Stanford launch of the "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment"

everybody thanks for coming today my name is Michael McFaul I'm the director of the Freeman spogli Institute for International Studies this is a great day for me a great day for FSI a great day for CD DRL and a great day for anybody that cares about the advancement about knowledge in the world today we are here to launch although I think you already launched somewhere else right but we're part of the launching party for Frank Fukuyama's new book it's called identity the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment Frank for those of you don't know there's very few people in the planet that don't know who fukayami is so it's kind of silly to ever introduce him it's one of those names I can say in any country and I'd say do you know Fukuyama and everybody knows my colleague at Stanford there's a lot of colleagues they don't no no no offense to the rest of us here but but just a couple formal things I want to remind you that he is he is the senior fellow at the Freeman spogli Institute the Olivier no maleeni senior fellow he is also the MAS backer director for FS eyes Center on democracy development on rule of law which he currently runs now it was a fantastic coup that Stanford recruited him from that other coast for me personally I don't even care where he worked over there but he came here and and just on a personal basis I just want to say a couple things I've known Frank and known as worked for a long time I've taught lots of his work over the decades what I didn't expect when we first hired Frank and I hired Frank Fukuyama by the way either so other people take credit for that I was the one note okay it's all we did it all as a team but I got to tell you honestly Frank you know you'd written lots of very important books before you came here some of them historic and we're gonna talk about that and I kind of thought you know you're gonna come out here it's nice it's beautiful you've done all this work already everybody knows your name around the world and I thought you know you're just gonna coast but but having Fukuyama coasting I thought was really gonna be a great thing for staff little did I know that he would continue to produce including two volumes which were going to talk about in a minute but also this volume and and I actually don't know of a single social scientist on the planet that has been more productive over the entire spectrum of their career not just the first couple of decades and I just deeply admire that moreover Frank doesn't ask little questions he asks really really big questions as we're gonna talk about to today the last two volumes in his last two gloves I think he called Oh covered all of human history actually it's before human history that volume started and ended you know in our current era and he doesn't just ask big questions that he brings data to answer synthetically which I think we just need more of Frank's also not afraid of answering and tackling really hard consequential questions identity is one of those especially on a university campus identity to take data and to think big and to think provocatively that is a very challenging thing to do a very brave thing to do and I just want to applaud that effort and and to encourage the young people actually encourage the old people to I in this hall today to think along those ideas ask the big questions don't be afraid to tackle the controversial issues but when you do so bring data to your hypotheses testing as as Frank does and I'm just in awe of that last thing I want to say about Frank he's just a fantastic colleague he's willing to talk about many things because he knows many things he's willing to change his mind based on data in many ways I think he is exactly the kind of person that we should exemplify and celebrate and emulate as scholars especially in these rather polarized times we need more Fukuyama's in the world and we are really lucky that we have one of them we have the only Fukuyama in the world actually that's not true we have the the only Fuki i'm in the world writing big books like this at Stanford and I am really eternally grateful that we do there's lots of other things on your bio Frank but let's let's get into it thank you Everett ladies and gentlemen Frank Fukuyama so Frank I want to be brief and get out of the way after that wind-up I don't know what I can say this I have a feeling I know you're gonna say it'll be justified well let me first make a confession I some of my staffer here they know that I blocked the entire day from 7:00 to 4:00 to read your book I mean I've know some of the arguments over the courses of the years that we've been talking about him there was this exhaustion a shock that happened today and I just turned off my television after seven hours of television watching that's the longest I think I've ever watched television and it feels a little bit like empty calories but we're gonna come back to that later so correct me if I'm making assumptions about what I think the argument is along the way and well read it over the weekend for sure the first big question yeah I just want to put the I'm trying to be honest here I and to watch for 20 minutes and I watch for seven hours but we're going to get into that because it's related to what you're writing about but the first big thing I want to get to is a historic question Fukuyama is one of the most famous social scientists on the planet I also think you may be one of the most misunderstood social scientists on the planet because of one essay you wrote and then nobody read the book and I've heard you say that yourself so that's why I feel comfortable saying that here but but help us understand that essay the two volumes that came in between and this book because I do think there's an intellectual history here that I think people would want to hear and and help in a kind of you know not without summarizing the whole argument but help understand how that your original end of history argument leads to this book No okay good well I'm glad to have the opportunity to do that Mike and by the way thanks very much for you know agreeing to help me launch this so the end of history was written in the winter of 1988 89 prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall for those of you that know this German continental historical Hegelian Marxist tradition history means the progressive evolution of societies over long periods of time today we use the words modernization or development to describe that and the end of history was something that's not my phrase it was really first posited by Hegel that this process of evolution had culminated in basically a liberal society and Karl Marx comes along and says no no that's not right the end of history the true end of history will be a communist utopia so all I did in 1988-89 when Gorbachev our friend Gorbachev was in power in the Soviet Union was to say yeah doesn't look like that's gonna happen doesn't look like they're ever going to get to communism and the stopping point you know the actual end of history is going to be something like a liberal democracy connected to a market economy and I still believe that that's basically right I mean I think that that's that's the kind of form you know that's the most satisfying regime you know at the end of this historical process now the part that people didn't get is reading the last third of my book the end of history in the last man the part on the last man the last man is a phrase of Friedrich Nietzsche and the last man is a person who appears at the end of history he describes him as a man without check without a chest meaning no pride no aspiration for dignity for you know for justice for any of the great things that motivated people in the past because you're living in a peaceful democracy prosperous you know secure and and so forth and that whole section was actually talking about future threats to democracy because you have this thing that Plato called thumos which is this spiritedness it's the desire to be recognized most people want to be recognized as equals but some people want to be recognized as superior now turn out I actually mentioned Donald Trump back in 1982 I mention that in your book yeah it's kind of amazing I had forgotten many social scientists we focused on him back then yes I had forgotten that I had done that but actually it turns out that the context for that was you know a democracy has to deal with really super ambitious people that will upset the democratic order the founding fathers solution to this was a system of checks and balances to keep that rank contained and I was making the argument a capitalist economy also does that because it absorbs the energy of these super ambitious people and I gave Donald Trump as an example right you know it was a good that he went into the market good that he went you know he was he was harmless there so little did I know 25 years later that that wouldn't well actually went bankrupt then and became an entertainer and but it turns out that that wasn't enough and so here we are today this situation where he's leading this populist movement that is part of a much broader populist movement which i think is really now the single biggest threat to global democracy that's out there right now right well let's get to that in a second but but let's define a few terms because these are all very controversial terms and let's start with identity just so we get kind of level set on that and let but let's also while we're at definitions here your definition