroes, enter civilian life, so I keep doing those things. As I mentioned, one piece of that legislation ended up in the larger bill. And that's a good thing for central New York. And that's what I'm committed to is to be a good representation of the district.

GR: You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Congressman John Mannion. The freshman representative is in New York's 22nd congressional district. So you mentioned John Katko there just a second ago. So, is one of the approaches you're taking in the legislative efforts is to try to get Republican people on these bills as well as Democrats?

JM: Absolutely. It's going to be you know, existing in the minority conference here, that's absolutely going to be essential. And I just referenced that veterans bill, that's exactly what we're doing. We're going, moving, you know, building alliances with Republican colleagues, particularly those who served in the military, some of whom that we have connections to, either because they're members of the freshman class or they represent a similar district. So that's what you've got to do. And I know, living here my whole life is that's what the people of this district expect. I did not expect the level of unprecedented actions coming out of the executive office. So therefore, I've had to push back a little bit more. But I got in this to make sure that I was a good reflection of the district, like I said, but also to get us to a point where we are working together more frequently and we, and in a district like mine, I've got a history of doing so, and I believe a future of doing so with my Republican representatives that represent the vast majority of the municipalities. So, listen, I've got to build those alliances, and I do feel a duty to push back and call out the truth and speak the truth as we know that there's a lot out there that is untruthful and being perpetuated. And unfortunately, what I've seen here is we're actually building policy, not me, but others building policy based on some of those pieces of misinformation and disinformation.

GR: So I wanted to ask you a question about fundraising. Obviously, as a state senator, you had to do a lot of fundraising, but it's a whole different level here in Congress. Have the differences and the scale regarding that given you a bit of sticker shock or phone fatigue dialing for contributions so far?

JM: So it is certainly an unfortunate part of this, it's beyond unfortunate. Part of the dysfunction of this is that you have to raise money to get into office, stay in office. It's the one data point that, no offense, the media frequently focuses on at this point. And it's not the media's fault, it's the system's fault and we have to fix it. And I do believe that, you know, the Citizens United case has now put us in a better spot. I hope that when I do get back into the majority in the next term or future term that we can do something aggressive around campaign finance because it's absolutely essential. The dark money that comes in is, we just saw it in this presidential election, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars coming in. And then what happens after, the really the billionaire class comes in to a race like that aggressively is that we end up passing legislation or executive orders that benefit them at a time where, you know, people are really struggling in this country. I will say Albany versus DC, you know, some of my colleagues advised me not to do this just because of the calendar. You know, it's nice to be, to do your legislative work from January to June and then really be able to go around your district, meet people, hear their concerns, deliver on some promises. DC it's all year long, but I'm used to the travel and, you know, my wife and my team are fantastic in supporting me. There's not as much legislation that goes through, there's not as much as in Albany. And I do think in some ways that's preferred because you can focus on it. The other difference which may not fascinate people is the committee work, at least historically and hopefully in the future and to a degree still now, is really where a lot of positive things happen. It is true committee work and holding hearings and markups they call them down here to amend that legislation. So there is a thorough process of getting a bill to the floor. And that is one difference, lower volume, but more intensive in the actual work in the development of that legislation.

GR: That's interesting. That corresponds with what I have observed in the state legislature in Albany, that the committees are not as important as working units as they could be. So it's interesting to hear that, hear you corroborate that. Let me ask you this, too. This is a kind of a more personal question, but have you had any kind of positive chill-running-down-your-spine moments so far being in Congress? I mean, it's pretty heady stuff. Any time when it particularly hit you, like, wow, I'm really here?

JM: Yeah, I will reference one thing early on, which was, I had spoken to a lot of these folks on the phone, of course, and some I had met in person but between Election Day and swearing in day, I went into the Democratic Caucus meeting. It's a morning meeting and, you know, the newly elected, the Congress members elect her there. But 200 Democratic members of Congress are there. And you know who keeps coming out with a cup of coffee out the door into the main room? You know, here comes the Hakim Jefferies, here comes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, here comes Nancy Pelosi. And that was a moment where you're like, you know, I'm here, I'm here, and that was significant. And then, you know, there was some other moments that, again, were unexpected, the passing of President Carter and being able to attend his funeral and hearing particularly what some of his family members said about him, which was just a great experience. And then, you know, I'll finish off by saying we got to take a White House tour before we get sworn in and who's there but Flavor Flav.

GR: (laughter)

JM: So, you know, not on my bingo card.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Congressman John Mannion, he represents New York's 22nd district. So I wanted to ask you about this new development for the Democrats, the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City. It seems to have really set the Democratic Party in a frenzy and also created some division within it. What's your take on his campaign? Are there things for the Democratic Party to learn from it?

JM: So a few things here. As I think many of us would agree, New York City is a world away, but certainly in our state. And I worked in Albany with people who would, you know, defined themselves by certain titles like a Democratic Socialist. So I worked with people with that title. I think what we saw from candidate Mamdani is that he delivered messages that resonated with people and he did the work. And the message that resonated was an economic message. People are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. They don't see their wages increasing at the same level that costs are going up. So he delivered a message and, you know, if he becomes mayor, some of those promises are going to be a challenge to deliver. But for me, you know, listen, I understand New York 22, I got elected in New York 22, I know some of my predecessors who did, and I know not just, I know the core values and beliefs and priorities of the people here, I believe that I do. If you drop me in Asoria, Queens, I don't think I'm going to probably be the perfect fit. So, you know, this is what democracy does. And this was a Democratic primary, we'll see what happens in the general election. But I think there's great consensus that the message that delivered was effective and also authentic and genuine. And that's the reason why the support was there. If if wasn't authentic and genuine, we wouldn't be talking about it. So you know, again, are there shared values there? Absolutely. Do I want to make sure people have accessibility to health care and they're not in food deserts and there's transportation available so that they can get to their work and their doctor's appointments and their kids’ schools? Absolutely. And I'm fighting for the people who have barriers in place where they can't access those things.

GR: Yeah. I think your observation that it was very economically focused is right on point. You mentioned this earlier, I wanted to come back to it. It does seem likely, at least to me as a political scientist, that Democrats will be able to retake the House of Representatives in the midterms. Both past history and what I'm seeing and some of the current reactions to many of the Trump administration's moves suggests this to me. I wanted to get your sense of the probability of that outcome. You spoke about it as if it would happen. And what do you think, though, more importantly, what would it mean for the final two years of Trump's term?

JM: Well, those are great questions. First of all, you know, I think what we've seen, even on an issue that this presidency was above water on immigration is, you know, the lack of due process, the detainment camps, people actually having a connection to individuals who have been treated unfairly, mass gang of federal agents, all these things are not popular. And that's just in one area that people, you know, found compelling from the Trump candidacy and have asked, for many, is stronger immigration policy. That's just immigration, but when we talk about the economic policy, our standing in the world, the tariff dynamics and the lack of predictability the treatment of President Zelenskyy in the White House, you know, listen, I said there are true believers that will probably never break from the president, but independent voters, younger voters, they are not buying this. People do not, you know, can't get behind some of these actions and policies and the defiance of court orders. What does that mean if we take back the House? I am expecting to and that will certainly, you know, if we take back the house, we'll see what happens in the Senate. That is a heavier lift. But I think what's necessary is a check on the executive office. And we are right now expecting, I certainly was expecting more of a check from my Republican colleagues where it was a bridge too far. We haven't seen that. You know, you don't see hearings frequently, House hearings where individuals are being called to testify. You know, one thing I've neglected to mention was the creation of a meme coin and a crypto coin, you know, cryptocurrency that is benefiting, stable coin that is benefiting the president's family. You know, there's no hearings, there's no pushback, there's no acknowledgment even that this is corrupt or illegal. So we've got to provide that check. And, you know, time flies and we're already almost through July here. Before you know it, it will be November of 2026 and then January of 2027. And people are asking for that oversight and that you know, that transparency and House Democrats are here to provide it. And we were hoping and believing we could work with our colleagues on the other side to stand up for the institution of the House but we're not seeing that happening to the level that it needs to. So we're going to provide that check when the time comes.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is Congressman John Mannion. So, I had two questions related to what you just got into there in the last couple of minutes. The first one kind of quick, the second one, I think we’ll take a little more time on, but one possibility, it seems to me that if the Democrats take the majority in the House is, obviously things in Congress regarding legislative production are going to stalemate. You know, you'll have a likely divided Congress plus the Republican president, he's not going to sign anything that House Democrats are going to put forward, likely. And so one possibility is the president will just keep turning to executive orders and really just push out even more on those because that's the option that would be available. So any quick thoughts on that?

JM: Well, the first thing I will say is, it is unfortunate. And beyond that, that that's where we all are, that the majority party can't work with the minority party and I have seen that here, you know? You have Secretary Vought talking about ending the appropriations process, which is a very bipartisan action. We just saw some of that statements as we went through this rescissions legislation process. So I do agree that when we get to that point, it is going to be a challenge. This is where it is essential, in a bipartisan way, that not just because there might be a Democrat president in the future that could go rattle off a bunch of executive orders that could go unchecked, but this is how our democracy is functioning effectively, is that there are those checks. And that, you know, what we've seen by and large with these executive orders, not entirely, not unanimously, but attorney generals in the ACLU and labor unions have filed lawsuits and effectively stopped or paused many of these executive orders because it's been found to be beyond the bounds of the president. That's going to continue. Is the legislature involved in that? They are to a degree. I've signed on to multiple amicus briefs that have gone before the courts. And, you know, we have a rapid response team here in the Democratic conference that works on those things in partnership with some of those groups. So we can't leave it entirely up to the courts, but we also have to be respectful of the courts. When this administration wins a court case, I may disagree with it, but that is what makes us unique from many of the other countries of the world, is that we follow the rule of law, we stand up for the rule of law. Even if we disagree, we follow the process of an appeals process, if that is an appropriate pathway. But other ways, as President Obama said, when I listen to him at Hamilton College, you know, we've all agreed that these three branches of government are going to be a check on each other and we're going to respect all of those. So if those executive orders happen, if they are unlawful or unconstitutional, I expect the courts to do their job and I expect Congress to do our job in holding hearings and passing legislation to make sure that we keep the executive in check, regardless of party.

