You know what? Before I continue, I want you to take me around some of the properties that you think I need to see which is close by. Sure. And then, yeah, we take you from there. Great story. Let's do it, let's do it, man. So this is one of your projects? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. How many people have you employed so far? We have around 400 people in the company. But on this particular site, we have like 30 people. You know what? It used to be employed. Yes. And now we are employing so many people. Now I'm the employer. Ah, that makes you feel. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good. But what in life, the biggest achievement for me is the freedom. It's the freedom. I don't know how people rate that, but to me, it's the freedom. It's waking up having to do what I want and I do it the way I want. That's the main thing. It's the freedom. Now I'm here, come on. The guys are working for me.  And the racism as well. I guess now you also have security guards? Yes, I do. I do, but I try to make them my friends. I know how it feels. I know how working 12 hours is. You know what I used to go to work, but when it came to around three, I was doing like 12 hours. You know, it starts six to six or seven to seven. When it comes to around three, I know what it feels.  Even a thief can go past you without seeing them. You're already tired. You overthink and you're just tired. So I respect the security guard every time I meet them. Will you say investing in real estate in Africa is worth it? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. You see, this is still a virgin area. The ideas are still possible. It is very much possible. Doing it here is far much easier than doing it anywhere else. In Europe and what I've been, it's way better to do it here because come on here. You can always do it in phases. You're not going to do that in Europe. What are you gonna do? You start one phase and you stop there another two years. Which council is going to allow you to do that in the U.K., in the U.S.? Which council is going to allow you to do that?  It's your thing. You do it at your own pace. In Africa, it's doable. It's doable and it's profitable because you need to stop undermining Africa. How profitable? That's what I want to know. A hundred percent profitable. You put in 10, you get 20. That is it. It's doable and profitable. That's what I'm telling people. There are no much restrictions compared to other countries. So it is too doable. The restrictions are very, very slim. Would you go back to the U.K.? Never in a million years. Never.  Yeah. And you hear a big fight that there was a guy who was fighting. Just if it is a real, real battle, ask them who was it? Was it Hajwa Kaluwa? If it was Hajwa Kaluwa, then they were trying to take him back to London. No way. And this is the message I'm sending to every African who went up there. If you were born here, just know that your mind, your background is all set here. If you went there and you can speak like a white man, then just know that maybe you were born there. But if you've been there 10, 20 years and your accent is still the same like mine, still heavy. Just know that your factory setting is in Africa. You can be there, enjoy 10, 20 years. But when you come to your old age, it will kitchen that you will want to be back home. This is what you understand. This is what your mind will understand. For me, taking me back to Europe, come on, don't even, let us even change the topic.  They're here with me. They're here with me.  Actually, I don't even need to tell her because herself, she's here. She followed you? She followed me. She was not mad because he never told her that you're coming back to Africa forever and you've resigned. You see, it is so easy to tell someone when you have succeeded.  When things are doing well, everyone will follow you. No one will listen to your story until it is a success. My kids came here. They were a bit hesitant. They didn't like it in the beginning, but yeah, but the way we had that friendship, the way they were brought up, they were kind of African set. They were kind of obedient to me. I was the father. I was the head of the family. They just followed, but eventually they told me that, listen dad, we didn't want to be here. But boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, after some time, they saw that actually in Africa, it's not what they see on TV. It's not about suffering. It's not those kids who are crying for water. They don't have food. It's not all about that. They came in here. They saw that actually the class of people in Africa you are exposed to is what you see. There are people here who are living a life. And if you are into that chain, you will be amazed how Africa is. There are rich people here. So eventually, it's what they like they were living. You know, in Europe, they used to take a pass. Here they have a driver who takes them to school. They eat the food we just wished we were eating. So what's there? Come on. Life is good. When you hear that in Africa, what comes into your mind? Home. Home. This is home. It doesn't matter.   She's poor. It's your mother. It's the love that comes out of it. Me waking up knowing that I can see my uncle, if my cousin passes away, I can be able to attend the funeral. If I'm bored, I can easily go and meet someone and we have a chat. I don't have to wake up on the alarm clock. Those are the things people need to look out if they want to come back here. Come on, home is home. Home is home. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how you think you've made it. The weather, come on. Look at it. It may be muddy, but it's home. Come on, you came in from Ghana, but I wasn't even ashamed taking you through the corners. Exactly. Knowing that you know this is home. This is Africa. You get it? This is home. I want you to give an advice to a young African out there who is looking forward to invest in real estate. Real estate, you need to make up your mind. What many people call me when they want to construct and they're telling me that they are going to ask someone to help them make a decision. And not those are not my clients. In real estate, you need to make up your mind a hundred percent because it is hard. It is hard. That's why not everyone is making it. It is hard. Okay. And another thing which you should bear at the back of your mind. Anywhere from today, 20 years, not everyone is going to be able to construct. It's been there for years. So if you can bear that hardness, just be assured that you are going to gain a hundred percent because not many people are going to be able to construct. What you need is to make up the decision. Not exactly what you want and be able to be persistent. The consistency because in real estate, you need to know that you're not going to make it in one or two years. Unless you're going to steal. People who are doing it, they have to understand that it's going to take a lot of time. The gesturing system, you know, the period has to be longer. Okay. And I will tell you that it will take you like 10 years. I did this for many years, but because the beginning is so hard, it doesn't show the results. I was there, but people didn't see me. After you have accumulated the capital, people will only see one project, which will be beautiful. But the way you have managed to get it to get to that point is what people miss out. As you start off in life, I think it should be about humbleness. Okay. People, young people coming from university, they have friends. They get jobs and they're paid, let me say, five hundred dollars. And in their mind, they think this is little money. Why? Because they have been told that this is expensive to put up. Now, they don't understand that they need to work out a formula. One plus one, two plus one. Before you know it, you count it to a hundred. So it's a process. You don't say it's going to be a hundred from the word go, even the longest journey starts with one footstep. It doesn't matter how speedy you are. No, it doesn't. It's a matter of knowing what you need. Now, if you have the display from the word go, you will understand that I don't need to buy an expensive car. I don't need to have all these loans to congest my bank account, to have all the direct debits. Actually, this is what I've been teaching on my Facebook. I tell people, like, don't try to impress. We are living in a society where everyone is showing. Listen, I have this. Listen, I've done this. I have the photos from Dubai. I have the Instagram, the TikTok. Everyone is trying to keep up. If you try to keep up, you keep yourself down. You don't need to do that. You have seen they come driving right now. It's not one of the most expensive here. You have seen people make it. But if we are to go and look into our bank accounts. I know from the word go what I need. I know the difference between assets and liability.  And to me, I want to be rich, not act rich. I would add my own to it. The goal is to create wealth, not to look rich. That is it! You hit mine right in the head. If you have a message to Africans living in Africa, what would that message be? It's possible. It's possible everywhere. It's possible. The possibility is in the head. It's in the mind. You have done things, you have made a lot of people. But the way you are thinking right now, it's not the way you thought 10 years ago. Facts. But you know that you have read a lot of books. The way you do interviews, the way you are looking at me, the way you take poses, the way you know when to ask another question, you did not wake up one day and know that. You worked on yourself. Get a goal, believe in yourself, read about it, believe in yourself once again, and you do it. It's out there. You don't need to go to Europe to make it because the money I've made, here, in the last 2 years, is more than the money I made in the last 10 years in Europe. So who tells you that you cannot make it in Africa? The money is here, but only that the people you find here put you off. People are crying every day. We don't have jobs. When someone from the UK, US, Dubai sends you money, you know, let us do business. The first thing that goes into an African mind, how can I steal this? All right, they are not going to take me to prison? Okay, we didn't make an agreement. It's how can I take? Not knowing that if you work on your personality and people know you and you can deliver. It's okay. Listen, these guys you see them, I know people who work Monday to Sunday. I give them projects. I know someone who's going to work today. Tomorrow is going to tell me that their child is sick. They lost someone. You know that they have this contract, but they're fighting to go somewhere. They leave all the jobs incomplete. I have the brain. I can work out and I know this guy is not good. This one is good. What is it? It's personality. Your personality takes you miles. You see, you came in here. You asked who you should talk to. Yeah. I did not call you. Yeah. You called me. Exactly.  