recording this session, which will be shared as a resource primarily in the campus community, but just so you know. And lastly, we have reserved time in the agenda for questions for Congressman Waxman. The question should be submitted view of the Q&A window near the bottom of your screen. Please note the questions submitted via the Q&A may be visible to others as well. In Mark Twain's often quoted line history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. We are reminded that while we often are captives of our time and the moments we live in, there's a fool's folly to declare no interest or no need to know what came before. Scientists, artists, craftswomen, scholars of all disciplines understand the necessity of building upon the lessons of the past, be they successes and or failures, and even some politicians understand this too. Tonight we're delighted to welcome Henry Waxman. Congressman Waxman served for 40 years in the House of Representatives, chairing some of the most powerful committees, including oversight, waste, fraud, and abuse, and leaving a legacy that among others included spearheading legislation that took on the tobacco lobby, championing the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, being a primary architect of the Affordable Care Act, and of course why we're here tonight, sponsoring the Ryan White Cares Act, from whose lens, at a distance, we can better understand the role of government in public health outbreaks, including what approaches for better or worse are being repeated, which are rhyming, and perhaps considering where we might go from here. And joining Congressman Waxman in conversation, as Betsy mentioned, is Edward Fitzpatrick from the Boston Globe, and he will serve as tonight's interlocutor. So please welcome Henry and Ed. Thank you for inviting us, and this ought to be a great conversation. We'll have some time at the end for Q&A from the people tuning in tonight. And just to set the stage, I wanted to begin by just asking the Congressman if he could outline, for those not familiar, the role you played, the important role you played in addressing the AIDS epidemic, and if you could identify some of the lessons that could be drawn from that experience, as we face the coronavirus pandemic today. In 1981, there was a disease that was a particular cancer, very rare cancer, and it was affecting gay men. The center for disease control was keeping track of it, and it was multiplying geometrically. They didn't know what it was, and they were very worried about it. They said that there was some kind of acquired immune response from this disease, and that it was fatal. We heard about it. We didn't know what to make of it either, but I called the first hearing on this issue at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Service Center, and we heard from gay men who were getting the disease. We heard from some of the medical people at UCLA who were treating patients with this disease. It was all very disturbing, and that was the very first time we heard of what later became AIDS, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. We held a number of hearings in Washington. We tried to get as much information as we could, but the victims of this disease were stigmatized, rather than what we see now with COBRA, where people are so upset at the death of so many people. 200,000 now is our mark in the United States. There's a great deal of sympathy for them and their families, but when it came to AIDS, there was very little sympathy. People were afraid that they were going to catch the disease. They realized that it was gay men, and then HIV was also affecting drug users, IV drug users, and a little known fact was that patients in the United States were coming down with AIDS. No one could understand why that was the case, but those were the three groups that were getting the AIDS disease. As opposed to COVID, where it spreads very rapidly to anybody. We didn't know if that was going to be the case with AIDS.  We shouldn't worry about them. It's not going to affect others. And in fact, President Reagan wouldn't even say the word AIDS until the end of his term when Elizabeth Taylor went to see him and said, you've got to talk about this disease. You can't ignore it. You got to at least talk about it. And she went through a list of their friends from the motion picture industry that had died from AIDS, and then he made some mention of it after that. Well, we got involved because of that, and I wanted to introduce legislation right away to provide more money for research. But we couldn't get support for that. People didn't want to spend money on this disease. Let's not do it for this disease. Let's do it for any disease that happens to a lot of people and multiplies as rapidly as this disease is multiplying. We didn't talk about AIDS. So it was the ability for the health services in the United States to do something about a disease that suddenly appears. And then we got through. We tried to work on the legislation that became the Riot White Aids Act, and we didn't get that through until 1990. Now, realize 1981, we started hearing about the first cases. We passed a bill before 1990, but it was vetoed by Senator Jesse Helms, very, very right-wing senator from North Carolina. And he said, if you talk about this disease, you're only going to be encouraging men to engage in gay sex, and he didn't want to have anything to do with it. The act that ended up being passed was the Ryan White Care Act. Who was Ryan White? And how was the bill after him key to winning approval of that legislation? Ryan White was a teenage boy from Indiana who came down with AIDS, and he seemed to come down with this disease because of some surgical procedure that left him with the infection from HIV and AIDS. And there was a lot of sympathy because at first people didn't want to let him go to school. But the scientists were saying, he's not going to pass on this disease by simply being with other people. The disease was transmitted through sex or sharing needles and not by simply being in a classroom. So there was a lot of sympathy for Ryan White and what he was going through, and when we finally passed the bill, we had a senator from Indiana that we were trying to impress with Dan Coates, who just finished his term as the intelligence czar. I don't know the precise name for it. But people were worried about Dan Coates, but they thought if he named it after Ryan White, it would be very hard for him to vote against the bill. That wasn't my idea. It was Senator Hatch and other people in the Senate. So we named it the Ryan White AIDS Act. And the gay men who had the disease, which certainly were far more than Ryan White, wanted that done because Ryan White and his mother were working so actively to inform and educate the public about this disease. And Ryan White, by that time, had passed away from AIDS. I got a sense of the battle at that time from a political magazine article by Timothy Westmoreland who described the subcommittee proceedings that were going on as a rollercoaster from indifference to panic to indifference again. He said one day there would be no members of the AIDS hearing at all and just the chairman presiding. The next day there were so many cameras and networks had to band together to have a pool reporter one day. They'd be talking about one white blood cells. The next day Elizabeth Taylor was testifying. C. Everett Coop was saying things. And Westmoreland's point was that throughout the whole course of this process, you kept focused asking over and over what did the public health people say should be done next? So in what ways do we find ourselves in a similar situation with COVID-19? And are we asking that question? What did the public health people say should be done next? Well, we asked that over and over again dealing with AIDS. AIDS was the disease, but HIV we found out was a preliminary position that allowed AIDS to come in. And so the HIV and AIDS became closely tied together. There was a lot of concern about what was happening, but people were looking at it either terrified that they were going to get AIDS. There was one congressman named Dan Burton who went to the House barbershop with his own scissors and hairbrush because he didn't want to be using the one that the barber had. There were people acting very, very strange. There were those who were being telling interviewers that this is a disease that you could just catch by being in the same room. So that of course terrified people. But a lot of mistruths were being spread about the disease itself and people were very frightened. We had leadership from the health people in the Reagan administration, both the