of populist nationalist or nationalist populism just so we don't have to agree on those terms I just want people to understand the argument that you're trying to make before we get into it just so we have your a concept of those yeah well so you know there's one sense of identity where you know your driver's license has your identity on it that's not the sense I'm using it in I think that mine has three components so the first is it's based on this this through Moses spiritedness it's a universal part of the human psyche it's a part the economists don't get at all they understand that you've got you know desires or what they call preferences and they understand that you've got reason which they call you know rash no utility maximization but this part of the soul or the part of the psyche that wants other people's respect is really not part of their model of human behavior but I think it's really important and it comes in these two forms you want either equal respect and you get very angry if other people are treated better than you given more status or if you are ignored or become invisible and it takes the form of wanting to be better than other people so right so that's the psychological basis the but there's a specific modern form of it that I think begins in European thought about 400 years ago this idea that I have a self that's buried deep inside me that is the authentic self and all of the social conventions surrounding me are false because they do not dignify and recognize that inner self and therefore the authentic self is given a moral value that is superior to all of the social rules and laws and institutions of the surrounding society and so that's the you know that was Martin Luther's model really that it's really the inner believer that matters in the Catholic Church that sets the rules is wrong but it gets a secularized form you know under Rousseau and other thinkers in the 19th century and it leads really to this revolutionary outlook that says you know actually recognition of the true inner self is what's important the third element is dignity because the concept of dignity has shifted over the years for Plato it was the dignity of a warrior you know somebody that risks his life that's the only class of people that deserve respect but I think really under the influence of Christianity that then gets secularized as time goes on it becomes a universal thing I think most commonly having to do with people's agency the fact that we are moral beings that are able to make choices make correct choices if you say well on what grounds could you possibly say people are equal I think it has to be something like that that we are we differ in height and size and looks and raised and you know intelligence and all sorts of things but you know respect to our moral being you know we all have the ability to make you know choices and I believe that becomes then the basis for modern equality and so that's the modern you know it's the combination of those three things that is the modern understanding of identity and identity politics is driven by people who feel that they are not recognized that they have this inner self that has worth but the rest of the society does not recognize it and that's the demand that you know is driving our politics well and let's dig into that a little bit more these are big hard things to figure out but but help me understand the rest of society that other rest of society is the same nationality or the same country or it by definition it's and well so nationalism is probably the first big manifestation of identity brainetics right so right if you're a German in the 19th century Germans are scattered all over Central and Eastern Europe you don't have a single state in which all the Germans live and so what you want is recognition you want to bring the boundaries of Germany around you know that cultural group of people that that are German speakers are ethnically German and so that's the kind of recognition you know or if you're Serbia and part of the austro-hungarian Empire that's one form of it not the only form not the only form I think politicized religion has an identity component so you know Osama bin Laden when he was 13 years old was watching on TV you know people being killed in in Gaza he comes running into his parents bedroom crying saying Muslims are being disrespected and oppressed all over the world and this is you know I think in his mind begins this idea of a Muslim Ummah that you know is going to restore dignity to Muslims and I think a lot of the fighters that you know dropped everything to go pick up an ak-47 in Syria a lot of them were driven by these identity confusions that they don't want their parents traditional form of Islam they're not really accepted by the year especially the European ones are not accepted by the societies in which there and what you know radical Islam does you know the Islamic state is it recognizes them and says you're a member of this you know gigantic community and we are being oppressed and you have agency and you can fight back so so that gets me and I apologize for skipping around I promise I'm gonna come to the floor very soon so get ready okay but help me understand obviously everybody has multiple identities right you know I I can think of five or six that I have in groupings and how do we know and under what conditions do some Trump those others I didn't mean to say Trump but I but I kind of did which is you know that this moment that we're in now is there is there something about the particular moment in history and our Lobley that you that you see this phenomenon you talk about erawan Trump she Putin or Bond are there something that's Universal about this one kind of identity being more important than the others and I'm going to ask the methodological question about the economist in a minute but or is there unique identities in these different places that that are not related to each other and no and how are those five people they're all called populous national is not necessarily by you but in the press they are should we think of them as one representative whether the cause or the effect but an expression of identity politics in the 21st century or are they unrelated that's a lot of company to disentangle but but let me try so I think that the immediate trigger for what's going on that's triggering this populist nationalism is in fact economic so you know as we now understand really well globalization has made everybody rich in the aggregate but not every individual in every country and in particular working classes in developed countries have been losing ground to rising middle classes in China and Bangladesh and Vietnam and so forth but I think that people interpret that loss of a job or loss of income or of social status as an identity loss as well right accompanied or driven in many respects by the fact that globalization has led to these huge cultural changes in which virtually every developed country has been filling up with immigrants right and so it's not just a loss of your job it's also you know you thought that you used to define the national identity of your country and then all of a sudden you're seeing other Peter Wright lesions and races you know that that don't correspond to your view of of what that was the populism you know I we've had you know at CD DRL a number of conferences on right I think that you know one of the core definitions that we agree on is that populist want to establish a direct relationship with the people that they represent they get elected and a legitimate election but they say you know I basically am you I'm the I'm the plane and they want to and that may go around automatically drakes I'm automatically anti institutional Branko's they embody you know the people's will and if you've got a court or the media or an opposition party that's standing in the way of your agenda that's not legitimate because you're blocking the people's will and that you know that applies to Orban in Hungary and to you know law and justice in Poland and I'm afraid to say it applies to our president right when he accepted the Republican nomination said I alone understand your problems and I alone can fix them and he has been you know attacking American institutions you know from the moment he became president and I think that's the you know that's the threat that we face it's not to democracy it's really to the liberal part of a liberal democracy so that's why just to underscore because some people say well what's what's wrong with being populist like you know that sounds like it's being democratic and you're saying it's it's the attack on the institutions you know that makes it dangerous and and by the way I mean part of that democratic responsiveness is actually legitimate because I think that rank one thing we've realized in the last few years is that there is a really major unrecognized and under served part of our electorate and part of the electorate's and most you know developed country that hasn't been well represented by the elites you know where their problems and their struggles have really not reached the consciousness of you know the people that that you know make movies and you know write about things and so forth well let's turn now to America because you brought up Trump you know identity politics in the u.s. are driven by social justice claims right so this is back to the theme of what's so bad about identity politics right black lives matter me too movement what's wrong with these efforts of writing social injustice is based on identity so