GR: I want to just push that out a little bit. I asked you previously on one of our earlier conversations whether you'd vote for articles of impeachment if the Democrats took the House and you said you would if those came up. If the Democrats retake the House, do you think that they'll be putting forward articles of impeachment?

JM: I'm going to take a couple steps back here. First of all, impeachment is not a not a popular process. Even in the second impeachment post, the insurrection, the second impeachment trial of President Trump found to be very unpopular with people in New York 22 and around the country. So this is serious business, the impeachment of president. And one of my colleagues did submit articles of impeachment, put them on the floor, they were voted to be tabled. And I voted yes on tabling and as you can imagine, I got some talking to about that from some of my constituents. What I have seen are actions that are clearly impeachable, acts like the creation of the stable coin and the meme coin and the president providing elevated levels of access when those are purchased or used as currency. That's unprecedented. That alone is troubling. So I'm going to take another step back, which is to remind that this president has been investigated in his previous term and indicted and impeached and gone to trial in the Senate unsuccessfully, twice, which means what is going to have to happen if there is a Democratic House, there's going to have to be investigations, there's going to have to be hearings, there's going to have to be a building of evidence. And only then will there be the potential to proceed. And I will do my job and listen to that testimony and listen to that debate and read the investigations and go from there. But at face value, I just mentioned one instance of the creation of this cryptocurrency by the Trump family that happened to be launched on Inauguration Day, of all things. It's that kind of actions that are beyond concerning. I believe they're unlawful and impeachable.

GR: Okay, just about 30 seconds left. I want to just to quickly give you a final chance. Looking forward to the next year and a half, can you just give me the topics of the areas you're going to be pushing on, what you're going to be trying to do?

JM: Sure. You know you don't want to always be responding. But listen, I was a public educator. I'm afraid that what could be coming next is another rescissions package to strip dollars away from what is still the Department of Education. I'm afraid that these title one and title nine grants that are essential to some of our most impoverished schools are coming. I'm going to push back against that and always fight for public education. And of course, we got a lot of other things to worry about as well. But thank you for having me on, Grant. I appreciate it. And I will always focus on the great equalizer: education.

GR: Well, I appreciate that. We'll have to leave it there, that was Congressman John Mannion. And again, Congressman Mannion, thanks for taking the time to talk with me, I know you're very busy.

JM: Thank you, Grant. Have a great day.

GR: You, too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. If you're a fan of true crime, you're in for a treat. My guest today is Dr. Mary Jumbelic. She's a forensic pathologist and the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County. She's just published a new book, it's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from A Life from True Crime”. Dr. Jumbelic, welcome back to the program and congratulations on this new book.

Mary Jumbelic: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

GR: Well, we're really glad you made the time. So let me just start, the structure of the book, it's a blend of, I guess what I would call sort of vignettes, sometimes extended vignettes of a personal memoir type. And then you have your, the theme of those is your experiences related to being a girl, a woman, a female doctor. And then you mix that in with different cases involving women victims that you've been involved in working on the cases for. So I was just wondering how you arrived at that structure, at that style, it's very interesting.

MJ: Well, my first book had a similar structure in that it blended personal and professional stories about my life and the life of my patients. And I guess I kept to that script, if you will, even though the lens of the second book is different than the first. The lens on the second book is related to being a woman and violence against women.

GR: Right, right. Now, you just did something very interesting there in your answer, you used the word patients. We need to make it clear that these patients are not alive. So in just one or two sentences, what is forensic pathology?

MJ: Well, forensic pathology is what medical examiners do. And so it's the study of death, what causes people to die, how they die, accidents, suicides, the investigation of sudden and suspicious death. And then relaying that information to doctors, the public, the law, whoever needs it, really.

GR: And I was surprised to learn in reading your book that there are only about 500 certified forensic pathologists.

MJ: Yes.

GR: That just seems really few to me thinking about all the people that are killed and die in various ways. Why is that the case, how come only 500?

MJ: Well, that's a really hard question to answer probably for, you know, brains larger than mine or analysis greater than I can give. But a pathologist in general is not a super popular specialty like primary care, surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics. People think it's not a social, you know, profession, but it really is. We are the doctors’ doctor, the pathologist. And then forensics is a special branch of that, so an even smaller group. And again, I think what we're dealing with is a sensitive issue, death and trauma and violence. And so not everyone wants to go into that. They want to be in the healing profession, so that's true as well. And death investigation in this country is not all medical examiners. It's coroners, and then they might hire a regular pathologist to do the autopsy and come to a determination. So forensic pathology is a special branch.

GR: Well, in your career, and this is obviously one of the themes of your book in different ways, but in your career you operated in a very male dominated environment, and that would be law enforcement and criminal justice that are related to being a medical examiner and the things that you worked with. Did you develop any, I don't know what to call them, tricks or hacks for dealing with that kind of environment?

MJ: Well, I think that I grew tougher, as anyone who might in a challenged situation where you're facing it again and again, you develop a thicker skin, you learn ways around the system. You learn to push ahead and not ask for permission beforehand and then say sorry afterwards. You learn who your supporters are and your mentors and you lean on them to gather that extra person who has your back. So all of those things.

GR: And one of the other things that I didn't realize when I was reading your book is that this explosion of all of these true crime, you know, the interest in true crime and true crime drama and a lot of the series that are dramatic series that are on TV, how many of those kind of got their start with the O.J. Simpson trial and how that was kind of the spark for all of that. I'm going back to the question I asked you just a little bit before but, do you know whether that has caused an uptick in the interest for people becoming forensic pathologists? You know that they see that and are like, hey, that's, I'd like to do that.

MJ: Well, it absolutely has had an uptick in interest in forensic sciences and so at the university level, even at the high school level and the university level, people going to get their criminal justice degrees, that sort of thing. Forensic pathology, not as much. You still have to become a doctor to get there and that's a bit of a barrier for some people. It's a long road to go to become a medical examiner. And so I do think it has glamorized my profession more, and I've enjoyed the popularity of it just from people appreciating what I do and what I did. So I'm grateful for that aspect.

GR: I remember you mentioned the barrier, I remember when I was in college myself and my classmates who were planning on going to med school, it was always, what was that class? Organic chemistry that kind of sorted them out. If they could make it through that, they could kind of go (laughter).

MJ: Right, right, everyone says that that's the breaking point for undergraduates is the organic chemistry. Which is ironic because I'm not really sure organic chemistry is necessary in most fields of medicine, but...

GR: That's the one. Well, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the forensic pathologist and writer Dr. Mary Jumbelic, and we're discussing her new book. It's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from a Life and True Crime”. So before we get to the Robert Neulander case, which is, you know, a big case that you worked on, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, which of the cases other than that one that you relate in your book, stays the most in your head and why?

MJ: Well, all of the women in my book, in some form or fashion were ghosts in my mind. And I started the book focusing on Leslie Neulander, but so many other women were in line saying, but what about me and what about me? And so therefore, I gave them space to grow and to exist on the page. I think one of the ones that stays with me is Carol Ryan, and I think for many reasons that local people will understand. But the length of time it's taken and no one has been charged or found responsible for one of the most heinous acts of violence that I have seen in my long career, and so she stays with me.

GR: And remind us, as I recall, her body was discovered in Jamesville, is that right?

MJ: Yes, she was the subject of a podcast called ‘Firecracker’ that was done maybe a year and a half ago and so it was discussed at length. But I met Carol while she was alive at the hospital. She was unconscious. she did not speak to me, but I was called in to give my opinion on what was the source of her injury and trauma and, you know, with the head of Trauma there. And so then I again examined her later when she died. So it stays in my mind very, very deeply for that reason.

GR: Well, you know, you mentioned this earlier, your book, I thought this was a nice little technique that, you know, it starts with the Neulander case and then you kind of leave it and then you come back to it at the end, and that got me going. And so your book leads up to this Neulander case. The Neulander case is arguably the highest profile murder case that we've seen in the Syracuse area, probably in all of central New York for several decades at least. Neulander was a very prominent and popular OBGYN physician in the area, and the couple very highly respected, well-liked. Just remind us, if you could, of the basic facts as they were understood before you first looked at the case. What were the basic facts as they were understood?

MJ: Well, Leslie had purportedly fallen in the shower and died. And this was on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days in the Jewish year. And that was what was known for several months to the community. It was sudden death, sudden collapse, and over time, and after I got involved, I uncovered that it was a homicide. And it wasn't just my opinion, other experts were brought in, like, can we review this and see, you know, what happened here? And they concurred, yes, it's a homicide. And because of the gap in time and the lag, I think it took time to accumulate everything, all the evidence, so it could be handled in a proper fashion. So he didn't go to trial until maybe a little over two years after the actual death of his wife. And he was found guilty, but then there was a complication with a juror misconduct. And so he went to prison, but then he was granted a new trial, as is appropriate in that circumstance. But then COVID happened, and then so a decade goes by after her death when finally the second trial occurs and again, he's found guilty and is in prison.

GR: Well, I don't want to delve too much into gossip, but I think it's important here that my understanding is that his career and his marriage both had taken difficult turns before this event and that that was known and that that was one of the things that got a lot of people suspicious. Am I right about that?

MJ: I think the community and those close to Leslie were concerned. There certainly were people that were close to her that weren't concerned, but there were others that were concerned and, you know, there were financial difficulties. There were, she was going to move out and get an apartment and all of this came out much later, you know, in bits and pieces and was verified. But at the time I reviewed the case, I didn't know any of that, it was not even on my radar, frankly. It only was in retrospect that there's all this behind the scene, you know, murmuring of what was going on.

GR: Well, we'll dove deeper into this in a minute. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Dr. Mary Jumbelic. She's a forensic pathologist, the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County and the author of a new book. It's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from My Life and True Crime”. So as you intimated before the break, you personally knew this couple. And then also you were retired as a medical examiner by the time this murder took place. So how did you come to get involved in it?