career people and his appointees. President Reagan wouldn't talk about the disease and the health people were restricted in what they could say by the political people in the administration. So I would ask them when they testified, in your medical judgment, because it was their personal medical judgment that I wanted, do you think we ought to do this or do you think we ought to do that? And then they were able to give us the testimony that the administration didn't want them to give. But the public paid a lot of attention when there was a suggestion that they are at risk. Then when there was not any suggestion that they were at risk, people didn't want to hear about it because it's only gay men and they didn't care about them. So there was a roller coaster ride about the attention that was being given to this epidemic. And I remember being told by one of the Sunday news shows, we want you on Sunday to talk about AIDS and HIV, but we only want you on it if it turns out that the actor, the famous actor whose name escapes me, Rock Hudson. If it turns out only if Rock Hudson has AIDS, at that point we didn't know. And which showed the way the press thought of the importance of the issue. Here were all these people dying from this disease, but they didn't want to pay attention to it unless Rock Hudson, the celebrity, had AIDS and was going to be killed by the disease which he eventually was. So then they had me on, but it just showed the fickleness of how this disease was treated by the press. So is there a lesson today can be drawn about that intersection of science and politics? Because it seems like you're saying a clash then and do you see it clashing with COVID? Because you know just today we had Senator Rand Paul in a hearing clashing with Dr. Anthony Fauci and and recently President Trump had contradicted Dr. Redfield, the director of the CDC, regarding the importance of wearing face masks and the timing of the vaccine. Well President Trump is looking at this issue from the perspective of his own self-interest in getting reelected and he didn't want to take responsibility to deal with the COVID-19. He said the state should deal with it and it's not a problem and it's going to go away. He made statements that were just not true and then when statements came out from the public health people, including people in this administration, his own administration, he wanted to reject those statements and say that they weren't true. Fake news is what he would constantly say when he didn't like a story that was coming out. But it's ironic that Tony Fauci, I first met during the AIDS epidemic and he testified strictly on public health as did the people in the Reagan administration. But President Trump doesn't want to hear from the public health people because they will say things that are different than the fantasy world that President Trump is making up in order to protect his political interests in failing to deal with this disease and the COVID-19 disease and trying to stop it spread in the United States. Yeah as you know the United States coronavirus death toll just surpassed the 200,000 mark in there of 6.8 million people known to have it in the United States more than in any other country. In your view could the government have done more to limit those numbers and what if anything should we be doing going forward that we're not doing now? Of course the government could have done a lot more. The president didn't want to hear what was happening. I said it's all going to go away but the scientists were telling us people ought to put on masks and the scientists were telling us that we ought to keep our distance. We didn't know and we don't know today if we're going to get COVID-19 from somebody who has COVID-19 or as a carrier for COVID the virus COVID-19 and we see and they see no outward signs that they have this disease. They're people who could look perfectly normal but be a carrier for the disease. So we should have given more attention to this we should have listened to them and followed through with what they had to say but if you remember President Trump he didn't want to talk about wearing masks because that would that would look bad for him and he didn't want to wear a mask himself and he didn't want people to think that they were going to get this disease because it was going away and in time for his reelection so he just ignored the facts and even today when 200,000 200,000 people have died he said oh that was shows this great success of our efforts from this administration. He just says whatever comes into his brain and it has nothing to do with what reality is happening. Back in 1990 the Ryan White Care Act passed 90s ended up passing 95 to 4 with bipartisan support but did we have more bipartisan support to address AIDS then than we do with coronavirus now or do you see bipartisan support now? Well I think we have bipartisan support to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic. People have been very concerned about this disease. It is not stigmatized the way AIDS was stigmatized. There's not a fear of it although people are frightened if they get it and are frightened for their family and friends who might get it but it's not being treated the way AIDS was treated and if anything we couldn't get money for AIDS research and AIDS efforts. Now the government is throwing money at this COVID because they want to get a cure for it and so there's no lack of money that's going into dealing with it. There's just a lack of following through with strategies that would stop the transmission of this disease by getting people to be tested. We didn't have the tests available. We still don't have tests available in lots of parts of the country. People didn't know if they were infected. They couldn't take steps to stop the infection of others and they didn't follow the public health advisers who were saying wear masks. In fact the idea of wearing a mask became a partisan issue. It's hard to believe but Republicans would not wear masks because they said this is a fake disease. It's not a real issue and people want them to wear masks because they want to hurt President Trump's reelection. And Democrat was a positive scientist. Yeah it's not the politicians either. I was just reading about how the singer Anne Morrison described the British government as fascist trolleys because they want people to wear masks and follow other health protocols. How do you respond to that? The argument is seeing different countries from different people that this is big government telling us what to do and it's an issue of freedom. Well it's not an issue of freedom. We don't say you can drive as fast as you want. You can drive under the influence of alcohol. You can do whatever you want. There are rules and regulations by which people have to behave so that they're not hurting others. And to put on a mask is a small sacrifice to make to stop the transmission of this disease. I'm appalled at the attitude that so many people have which has been encouraged by President Trump in his statements that it's a fake disease and we shouldn't have to do all these things and freedom should mean that we don't have to do it if we don't want to. We don't tell people that I'm driving drunk and in a lot of other circumstances. You know part of our audience for college students and we've seen outbreaks of coronavirus on campuses in Rhode Island notably Providence College and the University of Rhode Island and the Providence Journal just today reported that the Bristol Police early this month broke up an off-campus house party filled with maskless Roger Williams students. So I wanted to ask what lessons can you impart? What's your message to today's college students? Well I think the most prudent thing to do is to listen to what's happening from the point of view of those who are scientists and following the disease and are making recommendations to stop the spread of this epidemic. There's another thing I just want to mention because a friend of mine said well if you're going to talk to students today they might not even realize how gay men were discriminated against so bitterly in the early 1980s and of course it went on after that for quite a while it's only recently that we've stopped the discrimination but when people got aids they lost their jobs because you could be fired from your job and there's no protection for discrimination based on having a disease that came later in legislation passed on the disability act. They had no confidentiality protection if somebody heard that they had aids it can be told from one person to another and this person could not only lose their job but be shunned by others if you lost your job in the 