simple answer is nothing okay okay so so I mean look given the seven hours of TV you watch you know like the me2 movement is a perfect case of this so what is it what's really at stake there I would argue it's actually much more about recognition than it is about material issues right that women do not they have a dignity as human beings they don't want to be treated as sex objects and then when a man does that to them you know they get very angry and afraid and you know men use their power to you know behave in that manner and as I was saying you know the the modern model of identity is that that inner dignity is what is given value and it's the surrounding society that needs to change and we're in the middle of one of these cultural revolutions right now where you know man are waking up to the fact that no they actually can't you know continue to behave in that fashion and it's actually the norms of the surrounding society that need to adjust to the inner dignity of you know that particular group and so as far as that I'm concerned that's perfectly just you know there's nothing wrong with it I think the the normative way but then it equate well it's complicated application would say it's it's actually in a practical way the way this plays out the problem is you know so people are marginalized in groups that is true and so you fight back as a group but in a liberal society we actually believe that it's individuals who have rights that the not groups groups really don't have rights and I think that a lot of identity politics leads to a kind of group oriented thinking where if you are born into a certain category defined by race ethnicity gender religion then you have to think a certain way and it also leads to a kind of polarization where you know the marginalized group are the good guys and then the surrounding society are necessarily the bad people and I think that that actually doesn't correspond to you know to the reality I mean it you know these things overlap very strongly but and again in a liberal society we are supposed to think and act as individuals and not simply because we were born into a particular group identity so I think that's one of the issues did you see that I play today in the hearings when you watch this yeah I would I would say that that unfortunately is you know the way people the way people have lined up and I think one of the really poisonous things now in our politics is so you know I think that the history of this is that you have these big social movements these big important social movements regarding African Americans women the LGBT community you know the disabled all of which formed identity groups all of which were pushing absolutely legitimate social justice claims and that has you know well it had this effect both here and in Europe of pushing away older groups that thought that they were actually the core of the society not we define older groups you don't mean you know white people okay all right a lot of that in a lot of in a lot I mean that's what it amounts to I mean that's what's been going on in in American polity right that you know the Democratic Party for example used to be you know the largest voting group were working-class whites right right that was part of the FDR organized evolutionally by the way in labor unions right right and you know they were an important part of the but they've been drifting off to the Republican Party for the last thirty years that's really what handed Trump the victory you know in 2016 same things going on in Europe where a lot of white working-class voters that used to vote for the Communist Party are now voting for the National Front because of the you know the focus on you know marginalized identities on the part of the left and that so that's not to blame the left for this but you know today you get white nationalists that have adopted the identity language of the of the left saying oh you know we are marginalized also people are ignoring us the elites you know are basically conspiring to keep us down we're not recognized and you know to some extent that actually reflects the reality where a lot of those people you know have not been adequately recognized so would the counterfactual have been had just take the democratic party that I know better than the other ones but it'd be interesting to talk about Europe as well would the counterfactual be had there been less identity politics on the left that would have that would have avoided these identity politics on the right or was it are there these bigger things of immigration and globalization so ionisation I think the drivers you know I think there wasn't a way to have avoided it okay I don't think you can replay history that way but I do think that there's a really important choice between in front of all kind of progressive parties right now so you start with the United States the Democratic Party faces this big choice in not so much in the November election but they're really going to face this in 2020 when you have to unite behind a single candidate you know do you want to double down on the existing identity groups and that's where all your activists leave them so there's an electoral strategy it's a very you know appealing one or do you want to try to win back some of those you know white working-class voters not just working-class but you know white voters that defected from your party over the last thirty years and you know by making an appeal that is is resonant you know with them as well that's really the big and I you know as far as I'm concerned I think the latter strategy is really mandatory because essentially what we're moving towards is a situation in which the Republican Party is increasingly becoming the white People's Party and the Democratic Party is becoming you know the party of all of the identity groups and the you know minority groups and that's not a good way to organize American politics I really want to get back to the I want to go back to the 20th century you know when we were fighting over taxes and you know social programs and you know and this sort of thing was economic issues yeah more economic issues because if you're fighting over identities that are fixed you're kind of stuck in a you know zero-sum competition but just to be clear it's its identity politics in both parties right yeah I don't want to put words in your mouth no and I think the white people that's also an identity that has yeah I'm crowded out these other things that we used to think were Republicans no no this is this is what I you know this is really what motivated you to write to the right the book is the rise of identitarian ISM on the right rank I think is you know it's a it's a very bad form of polarization right well let's dig into a couple of the other you already mentioned immigration but let's talk a little bit more about causality now maxy before you do it can I have one methodological footnote is that okay okay I believe in democracy ASCII I'm very struck by what you write about I want to get a little bit more out of you in one of the early chapters about the reason why social science has been so bad at capturing what you're talking about and you know what you write in this book and I don't want to put words in your mouth but I do want to hear your words about the rational actor model the the cut that that the utility model is it that economists have just taken over everything we do in the social sciences and that's why we miss these things or endor because it could be related is it that those the Greek words that you use thymosin a saying right and the most the most emos is it also the case that those are just really hard things to measure or is that an excuse because you know that I'm very like why why did so many people miss this you know the election I mean and and what does it say about the way we study these things yeah no I think you can measure it I mean it's just expressed in in you know different ways so for example if you look at voting data from 2016 the app you know the median income of Trump voters was actually higher than the national median right which means that you know a large number of people that voted for him were not these working-class you know people living in de-industrialized you know right rest communities but we're pretty well-to-do so they were not being driven by any kind of immediate you know economic opposition to globalization on the other hand you can measure things like immigration which I think was a single biggest factor not just in the United States but in Europe as well that has motivated people to you know to vote for you know for a populist party and so yeah I think that there are proxies for these cultural issues and I think the misunderstand you can see this in the brexit analysis in Britain where you know the the remain side kept saying brexit is going to be economically terrible for Britain you know we're gonna lose jobs the city of London is going to shut down so all of which is true but a lot of the bricks that voters said well we don't care you know if we suffer economically that's a price we're willing to pay as long as we can get immigration under control and stop so many foreigners from coming into into the United Kingdom and I think it was that kind of blindness where you think that people are really driven primarily by economic self-interest that you know made a lot of people fail to see the real motives behind you know some of that vote right behavior right well let's dig in a little bit on immigration because in two different ways one is there a direct correlation