MJ: Well, in a quick synopsis, Grant, it was a rather lengthy process, but a friend of Leslie's was concerned that Leslie had been murdered by her husband and she wound up talking to me and asking me what I thought. And I said, well, you should go to the police, I'm not official, I'm not anything, I can't interpret what you're telling me, just go to the police and talk to them. And the long and short of it is she did and the end result was she called me back and said, they're bringing him in for questioning again and thank you for telling me to do that. And then he called that night, the house, and I knew he was leaving for Israel. And I got concerned that here was someone that was about to leave the country and I knew there was something going on in the background with an investigation or the police wouldn't be bringing him in for questioning. So I called, you know, Bill Fitzpatrick of the district attorney's office to talk with him.

GR: And you also mentioned, I think, in the book that Israel doesn't have extradition arrangements with the United States, that would have been a good place to go if you were worried about something like that. So, I mean, you must have had this, and you do write about this, this swirl of emotions in being involved in this, especially early on. I mean, the case sounds like it divided the synagogue that both of you went to. Can you describe your feelings when you first started considering the evidence, before we get into the evidence itself, just how are you feeling about all this?

MJ: I think it was complicated. I think that, you know, people ask me questions all the time. My uncle died and I think this, and my sister, this happened to her nephew, and, you know, people like to ask me and use my expertise to try to sort things out. And I like to try to answer questions and help if I can. But not usually on an official, you know, basis of any sort. And so when I was asked to look over the case, I thought, you know, maybe with my knowledge base and my expertise, I can sort out, like, whatever question exists about it, and I'll be able to just answer it easily and why are people worried about it? You know, I'll be able to just put everybody's mind at rest. That was my mindset as I went into it. And so I was a bit unprepared when I looked at the images on my computer of the scene and of her trauma and the autopsy to the level of violence that was there. And so that was probably the moment for me when I had to decide if I would go forward or not. That I would just say, no, I can't do this, or I would go forward. And I guess my nature is to see the trouble and see the challenge and then steal myself for it and move in a forward direction. So that's what I did. And I felt like my whole career had been speaking for my patients, speaking for women. And so I did it for my friend too.

GR: You mentioned the level of violence. And I have seen the district attorney's presentation of this case, he's got like a slideshow presentation. And that's one of the things that just the, in what you talk about in the book here in greater detail, but the, the apparent violence of the injury was quite arresting. I mean, it really suggests an extreme rage. And I guess my question to you is, you knew this guy a little bit. Did that fit the Robert Neulander that you knew?

MJ: I mean, I know that there are the people we meet on the surface and then there's whatever going on behind the surface of people. People are complicated and they're nuanced and they're not black and white and you know, I have seen enough people sitting in a chair being, you know, being accused of homicide and I'm in the witness stand and you look at the person, you know, they could not possibly have done this. You know, your mind tells you that. So I don't really hold to that. I think anyone is capable of, you know, extreme emotion in in a particular circumstance, you know? And I would say I was closer to Leslie than Bob. I didn't have any ill feelings toward him at all. You know, but he was more a shadow to me to Leslie's, you know, vivacity and energy. So I didn't know him the way other people in the community have come forward and described him.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Dr. Mary Jumbelic. So, thinking about what evidence that you were considering, what you were looking at, what were the questions and the inconsistencies that most leaped out to you?

MJ: To try to say it succinctly, the number of injuries, the location of injuries on the head, on all sides, on the neck on the arms, on the hands. So it was the patterning of the injury and also the head wounds and the devastating skull fractures and trauma there. Secondarily, the scene itself didn't make a lot of sense with the blood spatter and the location of the body and whether there was CPR and the shower being 60 feet away from the bedroom. So there were these secondary scene considerations that didn't fit the original story.

GR: And you witnessed the trial. In your view, was there one thing or a few things that more than anything else, did Neuander in both as a suspect and then as a defendant?

MJ: I felt like the playing of the 911 tape that the daughter called in was, I don't know if it was pivotal, but it was quite emotional and quite impactful. And it does seem to have not gone in the direction that I think the defense had hoped.

GR: Yeah. When I saw that presentation, that tape was played and it really, it kind of just puts a chill right down your spine, really. One of the things actually that I guess leads to this question is, it's puzzled me the way that the children stayed supportive of Dr. Neulander throughout the process. I remember a picture in the newspaper about them walking to the trial arm in arm, three of them. Do you know if they are still supportive of him? And I guess if they are, why do you think they have stuck by him in the face of what seems to me to be pretty damning evidence?

MJ: Well, you know, I can't really be inside their minds, but I would, I think they still support him. They certainly did after the second trial still, and that was only three years ago. But I think the gap of time from the death to the trial was quite long. And to my knowledge, they didn't have access to looking at the photos of their dead mother and the, you know, scene and all of that. So the information they had was probably filtered through the attorney and whatever their father was telling them. And so I think by the time the trial came up and they're actually hearing it in the courtroom and there's exhibits being put up and, you know, seen, I think there is a disconnect at that point. It's just a complete cognitive dissonance that happened. And I don't think there's any going back from that. You know, it's very, it’s sad.

GR: Yeah. Well, I mean, but social scientists would probably put this in the category of what they would call confirmation bias. You know, the way you take in information that conflicts with what you have kind of already sunk your mind into.

MJ: Right.

GR: This question here I'm about to ask you, it's very sensitive, but I just feel the need to ask because you say in your book that he is going to be eligible for release at a certain date. He seems like a pretty healthy guy. Do you worry, given your role, that if he is somehow released, maybe that because of old age, they'll release him, you or your family will be in danger? Will that be, you know, do you think about that?

MJ: No. I mean, I've had other cases where I've played some pivotal role or at least had maybe a lot of public acknowledgment of my role. And I'd be naive to say it's never a potential threat but I don't worry about that. I mean, I just did my job to speak for Leslie. I wasn't the jury, I wasn't the judge, I wasn't the prosecutor. I just spoke for what happened to Leslie and I just hold on to that.

GR: Now that makes sense, you know, that makes sense. Well, we've got about 3 minutes left or so, and I want to give you that time to kind of change the tone a bit. This has not been the most uplifting conversation that we've had. And so the final question I think would allow you to do that if you wanted to, is that, is there an overarching message here in this book, particularly for women? Is there an overarching message here that you want to convey?

MJ: Well, I think that my book is more than just a detailing of sort of heinous crimes that have occurred against women. I do want the reader to witness, to see what happens, but to take from that some lessons and learn and educate about the situations and to remember the women that have gone before. One of the ending stories in my book is one of the most hopeful ones, which is someone who actually changed her life based on Leslie's situation.

GR: Say a little bit about that.

MJ: And I think, you know, that is part of the goal here is to, let's not shy away from looking at the reality of what happens to women and let's do something about it.

GR: Yeah, I think, you know, as I was reading through the different stories and, you know, you tell a couple stories about yourself.

MJ: Yeah.

GR: Particularly one when you were a little kid that, you know, like that was like a very, very close call. I don't know if you want to relate that here, but, you know, they kind of all add up to look, all right, you know, pay attention, keep your eyes open.

MJ: Well, it's like, we are vulnerable as women, just on a sheer strength, you know, physical strength, access, okay? But we are smart and we can learn and we can be aware and we can help other women. And part of my goal in my career was to find justice for women. Sometimes I was successful, as in Leslie's case, other times not. But that doesn't deter us, we go forward.

GR: Well, that's a good place to leave it. That was Mary Jumbelic, and again, her new book is titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from My Life and True Crime”. And I can attest from reading it that it's a real page turner, it's intense. But I say nonetheless, I think it's a great summer read. So, Dr. Jumbelic, Mary, again, thanks for making the time to talk with me, I really appreciate it.

MJ: Thank you. I'm honored, Grant.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The Trump administration has declared war on DEI programs, and it has had reverberating effects throughout higher education, government and industry. My guest today has written a new provocative book on the topic of diversity efforts, and it's titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". Oneya Fennell Okuwobi is a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati. Professor Okuwobi, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.

Oneya Fennell Okuwobi: Thank you. And thanks so much for having me.

GR: Well, we really appreciate that you made the time. So let me just start with a very basic question. I presume, unless you work at the speed of light, that you did the research and writing for this book before the Trump administration's current war on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, especially on higher education. So I guess what I want to know first, is how and why did you get the idea to write this book when you did?

OFO: Oh, that's a fantastic question. Yes, I've been working on this book for many years, as authors do. And honestly, this book came out of some of my experiences. I talk in the book about how even though I'm studying diversity in churches, in universities and in corporations, I have experiences in all of those realms. And so this book really began when I was talking to pastors of color, working at churches who were newly diverse. And those churches were attempting to bring in staffs that more accurately reflected the populations that they were hoping to attract as congregants. But these pastors were having curious issues in terms of feeling like they were being brought in to display a black or brown face, but not really being listened to. Some were experiencing health issues or issues with their family because of the hostile environments that they were encountering. And hearing their stories, I started to discover there's something really wrong with, not the idea that these churches want to be racially diverse, but the ways that they were going about it, especially in reference to their employees. And it made me wonder, is the same thing pervasive? Is it happening in other venues? Which is why I added the venues of corporations and universities to get a more holistic picture.

GR: Okay, very interesting. And specifically, how did you go about researching it? You just said, you know, where you were looking. Was this was this based on talking to a particular sets of people? How did you go about getting your information?

OFO: Yeah, so this was an interview study, I talked to 60 employees across 53 different workplaces. Again, examining basically the equivalent of entry level managers within the church as universities and corporations. So in the university setting, that would be the assistant professor level and churches that would be anybody who wasn't, had clergy. So getting an equivalent understanding of what it is like to be an entry level management employee of color in these venues.

GR: And so let's get right to the core of at least the first part of your book, which is diagnosing the problem. I mean, what are the main things that you think that the diversity efforts as you looked at them, have been getting wrong? What are they not doing right?