1980s you lost your health insurance because most people had health insurance through their jobs so when you lost your job you lost your health insurance so the stigma of having aids was very very strong and that was the biggest fear people had they wouldn't come forward to know whether they had HIV or AIDS because they were so vulnerable now I don't think people are so vulnerable to know that they have COVID-19 and they'd like to know but the administration in charge that the president's administration has not provided sufficient tests so people could get tested and know whether they were infected with the disease that's improved a lot but there was a long period of time many many months where you just couldn't get that test because we didn't have sufficient tests for to know who had the virus it may well transmit it. Yeah what it wasn't at that point wasn't it true that Reagan's attorney general uh Surgeon General Siebert Koop um really provided a powerful rebuttal to the the the line of argument that AIDS was a lifestyle issue like at that time I think the conservative line was that AIDS is uh that his Koop's point to to that argument was that AIDS is not a no-fault disease you know and he insisted otherwise he he helped turn the debate didn't he? He was very courageous he was appointed by President Reagan to be the Surgeon General because he had campaigned around the country against abortions he was very strongly against abortion and Reagan's people said well let's make him Surgeon General but he looked at the problem from a health point of view and said we've got to do what is required by the evidence that the the evidence of what we learn about this disease and he was shunned by the conservatives the right wingers there was an event where he was being honored and I was one of a few members of Congress that showed up the Republicans unmasked stayed away now it's it was clearly really quite political the way they treated Dr. Koop but he would he would have none of it he once said I'm going to treat this like a health matter and I'm going to speak truth to power and he um he went on and I think became a real hero another person who was a real hero in the AIDS epidemic was Dr. Fauci he had just become head of the institute at the NIH and was very much in charge of AIDS and he talked about the scientific evidence and said we shouldn't follow every rumor that people started speaking about this disease because a lot of them were just not true and it would panic people he said let's stick to the science and he was a hero then as he's a hero now in dealing with uh uh cobra this uh this cobra disease yeah what do you have any today between Dr. Fauci and Senator Rand Paul you know Rand Paul was uh criticizing him for being too auditory to Governor Cuomo and he was drawing a compare he was talking about hurting him being saying you know you know sweetens had drawn a comparison to the numbers in Sweden any thoughts on that exchange today that just happened the scientists tell us to get hurt immunity which would mean so many people would have to have the cobra disease that uh more people won't get it because it will um not be effective anymore to be transmitted uh but Dr. Fauci and other scientists said to get there you'd have to have so many people die from the disease and that we shouldn't allow that to happen we should try to stop the spread of the disease through common sense things of wearing masks um and said and Senator Paul who's an optometrist or ophthalmologist disagreed and you can see his political thinking he wanted to disagree with that theory because he he wanted to scare people about the the disease and um it was his point of view from a political point of view not from a conventional scientific consensus which he cared he didn't care they know about and certainly if he knew about it ignored since you're an author of the Affordable Care Act I wanted to get your thoughts on the Trump administration and state attorney generals uh asking the Supreme Court to strike down the entire act is unconstitutional um you know what are the chances that you see of it being overturned and what's at stake well the Affordable Care Act was a very important piece of legislation to have been passed uh and in dealing with this medical crisis because it's it's allowing people to health insurance even if they've had a disability even if they've had a pre-existing condition of having COVID and uh one of the essential parts of the uh of the of the Affordable Care Act is you could not be discriminated against in getting insurance because of a pre-existing condition well if the ACA the Affordable Care Act is struck by the Supreme Court which none of us thought would happen after it's already survived other threats in the court but if if uh if it is thrown out people could be denied health insurance they wouldn't have access to purchase health insurance they'd be discriminated against um it would it would be terrible to strike down the only access to health care coverage for uh people who needed desperately uh because of a pandemic that's going on now I wouldn't have thought that the Affordable Care Act was endangered because it was challenged in the court and Chief Justice Roberts said I'm not going to throw this out I'm not going to declare it unconstitutional he joined the four liberals deserted the four conservatives gave the fifth vote to keep it constitutional and his argument was it's constitutional because it's enforced through the tax code well one of the first things that the republicans did when Trump was elected and they had control of the house and the senate was to strike the tax provision that said that if you um if you don't get a health insurance you have to pay a tax penalty and they said no the penalty was struck the mandate to get insurance was struck therefore it couldn't be enforced and because Roberts relied on that uh the ACA was unconstitutional now if the court and that they had a district court take that point of view another district court that took a different point of view but that's what would have been the issue before the supreme court and they even scheduled an argument for the week after the presidential election before the supreme court now anybody looking at this would say uh they're they're not going to throw out the whole law based on such a technical point uh and none of us have been that concerned about this case they could say okay that it's not going to be enforced that way but nevertheless the law is intended to be enforced and people have to get a health insurance but not because there's a mandate in fact the mandate wouldn't be there but they'd want to get health insurance people by and large want to be covered they want to be protected well if we end up with a six to three republican conservative majority on the court even though the chief justice stopped the ACA from being struck down his vote won't make any difference there are enough conservative votes at that point to strike the law and they may well strike it then congress would have to re-enact it but we don't know what we would re-enact president trump and the republicans said we want to repeal the ACA and replace it but they have never come up with a replacement president trump said oh and of course everybody would be protected for pre-existing conditions but how does he say that if the law is no longer considered constitutional and that provision is no longer in the law it would be a very tough job to get another law passed but the court may say it's unconstitutional let congress try to fix it so we've got some questions in the chat but before we get to those just let me you mentioned in the supreme court I just want to get your thoughts about the president's plans he said he plans to name a new selection for the supreme court on saturday to fill the seat vacated by the death of uh justice ginsburg who do you expect them to choose is do you see any way for democrats to halt the confirmation what are your thoughts on that well it's we've we just look at it as the height of hypocrisy because when president obama had 11 months to go in his term he appointed a a a candidate for a justice on the supreme court to replace the death of the uh the justice that died and he said i'm doing this as the constitution says the president will appoint the senate will confirm or reject and the senate wouldn't even uh take up the nomination they said let's let the have let's let the people decide this issue when they elect the president in uh 2016 and then that new president will make the decision he just made that up there was nothing in the constitution that required him to wait and now that he he's faced with the opposite position