between percentage of immigrants over the last ten years and the rise of populism or is it more complicated than that now obviously in Europe it's more conflict that even in North America I'm looking at professor stoner here I don't know what the percentage of immigrants in Canada are but it's it's high and yet we don't have a Trump in Canada yet so help us understand how to frame the way we treat that variable so no there's no correlation at all so that okay you know the two biggest populist parties are in Hungary and Poland where there's hardly any immigration at all right and in the United States you know states with more immigrants tend to be more favorable towards immigration than states that have right you know relatively low numbers so I think the issue is not actual contact with immigrants it really is more an intellectual thing that you see you know if you are living in a place that doesn't have a lot of immigrants you imagine to yourself it'll be horrible if we're overrun by them in this sort of thing so you're projecting you know these kinds of cultural fears into the future okay but the other but I think this is really critical because there's a lot of reasons for opposing immigration some of which are completely illegitimate and some of which are legitimate to a degree some of it is based on racism and xenophobia you know dead stop and so we just don't like foreigners and we don't want them in our country and so forth but you know there's another reason which is we don't like the fact that it is you know illegal that people crossing the border violating the law and we believe in rule of law or at least we want to have some idea that we're in control of this process and then the final one that I'm the most empathetic is with is that you know immigration is a really good and healthy thing we want diversity but ultimately also want some degree of assimilation because if newcomers don't accept the fundamental values of your society then you're going to end up living in these parallel communities and you won't really have you know a kind of national identity built around democratic values right and that I think is a perfectly legitimate reason to you know for example you know the biggest case of this was in 9 2015 with Angela Merkel's open the doors to refugees in Germany it was men dysley praiseworthy you know morally praiseworthy step but if you ask the practical question you know can Germany actually really integrate that many people that are that culturally different I think you know there's a serious question there because Germany really does not have that greater record in rank that kind of cultural integration so I think you need to disaggregate these motives and you have to oppose the ones that are simply based on prejudice but then you have to you know figure out ways of dealing with some of the other you know fears I think in this country there's just a blindingly obvious solution that's been on the table you know for a very long time that because we're so polarized we just haven't been able to take up and that's essentially like a super daca that you know you you you you have to really put in place future enforcement in existing immigration laws in a really serious way but you also have to give like the eleven twelve million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship not just the children but parents as well that was the basis of the nineteen eighty six you know immigration reform and Control Act it was the basis of you know the the attempted immigration reform under george w bush and we can't get to it because we're too damn polarized you know on either side there's a group of republicans that absolutely will not contemplate what they call amnesty and i'm afraid to say on the left there's also you know group of people that really do not want serious enforcement measures and between the two of them i think they've made that kind of reform impossible right things you used to write about earlier about yes and by the way just listening to the hearings today my as i was riding my bike over here furiously because i was late but the biggest thing on my mind was polarization and like but we're gonna come to solutions in a minute you've already mentioned one of them in fact we're gonna end with two big questions but one small one before we get there about Donald Trump himself so he obviously figured out some of these things I myself am surprised he of all people would have figured this out I that came out wrong III want to I want to get to the question of Kaza is he the symptom or is he the cause and and and number one just him personally and then this other thing which I know we've discussed in some of these other forums but I want to do it for the benefit of the launch of your book about the the pivot to the degree of the pivotal moment with the 2016 election right because remember a guy named Barack Obama won two elections before then he won I used to work for him as I know some of you know and and he I just I gave a copy of my book to him a few months ago he's very proud of the fact that he won a lot of white white working-class people or former working-class people we need to keep adding that their identity is working-class to Frank's point but a lot of them are doing those kind of jobs that they used to be he won them you know downstate Illinois Pennsylvania I'm from Montana you got 47 percent of the vote in Montana in 2008 not playing identity politics right so so the the question is is this just one just about your own theory of Trump did he have smart people around him or was this bound to happen and he just is the right person they're in the right party at the right time and then to is this a really an inflection point and maybe Obama was just kind of the latent piece of it right he was also after all a kind of outsider people forget this but he kind of ran as a dare I say populist I don't know if I'd use that word but maybe I mean it was it was definitely a change agent and and so we're just seeing something that's been happening for decades and now it's become more crystallized with yeah well it's a little bit of but I mean Trump is both cause and effect so the polarization has been going on really since the you know late 1980s and it's gotten more acute with every passing you know a presidential cycle and I think that Trump has you know he recognized that he also recognized the importance of this ethics of authenticity that's at the basis of identity politics that's why I think that that is actually really important for him because and effective for strategy right there has never been an American president where people thought you could actually find out what he's really thinking right George to be symbolic in his speech right now but doesn't know but I mean previous presidents tweeted but you know they had a they had a staff that was actually writing the tweets it wasn't yes what they thought of as they're eating their you know their oatmeal in the morning and and Trump you know everybody says yeah he doesn't me eat my choke me all right yeah whatever eggs you know whatever you need identity politics but you know so he figured that actually being deliberately anti political correctness and being you know authentic being perceived as authentic in that way was really something very popular that resonated with a lot of people because so much of our politics you know has actually become extremely inauthentic where politicians have to say all these stupid things catering to you know particular interest groups right oftentimes defined by identity and people were just kind of sick of that but I think the fact that you pointed out that a lot of Trump people that voted for Trump in 2016 had voted twice for Obama does some suggest to me that really a lot of that is can't possibly just be racism right you know that right there are a lot of these other issues and and part of this feeling that you are abandoned and ignored and not respected by the elites I think was part of what made people vote for both Obama and for Trump right so just to warn you I have two short questions left and then we'll take we'll go to the floor one is I want you to tell us how scared you are about how far this can go and in particular you know when you were talking about the erosion of institutions right it actually reminded me of a much older literature remember Gilmore O'Donnell and delicate of democracy and I just does anybody remember that okay so yeah I did we're at Stanford I'd uh but but but he remember you know he was always talking about but within the confines of a democracy it was a flawed democracy right any time there's an adjective used before democracy it's it usually means it's some kind of flawed thing but it seems to me this moment and and it seems like well well I don't want to put words in you tell us under what conditions do identity politics lead to the end of democracy and have we started to see that in some places already I'll let you fill in the countries and if it has can we you know can we distinguish between countries where that may happen and where it may not and of course I want you to answer the question of of the American democracy you know are the institutions still strong enough that despite this our democracy will survive many people don't think that but if if you answer it that way then help us understand the difference between I don't know the US and Hungary for instance or Turkey or places where it feels like it's broken down and help us understand why break down on one place and maybe not in the other lots of so