OFO: Yes, so the issue has been, most diversity efforts have focused on benefiting the workplaces. And in order for those benefits to accrue to the workplaces, employees of color have been paying a cost in order for workplaces to get the benefits of being able to say that they are diverse. And there are three main costs that I outline in that first section of the book. The first is heavy work burdens. So anybody listening has probably had that experience of seeing a diversity photo where you basically got one of everyone in the photo. But then imagine you are working at a hospital and you are the one black doctor at that hospital. That means every time there is a photo, a video, something else, you are being dragged in to be able to represent diversity. And that was one of the real stories of somebody that I talked to. So those heavy work burdens can be being brought into photos, being brought to meetings, being placed on committees, any additional work that is required for the workplace to be able to benefit from saying that it's diverse. So that's the first. The second cost of diversity that I talked about comes in two flavors. The idea is threatened legitimacy, and there's threatened organizational legitimacy, which basically means you're questioning the rightness of your employer's actions. We often talk about diversity as window dressing, but somebody has to dress those windows and the people dressing those windows can see the difference between what's being portrayed on the outside and what's happening on the inside and that creates feelings of guilt and conflict in them. The second flavor of this threatened legitimacy is threatened personal legitimacy, where employees of color who are being brought into workplaces proclaiming themselves as diverse, are being questioned about their own qualifications. Being called with that barbed insult, ‘diversity hire’. Because the real reasons why diversity is important are not being talked about. And then finally, there's something I call subjugated identity, where employers of color are being forced to put their identity into such a way that their workplace can market it as part of their diversity package. Think of this as being identifiably non-white enough so that the workplace can benefit from seeming diverse, but not so non-white that you make your white colleagues uncomfortable. And the employees I talked to dealt with these costs day in and day out for years and years.

GR: Well, I've got a couple of questions for you that come right out of that I have to say, just on what you've said. You know, I work in an academic environment like you do and one of the things I've noticed over the years, and my university at least up until a few months ago, I don't know what language it's using now, but we have used the language of diversity hires and diversity hiring initiatives. But when I see colleagues come in who are, particularly African-American, most specifically, but also just non-white more generally, they get a very heavy student advising load from the students. You know, and so, because our student body is much more diverse than our faculty. And so I can see the dynamic that you're talking about, that's very interesting. You're listening to the Campbell conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the sociology professor Oneya Fennell Okuwobi and we're discussing her new book, it's titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". So I want to stick with, maybe I'll stick with higher education, but I'm curious if this is something you encountered in the other areas that you looked at as well. And I'm going to quote a former colleague here, not a white male, by the way, but this person used to refer to DEI as, and this is their words, the ‘DEI industrial complex’. And it does seem at least that in higher education, when we look at the level above the faculty in particular, we look at administration, it does seem like it did spawn almost like a new category of administration and infrastructure in the administration. I don't know if that's an element that you look at or how this is going to affect things in any way.

OFO: It's not a pervasive element that I look at. But one of the things that I did find is that the faculty members I talked to, in fact, the employees more generally that I talked to who had a diversity office or diversity officer above them, saw often that those offices didn't necessarily focus on what the employees needed, that that open line of communication wasn't there. And so even though these offices and these officers existed and were important, their impact wasn't necessarily felt by the employees and they felt like more open lines of communication could be important. At the same time, the employees recognize the constraints that those officers and offices were working under, that they were not necessarily empowered to make the changes that would have to be made in order for the employees to be having an equitable work experience.

GR: I see. So the bottom line then, it sounds like what you're saying is the people who end up paying, to use the title of your book, “Who Pays for Diversity?”, is the employees, the diverse employees.

OFO: That's exactly right.

GR: Okay. So one of the issues that also has struck me, at least from my experience in higher education and I wanted to get your thoughts about this, is that, and again, it depends on sort of what element of diversity the initiative or the new hire is supposed to speak to, but especially ones that I think have come from outside the United States more than others fit this, is that those folks can often be from quite elite backgrounds, if we're just looking at economics. You know, that they're not, that we associate these efforts I think oftentimes with, you know, speaking to historical disadvantage and current disadvantage and current discrimination. Is that any kind of common pattern that you saw in what you were looking at? That there could be, kind of if you looked at it through one lens, there's diversity in one way, but then if you look at it through a more pure economic lens, it becomes a lot murkier. I don’t know if that question is making sense.

OFO: It is, and let me know if I'm answering it. But even as I look at race and racism, which is the focus of this book, even folks from elite backgrounds can experience racial discrimination and can experience the shadow and the costs that get put on them because of diversity. So even having an elite economic background does not exempt you from that. And so it's important to understand that these costs continue and have been pervasive because of the ways diversity has been structured. It's also true that the majority of folks that I talk to in my book were born in the U.S., even though I do talk to some employees that were 1.5 generation. And we see that there's a lot of advantage and recognition of racism that happens by the second generation, even if somebody is from an international background.

GR: This may be more of a feature, I guess, perhaps in academia. Well, tell me more about the way that that works, though. I'm curious to hear more about, you know, someone who is elite in some ways, but then is being treated as less than in other ways. Is there is there a particular way that that dynamic feels or works?

OFO: Yes. And I don't want to go too far into this because it's not necessarily the main idea here. But basically, when somebody, what I argue in the book basically is that the ways that diversity is framed is creating a level of disadvantage. So let's say that you are from another country, but you were brought in to a workplace that focuses on diversity. You may still encounter these heavy work burdens of having more students to advise than your counterparts, of being brought into specific photos or specific dinners or specific meetings in order to paint that picture. You may still encounter people who say that you don't belong here, despite your qualifications, you may still feel like you cannot be your entire self at work. So those things can still happen to you regardless of socio-economic status in which you grew up.

GR: Yeah, and now that I think about it as I'm thinking about our conversation in the moment, I think we're sort of headed toward a heated agreement here because your whole point is that these hires are brought in to help somebody else.

OFO: Yes.

GR: And to help the institution. And so therefore, they can experience these differences even. Okay, all right, I'm with you now.

OFO: When you talk about paying for diversity, the costs are pretty steep. When I looked at the experiences, again of these employees I spoke to, fully nine out of ten of the pastors and the professors I talked to were experiencing emotional and physical signs of stress. And that can be anywhere from having symptoms that mimic strokes to having anxiety attacks, insomnia, headaches. And they attributed these things to what I call the costs of diversity. For corporate employees it was a little bit better, more like three out of four. But still, that's a steep cost for these employees to pay in order to make their workplaces appear diverse.

GR: Yeah, it sure is. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Oneya Fennell Okuwobi. She's a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati and the author of a new book titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It" and we've been discussing the book. So as you said before, at the beginning of our conversation, you looked at universities, churches, corporations. First of all, does one of those sectors do better than the other, and is one worse? Or are there patterns, shared patterns of the ones that do better than others?

OFO: Yes, absolutely. So when I looked at the employees that were reporting the fewest adverse effects, surprisingly in some ways it was the corporate employees. But it's not necessarily for a great reason. The reason being is that corporate employees don't often see their work as a calling in the same way maybe a professor or a pastor might. And so they didn't necessarily expect to be respected as people. And so they maybe had some defenses up against what they were experiencing. For pastors, this idea of calling really loomed large. In addition to the fact that when you are working in a ministry profession, your entire family is involved. So not only do you work at a church, but probably your family attends the church, probably your social networks are connected. And so if you are being commodified for your presence, that commodification extends throughout all the aspects of your life rather than 9 to 5. For professors, I think the reason why the costs of diversity were higher is similar because assistant professors are often across the country away from their family, and their social networks are having to build new social networks. And that can be difficult when you are being commodified for the purpose of displaying diversity.

GR: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So I don't know if this is pushing you too far, but you're talking about commodification and the institution kind of thinking of these folks almost as a selling point or a product. Am I going too far to say it kind of smacks in some strange way of slavery in a way? I mean, one can see a line of connection, at least in an abstract level here.

OFO: I don't think it's going too far. Of course, we don't want to minimize in any way the horrors of slavery, but the idea that there is a profit, a capital that exists in certain bodies that can be used by others, and in this case, predominantly white people and white institutions is a direct line from thinking about chattel slavery till today. I'd also love to extend that in a way to say that, you know, even though this is a special case of commodification, in some ways all workers are subject to commodification. And so I want this to be a spotlight on a particular sort of costs that workers pay for benefits to their workplaces that is not fairly compensated. But I hope it as a starting point to look at other ways in which that happens to all workers. So I would both narrow it and make it more historical and wide net and bring that idea into the future.

GR: That's an important point. So, okay, so how do we make this better? What recommendations do you have for institutions that are saying, look, we want to have some kind of DEI effort, maybe we'll call it something different now, but, you know, we'll get to that in a minute. But how can it be done better?

OFO: Yes. So what I talk about in the last chapter of my book is making these things more employee focused. Honestly, a lot of the diversity efforts have said if we focus on diversity, if we play the numbers game and get enough representation, eventually we'll get to racial equity. And I argue that the only real way to get to racial equity is to focus on racial equity. So instead of saying, let's get up the numbers of, you know, black professors at the university, let’s instead listen to the black professors at the university and see what is it that they need to have an equitable experience to their white counterparts. Part of that is support with students, which could in part be solved by numbers, but it could also be solved by perhaps giving additional credit for service work when it comes to tenure files, which is something perfectly in universities’ control. It might come down to looking at rates of receiving grants and understanding the racial disparities in receiving grants and making sure that faculty of color have what they need to be able to execute their work. It might look like if you're going to have to drag folks into pictures or videos, A, don't, but to the extent that you do, make sure that they get other time in order to continue to pursue their work so their time for research is not eaten up. So looking at those very real disparities and then doing things to correct them.

GR: Well, what you just said makes sense, but it leads directly into the next couple of questions. That I wanted to ask you. And the first one is, okay, so how do you do what you just said without incurring backlash along the lines of, well, this is just more affirmative action extended throughout the entire evaluation process. I mean, we've got a current presidential administration that's declared pretty much open warfare on this whole notion. It sounds almost like you're saying we need to really almost double down on it in some ways. How do you deal with that?