that uh uh we have a new president that's going to be elected very very soon and uh the president has already been established to let the president make the selection of the of the vacancy for the court uh senator mcconnell said oh that's not a president we don't have to follow it our job is to uh is to move uh and decide on the nominee that the president places in front of us we can ignore everything that happened there are clips being shown on new shows of republican senators who said we have no right to fill this vacancy the next president should fill it when it came to the earlier vacancy but now they say we have a solemn obligation to fill the vacancy if the president sends a name to us now the president has said he's going to name a woman and there are two women on the circuit courts that are being considered uh both very very conservative fit with the with his philosophy and he wants to and he said he's going to make it an announcement and appoint one of them and he wants the senate to act on those on the appointment that he's going to make before the election well that's an extraordinarily short period of time there will not be adequate time to investigate this appointment it will just be rushed through by the republicans on a partisan basis because i don't see democrats voting for it there are two republican senators said they won't vote for it uh and uh but that's not enough to stop it the democrats don't have any bullets on this because the president appoints somebody and it's out for consideration uh then senator mcconnell is going to force the issue to be brought up the week before the election and with straight republican votes have that individual confirmed even though it was contrary to their actions and their opinions on how this should be treated uh and it will only exacerbate the very nasty partisan move that the congress and the white house has has been in failing to work together uh since trump became president even before but it got so much worse during this trump administration in working with the democrats so we've got some questions from our our viewers uh let me ask a few of those uh how long did acute miscommunication and political denial last at the beginning of of the aides epidemic compared to the beginning of covid oh she's she said all relative of course the advent of internet speeds are both in misinformation but also dissemination of public health guidance so how does that compare well we had information readily available with the aides epidemic uh there was at first extensively covered and people knew how it was transmitted there were some outliers who were saying that you could get it there was one woman said she got it from a dentist treatment but that just didn't hold up we held a hearing on it her testimony did not hold up but we knew very early and people generally accepted it whether they were democrats or republicans that this disease was affecting gay men and people who had blood transfusions or people who were sharing needles for uh uh illicit drugs and nobody else was really in harm's way so we knew the information about aides the only objection that we had were from right wingers like senator helms who said if you try to educate people about how not to transmit the disease uh it won't discourage gay men from engaging in gay sex and so we won't want to tell them how it's transmitted we'll keep that a secret from them as if they weren't going to engage in gay sex anyway or share needles or do anything else it was a ridiculous position but finally uh president reagan came around the republicans were coming around it wasn't a partisan issue we had strong republican support uh as well as democratic support who wanted to follow what the health people were telling us except for those few right wingers like bill danahmeyer who was a congressman from like sorry to say california and senator helms but uh others came around and uh supported the ryan white act when we had it before us one other question a number of grassroots organizations such as rod island project aides provided essential valid information to anyone in the community can similar grassroots organizations provide information where the government has failed us well the grassroots organization can supply information where people have not gotten that story from the government although the government is being up to date now uh they've been embarrassed uh with some of the statements they've made have turned out not to be true but by and large we've get it we're getting the right information from the government and from the health groups what we're getting pushback is from uh the some of the right wing groups and the president of the united states who's a significant player because he's the president of the united states and a lot of people believe what he has to say thinking he knows what he's talking about even though he's clearly not does he may know what he certainly does know in my view what he's saying but he doesn't care how misleading and harmful what he's saying may be to this spread of this disease and how many people will die as a result of his is knowing in this spread of misinformation in your opinion would more government action have been taken to control COVID if it was stigmatized would that type of fear have been more effective in a sense than the fear of simply contracting COVID I don't think it would have made any difference the fear was not fear of the disease the fear was the fear of the president Trump might pay a price at the in the election because he didn't want to acknowledge this disease if he acknowledged the disease he had to acknowledge that he didn't do things to stop it the only thing he's ever said he did was stop people from coming in from China well give me a break the transmission of the disease came in from Europe as well as from Asia and it was being transmitted just by being in the same place they didn't know that they should avoid getting together with people who might be able to spread COVID-19 and so if if it were stigmatized thank goodness it wasn't because our job would be harder but the job that the president should have taken on as the leader of this country he failed us miserably and many people have died unnecessarily because of it question one of the screen was tied to the funding associated with the ryan white cares act was the requirement that states adopt laws that criminalized intentional transmission of hiv how did that stipulation end up in the act because it ended up undermining public health prevention efforts i don't recall that provision i may be wrong but i don't recall a provision that's the only way that states and local governments were going to get money to combat this disease or the federal government was going to be able to spend money at the federal level if they made that statement it wasn't certainly given any credence in the way the disease was handled we gave a lot of money to local governments because the local governments were the ones who were handling the the the epidemic and giving the treatments the federal government provided a lot of legislation to do it and federal dollars for especially for research but what was being done under the ryan white act was supported by almost everybody except those who didn't want to even talk about the spread of the hiv aids the biggest fight we had was from right wingers who didn't want people to know that if they shared needles they could get the disease which made no sense or that if they were engaged in gay sex they could get this disease it was ridiculous to try to withhold that information it was important information for people to have um i i think there's a lot of emphasis on focus of academic work on climate change and that so before you go i wanted you to address uh how that ties in with the wildfires that we see in your home state it's pretty clear and the reporters who talk about the wildfires make it especially obvious that what we're seeing in the wild temperatures and and fires and floods all these things that are strange things are happening in our climate are tied to climate change it's and we fail to do anything about climate change uh again another case where the people in government especially the president doesn't care what the scientists have to say president trump campaigned against the idea that climate change was a reality so this is this is this is fake news and he denounced it and didn't want to do anything except when he became president he eased up on all of the things that the environmental protection agency had been doing to stop making this problem worse uh he repealed a lot of the provisions and uh and and it is it's more difficult to deal with climate change now