that's the questions are again so there's a spectrum so yeah that's why the Middle East is the place where it's gone the furthest so Eric and I were just in Iraq Syria Iraq Afghanistan Yemen Libya all those countries their big problem is there it's it's like identity politics gone crazy you know none of those countries have an overarching sense of national identity so therefore everybody lines up with the ethnic sectarian you know regional tribal group that they were born into and that's what the politics is so that's that's that's one extreme and that's kind of a warning where you can end up if you do not have a you know an integrating sense of national identity I think in Eastern Europe Hungary and Poland are new democracies that were not consolidated enough to actually develop strong check-and-balance institutions so when you know Viktor Orban gets elected with a pretty good majority he basically can change the Constitution and civil society isn't strong enough to stand up to him I think in our country so far the institution's had been holding pretty well you know the courts have continued to you know play their function the bureaucracy is actually one of the biggest checks on on the executive right now and I think frankly the election in November you know in a democracy it's it's the electoral check is a single most important check in in our check and balance system which is why the election is going to be extremely important and I think if the Republicans managed to hold on to both houses then Trump the next day is going to say you know many people love would love what I'm doing you know Mueller gets fired Jeff Sessions gets fired right away but on the other hand if the Democrats do really well a lot of Republican politicians are then gonna say well you know maybe this guy is actually a liability and they'll start rethinking the sort of blind loyalty that they've shown to him and then Congress may start working more properly as its as its supposed to do as a you know as a check on a president even if he's of your own party and I at this point it looks like Democrats are probably going to do well so if that happens I think you know we are gonna go down one path that will you know reflect the strength of American institution but we'll have to see well I think you guys are doing a panel on that right after you they are at the TV DRL so come to that as well we're doing one before the election and one right after it excellent and so people have to go on the record beforehand help me understand though where is where is hungry right now is hungry is it gone too far is it no longer a democracy well you know the troubles that a spectrum on but I'm now pushing you how far out so the trouble is that the Fidesz party and viktor orban have stacked the deck so that it's really really hard for an opposition party to gain any traction however they are part of the European Union you know they just got this big rebuke in the European Parliament last week which was I was really happy about they were finally people were finally standing up to them they're not going to be able to get subsidies from the you if they keep undermining democratic institutions and because you know they still do have elections even if there's gerrymandering and you know voter suppression and all these things you know at some point the Hungarian people may just say say we're sick of this and toss the rascals out I mean that just happened in Malaysia and right you know a lot of other surprising places so I don't think that they're so far gone that they'll never restore those institutions but it really right is a pill struggle right well send so then the last part of your book in the last question and then we'll open it up and we've already started to tiptoe into it but you know what is to be done like you've mentioned some institutional reforms yeah well we just go ahead so I think we need to revive a sense of national identity American national identity it has to be a civic national identity meaning it cannot be an identity that is tied to race ethnicity or religion and the United States what that means is basically the Constitution belief and the rule of law belief and the principle of equality is enunciated in the Declaration of Independence you know I took our honor students on this tour of the Lincoln Memorial for Honors College last week we do this every year we go to the Lincoln Memorial at night and read the Gettysburg Address in the second inaugural and in the Gettysburg Address you know Lincoln after that battle in 1863 talks about a new birth of freedom and I think my interpretation of what he meant by that new birth of freedom was basically that principle contained in the 14th well the 13 14 15 amendment but particularly the 14th amendment that says all persons born or naturalized on the territory of the United States are considered American citizens that is the first moment at which America adopted a national identity that was not tied to race because prior to that Native Americans and African Americans did not have right to vote it took women you know long other rank a lot of other decades you know to get there as well but that was the first enunciation you know of this new national identity and I think that's what the new birth of freedom in Lincoln's mine was all about it was a civic identity what we what we are as Americans is we believe in government by the people for the people of the people that you know is based on these constitutional principles and I think that in addition to thinking about all of your problems in a particular intersectional identity group you need to balance that with a thought towards an integrative national identity that gives Americans something to believe in in common allows them to deliberate together and to coexist in a democratic you know national community so that's I think first and foremost the thing that I would emphasize well but we don't have to have a civil war to bring it about right to flippin about it so how does that happen what how does that begin and talk both abstractly but also maybe talk about it and on an individual basis well it's it's I mean part of it as a matter of leadership the way that our leaders talk about our society but part of it is also done through the education system and so I do think that we have neglected civic education I mean if you look at these surveys of what high school students know you know can you identify a single right in the Bill of Rights or can you identify the three branches of government it's it's really appalling you know at how ignorant people are and I think you also can't really understand your system if you don't know a little bit about its history and the Providence and the Providence of some of the ideas that led to you know the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and that's all stuff that really you know the state is responsible for you got to educate people they don't just pick this up you know kind of surfing on the Internet mm-hmm so that's one thing that I would begin with okay that's a something concrete let's oh good we have time I'm not sure it looks like we have a microphone here so I guess are we're gonna have people go to the microphone let's do that is that right we can do that either way Bram you go ahead you can stay thank you very much and if you all could introduce yourselves and then ask a question sure my name is Rena Allen I'm the first year student in international policy here I wanted to ask basically pick up where you left off with how you build a national identity and ask what you think about you know I think people who are concerned about this issue are maybe also resistant in some cases to some of the kind of fuzzier softer intangible symbols of national identity you know like we talk about standing for the you know the flag the the anthem the founding fathers who have been really problematized in a lot of kind of discussions of US history like do we really want to hold up slaveholders as our national heroes so what do you do you think that people who are concerned about the deterioration of a national unity session in the u.s. need to be more comfortable or how could you get to you know kind of some national symbols that are acceptable to all people under those sorts of circumstances yeah as a practical matter it may be difficult partly as a result of the kind of identity politics you know that we have been experiencing I think that when you teach American history it should be perfectly possible to talk about all of the slavery the injustice the prejudice and subordination that has existed in American history but also to talk about you know the progressive side of that about how the country managed to overcome these problems you know through things like fighting a civil war and through the civil rights struggle and so forth and still say that there's a kind of redemptive you know progressive side to this and you cannot you know simply argue that that history is one of you know racism and patriarchy I just think that that's not possible as a practical matter if you are a national politician trying to run for president and you run on a platform that our country is basically the home of racism and patriarchy you're not going to get elected you know so just as a practical matter that ain't a winning that ain't a winning argument and so actually as a practical matter what I think is Democrats need to you know win the patriotism issue back you know they can't let the Republicans own this and so in terms of those national symbols respecting them you know kind