OFO: I am saying we need to double down on that in some ways. I also recognize that it's not legally possible in all places, but it is legally possible in some places. And I believe a key to limiting the level of backlash is to change the sort of messaging we've done around diversity. With diversity, the messaging has been, there's a benefit to all people by having people from diverse backgrounds, different viewpoints come together and talk about things. And if that's the real benefit, then it's no wonder that there's a backlash against that now, because you might decide, I don't want that benefit, I actually don't want any folks who disagree with my viewpoint around, I don't need that. But the real reason why these programs were put in place in the first place was to correct past and continuing discrimination and disparities. And so getting back to the messaging of let's educate all of the employees about the past and continuing disparities and our specific workplaces role in those disparities and how the things that we're doing corrects for those things. And by the way, I do believe that as we are assessing what employees of color need, we should be assessing what all employees need because there are lots of good ways to put in place corrections that don't just help employers of color, that help everyone, again, have a more equitable experience at work.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is a sociology professor, Oneya Fennell Okuwobi. So what do you, I'm going to put you on the spot here if you don't mind, but, so what do you make of the Trump administration's efforts to battle DEI and all of these really high profile conflicts that we've seen, particularly in higher education, but we've also seen very large corporations make significant changes in what they're doing in response to perceptions of concerns about the Trump administration, I mean, there's a lot going on here in this field, what do you make of it?

OFO: Well, quite frankly, nothing positive do I make of it. It is an effort, not just at eliminating DEI, but at rolling back civil rights altogether. But I do want to recognize the ways that this effort has been enabled by the ways that we have not continued to speak about continuing racism that exists in our society. The idea that, for example, hiring discrimination has not gotten any better since 1989. If the majority of people knew that, perhaps they wouldn't care. But we at least need to give them a chance to know what is going on and not cover it up. And so that people have a chance to look at these policies, look at this rhetoric and reject it wholesale.

GR: Well, we've got about two or three minutes left and I wanted to ask you a question that I'm sure I'll have a follow up or two on, but I want to make sure that we get a chance to talk about it. And it's more personal, I hope I can ask this, but you know, you are a faculty member of color and you've got this book out, and there it is in the flesh, in paper that somebody could hold up if they wanted to say, oh, here's another, you know. How, I mean, you've sort of put yourself out there right now and how are you experiencing that? Do you have any concerns, do you have any worries that, you know, the University of Cincinnati is going to be, oh, no, we've got this person that's got this book out right when it's under attack, you know, that kind of thing?

OFO: Yeah. You know, it is true. I have put myself out there. I will say my university has been nothing but supportive of me and my scholarship and I hope that will continue. But I think it is a message to all of us in academia, all folks who are involved in activism, if we don't stand up for what is right now, who will? And so that might involve and entail some personal risk. But if I take personal risk to make sure that employees of color can hear the message that you're not alone and we see the cost that you are paying and you are not responsible to pay them any longer, I have to, now that I know what I know take that risk because that message needs to get out.

GR: And lastly, and just about a minute left so I have to really ask you to give a very concise answer here, but there's been a lot of difficult conversations between faculty and students in the last few years. I imagine you've had some, too. What do you say to your students who are concerned about these kinds of things and looking at, I mean, this is really all they've known politically, I mean, they're that young, this is all they've known.

OFO: I have a lot of hope for our students. I have conversations in the classroom every year, honestly, that make me hopeful for what we will see. And I think that there are enough sources of information and understanding out there that students are gravitating towards that will allow them to make, hopefully, more informed decisions in the future that will lead us away from the path that we're on now.

GR: Okay, well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Oneya Fennell Okuwobi and again, her new book is titled, “Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". If you become frustrated or exhausted by the current debates over DEI and are looking for a new framework and a new way to see this, this would be an interesting read for you. And if you are looking for this book, on Amazon, I want to just say that professor Okuwobi’s last name is spelled o k u w o b i. Professor Okuwobi, again, thanks for making the time to talk with me. I really learned a lot from this conversation.

OFO: Glad to do it.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

David Lay Williams, professor of political science at DePaul University, talks about his book, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx."

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Economic inequality has been a perennial issue in political campaigns and we are said to be living right now in another Gilded Age of extreme inequality. My guest today is David Lay Williams. He's a professor of political science at DePaul University and the author of a new book titled, “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shapes Political Thought from Plato to Marx.” Professor Williams, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.

David Lay Williams: Thanks so much for inviting me. Grant, I'm looking forward to our conversation.

GR: Well, me too. So let me just start with something really basic. It's right there in the title “The Greatest of All Plagues.” It's kind of a provocative phrase there. Where does that come from? What's its significance?

DLW: So it's actually a phrase from the first figure I treat in my book, Plato, who would be familiar, I'm sure, to many. Plato was probably, you know, the first systematic thinker on politics in Western political tradition. But he's also the first one to seriously engage the question of inequality. And he introduces this phrase in his last dialogue, called The Laws. And he has a character speaking, a character he calls the Athenian stranger who says that whenever you have a wealth divided, extremely to the rich on one hand and the poor on the other, and not very much in the middle, it leads to serious problems, including strife, civil strife and even civil war, which he calls the greatest of all plagues. So technically, he says it's still as civil strife and civil war that's the greatest of all plagues. But what brings that about is economic inequality.

GR: And that sort of reminds me a little bit of what I remember from Aristotle, too, about the, you know, this idea of sort of a basic balance, and it can't get too far out of balance. Was there a way that the ancient thinkers as a whole tended to think about inequality? I mean, obviously, the societies they lived in were very heavily layered and different ways. But is there sort of an ancient way of thinking about this or were they all over the place?

DLW: A bit all over the place. Right. They're certainly very serious critics of inequality in the ancient world. Plato being one. Aristotle's certainly talks about inequality as being very problematic for managing a polis. But there are others who seem more comfortable with it that there's a figure known as old oligarch to ancient scholars who unsurprisingly likes being an oligarch and talks about how all political power needs to be concentrated in the hands of the rich few. So but but I will say that it's not unusual to find opposition to inequality, not just in ancient Greece, but you can certainly find it in Rome, and you can certainly find it, as I discuss in chapter two of my book in Rome and Palestine, or, you know, what some people now call Israel. Right. So there was I, we can sort of say there was widespread opposition to our concern about inequality in the ancient world.

GR: Hmm. And one of your central arguments is that the problem of inequality, the issue of inequality, drives much of the thought of political philosophy over the centuries. It's one of the main through lines. And I just wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on that idea, that notion.

DLW: Through lines, I'm sorry, in the ancient world or through lines?

GR: Throughout.

DLW: Yes. Yes, sure. Yeah.

GR: Throughout Western political thought.

DLW: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's several threads that I kind of pull through, I used to connect, like many of the thinkers in the book, right. One of those through lines is the role of what the Greeks call pleonexia. And that's, it's an ancient Greek word, which means greed, but kind of greed on steroids, as it were. It's a greed incapable of being satiated. Plato called…

GR: Gee, cause we never see that now.

DLW: No! So Plato, in his dialogue, The Gorgias, compares pleonectic souls with a leaky jug. He says, you know, you can they can spend all day pouring more water into a leaky jug, and will never be satisfied with the amount of water that you give it. In fact, the more water you give it, the more it wants. And he says many souls are like this. The souls that he characterized characterizes as as disease or pathological. And there are typically three things that pleonectic souls want, and this includes power, adulation, and especially money. And that's, of course, the connection to inequality. And it's why societies tend unless, you know, checked by policy, societies tend to revert to inequality because they're just going to be people out there who will never be satisfied with the amount of money that they have and will do practically anything to get it. So that starts in the ancient world. But interestingly, that really weaves its way through the tradition. Right. Certainly, we find lots of condemnations of greed. And specifically, you know, they the Greek New Testament uses the word pleonexia to condemn greed. But it's also found in the Old Testament. The book of Ecclesiastes is full of condemnations of pleonexia. Right. But this goes all the way through. It's in Thomas Hobbes. It's in John Stuart Mill. And even in Karl Marx. Yeah. So that's one thread that works its way through. Another thread, and maybe I'll stop it at two, for now, to leave time for questions, right. But another thread is kind of the damage that concentrated wealth inflicts upon the faculty, our human capacity for empathy. Right. And this really starts in the Bible. This is in the New Testament account, in the book of, in the Gospel of Luke and the story of Lazarus. Not the one risen from the dead. There's actually two Lazaruses in the Bible. It's the Lazarus, the beggar who asks a rich man for money, just asking for crumbs, actually, from his table. The rich man refuses. And then Jesus intervenes at that point to say, well, let me tell you how this ends up. Lazarus goes to heaven. The rich guy goes to hell because he had no capacity for empathy, for feeling for the poor and much less doing anything about it. And this inability to feel for the plight of the poor on the part of the rich is, again, a theme that we see throughout Western civilization, most notably, and maybe surprisingly for some, in the figure of Adam Smith, often cited as a godfather of capitalism. Adam Smith on page two of “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” his second most famous book, after “Wealth of Nations,” provides an evocative account of a begging man who was ignored, that nobody feels any sympathy for. So those are two examples of themes that connected to inequality that really worked their way from the ancient world to the modern.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the political science professor David Lay Williams, and we're discussing his new book, “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” So, you know, you've got a you've got a big handful of but it's still just a handful of philosophers here that you treat in your book. You obviously have to make some difficult choices to narrow it down. I'm just curious how did you pick the people that you did, you don’t have to go through each one. I'm going to ask you a couple of specific questions about individuals, but just what were your methods like or how did you go about deciding this person versus another person?

DLW: Yeah. Well, you know, I should begin with some honesty, right? I mean, I certainly included some people because I just really love reading and thinking about them, right.

GR: That's OK.