You don't have to play a character. You have to be. You get it. You have to be. You give the services. Now, what I'm doing right now, not many people can do it. Actually, in my field, constructing for people working in diaspora, no one is competing with me. Why? The idea here is not who can construct. No, no, no. Many people can construct the whole idea who is who you can trust. If I construct, if I contract this for like, let us say 200 million and I fall short, I don't go back to the client. I make sure who or crew I have to deliver because I have a reputation because it's the reputation. It's the character which is bringing in the people and we have got guys here from university. They're just putting on their nice shoes. They don't even know how to talk to people. They're just being driven by ego. They don't know. They don't work on themselves. They don't read. They're just like, oh, Africa is so hard to make it man here. I wish I can get a job. They don't know jobs here. Try to create them. Try to make yourself a person of value in whatever you want to do. You want to go in media. How can I be better than others? You read trust me. I've never met you before today, but I know for sure that you have seen lots of interviews. You have seen how people carry themselves in terms of body language, how they talk in terms of the volume. You put it down. You put it long. How do you communicate? What time do you have to post?  Exactly. Am I right or wrong? You're right. That is it. You're right. People wake up and work on to you yourself. Exactly. The opportunities are not going to come packaged. You need to come out of the box for you to read the labels outside the box. You cannot read when you're still inside the box. Get out. It's out there and it's for everyone. The world has got no favorites and it doesn't give you what you want. It gives you what you deserve. Be out there and be deserving, same as that. Everyone comes in this world with the same set of brains. If you were born in China, you would be speaking Chinese. My kids are born in England, they're Ugandans, but they speak like a white man. So all our brains come out standard. It's what you feed into them. When you wake up and you say from today, it's never too late.  I'm going to change my thinking. I'm going to change my connection from today. It's me, it's about making myself better. It works out. The world does not play favorites. It doesn't give you what you want. It doesn't give you what you need. It gives you what you deserve. Since you've lived in the diaspora, you're missing to the diasporas. How do you feel about the cold?  How do you feel about that? In the morning, I used to go to work.  They go to the other side because you're black. How do you feel about that? Someone finds you on the reception. You are two people seated there and you can see that they can easily strike a conversation with someone seated next to you. And they're saying nothing to you. How does it make you feel? You look at all the community, the people, the gangs, the big tattoos of your own race and others are getting opportunities. You go, you apply for a job. Someone who doesn't even know how to write is your supervisor and you have a degree. How do you feel about that? Just make that sing into your brain. How do you feel about that? That should be a reminder that that's not home. It may be giving you the opportunities, but how does it make you feel? If you have two pair of jeans and you're wearing them every day, they have now holes in the middle. How do you feel about that? That's a sign that no one knows about you when you're there. Do you want to live your life like that? Working, going back home, paying bills, sleeping, going back. Is that your life? Home is home. Plan your life. It's never too late. Work, that is a place you've got more opportunity compared to back here, money wise. But in terms of life, listen, home is home. Come back home. You have your money, invest back home. Don't worry about politics. Politics have been here since the 60s, since independence, 70s, 80s, 90s. Everyone who comes in power is telling you things are going to be better when I come in. Come on, in Africa, when they come in to power, what happens? It's the same. Come back home, don't, you know, the world will give you all the reasons not to do it. It's up to you to come up with the reason as to why you want to make it. In Africa, it's doable. What is doable? You made it. It's doable. Where are you? Where are you? Are you in Europe? No, I'm in Africa. You're going everywhere. I've seen your pictures here. How many people have you met here? I've seen you even with the minister. Come on. A boy from Ghana. A village boy.  How many of us were here? We have never met the minister. Come on. In this field, you know nothing about, but in yours, you made yourself an expert. That's what makes you different. You worked on yourself. You followed your passion. It's doable. Come on. What do you think about the bodice that we have on the continent? We need to have them. We need to have them man to control. Sanity is needed. Africans are crazy. We need to have them. I know you wanted me to say, oh, it should be taken down. We need to interrogate like brothers. Africans are crazy. Everyone should stay where they belong. They should stay where they belong. They should be where they are. But we have to do business together. We have to do business. And that is the bodice that I'm talking about. Okay. Yeah, you know that is acceptable. But I was like in terms of living together. Now listen, we are affected by the people around us, by the environment. The way Ghanians are crazy is not the way Ugandans are. All right. So we need someone who knows us. A Ugandan president knows the craziness of Ugandans. The Ghanian president knows the craziness of Ghanians. So stay in your lane. I'll stay in mind. But in terms of business, Africans need to unite. We need to take our thinking away from the lower side of where we are. Because there was something I was telling about people. Something which is stopping us as Africans. Many people abuse me when it comes to that topic. It is so sensitive. First of all, religion is part of the reason as to why Africans are controlled. Culture is one of the things why we are controlled.  If you cannot open your mind to new ideas, you are done. If you still want to do things the way your dad did things, you are not ready. I've seen many people who have got education, but they are too equipped to deal with the future of yesterday. They don't know what's happening.  They think that they are dealing. You know, this life we are dealing with needs self-education on a daily. And you need to be streetwise. Do you get it? So, in Africa, things we deal with are much more like our barriers are way more than other countries. When you were born in the UK, you were a white person.  And that is it. You are English. That is it. But in Africa, first of all, you were in Uganda. You were in Uganda. You were a Muslim. So, there's belonging. I mean, this sector. We are doing this. We are doing this. And every sector has got its own restrictions, which you have to obey. Now, you cannot do this. When you are trading, religion is saying this. And when you are doing this, culture is saying this. So, to fight all of that, and it's going to take a lot of time. People don't know that such things are limiting them. When you talk about religion, you tell people, listen, you can pray all you want, but pray, go work. Try to balance. No!  It's only in Africa you don't get to talk about that. No, how dare you... I went to church. So, what's wrong with going to church? It's this and that. Someone went and prayed the whole night. They went back home and slept. You try to reason with them logically. But listen. So, you prayed the whole night, and the world back slept the whole day. Well, right? Okay. So, what do you think? Like, what do you think is going to happen to your account? Like, all of a sudden something is going to be there. Let us get realistic. We can be religious. I'm a religious person. But I follow with my brain. Okay. I know how to deal... I'm a Muslim. I use my common sense. I know how to deal with a non-Muslim. I'm not the kind of... I'm not talking to you. Come on! If you had a chance to change one thing in Africa, what would it be? It's the education. You've been to China. Yeah. How many subjects are they doing in class? Not too many. From the word go, someone knows what they're doing. They don't congest their brains. You're going to be a doctor. You'll be into sciences. You're going to do business. You'll be in business classes. Inventing, you'll be in event rush. They will just be teaching you to master that. But in Africa, you know history. You know geography. It's like they are congesting your brain at an early stage. You learn about things which you're not going to use in your life. And actually, people, you go back and ask your own child, why do you go to school? And I can tell you, everyone is going to fail that question. We should be going to school to learn how to think. How to think. People think that going to school, memorizing what they have been told, they are going to make it in life. That's the idea of being sold to. We just need to change education. That's the thing. Not to waste time. If someone is going to be a builder, tell them how to be creative. When it comes to construction, they do it for many years. As they come out, they're already experts. It's as simple as that. Just change the brains. The reason why we are lagging behind is the mind. We are dealing with too much. You deal with an MVS family member. You deal with the religious leaders. You deal with the cultural leaders. You deal with the ogars on the village. You are having this one. It's too much clutter going on into our brains. And that's Africa. The biggest challenge you face in Africa? The biggest challenge is... This whole business. Actually, it's the people I'm dealing with. It's the people I'm dealing with. They're exhausting me. Many people don't want to do construction. Why?  Okay? Illiterate guys. And how you're dealing with them, you don't know. You tell them something. They lack organization. You tell someone to do this. You find them another day doing the other thing. It's... And... I don't know how to say this, but... safety. And construction is on another level. Even construction? Even... It's crazy. No, no, we are taking number one. Don't even say even. We are taking number one. Number one. You can employ ten people, but four or five of them, every time they're here, they're just looking at what they're going with at home. It is a pity. Come on. This is Africa. If you want to make it, think an African way, and at the same time, think as an advanced minded person.