of understanding American let's role in the world you know that's very important for them to to gather back okay yeah please thank you for engaging conversation so far my name is kasper I'm a first year student here at FSI and International Policy Studies program I'm interested we've talked a little bit already or you have rather about attacks on institutions but mostly in the context of attacks on domestic democratic institutions and I'm wondering what you think the implications are for the this rise of identity politics particularly in Western Europe and North America are four international institutions in particular international security institutions like NATO well I don't think that's really hard I think question to answer it's bad right I mean we have a you know how bad really bad yeah how do you like that for social science that's good it's not really bad no that sounds like a we ran some intelligence community briefings yeah it's always there's only three it's this bad yes no well no so obviously you know all of the European populist politicians are anti EU and so they're doing their best to try to undermine the EU you have a president whose first act was to withdraw from the TPP wants to get out of NAFTA question the importance of NATO doesn't really like the WTO so right so there's a whole you know kind of anti international institutional aside to this how durable those institutions will be is an interesting question I think that they're probably a little bit safer than you might think simply because I think a lot of people realize that their prosperity is really pretty heavily linked to their survival and that if you simply abandon them you're not actually going to have a very nice world that you're living in you know there's actually even further you know so as we speak Steve Bannon is running around to Hungary and Poland and to all these other places with populist parties he was in Italy you know just this past week trying to talk to their populist party now the nice thing about a populist nationalist is that although they may agree in principle that they don't like elites they all hate different elites and they all have different national you know interests that they are supporting and there's not a natural degree of cooperation between all of them you know when you get right down to it and so it turns out that the populist in Poland really don't like Putin's brand of populism because polls don't like Russians you know and and so forth so I think there is a kind of natural limit we're gonna have actually a workshop on what's called the the nationalist internacional you know and the degree to which you're actually getting a kind of anti institutional coalition building in the world so we'll have to wait you know the results of that workshop didn't really come to any conclusions but I do think there probably is a kind of natural limit to how far some of that stuff can go but again the United States is so important in all of this and this is why actually what I think happens here domestically really really matters for the rest of the world because it was American power and American influence that really held these institutions together and once that goes it's really hard to see what other power is gonna come and fill that vacuum and so you know so I guess my answer is how bad is it it's kind of conditional on what happens here can I ask a footnote to that just before your question cuz I meant to ask it about political parties I thought what you said about American institutions being rather I agree with by the way the one area where it feels they're not performing well are political parties in terms of you know the creation of these identities and cross cleavage issues as opposed identity politics is that also and in Europe I think you know others who are more expert than me in the room can speak to this but is that also a paradoxical blessing in disguise that populace don't have strong parties as well or is that being that's looking too much for silver linings I mean you don't have you know when you think of other populist uh you have this strong party identity no I do not think that you can make a generalization that parties as a whole are declining what are really declining our parties of the left both especially in Europe so if you look at like the French Socialist Party really has disappeared as a party the German Social Democratic Party is much much weaker all the Social Democrats in Scandinavia are much weaker the mainstream party also the center-right parties are losing ground right I'm not sure that you can make a generalization that parties as a whole are weakening okay all right so that in in our country it's it's a kind of funny situation but I think you know again we were holding another workshop on political parties in october/november so it's something we're thinking about a lot but in our country it's a fine of a kind of funny situation the parties are more homogeneous and more ideologically United than ever but the party in terms of the institutional party meaning you know all of the governors and the the you know the party bureaucrats and the national party leadership I don't think has ever been weaker because of all the money that's sloshing around in the American political system it's alerts their controllers yeah so neither party can really control who gets nominated you know it's all the result of all of these big donors that are pushing you know particular agendas and the parties themselves I think are just completely gutted okay sorry I apologize for that yeah go ahead oh sure my name is Minh Lee I'm a lecturer at Stanford University I thought that your argument was very persuasive when you I doubt that the current crisis and democracy can be traced back to the loss of identity on the part of people many of whom are in the the working class and they feel like when they lose their jobs they're not just losing a source of income but they're losing their sense of dignity and their sense of standing and status so it's wondering what can be done to help the working class to de-stemmed this crisis and democracy especially given that one of the political parties one of the major political parties is very much opposed to any programs that might help the the working-class well you know so this is this weird thing about American politics that people don't necessarily vote their own economic self-interest and this is particularly true you know so one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act are actually rural whites working-class whites in the south and they're the one you know they're the group that are going to really lose when used you know when you can know long when insurance companies can discriminate on the basis of pre-existing conditions and so forth and yet that group of voters has been voting for Republican politicians that have been promising to dismantle the Affordable Care Act you know so go figure and that's why I think that actually it's these identity drivers that are persuading people to vote a certain way rather than you know kind of any kind of narrow understanding of self-interest so you could say well the solution to working-class misery is actually to expand social services and you know other welfare state benefits for them but in our politics it just doesn't work that way you know because people regard the state with a great deal of suspicion and and so forth so that's why I think actually to get those voters back you actually have to get to some of the cultural issues that are bothering them and that's why I think you need a different position I mean that's why immigration reform is actually a fairly urgent thing so for example I think the Democratic Party cannot build an immigration party around sanctuaries and abolishing ice because that you know culturally is just not going to resonate with that kind of loader they you know want to feel that the party stands and you know in favor of rule of law and and and and this sort of thing other things to win them back I think partly partly it's just you know recognizing that they're an important block that needs to be cultivated and you need to listen to them that's the thing about dignity a lot of dignity is not where people are deliberately disrespecting people a lot of indignity is invisibility you know that you are simply not seen as a fellow human being by you know your fellow human beings and that's what you know so in Ralph Ellison the famous novel Invisible Man it's about a african-american man that moves from the south to Harlem and he's saying you know in the North you don't have overt segregation like you did in the South so people aren't actively trying to exclude you but the form that racism takes is invisibility that people don't see you as a human being they don't make eye contact with you on the street you know that's really what what hurts and I think that that's the way a lot of you know people in that class you know a voter's has felt about the elites that lived in places like Palo Alto you know that that group of people has become invisible and so I think you somehow need to you know figure out how to see them and you can begin just by I think a more sympathetic understanding of their situation thank you Frank's my name is Louise Leo I was at a DSPs executive program and just back this week for the reunion so I have a question about democracy dictatorship and the demand for dignity especially in particularly on us-china relations so I mean you know after 2000 days sort of the world has been struggling to get back on his track but China