DLW: I've written a couple of books on Rousseau. You know, I certainly wanted to make room for him. And I do really love reading Plato. But beyond that, right, the more, you know, maybe justifiable explanation is that I really wanted to draw on very well known canonical figures to kind of make a point to say, look, if if people care about the Western canon and we hear this from from a lot of people on the political right these days, for that matter. Right. You know, why aren't we reading more of the Western canon? You know, why are we reading all the DEI stuff? Right. Well, you know, I want to take these people seriously because I you know, although maybe not a person of the right, I share their passion for these texts. Right. And I want to say to them, well, you know, if we take these texts seriously, you know, they say some pretty interesting things about inequality. Right. And if we're going to, you know, and certainly we're all engaged in the question of inequality today. Right. It's coming up this week with the budget. And, you know, if we're going to look to figures like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and, you know, Plato and the Bible. Right. Among other sources. Right. I think, you know, these canonical texts have a lot to say about this issue and can be the source of some, you know, stimulating and perhaps important discussions.

GR: Mm hmm. And it was you've already mentioned this a bit earlier in our conversation, but I found it very intriguing, maybe a little surprising. I don't know. But when I first opened the book and I saw that the New Testament was one of your chapters right there, along with Plato and Marx and Rousseau.

DLW: Yeah.

GR: And it makes sense, you know, when you think about the Gospels and you've talked a little bit about the view of inequality that the New Testament offers, maybe this is a time to work in your third through line that you didn't that you left out before. But, you know, there's this theme of greed. There's this interesting theme of empathy being damaged or destroyed. Is there an overarching lesson about inequality that you think the New Testament is teaching us?

DLW: Sure. Right. And the New Testament is really unique, obviously, in this book. Right. You know, Jesus is not typically taught as a political thinker in political science departments at universities, whether that's Syracuse or DePaul or Harvard or wherever. Right. I and I didn't even intend to write one on the New Testament. That wasn't my intention. My problem was that I had a big gap between Plato and Thomas Hobbes and I and I started reading some Christian thinkers a little bit later than the Bible, of course. And the more I read them, the more I thought, well, I should really go back and look at the Bible. And I realized that that's what I had to write about, because the Bible has so much to say about this. And, you know, interesting things, you know, that come from the Bible. Right. I'll focus on two important laws. These are in the Hebrew Bible. Actually, they're in the books of Moses, the you know, the Pentateuch. Right. And it's that they're very important laws, according to Moses. Right. And they're laws that Jesus draws our attention to again, in the Gospels. And these two laws are the laws of sabbatical and jubilee and the law of sabbatical and again, an ancient Hebrew law that says all debts should be forgiven once every seven years. Right. Among other things. Right. A jubilee is the seventh of every sabbatical years. Right. So once every fortnight or 50 years. Right. It's kind of gotten rounded up to 50. And in a jubilee year, you do you forgive all the debts and these other things as well. But you also have to return all property that's that's changed hands over the last five decades back to the original equitable distribution. Right. And when Jesus is setting up his ministry, he's preaching, he announces very specifically, it is the year, it is the year of the Lord, which is a Jubilee year. Right. And when you think about the context in which Jesus is, you know, ministering to the poor. Right. This is a very powerful and appealing message. Right. You know, “Hey, you know, we would like our land back. We would like our debts forgiven.” And there was a significant debt crisis in Roman Palestine at that time. And this message was extremely appealing.

GR: Hmm. Also, cueing a student loan forgiveness.

DLW: Yes. And people have made that connection.

GR: You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with David Lay Williams. He's a political science professor at DePaul University and the author of a new book titled “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” And we've been discussing his book. So I, I've read in my past all the writers that you treat, including the Gospels, spent, you know, two months slogging through Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.” I've done my duty there, too. But I find Rousseau the most intriguing of the political philosophers that you cover. So I'm going to take a personal indulgence here. Tell us a little bit about his views on inequality.

DLW: Sure. Rousseau is obviously a really important thinker when it comes to inequality. I famously he wrote a book called the “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.” And he's certainly the first modern thinker to think about inequality in a very systematic way, gives an account of where it comes from and why it's problematic in that discourse. And then and in other writings beyond his discourse, inequality talks about what he thinks could be done about it, has some a variety of interesting proposals. But I think what's really distinctive among the many things that Rousseau says about inequality is it is in the context of his enlightenment culture, of emerging meritocracy. I think this is where Rousseau really speaks to us. Right? Again, meritocracy is a word in the contemporary discourse about politics right there. Politicians are saying you know, universities need to be more meritocratic. Corporations should hire on a meritocratic basis. Right. But Rizzo's kind of he's and he's Rousseau was well aware of this emerging culture of meritocracy, because that's what's happening in the Enlightenment. And there are lots of good things, of course, about encouraging, you know, people to cultivate and develop their talent and use that for the public good. But Rousseau also thought there were problems with that. Right. So and it's maybe useful to think about, you know, kind of a capitalist economy versus a feudal economy. Right. And nobody wants to go back to feudalism. But Rousseau says, imagine, Rousseau invites us to think, you know, about, you know, the moral psychology of people under feudalism. Right? If you're poor in a futile economy, you're you don't have to, like, spend time thinking about why you're poor. You know why you're poor. It's because your parents were poor. And it's no reflection on you, you know, or your talents or your efforts or any of that. And the same thing if you're rich, right? If you're rich, it's not like you deserved it. You know that. You just you know that you're rich because you inherited your money. Right. And you're you're estate. Right. You know, in the case of the nobles. Right. But you move to a market economy, and there's a very significant psychological shift. Right. Because now if you're poor, it's because you're not smart like the rich people, or you didn't try hard. Right. Like the rich people. Right. In, you know, more colloquial terms, it's because you're lazy and stupid. Right. And if you're rich, by contrast, it means, boy, are you smart. Boy, are you a hard worker, and you deserve all the money you can get. Right. And the richer you are, that just means that you're all the better a person. Right. And Rousseau thinks, honestly, that this is this is dangerous, maybe even perverse, because he wants people to focus on their moral character. Right. Not focusing about how great they are. Right. Or focusing, by contrast, on how terrible they are for the reason that they're poor, which has nothing to do with their character as far as Rousseau is concerned. In fact, probably is a point in their favor. So Rousseau points out just how pathological he thinks this is, and he really wants us to kind of get our get our values back in order in an unequal world, which he thinks could be best achieved by reducing that inequality. Right. Because, you know, that's how we can reduce, you know, kind of the demoralizing effect on the poor and this kind of entitled effect among the rich.

GR: Now, very very prescient psychologically. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher. And my guest is the political science professor David Lay Williams. So, thinking about Rousseau, but I want to ask a more general point. But thinking about Rousseau, there's obviously a lot of contradictions and hypocrisies between a lot of Rousseau’s writings and Rousseau’s actual life. I've read a couple of biographies of him, and I think that makes him more interesting, actually. But in writing this book, did you come to any general conclusions about the relationship between the life experiences of these thinkers and then what they have to say? Any sense of influence?

DLW: Yeah. You know, I it's interesting to reflect on that. I certainly one thing I do in the book is I try to put each thinker in a historical context. Right. To explain why they might have been interested in inequality. Right. But I think your question is even more specific than that. What about the specific life experiences and maybe the background of each thinker? Right. And you mentioned even the possibility of hypocrisies. Right. And on this account, we might look to the first figure in the book, again, Plato, who has all kinds of problems with rich people and says, you know, it's impossible to be both rich and virtuous at the same time. Plato, it turns out, was rich (overlapping laughter). He was very rich. And, you know, it's interesting to reflect on that. Right. Was Plato saying I'm a bad person? Was Plato saying I'm the exception? Right. He doesn't tell us. Right. I mean, I think what we you know, you people are free to, you know, draw from these facts however they want. I think maybe kind of the most you know, I think what I'm comfortable in drawing on from this is that Plato did spend a lot of time around a lot of other rich people. Right. And, you know, and many of them, of course, were relatives like his Uncle Critias was one of the tyrants of Athens imposed on Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, a brutal murderer. Right. So it's not unreasonable to think that. Well, maybe Plato's experience growing up around a lot of rich people actually informed his understanding of rich people. And maybe he had a better angle on that than some others who maybe didn't grow up under those circumstances.

GR: Hmm. So you've obviously thought deeply about all of these thinkers that are in your book. Is there one that you think has it most right when it comes to inequality? Can you pick one that way?

DLW: Right. That's a real tough question to answer. Right. And might be taking the cheap way out, because I think every one of them has some handle on an important truth in the way they approach this. So I'm not going to pick a single one. But what I can point to is that there's you know, there's certainly a pattern among some of the thinkers who say you kind of draw distinction. And this is true, I think, in Plato very expressly and Rousseau more implicitly, that for them, this kind of a radical opposition, a radical a path of radical reform and a path of moderate reform. Right. Right. They both say, look, ideally we should be, you know, a very equal and not completely equal. Nobody argues for perfect equality, not even Marx, for that matter. Should make that clear. And Plato says, ideally, the rich people should have no more than four times the wealth of the poorest, for example. But he says, look, you know, that's that's if you're creating a new society from scratch, I guess. And he's saying that in the context of establishing a colony in a territory that's never been occupied before, he said do it this way. But he says, look, if you're writing laws for, you know, a political entity that already exists and already has that's distributed a lot of property is like, no, you can't do that. Without killing a lot of people. Right. And maybe some people are open to that solution. Right. But Plato doesn't love that and says, look, you know, you still have to get more equal than you are and you need to work on it consistently. But he also says that ideally, what you want to do is try to get buy-in if at least some people find some people who are rich and feel guilty about it. Right. And have them do some of the hard work of persuading their friends and colleagues and business partners to realize, you know, it's not the worst thing to have their taxes raised and to build schools and, you know, and other public entities for people who are less fortunate than them. Right. And to kind of work toward a greater equality. Right. And I, you know, I, I like, you know, contemplating the idea that there are moderate paths forward. Right. Because, you know, the other path, you know, at the polar opposite end of the book is Marx. Right. And Marx, you know, fundamentally just kind of concludes that, you know, rich people aren’t going to give up their money without a fight. Right. And you just need to come prepared to fight. And, you know and, you know, I can't you know, I don't, maybe Marx is right. I don't know. There are scholars who certainly think that Marx is. I'd like to hope there's another path available. I'd like to hope that people are persuadable. Yeah.