So here's a review of some basic integer operations, and again here's a quick disclaimer, this is a review, it assumes that at some point you learn how to do arithmetic with side numbers, but for whatever reason you need a refresher. And so it consists of a sequence of rules for operating with side numbers followed by some examples. This is by far the worst way to learn mathematics, you cannot effectively learn mathematics by memorizing a set of rules and following the examples. This is a horrible way of learning mathematics, and if you haven't already learned how to do arithmetic with side numbers, you won't be able to learn how to do arithmetic with side numbers by watching this video. Instead, I suggest you watch these videos. Now, so let's take a look at some of these basic rules for integer arithmetic for addition and subtraction. Given two integers a and b, I have the following rules applying. So the negative of a plus the negative of b is the same as the negative of a plus b, so I can take that negative and I can add the two unsigned values. a plus negative b is the same as a minus b, a minus a negative b is the same as a plus b, negative a minus b is the same as b minus a. In other words, I can take a subtraction, the negative of that is the subtraction of the other order. And if I use the commutative and associative properties, the key to these rules is that I can transform one integer expression into a different one. And maybe I don't know how to do the one side, but I can do the right hand side. And so this is a general approach to dealing with integer addition and subtraction. For example, consider negative four plus negative six. So now I have the sum of two negatives, and so I have this property that negative a plus negative b is the same as negative quantity a plus b. Now a useful thing to do when you're reviewing stuff is to write, write, write, and write. Paper is cheap, pencil is cheap, understanding is priceless. So what I might want to do is I might want to copy down this rule, negative a plus negative b is the same as negative a plus b. And then compare what I want to work with with what I have. And here, evidently, a is four, b is six, and so I can copy this over. This is negative four plus six, and I know how to do four plus six. That's an addition of whole numbers, and the parentheses say do that first. So the inside of the parentheses is going to be ten, and the outside negative, whatever that is. At this point, there's nothing to do inside the parentheses, so I can just drop them out, and there's my sum. Well, how about eight minus twelve? Well, again, twelve is more than eight, so I can't subtract twelve from eight, but that's okay. I have this property of integer arithmetic that says I can convert a subtraction into a different subtraction. The negative of a minus b is the same as b minus a. And the thing about that equals is that I can write this in either order. If I have this, I have this. If I have this, I have that. Well, I have the subtraction, so let's see what I can do with that. So again, I'll set down my values here, and this eight minus twelve, that really goes on the right-hand side here. This is eight minus twelve, and I'll compare once again. b is eight, a is twelve. I'll substitute those into our formula. That's negative twelve minus eight. And again, parentheses say do this first, so I'll take care of that twelve minus eight. That's four, and now this is, well, the parentheses say do this first, but there's nothing else I can do, so I no longer need the parentheses, and I can drop them out. Four minus negative six. Well, this is a subtraction of a negative, so I can use the property of integer arithmetic. a minus negative b is the same as a plus b. And again, I can write down the rule and compare what I have. So here's a minus negative b. I can compare what I have. This a is going to be, let's see, so that's negative four. It must be that a is negative four, and b is going to be six, so that's going to give me a plus b, negative four plus six. Well, maybe I don't know what that is. Maybe I don't know what negative four plus six is equal to. So again, I can reuse the properties of arithmetic. I can use the commutative property and rewrite it as six plus negative four. Addition can be performed in whatever order we want, so that's six plus negative four, and there's another property of integer arithmetic. a plus negative b is the same as a minus b. So here's a plus negative b, and that's the same as six minus four, and I know how to do that. That's going to be equal to two. Eight plus negative ten. Again, I can begin with the property. a plus negative b is the same as a minus b, so eight plus negative ten is the same as eight minus ten, but I can't subtract ten from eight, so now I'll use that property a minus b is the same as negative due to the subtraction of the reverse order. So instead of eight minus ten, I have negative ten minus eight, and I do know parentheses say do this first, and I know what ten minus eight is. Ten minus eight is two, and that parentheses, there's nothing to do inside, so I don't really need those parentheses anymore. My final answer, negative two. Five minus eight minus negative four. Again, subtraction is commutative and associative, and it's helpful this is not a subtraction, but the rules of integers allow me to convert subtractions into additions. So let's go ahead and do that to make our lives easier. Five minus eight, that's the same thing as five plus negative eight. Here's another subtraction, minus negative four. That's the same as plus negative negative four. And so I have this property of integer arithmetic that negative negative a is the same as a. So negative negative four is the same as four, and I have an addition. I can write this in any order that I want to, so maybe I'll write it this way, where I have the non-negative numbers first. I know how to add those. I have my negative number at the end. I have the property a plus a negative is the same as a minus b, so this nine plus negative eight is the same as nine minus eight, and I know how to do that. That's going to be one.


It's very different, in a traditional class, and actually many of my classes I still teach mostly in a traditional way, you know, I'm at the front of the classroom, sort of everybody is sitting facing me, I'm working at the board, I'm writing and talking, and I'm asking them questions, but it's all sort of everybody's looking at me the whole class, and I'm the one that's doing the stuff. In this class, I'm hardly ever at the board presenting material, I in fact don't really lecture at all except for maybe the first day or so, and that's just to give them an idea of what it means to prove something. There's sort of two different types of days in my class, there's a worksheet day or there's a theorem presenting day, so on the worksheet days they've moved their desks around to sit in a group, and so they're working in their groups in groups of maybe three to five students, and I'm sort of wandering around the classroom, kind of listening in but trying not to intrude too much, letting them do their work, if they have questions and kind of wave me over, I'll come over and listen to what they're doing, and I try not to give answers, but I try to maybe suggest something else to try, or if they say, look I think this is right, and if I know it's not right, I can say, well why don't you think about this example and see if it works in that situation, things kind of like that so that they are still discovering and refining things themselves, sort of with my guidance. That's pretty much my job, I sort of listen in, I kind of check in with them, make sure they're mostly working on the right track, and then on theorem presentation days I'm sitting in a chair just like the rest of the students who are not presenting, whoever is presenting is front and center at the board or at the document cam are presenting their proof, and I'm sitting usually towards the back of the classroom listening to the proof, and then after the proof is presented there's time for the class to ask questions, suggest improvements, those sorts of modifications, and so I try and again defer to the students to make those comments first. I'm also evaluating the proof myself and thinking about things that might need to be fixed, but I'm hoping that those will come from the students and not from me, and generally they do, depending on the class. If there's something really kind of glaring that they haven't caught that I think needs to be talked about, then I'll try and kind of prompt that in some way, something like well let's take a look at this part right here, let's read that again and see if we agree with that, something like that. I actually like it a lot better. I think partly it's my personality but I don't really like being the center of attention, and I've sort of had to overcome that in many years of lecturing to classes of 30 or more students, and I sort of have to adopt this kind of role of teacher, but I'm much more comfortable facilitating rather than lecturing, and I really like, I like helping the students to learn themselves rather than just telling them the information, and I have always felt more comfortable I think working with small groups or one-on-one, and so this allows me to do that as well. I find it very rewarding. It's really my favorite way to teach. It does take a lot of, it's sort of one of these things that it seems to take a lot of work in preparation, I mean to, especially if you're making your own materials to develop all that beforehand, but then once you're actually teaching the class it's sort of as easier because they're doing most of the work in class.


Good afternoon, everyone. I'm John Shortchiari. I'm the faculty director of the Wiser Diplomacy Center at the Ford School of Public Policy. And I'm delighted to welcome you to this special event featuring the 67th US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton. I'd like to start with a word on format. After a conversation between Secretary Clinton and Ford School Dean Michael Barr, we'll have time for questions from the audience. Please write any questions on the note cards that will be offered to you, and staff members will circulate to collect them. Two of our excellent Ford School graduate students, Maggie Barnard and Jonathan Martinez, will sift through your question cards with Professor Megan Tompkins-Stang and myself. And Maggie and John will pose questions to Secretary Clinton. We're also live streaming the event, and you can share your thoughts online at hashtag Ford School HRC. And now to introduce Secretary Clinton and Dean Barr, please welcome the president of the University of Michigan, Dr. Mark Schlissel. Thanks very much, Professor Kuchari, for the kind introduction. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming. This is wonderful. Welcome to the University of Michigan and a conversation with former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. I'd like to offer a special welcome to the many students who are here today. Also joining us are Congresswoman Debbie Dingle and Rebecca Warren of the Michigan House of Representatives. Let's give them a hand. The University of Michigan offers many opportunities to interact with people doing extraordinary things in our world. Providing a forum for engagement with different points of view, contrasting philosophies, and varying beliefs is exactly what a great research university should do. U of M Board of Regents Chair and former US Ambassador Ron Weiser and his wife Eileen Weiser sought to promote such conversations, particularly those advancing international understanding. Their generous gift, establishing the Weiser Diplomacy Center in the Ford School of Public Policy, brings diplomats and foreign policy experts to campus, while also providing support for professors of practice and students committed to international affairs. This advances our public mission by strengthening our ability to apply knowledge and practice to the global challenges we face as a society. Ron and Eileen, thank you very much for all you do for the university. I'd also like to acknowledge the tremendous support the university receives from all of its regents, including those that are here this afternoon, Regent Paul Brown, Regent Denise Illich, and Regent Shauna Ryder-Diggs. Thank you, Regents. Today we have the opportunity to learn from a woman who has, through a career of policymaking in practice, as both an elected and appointed government official confronted many of the societal challenges that demand our attention. But before I introduce our honored guest, I'd like to share a few thoughts on the person who'll moderate the conversation. Michael Barr has experience in both Washington and in academia. He's the Joan and Sanford Wild Dean of Public Policy in our Ford School and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Joan and Sandy Wild are here with us today as well. Welcome, Joan and Sandy. Of course, we'd like to thank them for their ongoing support of the Ford School and the mission of the university. This fall, under Dean Barr's guidance, the Ford School is launching a major new initiative on leadership, as well as expanding programs in practical policy engagement and conversations across lines of difference. Earlier in his career, during a leave of absence from his position on the faculty of Michigan law, Dean Barr worked in President Barack Obama's administration as the Treasury Department's Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions. There, he was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. We're pleased to have him moderate this conversation today. As a young person, Hillary Rodham Clinton's view of the world was strongly influenced by the beliefs of those around her. Her mother was a methodist who advocated for a socially conscious life of doing all you can do for others. This contrasted with her father's firm, anti-communist, conservative political view. She took those influences to Wellesley as a college student where she excelled as a leader. She was president of the young Republicans and worked on John Lindsay's campaign for mayor of New York and Edward Brooks' campaign for senator. At the same time, she experienced the anti-Vietnam War movement and the competing tensions between radical action against the system versus working for change from within. At one point, she wrote to her youth minister describing herself as a mind conservative and a heart liberal. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she organized a student strike and worked with black students to recruit more African American students and faculty to Wellesley. All of these diverse influences from her parents to fellow students, from backgrounds to the cultures of Wellesley and later Yale helped her form her own view of the world and led her to create a life of extraordinary public service as First Lady of the United States, as US Senator from New York, as our nation's C7 Secretary of State and as a presidential candidate. In 2008, then Senator Clinton was featured on the cover of Time Magazine with two checkboxes next to her picture. Love her or hate her. Today, we welcome her. And of course, we thank her for visiting the Ford School for this wonderful opportunity to learn from her. Please join me in welcoming Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. Welcome, Secretary Clinton. It's just a real honor and a pleasure to have you here in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. A great honor to have you help us launch the new Wiser Diplomacy Center. Thank you very much, Dean Barr. And thank you, President Chisell and others who have made me feel very welcome. And all I can say to that is go blue. So we're obviously in very difficult times on a lot of levels right now. I'm gonna jump right in. We're seeing some unprecedented challenges in a lot of ways to the norms and the institutions of the post-World War II era. There's been a rise of xenophobia, of nativism, attacks on immigration, attacks on NATO and the UN and the alliances and institutions that we built after World War II from lots of different sources all around the world. What do you think accounts for that kind of change in the cultural moment or the intellectual moment we're in? And can you give us some hope about a path out of it? Well, I think your quick summary of some of the challenges we face only needs to be edited and added to because we're also facing internal challenges here to our institutions. And so I think you have to look at both the domestic and the international scene and try to answer that question the best we can. There's a lot of really smart people on this campus who are thinking about and writing about it, but I would just offer a few observations. We did create the post-World War II order and it served the United States very well and it served the world very well. We had sustained peace and prosperity. We saw the rise of democratic governments. We had a real alliance across the Atlantic with our friends in Europe. We worked hard to make sure that we never saw the horrors of the previous World Wars and I think that we owe a debt of gratitude to the leaders both in our own country and abroad who created this time in history. I think things have changed. There's no doubt about that. And a lot of institutions are under stress including the ones that you mentioned, Mike. And we have to ask ourselves, okay, why did this happen? I think some of it is because the natural movement of thought and understanding about what's needed, the rise of technology and the sharing of information across the world, the competition that comes from people who are putting forth a different point of view. There's a natural rhythm to this that I think we are watching unfold. But I would add there's also a concerted effort to undermine our faith in these international institutions. There is a real effort by some to try to create dislocation and disruption. And at the top of that list, I would put Vladimir Putin who has been trying to undermine NATO and the European Union, American democracy, our elections, for his own purposes in pursuit of his geopolitical strategic goals of restoring, in his view, Russian greatness. You see China offering a competing financial system and that competing financial system is grounded in authoritarianism in state-run enterprises. But it's being quite successful. And so people are saying, well, democracy's messy. The free market has all kinds of problems. And so maybe there's something to be learned from what's happening in China. You have rogue nations that are trying to create chaotic conditions for their own purposes. And so you can look around the world and you can see why it is in the interest of some leaders, particularly autocrats, to sow discontent, confusion, disappointment with those institutions. What we should be doing is saying, you know what? We need to take a hard look at what has served us well since the post-World War II era, where they need to be reformed, where they need to be updated. Let's engage in that process. But I think we find ourselves in a much more defensive crouch than we should be. We should be standing up for the success of the last 75 years, not throwing it onto trash heap of history. So unfortunately, we don't have leaders right now that are willing to do that. But that is what not only the United States needs, but I would argue the Democratic experiment, the transatlantic alliance, the hope for greater freedom and opportunity around the world. So yes, we need to engage now in a new process of trying to restore and renew. And we're necessary reform and even replace institutions that are no longer serving us well. So a lot of these issues are incredibly complex and we're gonna get into the details of them in a minute. But when you think about how to translate these kinds of issues for an audience, not this audience, but the domestic audience more broadly, how is it that you think we can go about or you'd like to go about explaining the importance of America's role in the world for people who may rightly be focused on their own daily lives rather than these more abstract kinds of questions? Well, of course, I'm a believer that what happens in your daily lives will sooner or later be affected by these large questions. And that's why we need to have conversations like the one you're having at the Ford School. Let me just give a quick example of a way of thinking about a problem that's in the news right now and how to handle it differently. The other day, President Trump walked out onto the south lawn of the White House and said that he'd just gotten off the phone with President Erdogan of Turkey and he was withdrawing American troops from Syria. And everyone knew that that meant that the Turks would, as they have, launch a military assault into Syria with the purpose of trying to, in their view, contain and quell the Kurds who have been our allies in the fight against ISIS. This has been brewing a long time. This should not be a surprise that the Turks intended to do that. What is surprising is that the president of the United States basically gave them a green light to do whatever they chose to do. The way this could have been handled is to call a meeting at NATO, Turkey is a member, to get planners into this meeting, led by Americans who wanted to support and, frankly, protect our Kurdish allies who have lost around 11,000 fighters in this ongoing battle against the militants and sit down with the Turkish government, their representatives, and say, look, your legitimate complaint is that you fear, left unchecked, there will be a Kurdish corridor on your border that will support those elements of the Kurds inside Turkey that you are concerned about and that you have a history of having to deal with their demands for autonomy, the terrorism that goes along with them. Okay, that's your legitimate concern. We have a concern. These Kurds have been with us. They have fought with Americans. We have supported their efforts. They were the ones who really led the assault on Raqqa. They're the ones who are holding tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners. So let's figure out how we're gonna deal with this. And let's make sure that you don't go in and through air power and ground assaults murder thousands of Kurds, both fighters and civilians, in your effort to try to prevent terrorism inside your own borders. Let's figure out how we can do this. Let's figure out how we can help you with your problem and how we can protect our allies. There are ways of working on really thorny, what are called wicked problems, but they take thought and deliberation and diplomacy. So yes, we have the common bond of NATO membership. We could have used that. And now we have a situation with all kinds of consequences, both predictable and unintended, that will flow from this military incursion by Turkish troops. I think you're exactly right. This problem of Syria is a wicked problem. It's been around for a long time. You can go back to the British and French drawing the boundaries of the region, but we're tracing it through. The Obama administration had very difficult choices to make in Syria. How much of this do you think the problem in Syria, can you trace to difficult as you had in the Obama administration? What do you think you got right and didn't get right about Syria then? And then again, I'm gonna keep striving for that hopeful answer. Is there a path forward in the region that is for Syria and for Syrian refugees and Syrian people that is less brutal than the one they've been living with now for quite a number of years? Well, I can't give you a hopeful answer to that right now because I think the brutality and the conflict will only intensify. And I fear that it will contribute to a resurgence of ISIS. They were driven from their main headquarters and they were driven out of Mosul in Iraq and a certain number of them were captured along with their women and their children, but by no means was that movement or that ideology defeated. So I fear that we're gonna see some very difficult times ahead. So going back, this is one of the areas where I disagreed with the president and I made my disagreements known privately while I was serving as Secretary of State. When Syria got started, it was a legitimate uprising by people who were protesting the actions of the Assad regime and some of their overreactions to rather minor protests. But the Assad government came in with a very heavy hand and tried to totally squelch protests and the people who were in the streets at that time were predominantly business people, students, people who wanted more freedom than they were being permitted. Again, I think Assad, without giving up power or capitulating in any way, could have lessened some of the oppression that people were living under, but he chose a very different approach and the approach he chose was in line with his father's approach, which is if there is protest, there is demonstration, you have to take