kept rising so to a point certain people were asking is democracy is the only solution to things more importantly right now at the moment us is sort of at least Trump is talking about being bullied by China you know it's cheap good the tariffs IP issues at the same time China feels is being bullied by us you know be it the WTO is not measuring rightly or it is you know it's rise or even you know there are to move argues that us need to accept China's rise so what's your take on this and if say you were to me presidency and Trump now at the same time what would be your advice to them separately well so not just President Xi but he has made a big deal of this you know gaining legitimacy by talking about China's 100 years of humiliation right that this has been a constant trope in post reform China but particularly with a leader that wants to secure his legitimacy as a national you know a leader of a Chinese national revival and so he's playing off that resentment of that entire legacy you know from the opium wars on when China was you know which had always been one of the world's great civilizations was treated as you know kind of a doormat by you know the imperialist powers and so forth and it's a communist party that succeeded in reversing that and I don't see how you're ever going to get them to come off of that narrative because you know a it's partly true or it's true in many respects and be you know it's just too you know it's it's too obvious a kind of source of legitimacy for them to ever reject I actually think that the trade issues should not be dealt with in these identity terms because that's you're never gonna solve them that way I just think you need to you know get real about you know what the real agendas are and underneath this I don't think it's an identity fight I think it's really just a fight over economic policy and and those fights are a lot easier to resolve because you can actually policy in a way that you can't change identity and here you know I mean they're Chinese practices that really need to be fixed I think you know we on our part haven't been keeping up in a lot of ways in in terms of you know some of our economic policies but that's the level I would analyze this in and not not try to shift it into an identity frame thank you I think my name is HR and I'm a night fellow in journalism here at Stanford miss HR another one that just joined us that's why I was asking you should have you ever meet him soon that would be fantastic my question relates to democracy is in the global South I come from India where it's a pretty diverse country as you know with 22 languages but one party has consolidated the vote by appealing to one part of identity which is the Hindu identity and there are other countries where I've seen this as well for example South Africa I didn't think it plays out differently yeah I'm Brazilian Argentina so how do you see identity as a force in these democracy oh yeah I mean this is why I wrote this book it's it's a you it's a global phenomenon that many politicians are trying to shift their national identities onto these fixed categories so India up until the rise of the BJP would have been you know one of my top examples of a country that had created a liberal open identity given the reality of India's de facto diversity you have no choice but to do this so Indian national identity you know Sunil kill9 he wrote this book about the idea of India and it really is an idea what unites Indians is a commitment to certain set of institutions to democracy to a kind of liberal order that managed to accommodate all of this you know cultural diversity and you're right you know you've now got a leader that wants to shift it back onto a Hindu identity which then excludes a whole you know hundreds of millions of people from that ident that's really a formula for a lot of conflict it's going on in other places I think you know Bobby and Japan also represents a certain you know specific narrative about Japanese history that is much more nationalist and Prime Minister's before him you're right in South Africa you got this this really scary guy bolson ro Jair bolson ro in Brazil who next month could end up the president of Brazil who I mean he is a super Donald Trump I mean a really much much worse version because he's just overtly racist you know says you know basically police ought to be able to go in and kill you know all these black criminals in the favelas and this sort of thing you know you've got a version of this going on in you know with doTERRA tea in the Philippines and so I think that this is a you know it's a global phenomenon where identity is becoming the main focus it's being driven by I think opportunistic politicians who see that this is a way to gain power away from you know more liberal parties that have based their appeals on you know more policy related grounds so there's no global solution to this I think this has to be opposed in a fought you know country by country and yours is one of the you know the front lines of that is there one country that's doing really well in this fight you just listed a lot of negative cases there's a place that inspires you how they are managing well so you know there are there have been color revolutions and pro-democracy revolutions the most recent one was this amazing vote in Malaysia you know where they're trying to get back control from this really corrupt well so Najib the the former prime minister was actually playing that identity card you know that Malaysia had it was an Islamic you know Islam was important but he was really playing the Islamic card he was encouraging you know the more radical Islamist parties accepting support for them and I think that maja tears come back although you know he's got a kind of questionable authoritarian past you know that's a good sign our Ukrainian friends in the audience you know Ukraine has managed to fight a revolution of dignity where you know they want to actually create a country that's based on modern European principles there are populist you know running in Ukraine but I think you know that's going to be a big fight because there's a lot of Ukrainians that don't want that so I think you know there's still a desire to have a kind of more open order you know expressed by a lot of people around the world and write it what's called the revolution of dignity the revolution of dignity right in Ukraine so we're running at a time I think we should take these three questions and that will get us to the end of our formal time but we have books most importantly so for those of you leaving early you still can buy a book even if you're leaving early I've noticed some that did not stop him buy a book and then we'll also have a reception afterwards or we're gonna talk more informally with Frank so we'll just take these last three in sequence and then we'll finish thank you so much for this I'm really I'm really interested yes I have many identities here that are sad for the world right now so the politics of resentment I'm interested in especially from the point of view of what is resentment and what is a perception of resentment that is not necessarily based in reality right so as you've mentioned Hungary and Poland aren't actually taking in millions of refugees right now there are other places where the politics of economic grievance are very very successfully mobilized even though they may not necessarily be occurring quite like that on the ground so I'm really interested in this distinction between resentment and perceptions of resentment and what I'm interested in to hear a little bit more about is how political communication and information and news figure into your conception of how we can come back from this age of politics of resentment to something that's a little bit more based in aa quote-unquote real structural concern so I don't think that there's any rigorous way that you can distinguish between what's genuine resentment I mean it's a moral judgment basically right I mean you're saying our people who feel disrespected truly being disrespected and what is the degree of disrespect you know what is the proper way to value them these are all kind of complex contextual moral judgments that I don't think you've got a clear methodology for making I think in general it is very hard to create a politics of resentment out of whole cloth if there isn't something there and so in Hungary you know there is I mean if you look at the sociology who votes for Fidesz they're not the people in cosmopolitan Budapest for the large part I mean they're people that are living you know in more rural areas and are really not as connected to the rest of Europe as you know the more urban people are and you know some of them do feel that you know they see what's going on in Germany or France and they say well we're really worried that we're gonna fall into that same situation is that a legitimate fear probably not you know but again I just think it it requires a more qualitative you know moral judgment about the specific arguments that are being made and then the response to it that that moral judgment is important because the the appropriate response is to figure out what part of the resentment is actually grounded in something that people have a real reason for you know being unhappy about and then trying to do something about that right so that's why I'm saying you know in terms of opposition to immigration you to disaggregate you know between the pure racist and the people that are worried about other things like you know ultimate assimilation and