GR: So we only have about a minute left, and I wanted to squeeze this last question in, and I think you kind of are already answering it, but I'll give you another few seconds to add on to it. And that is obviously, you have thought a lot about inequality as a social issue and a social problem very deeply. What would you do if you were one of Plato's philosopher kings, or to use a phrase that's out there, maybe dictator for a day, to address inequality through policy change? What policy changes would you recommend? In about a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sure that's a more complicated question.

DLW: Yeah. So I'll try to do this quickly with a reference I think I haven't mentioned before, but John Stuart Mill has a wonderful range of policy proposals for addressing this. Things like having more co-ops, like worker co-ops, you know, businesses owned by workers, will lead to a more equal distribution. Honestly, you know, estate or inheritance taxes, you know, on fortunes over X amount of money. Right. These things should be politically doable. Right. In a democracy. Right. The will is, you know, I think there for things like that, and we just need to find politicians with enough courage, I think, to seriously pursue them.

GR: Hmm. We'll have to leave it there. That was David Lay Williams and again, his new book is titled “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” If you've heard of some of those guys and you want to learn a bit more about what they have to say, or if you have concerns about economic inequality and want some deeper grounding, this book is a great choice for you. I want to emphasize that it is not an arcane work of political philosophy. It's extremely readable and it's an enjoyable read. David, thanks again for making the time to talk. Great book. Thanks a lot.

DLW: My pleasure.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. Last week I spoke with a writer who had a new book out on the foods of upstate New York. Today, we stay with food, but we move very far from that in many respects. My guest is John Sanbonmatsu. He's a philosophy professor of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and the author of a new book titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves”. Professor Sanbonmatsu, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.

John Sanbonmatsu: Thanks so much, I'm delighted to be here.

GR: Well, we're glad you could make the time. So, as our listeners are about to discover, this book is very provocative, I think it's fair to say and it has an intriguing title. So, “The Omnivore's Deception…”, break that down for me, what is the omnivore's deception?

JS: Sure. Well, my book is really about our exploitation of animals and the food economy. And the three modes of deception, really, that I talk about in the book are, well, first, the fact that the meat, eggs, dairy and fish industries hide from consumers, the incredible mass violence that undergirds this system to get food on our plate. The second mode of deception really is the, a kind of whole discourse that's been developed in the last 20 years for so-called humane meat. The enlightened omnivore, kind of dating back to Michael Pollan's book, “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, which we might talk about. And that is simply a myth, you can't have these animal products without causing enormous suffering to animals, no matter how small scale the agriculture is. And then the third mode of deception is simply self-deception. We engage in what the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called bad faith, which is to say we deceive ourselves and we want to believe we can have our meat and our conscience, too. And I make clear, I hope to my reader, that we can't.

GR: Well, you anticipated one of the questions I wanted to ask you when you talked about smaller scale, sort of, you know, local sourcing kind of things. Well, I'll ask you that right away, I mean, what is the problem with paying attention to the scale, if you’re an eater paying attention to the scale and the method of raising animals? You know, you focus on locally sourced, smaller, non-industrial scale animal growing operations, where's the problem there?

JS: Yeah. You know, it's thanks largely to animal advocates that the public is aware of what we call factory farming or intensive industrialized animal agriculture. And the animals in that system, which by the way, that's 99% of where our products come from, food animal products, 99%. And it's horrible, it's horrific the way animals are treated in that system. But what people don't realize is that the critique of our violence against the animals for use in food dates back 3000 years. They'd been ethical vegetarians during that whole period. You know, Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist wrote, he was an ethical vegetarian, he wrote an incredible critique about a slaughterhouse. So, really, my book is examining the underlying relations of domination and violence in all forms of animal agriculture, including smaller scale, which is, by the way, not scalable. You can't feed 10 billion human beings, you know, with pasture raised animals, we’d need several additional earths. But my focus, so I do talk about the environmental problems at lengths in my book, but really the focus is on the ethical question of what gives us the right to subject defenseless, sensitive beings to violence.

GR: Well, and you also talk about, I believe, some of the health implications for humans and the way that our diets are currently constructed. Just give us a quick overview, and others have written about this, obviously, what are the health problems with how we currently eat animals?

JS: Yeah, well, it's interesting. When I talk about these issues in class, because I teach ethics at the college level, you know, students, naturally, they think, well, we can't live without animal products, we can't live without the protein from animals and so forth. And what's ironic about that is that practically every scientific study, and I'm talking about studies in The Lancet and JAMA and you know, top medical journals, show that in a plant based diet is actually superior in like every category compared to an animal based one. I mean, in terms of lower rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, even longevity, vegans live longer than so-called omnivores. And so there's just these sort of scientific facts. But leaving that aside there, I mean, there's just a whole slew of problems for us health-wise and epidemiologically. For example, 75% of all emerging diseases are zoonotic in origin. That means that the diseases that are afflicting our species and that have in the past have come from other animals. Most of those diseases historically have come from exploited animals, smallpox, cholera, Spanish flu, even AIDS. These all developed out of human food exploitation, exploitation of animals for food. So it's, and now of course we have the H5N1 virus, avian flu and the WHO, well, 20 years ago, excuse me, warned that if that thing becomes transmissible between and among humans, it could kill 150 million of us. So that's just an example of why it's even in our own interests, and again that's not the basis of my book but I do talk about this, it's in our interest to stop this too.

GR: And what about the impact on the environment? That's another concern that drives a lot of people to vegetarianism. You'll meet a lot of vegetarians that say, I am this way because I'm concerned about the environment. I have a colleague, I think, who's primarily driven by that.

JS: Yeah. You know, the first sentence of my book in my introduction, I talk about that, that, you know, occasionally you'll hear people say, well, I've cut back on meat or I tried vegetarianism once for the environment. And I'll tell you, I don't like that (laughter), I don't like that at all. As I explain, because it's like the person who says that they, in my experience, they often say, well, I don't do it for the animals, you know. It's like, well, if you care about the animals, you must be some kind of nutcase, right? The fact that we're killing, conservatively, 80 billion land animals every year, mostly birds and mammals, and up to 2.7 trillion marine animals every single year, each animal of which, you know, is an individual with thoughts and experiences, emotions and so forth. The idea that we should want to spare them a violent death at our hands, that just drives people crazy, right? So the environmental issue is crucial because what people don't understand is that this confluence, as I discuss it in the book, between capitalist development on the one hand and human supremacism or speciesism on the other, the confluence of these systems in the food economy is the greatest ecologically destructive force on the earth, right? So people are familiar with global warming. Well, global warming is not the biggest environmental problem on the Earth today. That would be mass species extinction, right? So, we're experiencing the greatest mass species extinction event in 65 million years. Global warming is part of that problem, but it isn't the only thing driving it. So we're talking about the death of all the animals on the earth. Birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, even invertebrates, like insects, scientists refer to it as the insect apocalypse. You know, honeybees are being devastated. Crustaceans, horseshoe crabs, who are on the earth hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs are being wiped out. This is the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws, which I saw when it came out as a boy.

GR: So did I.

JS: Yeah. And I'll tell you, when I asked my students how many humans are killed by sharks every year, they always get that right, which is about ten to 20 globally. And when I asked them how many sharks are being killed by humans, they say, well, I don't know, 2000, 500? It's actually 100 million every single year. And all of that violence is put out of sight and out of mind. But it's literally tearing up the web of life on our planet. So, yeah, I could go on and on about it, but it's, it's something that people have got to start paying attention to because we're dooming our own species because of this system.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the philosophy professor, John Sanbonmatsu. And we're discussing his new book, it's called, “The Omnivores Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves” and it argues for the total abolition of the animal economy. So let's get to what I think is probably the heart of your argument and where your passion most lies and that is the moral concerns. And you've already spoken to them in several different ways, but the moral concerns about raising an animal to kill and eat it. How would you crystallize that that argument that you want to make?

JS: Well, you know, there's, any system of power or dominance has to be continually reinforced. It's not like it's one and done. You know, you don't just set up a system for, whether it's human slavery or, you know, racism, a kind of racial hierarchy or gender hierarchy. You don't just set that up and then it just goes on, on its own, it has to be continually reinforced. So all of us are raised from birth to, with the idea that there are these classes of animals who simply don't matter and it doesn't matter morally how many of them we kill. It just, they're irrelevant, you know what I mean? Which is why, as I said, we can kill billions and indeed trillions of animals every year without it even disturbing anybody. But here's the thing, most people listening to your show probably have lived with a cat or dog. I mean, that's statistically the case. And if you live with a cat or dog, you know that they are unique individuals. They have personalities and temperaments and emotions. They have different relationships with different people. You know, they have different quirks, they have a kind of biography and you can see them go through the stages of life that we do, the playful kitten and then the kind of, you know, the limping elder cat who you know, tolerates the juvenile you've just introduced into the house and so on. So we know that our cats and dogs are individuals whose lives matter and who deserve our respect and are worthy of our love. Well, let me tell you, everyone should be disturbed by the fact that chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, oxen all these animals that we think of as stupid, irrational, dirty, they are no different than our cats and dogs at all. I mean, scientifically, ecologically there's just a ton of research on this. Scientific American has published articles on chicken intelligence, there's empathy in pigs and so forth. So if you think that every time you sit down to a meal, you are eating the body of some, you know, richly endowed creature like a cat or dog with sentience, with subjectivity, then you might begin to understand why this is a moral issue of the first order.

GR: And at the risk of sorting out my animals, anthropomorphically, I can readily see the appeal of the argument that you're making for cattle, sheep, pigs and chicken. But what about something like fish? I have a friend who's very tuned in to the kind of concerns you're talking about. He describes himself as a pescatarian. So what's the problem with fish?