the most draconian steps to squash it and send a message to everyone and they were quickly joined by the Iranians and the Russians to support the Assad regime and there are lots of reasons for that, one obviously that the Iranians had a long time relationship with Syria and Assad because they used Syria as a pass-through to equip Hezbollah in Lebanon. So they wanted to maintain enough control to be able to continue to support their allies in Lebanon, both internally in the role that they played in Lebanon and then of course always with the threat against Israel. The Russians had a long-term relationship with Syria with their sending students to study there back in the Cold War. They had what they, they have a military base in Syria, so they saw it as an opportunity to buttress the Assad regime but also to get a foothold in the region. I along with the then Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, the then CIA Director, Dave Petraeus, recommended to the president that we take some steps through the CIA predominantly to try to send a message to Assad, the Iranians and the Russians, that they would face consequences. They couldn't just expect to slaughter tens of thousands of Syrians, force this huge exodus mostly into Europe, become a client state of Iran and Russia without the United States taking some action. And as you know, the president said the chemical weapons attacks were a red line and then when it happened, he didn't think he could get support in Congress and so he didn't proceed. So fast forward at great human cost, incredible devastation, the Assad regime backed by the Iranians and the Russians has hung on. The only part of Syria that they had not totally conquered was that northern part where the Kurds are and where other Syrians had gathered to try to fight against both Russian forces particularly Russian air power, Iranian forces on the ground advising the Syrians and the Syrian military. So at this point, I don't, I assume that Turkey has gotten the green light from Assad, the Iranians and the Russians. So I assume they've de-conflicted the area so that there will not be any mistakes where Russian planes bomb Turkish troops. But you know, it's a complicated war zone and nobody's quite sure what is going to happen. At this point, it would be very difficult to engineer a diplomatic solution because the Iranians are not gonna give up the gains they've gotten and neither other Russians. I actually negotiated an agreement in June of 2012 with all the parties and brought in the Gulf Arab States and everybody was around the same table and we negotiated a transition agreement. The Russian foreign secretary Sergey Lavrov was there, he actually agreed to it. We broke for lunch, he left, he went to his embassy, he called, we think Putin came back and disowned the agreement. So we have tried, we've tried to be an honest broker, we've tried to support internal opposition and those who have fled and are now expatriates. But where we are right now, and it's a very dangerous situation, Assad has become basically a tool of both the Iranian and the Russian interests. And I think you will see increasing pressure on Israel from the Iranian interests and you will see increasing arrogance and potential further threatening behavior from the Russians and of course we've got the Turks on the ground in a military battle. So this is a, it's an interesting time because a lot of the Gulf Arabs are so concerned about Iran that they have taken a lot of pressure off of Israel. So Israel and the Gulf Arabs actually have more in common now with their worry about Iran, but now on the doorstep of Israel you've got a Iran dominated Syria. So this is gonna be a difficult period and it requires intense intelligent diplomacy and right now we have very little of that and we're gonna pay a big price. So another country, obviously in the news right now is Ukraine, Secretary Rice when she was here last week said that Ukraine is at risk of becoming known as a scandal rather than a country. How do we refocus attention and energy not just on the role of Ukraine in the US-Russian relationship, but the broader set of relationships we have in the region that are gonna be needed to move towards a post-Putin Russia at some point in the future? From your lips to God's ears. You know, I think Ukraine is a centrally located important strategic country in Europe that straddles east and west and it has been yearning to be part of Europe. That's what its revolution was about, the Maiden Square Revolution. They've had a lot of mishaps and a lot of setbacks because their leadership was not up to the job. There were several people who tried and were overcome by circumstances and one, Ukrainian president, overcome by radiation poisoning and another accused of corruption and thrown in jail. And so there is a lot of growing pains in Ukraine and it is a place that I think both Europe and the United States have a real stake in trying to help stabilize, trying to help modernize their economy and support their efforts to move toward a more secure democracy. And of course, we've seen two very aggressive moves just in the last 10, 11 years from Putin. We've seen his invasion of Georgia and the seizing of two provinces in Georgia, one strategically located on the Black Sea down the road from where he has his dacha near Sochi where the Olympics were held. He just basically seized this part of Georgia and another part further north. And then of course he invaded Ukraine and he seized Crimea and he kept troops in eastern Ukraine. Because Ukraine in his view belongs to Russia. Doesn't belong to the Ukrainian people. It doesn't in any way belong to their aspirations and hopes for being part of Europe and maybe even someday part of the European Union. And what he has done is to set up a very difficult problem for whoever is in leadership positions in Ukraine. Because with his domination of eastern Ukraine and the presence of Russian troops and the constant arming of Ukrainian civilians who are sympathetic to Russia, if Ukraine doesn't have friends who can try to help deter further Russian aggression, they are in a quandary. Do they place their hopes in Europe, in the United States? Or do they surrender to the inevitability that Russia could seize them any time they wanted to and nobody would come to their rescue? So the whole Ukrainian scandal in the midst of the impeachment inquiry in and of itself is troubling because of what it shows about abuse of power and the use of threats and extortion by the President of the United States withholding military aid that they so desperately need to defend themselves. So it's a scandal, it's an absolute appropriate scandal and it should have triggered the impeachment inquiry but let's not lose sight of the larger issue that you raise, Mike. The current President of Ukraine who has no political experience, he was a TV star, sound familiar, so he's in a bind. He's got the American president threatening him, he's got the Russian president threatening him, he's just trying to figure out how to be a president and from everything we know about him, he wanted to bring energy and modernism to his presidency and what's happening now is he's accepted an agreement that there will be elections in Ukraine, in Eastern Ukraine, which remember the Russians dominate, the Russian media dominates, there'll be elections for the people of that part of Ukraine to decide whether they want to break away and join Russia like Crimea or stay in Ukraine. He probably felt like he had no choice. The Russians are breathing down his necks and there is evidence that Russian troops are moving to the border again in pretty large numbers and then one thing that hasn't gotten a lot of attention that I just wanna mention is that there is a treaty that we've been a member of, in fact we were the architect of that goes back many decades called Open Skies and it permits satellites and other surveillance mechanisms to see what's happening on the ground around the world and just out of the blue, the Trump administration announced they were gonna pull us out of the Open Skies Treaty and if I were guessing, one of the consequences of that is we will not necessarily be able to discover all the troop movements that Russia is engaged in on the brink of forcing their will on Ukraine. So Ukraine deserves a lot more help and a lot more attention than we are currently giving it except in the kind of scandal mode. It's a real country with real people who thought they were gonna get a real chance to have a better future and now they are caught between our political games here in the United States and Russian aggression and it's really a very unfortunate situation. So let me raise another difficult topic. There again, no shortage of them. Lots of people around the world are very much struggling for democracy, for freedom of expression. We're seeing that now very much in the streets in Hong Kong, in the midst of a very complicated US-Chinese relationship. Let me come at this from two different angles. In your book, Hard Choices, you talked about your experiences in Iran and the way in which the green movement took off there and that you regretted not finding a way for the United States to have a bigger voice for democracy. So you've got that going on the one hand, you wanna do more. You have this big complicated US-Chinese relationship and again, you more than anyone knows that the growth of China as a rising power has led to all kinds of challenges for the United States that you also write about in your book. So you've got this tug of war between your desire to support these democratic protesters in the street and the complicated US-Chinese relationship. How do you navigate that? What would you do? How do you show support and engage in the long term with the Chinese? Well, look, I think the Chinese used to understand that part of the role that the United States played in the world was to speak out for human rights and democracy and knowing full well that there were many situations that all we could do was speak out. We weren't going to do anything else, but at least we could give a level of encouragement and support to the people who were in the streets or the people who were trying to make the changes. And in the Iran situation, going back into 2009, when there was a green movement uprising, we talked to all of the experts and the expats, the Iranian-Americans, everybody we think of, who said, look, we don't want the United States to speak out too much because we don't want the Iranian government to say this was a US-inspired demonstration because it wasn't. We're demonstrating because we want more freedom. So we didn't go as far as we might ordinarily have, but we used technology in those days. We knew that a lot of the demonstrations were being planned on Facebook, for example, and Facebook, we found out, was going to have an outage for some kind of mechanical, technical problem, and we begged them to keep it on so people could still meet. So we tried to do what we could, but I think maybe listened too thoughtfully to the people who said, don't be too out front. But the Iranians, like the Chinese, would expect us to say, you know what? We believe in human dignity. We believe in the right of every person to have certain equality and access to justice and be part of a political environment in which they get to choose their leaders. So when it comes to Hong Kong, I personally think it would not cause some huge breach if the United States government were saying what they should say, which is that people have a right to demonstrate peacefully and we expect the Chinese government to avoid, you know, military action against their own people in the streets of Hong Kong and make sure we deliver that message in a couple of different ways. Instead, we hear that the president has a call with Xi Jinping and he basically says, I'm not gonna say anything about Hong Kong. And if you looked at pictures of the demonstrations in Hong Kong, there were lots of American flags. There were lots of statues of liberty. People were carrying quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. So certainly the predominantly young people of Hong Kong were being inspired by our own history. And I think it's a shame that we have retreated so far from speaking out.  