that he's president and it's not giving any leadership and in fact is giving leadership contrary to to containing uh the the carbon emissions that are causing the the warming of our planet and the harm by our climate all around the world uh look let me just say something unequivocally uh we could survive four years of president trump and the climate change issue if we get busy doing something starting immediately come january but if president trump is reelected uh we will face a situation where the climate change issue will get worse because the emissions go up into the air they don't disappear they stay there in the atmosphere they add are additive to the other climate change emissions that are there and we won't be able to do anything about it you can't get rid of those emissions our only strategy has to be to stop adding to it until we have some scientific way to do something that we would reduce the carbon emissions that are stored there but i don't see any leadership from a president trump in the next four years and i think it's just going to be too late for us we're going to have to learn to adapt to climate change and the harm that it will bring we don't know quite how to adapt to it except people are going to have to move and not live in certain areas uh they're going to be people who are going to have to pick up and not only move but try to relocate to some other area there's going to be tremendous tremendous damage that's going to be done to uh this this planet and it's you have to ask why would we take a risk on the only planet where we live on allowing climate change to be uh to be added to and to become uh more harm and a threat to our life on this planet very good to ask you about one more issue before we let you go i know you've weighed in over the years about net neutrality and i was wondering if you see any prospects of congress addressing that in the near future yeah i have been a strong advocate for net neutrality that neutrality would say that that on the internet the the those who are controlling the internet like the service providers cable or broadcasters and others couldn't discriminate on the kinds of shows that would be available to consumers by adding barriers to them getting those shows and uh we wanted legislation to be passed i authored legislation to provide for net neutrality it didn't pass but the FCC adopted net neutrality rules but when president trump got elected the new FCC repealed those rules those repeals were challenged uh in the courts and the rules can be reestablished if we get a new FCC with a new president but if this issue uh goes before the the the trump appointees even if they're new appointees they're not going to do anything about net neutrality and we're going to find that uh there's going to be a lot of discrimination of what we are allowed to see on on the internet and what will be permitted to us to be transmitted to the public uh through the internet itself very good well thank you very much congressman for this discussion tonight i think we've covered a lot of ground and i will turn it over to that's an atom uh to conclude good thank you i'll just add thanks thanks to both of you for an informative talk and discussion and given obviously everybody much to think about um i also would be remiss to not recommend the book by congressman waxman to you guys report um which really looks at some of the signature legislation he writes about the signature legislation and really what it took much in the same way we heard a little about the the ryan white act the the process the often slow process um and the and and i believe the the book makes the case that it is a slow process um legislating is a slow process to to to get it right i'd like to thank you both as well um henry um one of my best friends died died of aids when i was had my first job after college in 1980 1980 and um so the aids epidemic is really near and dear to my heart and i appreciate the service that you gave and still give to this country for all your years in in the congress thank you thank you very much and it's so great to see you take care give a virtual round of applause thank you and thanks everybody for coming and attending tonight through your wi-fi problems and everything else yes good night everybody thank you to all for coming tonight


So, welcome to this lecture. So, in the last few lectures we studied the topological property of being connected, connected and path connected and saw several examples. So, two examples which we did not see were. So, the problems of whether S o n, u n are connected or path connected will be pending will be taken up later. So, we need to develop a few more tools before we can answer the question of whether S o n and u n are path connected. So, however for the next few lectures we will study the property of being compact. So, let us begin with the definition of a host of topological space. So, let X be a topological space. So, we say that X is host of if for points x 1 distinct points x 1 and x 2 in X. So, we have our X, we have x 1 here and we have x 2 here. So, there should be two small open sets which contain x 1 and x 2 which are designed right. So, we can take any two distinct points x 1 and x 2 and there exists open sets u 1 and u 2 such that x 1 belongs to u 1, x 2 belongs to u 2 and u 1 intersection u 2 is empty and u 1 and u 2 are disjoint. If this happens for all pairs of distinct points x 1 and x 2 then we say X is host of ok. So, here are some easy exercises if X and Y are host of the product of topology is host of. So, let us see how to do this. So, let us say we have two points x 1 y 1 and x 2 y 2. So, now since x 1 y 1 is not equal to x 2 y 2. So, this implies either y 1 is not equal to y 2 or x 1 is not equal to x 2 ok. So, let us simply assume that. So, let us assume that y 1 is not equal to y 2. So, then our y 1 is here I am sorry y 1 is here and y 2 is here. So, since y is host of this implies there exists open sets such that y 1 belongs to v 1, y 2 belongs to v 2 and v 1 intersection v 2 is empty right. So, this is our v 2 this could be our v 1 right. So, then we know that. So, then x cross v 1 and x cross v 2 are open sets in the product of topology x cross y right. So, this is x cross v 2 this is x cross v 1 right. So, clearly x 1 comma y 1 is in x cross v 1 x 2 comma y 2 is in x cross v 2 and the intersection right. So, this shows that x cross y is host of ok. So, in the same way we can easily check that if x i for i and i is a family of topological spaces of host of topological spaces then the product. So, obviously every time we talk of the product as I said we are giving in the product topology is host of ok and imitate the proof of the proof of 1. The same proof as in the previous case will work and I will leave it as an exercise. So, finally, the third easy example or easy exercise is x is host of y containing x is a subspace then y is host of right. So, let us quickly see this. So, suppose these are x and let us say y is this.  So, then clearly u 1 intersection y contains y 1 u 2 intersection y contains y 2 and these are disjoint open subsets thus y is host of ok. So, the above exercises give us plenty of examples of host of topological spaces. So, we are mostly interested in host of topological spaces and we will almost deal exclusively with host of topological spaces for the rest of this course. So, for the rest of this course interested only in host of topological spaces. So, if nothing is mentioned then it is safe to assume that the topological space we are working with is host of ok. So, we have defined what host of means. So, now we are able to define compact compactness. So, let x be a host of topological space. So, we shall say that x is compact if the following happens. So, every open cover u i. So, what do we mean by an open cover? It means each u i we are given a family of open sets u i the union of all of them is equal to x. So, we are given any open cover and given any open cover has a finite sub cover that is there exist finitely many indices i 2 up to i n such that x can actually be covered by these finitely many open subsets u i j sorry. So, let us see an example of a topological space which is not host of I am sorry which is not compact. So, example r is not compact. So, to say that r is not compact it is enough to produce an open cover for r which has no finite sub cover. So, that is easy. So, what we do is we take any n n plus 1 we take n minus 1 by 4 and n plus 1 plus 1 by 4. So, then we can write r as the union over n in integers n minus 1 by 4 and n plus 1 plus 1 by 4. So, clearly if we take any finite subset. So, clearly any finite sub collection in this union it will not cover r any finite sub