JS: Yeah, it's funny. You know, I remember like, many years ago, I'd go to someone's wedding or something, and the caterer would put chicken in front of me after having heard I'm an ethical vegetarian and think, well, if you eat chicken, though, right? So the idea that chickens are animals would not compute. And similarly, I've met a number of people over the years who call themselves vegetarians but they eat fish. It's very bizarre because the signs that we're finding with fish, it's just fascinating. Fish do better at some forms of cognitive reasoning than primates, including the great apes, including humans. They have memories, they have emotions. Now, the thing is, as mammals, we're just not equipped well to perceive the feelings or thoughts of fish, right? Because they don't have the facial muscles that we have. So we think of them as silent, gaping, animate objects, I guess, right? I mean, I went fishing as a kid and you bring the, oh, and now the fish is flapping on the dock. It doesn't occur to us, well, that fish is now suffocating to death and is experiencing the same trauma and stress hormones that we would as mammals if we were drowning. But that is the case. And this is just, now certainly there's still a lot we don't understand about fish cognition. And the fishing industry is always funding studies to prove that fish don't feel pain and so forth. But I mean, it's just a silly argument because evolutionarily, how can you have a sophisticated organism that's going to survive, like the Greenland shark lives up to 400 years, I mean, there are fish that live a really long time, who can't experience pain? So, yeah, so I think we've got to stop writing off entire classes of beings as worthless because they aren't worthless.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I’m talking with John Sanbonmatsu. He's a philosophy professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and the author of a new book titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves” and we've been discussing his book. Well, you lay it out in the first half of the program, I think very well, your main arguments for why we need to eliminate the animal economy. Who are some of the main sort of voices out there that you are trying to correct or take issue with?

JS: Well, you know, I go after a number of different folks in a certain sense, but centrally I'm concerned to refute arguments developed by the very popular food writer Michael Pollan. In his book, for example, “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, that book had an enormous cultural influence over the way Americans view our relations with animals, particularly in food. It's still, just took a look the other day, it's like 20 years later, it's still in the top ten bestsellers on food policy, it's part of the state mandated curriculum in middle and high schools in different states around the country. I couldn’t possibly exaggerate the influence that book. And, you know, without taking too much time, Pollan's arguments ended up creating kind of intellectual scaffolding for this myth of the enlightened omnivore, you know, locavorism and so forth. All this idea that we can raise animals, quote, humanely, kill them with compassion and so forth. And so I show the problems with those arguments as well as similar arguments by Temple Grandin, another very popular apologist for the animal system, Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed writer. And if you examine their arguments, they're not only wrong, but they are intellectually dishonest and sadistic. There's this undertow of violence and sadism against animals in those works.

GR: So let me throw out some potential challenges or problems with this that I thought of and see what you have to say about them. And the first one is very Syracuse oriented, I don't expect you to be an expert on Syracuse, but we have in Syracuse a real overpopulation problem with deer. And it creates a whole lot of problems, creates problems on the roads, it creates problems in people's properties and the ticks and so on. If we stopped all hunting, for example, that would probably make those problems just worse. So how would we deal with an overpopulation of deer and Syracuse if John Sanbonmatsu was running the program?

JS: Yeah, well, first, I just want to note that the one species that is causing the greatest damage on this planet is actually us and no one talks about culling us. No one talks about culling real estate developers and capitalists and all the folks who are…

GR: Fair enough, fair enough.

JS: I mean, if you look at the ecosystem of Syracuse and you compare human impacts on the environment in terms of consumption of goods from China and blah, blah, blah, with what the deer are doing, it's, you know, no contest. So it's very interesting to me that communities, the first thing they do is reach for the gun. Like, okay, this, first of all, this is a problem for whom? It's for motorists? Well, don't forget the highways and the roadways were put through the living habitats, the living spaces and homes of all of thousands of different species and then they are supposed to get out of the way. So that's number one, there's structural violence against animals built in and the starting point is always, let's assume that all these animals lives are disposable, interchangeable, what do we do with this problem? That's number one. Now, in terms of the Syracuse issue, it's true. I don't know the specifics, but I've looked into this in other cases, there are alternatives, okay? First of all, one reason that deer and other populations are increasing is because humans have, through hunting, just killed all the predators, right? So there is no ecological balance to be restored. Secondly, there are nonviolent alternatives. There's birth control, there's relocation. And I'm not saying that those are easy alternatives either but in my having examined the planning process at the local level in some communities, there's a big hunting lobby and these folks want to kill the animals. And so they bring in experts from, you know, the NRA or hunting lobbies in order to promote their agenda. And the problem is that state wildlife officials are hunters. And, you know, it's run by these agencies are actually not ideologically neutral. They're run by the same constituency. So I think that if we start, in my book, I say, look, why don't we have a different mode of address with the other beings we share the planet with? Let's approach them nonviolently for a change. You know, we've tried this other approach which is to treat their lives as so much disposable garbage. Why don't we instead view them with respect and go from there? And so that's what I would say is like, what if we have a paradigm shift and we say, okay, those deer are as important to us as our own cats and dogs or even, you know, other humans and how can we live with them in harmony, you know, without violence? That's what I would say.

GR: Yeah. I just, not to sound snarky, but I'm thinking of when you mentioned predators, you know, if I were a deer, if that makes sense, I'm not sure I'd rather be killed by a pack of coyotes taking me down or a hunter killing me quickly, but I get your point. It's a different way to think about this. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the philosophy professor John Sanbonmatsu. So I want to get to some how do we get there type of questions, because I've had many guests on this program who make arguments that are, you know, hard to imagine becoming completely successful politically, policy-wise. And as a political scientist, you know, I am sympathetic to much of what you are saying, but I also really can't see what you are arguing here getting much traction in contemporary America or the world. Do you have a political strategy attached to this argument that you could briefly put forward? Or is that is that sort of outside of your lane?

JS: You know, it's a fair question and a really important one. The short answer is, I don't have a concrete you know, I don't have a blueprint for social change. In my first book, “The Postmodern Prince” I talked about some of the obstacles to thinking about strategy and long term change on the political left. And there are a lot of reasons why it's hard to imagine an alternative to this system that we're living in. But, you know, as a philosopher and thinker, I'm really trying to first of all, you know, before we can get to the question of strategy, in a sense, we have to understand what the problem is, A, B, we have to understand and agree that this is a problem like morally. And so if we want to survive on this planet, let me put it this way, if we want to survive on this planet and if we want to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and not see a kind of monster there, then we have to rethink our relations with the other natural beings, you know, of the Earth. Certainly I'm promoting veganism but I'm not, I don't, but, you know, I've been a vegan for over 30 years and things and animals are being killed in greater and greater numbers. Per capita, meat consumption is up. There's been a whole kind of political reaction against animal advocacy, just as there's been political reaction against women's rights and civil rights. So the thing is, and you know this, that historically slavery existed, persisted for thousands of years in human culture. It was accepted almost everywhere. No one thought that that system would ever be ended. And then, of course, there was racial slavery, you know, European racial slavery that began, you know, five centuries ago. No one thought that would ever end and it has ended. And maybe now not to get into, you know, there still existing slavery, but at least not legally. Women into the 1970’s, that was the first time it became illegal, thanks to feminist efforts, illegal for men to rape their wives in the home, conjugal right was simply part of standard English law for a thousand years or more. So change is possible and I think that there's a way in which by, when we say, oh well it's impossible for everyone to give up the animal economy, it becomes a self-confirming prophecy, clearly. And so I wrote this book to try to intervene against that self-serving fatalism, that, which again I call self-deception where we say, oh, well, there's no real, we can't do anything about it, it's too big a problem. But the problems we face are really kind of out of hand, right? I mean, global warming and species extinction, not to mention fascism rising everywhere around the world and the liberal capitalist democracy waning. You know what I'm saying? So these, that's a cop out, though, to say, well, these are very big problems and what can we do?

GR: Well, we've got about 2 minutes left or so and I want to try to squeeze two questions in. So this will be kind of your lightning round, if you will, a couple of quick answers to these and they're both tough questions, so I apologize for that. But you already mentioned something about the political moment we're in that there's a lot of backlash against different things right now. And I'm wondering about whether given the layers of backlash that we're seeing, that what you are saying right now is going to be heard by a lot of people as kind of an instance of political correctness on steroids, is there a way that you've thought about diffusing that in terms of how people are going to hear this? Quickly, if you could.

JS: Yeah, I mean, people think that the question of animals and meat is at best a trivial one, right? Or at worst, it's political correctness on steroids. But this is, it's always been the case historically that any challenge to an established system of power and authority, you know, the people who are questioning it, whether it's slavery or women's subordination to men, are viewed as zealots and crazy people and so forth. And what I argue in my book is that this is the most important issue of our time, if you look at it. And I think that if people give my book a chance, they will, by the end of it, they'll agree with me. So, yeah, just ask people to keep an open mind and read the book.

GR: Okay, and my last question, just a few seconds left, I want to be very honest with you, I want to tell you something you probably already knew about me. I'm not going to do what you're telling me to do (laughter). I'm not going to become a vegan. I recognize the arguments for it, but it's probably not going to happen. But if I were to do just one thing short of that, what would it be? Would it be to avoid highly tortured processed animals of a certain kind of meat? What would be the one thing you'd want me to do?

JS: One thing I'd ask you to do is to recognize that what you're doing is wrong. The argument in the book is that you can't get humane meat or better sourced or, that's the whole point of the book. And if you can live with yourself knowing that what you're doing is causing horrific suffering and violence to helpless beings who deserve better, that, you know, that's a personal choice that you or I or whoever make. Not you, but, you know I'm saying, if we choose that.

GR: I get you.

JS: But that is the situation, it is all or nothing.

GR: Okay, well, I will tell you this, you have got me thinking about something I wasn't thinking about before. So that was John Sanbonmatsu and again, his new book is titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves”. And it may not change your habits, but it will challenge them and it will certainly maybe change some of your assumptions. John, a very provocative book, to say the least and I can agree that (this is a) very important argument that you're making.

JS: Thanks for having me.

GR: You bet. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.