But it does mean that when America is silent about these fundamental human rights, nobody else is gonna speak up. Nobody else has a voice loud enough to be heard. I still remember you gave a remarkable speech in Beijing in 1995. Phenomenal speech, very powerful speech in Beijing where you said, women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. And it was shocking at the time in a diplomatic way. And you've been working on women's rights issues for a long time. Obviously, before that, can you say a little bit about, you know, what it felt like in that moment? You know, Flash Floor, you created an ambassador at large for women's rights at the State Department. I've been very engaged around the world in advocacy. You have a new book, if I can lift it. The book of gutsy women, which is terrific. Stories of courage and resilience, including a wonderful account of the late great Betty Ford that I would recommend to you. So you've been working on these issues for a very long time. How has it felt to struggle on it? What kind of progress do you feel like has been made? And obviously there's a long way to go. Could you say a little bit about the path forward? Sure. And, you know, next year, 2020 is the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Women's Conference and that speech that I gave. It's also the 100th anniversary of American women winning the vote. So it's a particularly important year. You know, when the Beijing Conference was announced, there was an American delegation. It was headed at that time by the then U.N. Ambassador, later Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. It had Democrats and Republicans. It had men and women. It had a real cross-section of Americans. And I was invited to go and there was a very worried reaction in the Clinton administration, including in the State Department and in the Congress because they weren't sure that we wanted to draw as much attention as my going would to the Beijing Conference. Some members of Congress were upset because China had imprisoned human rights activists and they didn't want me going unless they were freed. And so it was not at all a given. And I was very anxious to go and to be part of that historic moment. And eventually we worked it out. And so I did go and in the speech, I did take on China. I took on some of their practices like forced sterilization, the one-child policy. I took on other problems that affected women and families. But it was a turning point in a certain way because my speech and particularly that phrase about women's rights being human rights became a rallying cry. But in addition to the speech, there was something called the Platform for Action that was adopted. And it was adopted unanimously by the 180 or so countries that attended. And it did things that sound very simplistic now, but back then was considered radical. It said that domestic violence was a crime, not a cultural behavior, and that countries should legislate and prosecute domestic violence, which was very controversial back then. So it had a lot of meat in it. And I do think we have certainly made progress. Laws have been changed, practices have been changed. A lot of places back in 95, women could not inherit property from their families, from their husband often time. If their husband died in parts of Africa or Asia, the brother of the husband would come and kick the widow and the children off the land and take that land over. So women had very few rights, rights to an education, rights to healthcare, rights to economic opportunity, rights to full participation. So back at the 20th anniversary of Beijing back in 2015, I worked with the Clinton Foundation and the Gates Foundation to do a survey about the progress that had been made over the last 20 years. And a number of people will do the same going into the 25th anniversary. So I think the sort of the short story is progress has been made, but not enough. It still is true that more girls are out of school than boys.  And we're talking about the world as a whole, that more healthcare is denied girls than boys that economic opportunity is still very difficult. And so when I was Secretary of State, I wanted to do a lot of research into this because I wanted to see two things. One, could you correlate where women had more rights with greater economic opportunity and the growth of a middle class? And could you correlate greater opportunity for women with more stability, more peace, more opportunity? And in fact you can. And there was a lot of research done by all kinds of institutions including some of the private business forecasters that if every country tore down every obstacle to women's participation in the economy, the gross domestic product of every country would go up including ours. Because if you look at the participation rate of women in the economy even in our country, it's held back by lack of childcare, lack of leave policies. In other countries of course it's much more onerous. So I made the argument in the State Department and in speeches around the world that giving and securing, supporting women's rights, opportunities and participation is not just a nice thing to do because you wanna be nice to your daughters and your granddaughters. It is a really important way of increasing your economic activity and the stability of your country. So I think it's a mixed bag. And in our book, I wrote this book with my daughter Chelsea, we highlight 103 women and it was really hard. We started with hundreds and had to keep narrowing it down. But we highlight women who persevered through obstacles and terrible difficulties to make a difference over at the Ford School. Their leadership definition is working to make a positive difference for others. These women did that. And there's two women, I just wanna briefly mention, who kind of embody the progress. Two women who became presidents of their countries, unlike some places we know. And so, I'm particularly intrigued by them, but one who became the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, and one who became the president of Liberia, first woman elected president of any African country, Ellen Johnson-Cerle. What did they have in common living so far from each other? They were both tortured, beaten, arrested, oppressed, exiled. It happened with Michelle because of Pinochet. Her father died in prison. She and her mother were grabbed up and put into prison and then exiled after being tortured. Ellen Johnson-Cerle was in the middle of the vicious civil war in Liberia, arrested, beaten, exiled. And they both came back. They both came back to their countries. They both got involved in politics and they both ran for office. And both of them remembered what had happened to them. So they championed, in their own ways, very different political systems, very obviously different economic standing. They championed the rights of women. And Ellen Johnson-Cerle, who saw the horrors of that civil war, the murders, the rapes, the amputations, everything that happened, in her inaugural address said that we want a peaceful nation. And part of having a peaceful nation is to let women live their lives in peace. So this was an amazing journey. And I wanted more Americans to know about all of the women, but particularly women who didn't just make it on their own, but kept reaching back to make sure others could come along as well. I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions pretty quickly before we open it up to the audience. We've been talking a lot about defense, a lot about diplomacy. We've talked a little bit about development. I want to spend a little bit more time on that. You have been advocating for microfinance as a development strategy for more than a quarter of a century, and quite effectively. Could you say what it is about that strategy you find appealing, how you've been working on it, what its achievements and limitations might be? Well, thanks, Mike. And the title of this talk is about foreign policy and defense, diplomacy, and development, because that's what I emphasize when I was Secretary of State, all three of the Ds, not one more than the other, but trying to maintain a commitment to each. And microfinance is a concept that was really pioneered in Bangladesh and India. In Bangladesh, there was an economist by the name of Mohammad Yunus, who actually won the Nobel Prize. And he had this really radical idea that if people were given a little bit of money, not as a gift, but as a loan, that they would have to pay back, that they could invest in furthering their income or their children's education. It would help lift development. And so he started something called the Grameen Bank. And that's what he began to do. And what he found was women were the best people to lend to, because women would invest in their families. So these small loans, they would help to pay the rent on a market stall. They would help to buy material for seamstress or an embroiderer. They would help to put the girls in school, just like the sons. And that concept has been really proven in Bangladesh. And then in India, a woman featured in our book, alabot, started something called the Self-Employed Women's Association to do exactly the same in India, where women would get these small loans. And what was so remarkable is that they would be put into lending groups. And in the lending groups, they would have to look at the four or five other people, the women who were in that group. And they would be told, if you don't pay back your loan, then the woman next to you can't get her loan. So it was both a financial scheme and a community development opportunity. And now there's like a million members of Sehwan India. So this is a program that we did bring to the United States. Mike was a part of that when he worked at the Treasury Department, where we tried to replicate it for Americans. So it couldn't be the same exact approach that was done in Bangladesh or India. And what we found was that we needed to create development banks. And so I helped to start something called the Southern Development Bank in Arkansas, which was focused on not running up huge profits, but plowing money back into the bank so that they could loan to small businesses. Because so many small businesses can't qualify for a $10,000 or $20,000 loan to buy new equipment, to make investments, hire another employee. So this is a concept that was really pushed by the Clinton administration. And it has survived. Don't tell anybody about it. It has survived up until now. And literally millions of people have benefited from these kinds of micro development bank approaches. So this is the last question before we open it up to our great audience questions. The Wiser Diplomacy Center that you're helping to launch is really committed to training the next generation of international affairs leaders and experts in the United States. If you look out at the next 20, 25 years of challenges that they're going to all be facing, what are they? What should they be working on? What should they be thinking about? And how should they be best prepared to be the kind of leaders we're going to need for the next 20 and 30 years? Great question. And we'd probably be here till breakfast with all of us talking about it. But I think just a few points. First of all, I love what you're doing at the Ford School and the Wiser Center and everything that is being supported, what the Wiles have done, all of you who've seen the importance of this kind of investment. In our next generation of leaders. And the conversation we had over at the school, which was just with the students, was very revealing based on the questions they asked. Because it wasn't just, how do I get prepared? What do I study? Where do I work? What do I do? What are the values that should guide me as I think about becoming a leader who wants to make a positive difference? And one of the questions was, what is the role of empathy? And I am a huge believer that if you are a leader who wants to make a positive difference rather than just feather your nest or stroke your ego, but you want to make a positive difference in people's lives, empathy is key. You can't really help people unless you can relate to them. When I went to Bangladesh and to India and met women who had gotten these loans, that's what got me committed. You can read about it, you can go to a lecture about it, but you see the difference that it makes in their lives. So from my perspective, we've got to get back to listening to each other, empathizing with each other, working with each other. We cannot solve our problems here at home or around the world if we continue to be so divisive, so divided, and so mean to each other. And whatever we can do to try to break out of that, that doesn't mean we're going to all