collection of intervals of the type n minus 1 by 4 comma n plus 1 plus 1 by 4 will not cover r. So, thus this cover has no finite sub cover thus r is not compact exactly. So, r is not compact. So, now we want to construct some very basic examples of compact spaces and prove some very basic results about compact spaces which is exactly the same as we did when we talked about connectedness. So, the first result we are going to prove is the interval 0 1 is compact. So, the proof is very similar to how we prove that 0 1 is connected. So, let us prove this. So, suppose we are given an open cover. So, our aim is to find a finite sub cover of this. So, we need to show that this has a finite sub cover. So, as before we let s be equal to those x in 0 1 such that this when we look at this interval the close interval 0 x is covered by finitely many u s. So, clearly 0 belongs to s as. So, for 0 to be belong to s what we need is 0 comma 0 this is just the single set 0 is covered by 1 u i. So, we can just take any u i naught which contains 0 or any u j let us say any u j which covers which contains 0 and then obviously, this interval which is just this 0 is contained in this u j. So, when I say covered by finitely many u i's I mean that this interval 0 x is contained in finitely many u i's union of finite union of u i's ok. So, let x naught be equal to supremum of x in s x. So, we claim that x naught is also in s. So, let us prove this. So, there is a sequence x n's converging to x naught with x n's in s right. So, let x naught be in some open set. So, we have 0 we have 1 and let us say our x naught is here. So, x naught is going to be in some open set u i naught. So, there is an epsilon, epsilon positive such that epsilon x naught intersected with 0 1 is containing u i naught ok. So, and since these x n's are converging to x naught all, but finitely many x n's are in this interval. So, all these x n's eventually all of them will land inside this small open neighborhood around x naught ok. So, we choose some x m in p epsilon x naught intersected with 0 1. So, this is 0 this is x naught this is our interval and let us say x m is here let us say this is 1. So, then as x m is in s this implies 0 comma x m is covered by or let us say is contained in a finite union of u i's finite union of u i's right. And moreover we also know that this interval moreover this interval x m comma x naught is contained in p epsilon x naught intersected 0 1 which is contained in this u i naught. So, this implies that 0 comma x naught which is equal to 0 comma x m union x m comma x naught which is contained in 0 comma x m union u i naught right. Now this interval 0 comma x m is contained in a finite union and therefore, 0 comma x naught is contained in that finite union along with u i naught which is therefore, also going to be finite. So, therefore, we conclude that 0 comma x naught is contained in a finite union of the u i's yeah. So, thus x naught is in s right. So, this proves our claim the claim that x naught is in s yeah. So, now next week claim that next week claim x naught is equal to 1 yeah. So, once again if x naught is strictly less than 1 then that would mean that there is some. So, we can just make a picture here once again and this is our epsilon and this is our x m that would mean that there is some epsilon positive such that x naught comma x naught plus epsilon is containing u i naught right. So, again so, this implies that 0 comma x naught plus epsilon which we can write as 0 comma x m union x this x naught plus epsilon is contained in a finite union of the u i right. So, this implies that x naught plus epsilon belongs to s which contradicts t assumption that x naught versus supremum. So, thus x naught has to be 1 x naught cannot be strictly less than 1 right. So, the since and since x naught is equal to 1 this implies that this 0 comma 1 we have already seen that x naught is in s. So, therefore, this implies that 0 comma 1 is contained in a finite union. So, thus there is a finite sub cover is contained in j equal to 1 to n some u ij this implies that. So, therefore, this open cover. So, this this proves that the open cover we started with has a finite sub cover thus this interval is compact. So, this proves this complete theory. So, we will end this lecture here.


t really shows the breadth of the grants that are encompassed by peace building. So you have an alliance for peace building grant on peace building evaluation, which is one type of grant. You also have a grant to a city council, which is definitely a non-traditional recipient on their peace building work. And then a grant to a local work for peacemaking efforts, again on a totally different lens. So this just really represents the diversity within the field of peace building itself, the diversity in funding interests. So you have funders who are really interested in a wide range of geographic contexts, issues and approaches. And then also, I didn't put the size on, but the sizes of the grants also vary. You have really small grants, as you saw before, it was like a $2,000 grant. And then you have really large grants as well. So there is a lot of diversity within the funding field. We had two main challenges to tracking peace building grant making. First is terminology, which I spoke a little bit about, but I'll give you an example of a grant that we have here where it's kind of like, is it peace building, is it not peace building? So we have this grant that just says, we're building a culture of peace. So how many of you would consider that peace building culture of peace? How many would not consider it peace building? All right, thank you, yeah. So yeah, so we don't know. The point is we don't know and we can't make that judgment call because again, we're working in a database. So I can't tell the computer, okay, anything that says culture of peace is peace building because there might be some grants who use that terminology that are not peace building at all, that are something different. So that again was one of the challenges that we had with tracking peace building funding. We also, all funders don't talk about their work as peace building. So people will say, we're supporting civil society work on the ground locally. And so we don't know it's peace building, but it comes out of a peace building program, but we don't have the information so we can't code it as such. So we're hoping that the funding for peace building is actually a little bit higher and that we'll see the change next year once we have more comprehensive grant data. The second problem again was just general support grants, which are terrific for organizations but terrible for building a grant database. So I guess we're kind of lucky that 80% were not general support, but we will advocate for more that despite the challenges it poses to our work. And then the 2013 peace building funders. So get your phones out quickly, you know. It was hard to fit them on one slide. So these are all the different groups that funded peace building work. And some of them actually were a little bit of a surprise because we had never encountered them before. And so we're working to do outreach to pull them into our group, to help them connect again to other funders and then also to encourage them to give more money. So these are again, some of these may or may not be a surprise to you, but if there's anyone who you're like, oh my gosh, you know, my dad funds peace building and he's not on there. And then that's important. This is only a mapping of foundations. And so there are operating foundations are not included and there are some operating foundations doing incredible important work who are not represented. And then also individuals. There's so many individual philanthropists that are PSFG members who are doing work and they're not represented on this either yet, but we are working on that for the future. So again, this is just foundations. And finally using the index. So you're probably like, okay, we have this big website.  