then you can do something about the assimilation part but you can't you know do anything other than simply oppose the people that are doing it on just racist grounds so in terms of communication and yeah that's a whole that's a whole complicated set of issues because the political communication when your society reaches a point of polarization that exists in Hungary today and unfortunately now exists in Washington you know you can't communicate that's one of the problems is that I mean you just watch this in the Kavanagh I mean depending on where you stand you know on the fundamental polarization you saw two completely different you know you either saw a horribly mistreated woman or you saw a really horribly mistreated you know upstanding guy out there and which of those you know you saw watching the same TV show or same TV coverage is completely determined by where you stood on your priors you know in terms of the read basic red blue polarization so I'm not quite sure how you how communication by itself can be a sort of independent variable that fixes this problem as opposed to more political solutions that under you know that alter that underlying polarization so that's not a very coherent answer but it's the best I can do on that since you put me on the spot thank you please thank you my name is Julia flash' I'm a visiting scholar at scan core and I'm pretty intrigued by the idea of identity politics and its relation to potential dangers for the institutions I would be curious what role does bureaucracy have here you know the executive branch we talked about parties yeah what's your take on this thank you well you know based on my previous books I really like bureaucracies I actually like the idea of an administrative state I think that there is this old vibe Irian ideal of an impersonal bureaucracy that was serving public interests rather than you know private interests actually this is a idea of Hegel's as well and we still have that to some degree in the United States so if you go to NASA or the CDC or you know even the Fed I mean you have a number of bureaucracies that basically do serve this public interest the people that work in them feel that you know they are public servants you know in in the best sense of the word and one of the terrible things that I think is going on in American politics is we are progressively politicizing all of those institutions and you know part of it is just as a verb process of putting political appointees into these bureaucratic I mean there's no question you know in a democracy when you win an election you have a right to set the overall political direction but in a well-functioning democracy I think that you recognize that you do need the support of these you know nonpartisan you know fairly impersonal people that will actually carry out the administration of you know your your government whatever your government policies are and the identity politics is basically poisoning a lot of that impartiality so that you know people are well we were so I mean today you're seeing this in the court like the court is supposed to be one of the you know just calling balls and strikes right that you don't call things based on your ideological priors unfortunately I think that kind of court disappeared a long time ago right and it's creeping into other you know other institutions as well to the point that you know like Noah I mean you know every time there's a hurricane and they give hurricane warnings or people on the right that say no no these just these are liberals that have a agenda they want to you know tell us about global warming right so this sort of thing is happening in the country and that's you know that's very bad hi professor Fukuyama I&K one tongue and I come from Taiwan I talked to your cruise last year so I have a question about identity party in some ethnically homogeneous society like you just mentioned some cases in like more nutrients new society like American European as identity politics joined by some as any country or some immigration issue I wonder if your story can apply to lost Nicoli homogeneous societies such as Taiwan and South Korea for example Taiwan is suffering from a problem polarization between independent and unification so I have two questions first can use your real life identity politics Drive and pilot demand for dignity applied to least homogeneously country and second is there difference between identity party between those homogeneous country and those multi-ethnic only society thank you yeah so by the way so Taiwan is not free of these ethnic identity issues right so people that were born on Taiwan do not you know a lot of them do not feel that they're part of China and they never agreed with the KMT you know agenda of claiming to represent the whole of China and you know a lot of them are at the root of the you know the Taiwan independence movement and then even within that group there are indigenous Taiwanese that were not the Chinese that came over in the 19th century but people that had lived on the island even before that and they've got a separate language and you know they're asserting their separate ethnic identity so I think that kind of ethnic division is also present in Taiwan but I would say that you can construct identity of around any damn thing you want and you know so in the Byzantine Empire there was a fundamental cleavage between the blues and the greens that were represented by - those were the colors of two racing teams in the hippodrome that correspondent to a theological cleavage between mono few sites and monocytes and these people ended up fighting a civil war with each other and wrecking Constantinople you know because they were so much aligned you know on both kind of theological and you know basically which team they like better which sports team they like better so people will you know create these very strong identities and in a way we're sort of programmed to do that you know to really love our people that we identify with and to hate people on the outside so there's lots of different ways and which identity can play out and that's why I think ultimately in politics you do need these larger more integrating identities and not let your societies sink into these you know us-versus-them kinds of you know team efforts well I was hoping that was gonna end more optimistically that latter that we could go to war between Stanford and Berkeley but but you did actually he turned it around you you you you limp let me give you one one so you were asking for positive so let me just cite the one that I cite in the book which was you know the which is described in the movie Invictus yes yeah so after the end of apartheid it was a highly polarized society in South Africa where the blacks played soccer and the whites played rugby and what Invictus is about is a visionary leader Nelson Mandela who wanted so South Africa was hosting the Rugby World Cup in 1996 the Springboks their national team was an almost all my team and he decided that it would be important to get the black community in South Africa to root for their national rugby team and the whole movie is about his effort to bring the African National Congress along in that agenda and you know he he managed to succeed in that it helped that the Springboks actually beat the All Blacks and actually won the tournament but you know that's an example I think of how leadership the right kind of leaders can actually you know work to kind of overcome some of these identity divisions but it has to be pasted on the right idea you know right it has to be based on somebody that's willing to take some risks but it is in the book and and even your negative story is a that's a good positive note we're gonna end on which is that these are not fixed identities it's not predetermined and leaders and in their ideas can matter as long as they're you know those leaders with good ideas absolutely and on that I think we're gonna end I want you to thank me in three different ways the first way you're gonna thank me is you're gonna buy Frank's book right now books are really hard things to write I can tell you from experience there are hard things to write and they need to be celebrated and the best way to celebrate them is to buy them and if you've bought Frank's other books you'll know that this one's thin by Fukuyama standards right so you should buy this one that's the first thing that's the first way you're gonna thank professor Fukuyama the second way I just want to say there's been a fantastic discussion and we'll we'll continue to have this discussion along these different workshops that you mentioned Frank because we do have a core group at your Center to do that I consider this like the beginning of the academic year so what a great way to launch that all the better so get on the website and see what's coming because it actually is it's a great fall quarter and then just as I promised I said Frank was always interesting provocative and engaging with everybody and everyone you saw a testimony to that again today and I just am thrilled that you're here with us and continuing to be as productive as you are so then we can now go drink I think we can drink right there is some drinks right okay we're gonna drink coffee we're gonna drink coffee and cookies we're gonna buy books and then I think Frank is gonna sign some as well so join me in thanking Frank on the book now straight fantastic

Channel: Stanford CDDRL

Views: 10,340

Keywords:

Id: HbbUln2fOMI

Length: 83min 57sec (5037 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018