agree. I mean, part of being in a democracy is you have disagreements and you have the right to disagree. But we've got to start showing that democracy can work again. We need to have debates that actually lead to decisions being made and actions being taken. And we can't afford paralysis and gridlock. We can't constantly be looking for the political advantage. We need to say, hey, what does America need and what does America need to do in the world? So if you look out at all the problems, we have none of them can be solved by us alone. But if we don't lead, I can guarantee you they won't be solved. If we're not in the forefront of trying to figure out what we do about climate change, what we do about conflict, what we do about the spread of disease, which is only going to get worse because at the climate change, disease is moving north. And we are not prepared for that. How do we try to help manage the rise of China? They have every right to rise, but not at the expense of their neighbors, not at the expense of concentration camps filled with Uighurs, not at the expense of suppressing the rights, freedom, and dignity of their own people. How do we work with that? How do we deal with a newly aggressive Russia? How do we deal with Iran that feels like the constraints that were put on it by the Iran agreement are gone so they basically can pursue that nuclear weapon that we put a lid on under the Iranian agreement and the Obama administration? So yeah, we have a lot of big, big issues. And we need leaders who are going to put country before party, country before personal interest. I'm not saying it's easy. I plead guilty to the times. I didn't. It's very easy to kind of get into the frame of mind, like you're right and everybody's wrong. But we've got to save ourselves from that. And it's the next generation of leaders who are going to have to model the best way to do that. It's great. Madam Secretary, it's an honor speaking to you today. I'm Maggie Barnard, a Wiser Diplomacy Fellow, pursuing a master's in public policy. Our first audience question is, what is the most important undertaking to restore American leadership and cooperation in the international order? How can the US's global leadership role be redeemed? Small question for you. Yes, small question. Well, our current president could have an epiphany. You know, on the road to Damascus or somewhere, I worry that right now we're in a situation with the president and those who enable and empower him where we just have to try to hold on to what we have because we're becoming less and less relevant in the world. We are losing our leverage along with our credibility. And people are going to start hedging their bets if they can't count on the United States to deliver the weapons that the Congress voted on to help them defend themselves in Ukraine against the Russians. What does that mean? If you fight for America and you fight with our special forces and you get rid of ISIS and then you're betrayed, what does that mean? So we have a lot of repair work to do, whoever the next president is or the next secretary of state, however that comes about. A lot of the people who we're trying to constrain or educate the president are gone, and so there's not really counter voices within the administration. And you know, I was lucky enough to serve with a president who invited dissent. We had real debates about the right thing to do and how to do it, and that doesn't seem to be happening now. So we have to do a lot of repair work. And this is a moment in history when I think the voices of others, the voices of other elected officials, the voices of citizen leaders, the voices of prominent business leaders, all need to be heard so that people around the world will know that the America that they used to count on that was there, that represented the values they aspired to, will be back. We'll find our way back. Good afternoon, Madam Secretary, and thank you once again for being here. My name is John Martinez, and I'm a second year MPP student, a Bonnet Fellow at the Ford School, Public Policy. And we were wondering, there is a school of thought that the last recession contributed to the rise of populism and emboldened racism in Europe and the United States. Should we be worried that if it will intensify, if there is another global economic downturn, and how should we address this worry? It's a very important question. I do think that the global recession unleashed a lot of emotions, and some of them were justified because it should not have happened. And when it did, I think many millions of people here in the United States and around the world lost a lot of faith in institutions, both in the free market system of our country, as well as in our government. And even though President Obama tackled it seriously and let us out of that, saved the auto industry in Michigan, did a lot of other really good things, it took a while. And so people had a lot of serious problems economically, and the damage lingered. The other big push for populism, for nativism, whatever you want to call it, tribalism, nationalism, was immigration. And that goes back to the Syrian question, because the real igniting event in Europe was the tens of thousands of Syrians pouring out, trying to escape Assad, and Russian bombers. So they were flooding into Europe. And Europe was not prepared. It was kind of hard to be prepared. And there were millions of people who were showing up in Italy, and then moving on to Germany or France. And Angela Merkel, who is a great stateswoman, took a huge political risk and basically said, look, we're going to take the Syrians. And there were others mixed in with them, but it was predominantly from the Syrian region. We're going to take them, and we're going to try to assimilate them. We're going to try to give them jobs, training, education. And they took about a million Syrians. And that caused a huge political backlash. I mean, the fact is Germany had a better system than most countries would to actually do what she said they were going to do and to absorb those people. And a lot of them, they may not have spoken German, but they were engineers, they were pharmacists, they were educated. So they have slowly been able to assimilate them, but there still is a big backlash. And so these problems, the economic problems, the migration problems, we need people, again, doing that slow patient diplomacy that looks boring, but can actually make a difference, trying to figure out what do we do about this? Because I will predict that with climate change, you will have even more migrants, and particularly from North Africa, which is suffering from desertification. You're going to have more and more people pouring out of parts of Asia. You've got temperatures in Europe now, 110 degrees, and temperatures in parts of Asia, 120, 130 degrees. People are going to leave, and what are we going to do? And I want to say just another quick word about development. I think it would be really smart for us to focus some development aid, to build institutions in Central America to stop the migrant flow, to try to provide, you know, honest policing, to try to provide support for those governments, even if they are not particularly, you know, effective or even honest, we ought to figure out what we can do. A lot of the migrants are coming because they're scared to death with the gangs. Well, no government should tolerate armed gangs, and we should help those governments crack down and eliminate that gang threat. So people don't have to rush to our border because they've seen their father killed or their daughter raped, and they don't know what else to do. The coffee farmers are leaving because there's some kind of pestilence that is affecting the coffee crop. We have the best agricultural experts in the world. We should be down there trying to figure out how to help those people stay on their, you know, little farms if that's possible. We could be doing a lot instead of making this huge political dilemma, putting children in cages, abdicating our own values, our own laws, you know, we should say, look, we have to have an orderly migration process. Every country has to have secure borders. Why don't we try to help our neighbors so that they don't have to leave their homes and do more to prevent that flow in the first place? Thank you. What should the U.S. do to prevent foreign interference in elections? Another easy question. You know, oh my gosh, well. First, except the fact that it happened, don't argue about it. It happened, you know, just this week, the Senate Intelligence Committee on a bipartisan basis issued a report going into detail about how much the Russians interfered in our elections in favor of Donald Trump and against me. I mean, that's just a fact. And you know, the Mueller report, if you can bring yourself to read it and not just read about it, it really explains what they call the sweeping and systematic attack by the Russians on our election system. So first let's accept the fact that a foreign adversary used their military intelligence assets, think of that, to interfere with our election in the hopes of helping to elect someone they thought would be more malleable or more favorable to their goals. And right now we're in a real quandary because the only institution capable of stopping this is the federal government. Our elections are at the state and local level. That's where we run them. But the expertise, the Homeland Security expertise, the cyber expertise doesn't exist in a county in Michigan. It exists in the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department and the CIA and other places in our federal government. And there seems to be very little appetite by the federal government to do anything about it. And so if you followed this, and you can guess I have, even officials in the Trump administration have said repeatedly the Russians are still in our election systems. Dan Coates, who was removed from the director of national intelligence, very honorable man, gave a speech about it. Actually went to the White House briefing room to try to sound the warning. But it's going to take concerted effort and just throwing money at the problem is not enough. That's a part of it. So here's what I tell the candidates who've come to see me or called me on the phone, the ones running on the Democratic side. I've said, look, you could run the best campaign. You could be the nominee and you could lose for four factors that are not in your control. One, voter suppression and purging of voters, which is still going on. Millions and millions of people are either being purged or their registration's not accepted or they're turned away when they come to vote.  