Like what am I gonna do with this? So here's what you can do with it. If you're a civil society organization, you can scope out new funders. We hope you use it for that. We hope you go on there, you know, find foundations, stock people, get in touch with them, share your work with them, situate your work within the funding landscape. Use it to make the case, you know, only this percent is used for peace building and with this small grant, we can do this or with this large grant, we can do this. Use it to back up your work and to support it. And then make the case for more funding for why we need more funding, because we do. And then policy makers find foundation partners. Foundations are open and interested in working with policy makers and government donors. And so PSFG is trying to help build bridges between different groups to try to leverage funding and make the funding go further. And then learn about peace and security issues if you're not familiar with them. And then finally for funders, if you are a funder, find new funding partners. We hope that you'll, you know, see one of those foundations up there and reach out to them and talk about your work. Help your board understand what your funding fits in. So if you're making the case to a board on why they should maintain or increase a peace building portfolio, you can use this to make that case. Remember, you know, we're having the Weight Watcher's pie. And finally to identify funding gaps. So the cool thing about looking retroactively at 2013 is you can think about some of the things that were happening in 2013, some of the things that are happening now in peace and security and say, ooh, did we make a mistake and not fund the right things? So, you know, for example, in 2013, there was not a whole lot of funding, private funding going to Syria. So as a community, a funding community, we can reflect on that and hopefully learn from some of the things that we did or didn't fund. And finally, fill the gaps. So if there is a funding gap, see what your foundation or friends can do to fill it. So that's my 15 minutes of fame. So now I'll take any clarifying questions. So nothing too specific, but if there's something that was not clear about the index, the data or anything, I'm happy to answer your questions, if anyone has any. So the data was pulled from the Foundation Center's database. So the Foundation Center collects data from foundations, not just in the U.S., all over the world, although primarily they are from the U.S., and they also pull data from 990s. So if foundations don't, like, happily submit their data, they just go and search through 990s and then pull some data, which isn't that great, but they still have it. So that's where it comes from. It is from the Foundation Center. And largely it is self-submitted. Foundations do turn over their information, which is terrific. The 3.5 is a piece of the overall pie. So it is a part of that 283 million. It's a percentage of that. So that's what it's in relationship to. And, Rachel, could you compare that to the number in the human rights funding? Because that was quite a figure, but I don't remember what that other figure was. Two billion. So funding for human rights work is at around two billion. So it's considerably higher, those lucky people, human rights. Thank you. That was such a clear, concise presentation. Thank you. So I wonder if I could ask you, Alex, and those of you who are at the Peace and Security Funders Group meeting, since you just had your annual conference, what was the reaction from your community? And it might be helpful also to tell us who's in your community. So we have a sense of what kinds of foundations are part of it. Sure, yeah. So we just had our annual meeting a few weeks ago. Rachel has had a chance to practice this. We, the reaction was, I mean, maybe you could speak to that more than I can, but the reaction was a reflective. I mean, I think we had a really great annual meeting. We explored some of the gaps and some of what the data told us. And there are several PSFD members here. So I'm happy to turn it over to them. I don't want to speak on their behalf. But who they are is we are up to 65 members. They are all sorts of funders and philanthropists, as Rachel mentioned. We have public, private, operating foundations, family foundations, as well as individual philanthropists that are part of the PSFG network. And we seem to be growing almost, I wouldn't say weekly, but definitely monthly. Even the past year, we've got 10 new members that have joined the Peace and Security Funders Group because they want to collaborate with their peers to enhance the effectiveness of philanthropy in this field. Okay, thank you. Are there other funders with Mary or Steve? Would you like to talk about your reactions to the first saw this report? Go ahead. Completely agree with Alex at the meeting that we had a few weeks ago in Portland. It was, I think, a moment of being able to look specifically for me at the very limited funding available for prevention. And I think there's a lot to unpack behind that and why, I mean, some of the very logistical reasons that Rachel outlined. But I think there are also some broader programmatic reasons that account for that real small amount that ultimately goes to prevention, which is an area that Humanity United has really been exploring very deeply the past few years and is hoping to increase our funding and our support in that area. Thank you. Well, I wasn't at the last conference, PSFG conference, but I was present at the creation when PSFG was established. And from the very beginning, we've been looking for a database of what the field, as we define, has been doing. So I commend our colleagues. Do I hear my voice reverberating? Oh, it's your tie. It's my tie, though. It's on your tie. OK. Anyway, so I think that the, I commend PSFG. I think the report, as Rachel has described, there was some practical and methodological challenges. And if you read the end of the report, it says something about how you're going to learn from this and there are other more nuanced approaches as you go forward. So again, kudos. And it's going to do an amazing baseline. This is to be, to clarify, you do this yearly. So you'll be able to update this. So we are, we're going to improve it. It's an iterative product and a database. I don't know, yeah. Sorry. It was on his tie. But I think you put it on my tie. So we're going to do this annually. And, yeah, and it's, as Rachel said, where it's, it, it, there are challenges, but we hope that it's, you know, more resource than it is, you know, a challenge to, to get this data. And just from a thumbnail kind of sketch, because we had the luxury of being piece building, a nice kind of broad, fuzzy umbrella. To what extent did you see the ratios between security and peace? And was it fine grained enough to really capture that? Rachel could probably. Yeah, I think the answer to that is that most funders don't speak about their work so much in terms of security and the grants aren't labeled as such. So I think there generally wasn't stronger security or peace. It was really just totally diffused in terms of the different issues. So you'd see like nuclear disarmament or you'd see some diplomacy, but really it was more issue based than peace versus security based. Interesting. Well there are two sets of questions I'd like to ask you to get us started and then we can open it up to the rest of the group. But I'm very interested in bridge building. You know, how do we build bridges between traditional peace building work and then organizations that are doing peace building work in other sectors? So where you're able to capture democracy groups or governance groups or human rights or climate. And to what extent is that reflected in this index? And even if it's not, how are you kind of seeing this play out in your own grand picking? Please. Sure. I think that's a really tough question because even though while I think all these different sectors, whether it's human rights or governance or humanitarian or peace building, we're all working towards a peaceful and inclusive society ideally. And yet we're still very siloed in our individual work. And I think all too often our individual efforts aren't actually adding up to some of these broader goals that we all have in mind. I think forums like the Alliance for Peace Building are actually a wonderful entry point for having some of these conversations. So is PSFG. And I think individual private donors also have a role to play in terms of incentivizing different sectors to be collaborating and to be brainstorming. Even within sectors, I mean all too often, policymakers are very disconnected from what academia is doing. I think that's also a role where private philanthropy can play a role in bringing together these various different actors to be sharing research and recommendations and to really be working together towards this ultimate goal that we all are trying to see. That's a perfect segue, Steve. Didn't you just get back from Denver looking at bridging that gap? Yes, indeed I did. We have a focus at the Carnegie Corporation and the International Peace and Security Program that we like to think transcends all our work in bridging the academic research and policy gap and certainly the work in peace building is relevant to that. On the bridge issue, unfortunately, as