You could have a steady stream of outrageous untrue stories that are fed to people's Facebook feeds and other social media accounts that influences them because we're talking about really sophisticated propaganda. We're talking about people in your feed who look like they're real news people. They speak with American accent in English and they're filming in Macedonia and Ukraine and St. Petersburg making up stuff. I mean, one of the things that people who voted against me apparently believed, according to an Ohio State university study, was that Pope Francis had endorsed Trump because why? They saw it on the news. What was the news? A guy in a suit and tie, a young good-looking guy sitting behind a desk telling them that. And then the fourth problem is the actual interference with the elections themselves. We know it happened. We don't have the details about what did happen. We know that the Russians were in the systems of at least four counties in Florida, but even members of Congress who get briefed on this from the FBI can't tell you what they're told because it's classified. So I am very worried, my friends. I'm very worried because those four factors are alive and well. And I'm also really disappointed in a lot of the tech companies. And I'll mention Facebook because they're the most influential. More people in the world get their news from Facebook than any combination of other news sources. And now Facebook says that you can buy an ad that is totally untrue. They're not gonna take it down. You can take elements of Nancy Pelosi speaking and piece it together to have her say something she never said and have it posted and Facebook won't take it down even though it's a manufactured deep fake. So how are voters supposed to know? I mean, I don't know. I'm a voter. How am I supposed to know? When you see this stuff, it's professionally produced. It's got a lot of money behind it. It's aimed at you because remember when the Russians hacked the DNC, they also, and they got people who work there, their emails and caused commotion about that, but they also hacked the cloud and they stole all of the information my campaign had stored there about persuadable voters. Voters we were going to be reaching out to calling, knocking on their door. They stole all that. So when Paul Manafort handed something over to a Russian agent named Kalimnik, we believe it was polling information that they then could match up against the information they stole. All I want is a free, fair, transparent, honest election not interfered with by Russians or anybody else so that the choice of the American people is actually the choice the American people made. Thank you. Do you believe we are facing a constitutional crisis? Is our democracy under threat and what can we be done to rebuild our institutions? I do think we are facing a constitutional crisis and I say that as someone who actually worked on an impeachment staff back in 1974, I was a young lawyer recruited to work on the staff to gather and analyze the law and the facts around President Nixon's behavior in office. And I was one of the lawyers who worked on a document about what is a high crime in misdemeanor. Think about this. Why did our founders put impeachment into the Constitution? They knew we'd have elections. They assumed that we'd have fair elections without British, French, or Russian interference and that if you didn't like somebody in office, including the president, you would vote that person out. But they put impeachment in because they understood human nature and they understood the potential for abusive power and they concluded you needed a remedy in the Constitution to remove dishonest, abusive office holders. So the impeachment power is given to the House to conduct investigations when there is evidence that a president in office has engaged in behavior that amounts to a high crime or misdemeanor against our nation that could cause a series of consequences that would undermine our rule of law, our rule of law, our separation of powers, our Constitution. So I think that Speaker Pelosi was correct not to give in to pressure to impeach about everything that people disagree with Trump about. I mean, there's a long list because I think she felt a heavy responsibility that it had to meet the founders' definition and reason if she was going to trigger an impeachment inquiry. The Ukraine phone call, the whistleblower report, the additional information that is now coming out, certainly in my view meets the definition of an impeachable offense if it's proven. And so I believe you have to have a very thorough, thoughtful, deliberative process. When I was on the impeachment staff, I mean, we didn't talk to the press. We didn't leak anything because we knew this was a very heavy responsibility. And I think that's what Nancy Pelosi understands and that's why they're trying to gather evidence. Now, if you look back at the Nixon impeachment, abuse of power, obstruction of justice, contempt of Congress were the major reasons under which there were specific acts. The Trump administration's letter that their White House counsel sent saying they weren't going to cooperate and that the House had no right to investigate the president and all of that is totally out of bounds. If you were to believe that no president could be investigated for wrongdoing while in office, if you were to believe that the president was above the law, we would lose our democracy right then. We would be on the road to tyranny. And, you know, if he wants to contest the evidence, if he wants to present contrary evidence to the House, that is his right, you know? I mean, the Nixon administration desperately tried to present evidence, but the problem was, just like with the transcript of this phone call and the whistleblower complaint, there was real evidence about what President Nixon and his staff were doing. They were obstructing justice, they were abusing power, and the tapes just sealed the deal. So remember what happened in 1974? And one of the people I profile in here is Barbara Jordan, who gave one of the greatest speeches when she spoke about why she was going to vote in favor of the Articles of Impeachment about defending the Constitution. So the articles were presented to the House committee, and four Republicans joined in voting for those Articles of Impeachment because the evidence was compelling. It couldn't be brushed away, it couldn't be argued or insulted away, it was there in black and white and in transcripts of phone calls. And so four Republicans voted to impeach President Nixon. It never went to the full House because Republican senators went to the White House, including, I recall, Barry Goldwater, and said to President Nixon, you should resign. The evidence is there, you should resign, and he did. So I think this particular impeachment inquiry is not anything anybody should be happy about. Nobody should celebrate. It's a solemn, sad moment for our country, but we have to enforce our laws and our Constitution, and we have to hold leaders accountable, and we have to protect the separation of powers and the rule of law. So I will not prejudge it, but from my own experience and looking at it, it certainly seems to meet the definition of impeachment that the founders had in mind. And for our final question, you cited empathy as an important leadership characteristic. What about expertise? Why has there been such a devaluation of expertise and how can we change this? Well, I'm really happy you asked that. Yeah, empathy is a human value. Expertise goes to whether we make decisions based on facts and evidence, and I don't wanna live in an evidence-free zone. I don't wanna live in an evidence-free country. I want people to put forth facts based on their expertise and then to have a good, healthy argument about it. I don't understand why expertise has been so devalued, but in this book, my daughter who is passionate about this, she has a PhD in public health from Oxford and is just so upset about what's happening with the lower vaccination rates. And we write a chapter dedicated to vaccinators who are predominantly women. Dozens and dozens get murdered every year, trying to vaccinate against Polio in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Northern Nigeria, trying to vaccinate against Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These women are intrepid. They go out and they try to convince people who have no access to modern information or science in lots of different settings, but they listen to rumors. If you vaccinate for Polio, your children will be sterile. If you vaccinate for Ebola, you will be turned into a ghost and all the things that people believe that are not based on facts. That, as tragic as it is, is somewhat understandable. Having Americans and Europeans now say, I know better than decades of information about vaccines and about all the science behind them is just, to me, incomprehensible. I don't know exactly how we got there, but everybody now is their own expert. What they read on Facebook or Twitter, they feel like their opinion is equivalent to Jonas Salk and therefore they're gonna do what they think is right to do, regardless of expertise. It's a really dangerous trend. I mean, I'm not saying that every scientist and every expert is right about everything. I wouldn't say that by any means. We know that, but the scientific method, the debate around scientific findings has a way of revealing the facts and the truth. And we are in a dangerous position. I mean, it's one thing for the fossil fuel companies to convince, unfortunately, a number of elected leaders in our own country that climate change is not real. It's another thing to watch diseases moving north because the climate is changing and these bugs that we never had are all of a sudden upon us. I mean, we need to be more scientifically literate so that we're able to appreciate expertise again. And I guess that goes to education. It goes to a great public university like the University of Michigan. It really does require a concerted effort to educate. It also requires the press to quit being both sides now. False equivalency.  They feel like it's their duty to find some guy, somewhere who's gonna say neither is true. That is a terrible disservice to people trying to figure out what to believe. So they also need to be more scientifically literate and more willing. And you know what, I've had this argument and their answer is, yeah, but these guys are so boring. We put them on.  They're not entertaining. Oh my gosh, I don't even know what to say. I mean, do a talent show for the most entertaining scientists. I don't know what to say. Just get them out before the American people so that they can get the facts and the evidence and the truth. And then we can get back to having some level of expertise to be relied upon. Well, please, thank you. Thank you very much, Secretary Clinton for this really amazing conversation. The time you spent with our students earlier in the day, the time you're spending with us this afternoon, it's been enlightening and a joy. And we're deeply appreciative of you coming here to the Ford School of the University of Michigan. And we'd love to have you back whenever you'd like. Thank you, Mike. Thank you.


From New America and Slate, I'm Bridget Schulte and this is Better Life Lab, our new podcast about the art and science of living a full and healthy life. Let me give you a little taste. When you ask people how many of you have right now rottening fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator? Almost everybody admits that they have it. I just took mine out to the compost this morning. And it's a sad funeral, right? You take all this stuff that you paid lots of money on and you had good plans for and then all of a sudden you check on them and it's too late. That's true. It's so true. It's so sad. And the reason, of course, is that it's a bad design. Where do we put the fruits and vegetables in a low drawer that is opaque? So because of that, we open the refrigerator and whatever comes at eye level, those are the things that we eat. So I think that what we need to do is we need to figure out how do we design better environments. It's true for the kitchen, but it's also true for the work environment. We make decisions as a function of the environment that we're in. That's Dan Arelli. He's a behavioral economist and a best-selling author of books like Predictably Irrational. We talk to Dan and experts like him who can help us understand what drives so much of this overwork and this sense of being busy all the time. And more importantly, what we can do to change it. But we also talk to people who can share their stories of how they struggle with that sense of overwork and feeling like there's never enough time to do everything you need and want in a day. People like Keenette Howard, who gave up her dream job. It was so fantastic. I really cannot say enough good things about that experience. But the clock is ticking and I also really wanted to have a child. And I finally made the tough decision to leave that job. And very shortly after that, I was able to have a child. I'd had problems with losing pregnancies. I think it was critical that I take the stress level down a notch in order to have a child. There are a lot of people like Keenette Howard. Today, Americans work among the longest hours of any advanced economy. We take the least amount of vacation and we're obsessed with productivity and always being on. But that's really exacting a huge cost, as Jeff Pfeffer told me. Unlike the case of perhaps polar bears or penguins or other forms of endangered species, the assumption is that human beings can take care of themselves. There is a very market-based ethos in the world which says, you know, employers offer work. People go to accept the terms and conditions of that work. And if they don't like it or if they feel sick, they should go find themselves another job. My bottom line is that we ought to be as concerned about human beings as we are about polar bears. That we ought to be concerned about human sustainability. As humans, we all want to find time for meaningful work, time to connect with others, and time to play, to enjoy our lives. It's really all about the good life. So join me, Bridget Schulte for Better Life Lab, the podcast about the art and science of living a full and healthy life.