you know, I wasn't here the first two days of the conference, but in looking at the agenda, it seems to me that there are a lot of bridges that have been built and are being built. And I'm not really sure what traditional peace building means anymore. And when I looked at the survey, it was pretty evident that we have everything from nuclear security to gender issues. And as was suggested, it raises a question what was left out and not only somebody's father who has worked on peace building, it wasn't recorded, but there are lots of activities that don't have the P word in it that obviously some could make a plausible argument under a loose constructionist definition of peace building that are relevant. For example, at Carnegie, we've had a longstanding program in reforming higher education in a sub-Saharan African countries. So what's that to do with peace building? Well, if that is contributing to the health of the university, which is contributing to health and well-being in society, then that could also be included. Exactly. Well, one thing that I've noticed, and it was part of the planning of this conference for this year, is I have not in at least three years had the conversation of, is peace building a field? Because that was the conversation for so long. Are we a field or are we just some, Field in the making, so I have to put it. But I think people are also comfortable with the fact that this is a very integrative field. And so that there is some border with these other fields that we can help, we can encompass. I mean, the World Bank just last year, we were at their FCB conference. So the World Bank just last year, rejiggered their strategic goals and overlaid five, one of which is fragile conflict and violent states, the World Bank. It's a squarely development. And another one I think is gender-based issues. And so I think there's sort of this understanding that it isn't, okay, here's peace building, okay, here's development, here's, and I don't think we need to water it down. I don't know that we should be merging with the Environmental Grantmakers Association. But I think that there are some, there's a Venn diagram where they all kind of, we can help each other out across sectors and learn. Yeah, I think the SDG process also brought this, in a very central way where we now actually do have a goal focused around peaceful and inclusive societies and governance. And it was in a highly political process that led to that. I mean, I know there was an intense amount of negotiating and earlier on in the process, a lot of people saying, this shouldn't be part of a development agenda, and that it was quite heated at moments. But ultimately, I think it speaks volumes to the fact that at that big of a forum, you actually have that as a central part of an entire development platform. There's a kind of deja vu all over again, sense to this for me. I started in philanthropy at the end of the Cold War. And in those days, a lot of us were talking about how the emergent problems in the world were inherently interdisciplinary, and therefore we needed to have interdisciplinary solutions. And one could argue 25 years later, that's even more the case. And I think in terms of peace building, the fact that it is so expansive and integrative is to use a cliche, both a challenge and an opportunity. It's an opportunity because it's inclusive and it can reach out. But it's challenging particularly for some funders because it's difficult to get your arms around. Well, I wonder, we have a good sense, I think within our community, of what the advocacy looked like around goal 16. And as we came up to the World Humanitarian Summit, Nancy told us this morning that peace and conflict prevention were very much in the center of those discussions. What did the philanthropy discussions look like during that advocacy period? Were you involved with advocacy? Were you thinking about your own programs, reading the tea leaves about how some of these new orientations would be shaping up? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, over the past couple of years, we've been developing a new initiative at Humanity United, which is completely focused around prevention of deadly violence and responding to the risk of violence. And this was while the SDG process was being negotiated. And I mean, I think it really did speak to a desire, particularly post-2013 with the crises in South Sudan and Central African Republic, in which we really were caught off guard and did not have the tools or resources to respond early and to anticipate those crises. And so with the SDG process happening simultaneously, I think what it really did was animate and deepen our commitment to be working in this prevention field squarely, as well as I think a lot of excitement that we're not alone in this and that there's a huge amount of energy and a burgeoning community that we also want to be better linked to. And at Carnegie, was that kind of on the radar or were you kind of defining problems a little differently? Well, let me put it this way, if you're directing a program on international peace and security and you're looking at the condition of the world as it is, that means either, someone like me is either needed more than ever or needs to find different employment. But the challenge is that a lot of what we're doing was already relevant to the new goals. But our view, we've tried over the years as best as the specifics of the agenda has changed to not succumb to the kind of institutional ADHD that can lead us astray. So under certain rubrics, whether it's nuclear security or relations with China and Russia, a lot of these subset issues that were reflected in the new goals we're addressing, but not, we've kept our eye on these for a long time and how they've evolved. And just to add that the Council on Foundation, one of our sister organizations, very, very broad, but they have a track right now that they're looking at the SDGs and how funders can play a role. They're starting to facilitate some conversations. And the European funders are actually pretty jazzed up about the SDGs. So I know the European Foundation Center is particularly looking at how funders relate to the SDGs. So I wonder if we could talk for just a minute about some of the gaps that we saw in the index. One that was mentioned already was prevention. And I had just a couple of thoughts about that. The first was in our fragility panel this morning, Sarah Cliff left us with a challenge of how do we have a better typology of violence prevention, comfort prevention, CVE, and atrocities prevention. And then I also had a conversation with Aaron at lunch this week when I asked him, Brother Bluntly, well, what did he think about the fact that prevention was only 6% of this total? And Aaron, I don't know if you'd like to give me your answer, which I thought was actually very comforting. Aaron works at the Carnegie Corporation in New York. No, no, no. Sorry about that. My answer to the question on conflict prevention was that I think there are a lot of, it depends on how you code some of these programs that different foundations are working on. And then there's a lot of things that go into conflict prevention. Conflict doesn't come out of one thing. It's more bulbous than that. It comes from society, which anybody who's in the system's thinking earlier understands is quite complex. A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil. So kind of my summary of that comment would be that I think there's a lot of things that go into conflict prevention that wouldn't necessarily be quoted specifically as conflict prevention. And so if we were to change the way we coded it, we perhaps would get a larger number that we would say is focused on conflict prevention. But I also understand why you would code it in certain ways. Well maybe Rachel, I don't know if you wanna say something. Yeah, so I was actually talking to CSO this morning about that very thing. So the Conflict Stabilization Office of the State Department. So basically the conflict prevention piece, we actually did it as a strategy as well, prevention efforts overall. And that also was only 6%. And it's a little bit broader and encapsulates a little bit more. It includes track two diplomacy. It includes work on mass atrocities and genocide, which actually is not so much preventative that we're seeing in the grants. It's actually more reactive. So it's working with survivors of atrocities, working with prosecutions, which again, there are those that make the argument that is part of prevention. So it's a circle and where does it stop and where does it end and where do you start and finish it? And so it is pretty broad. We did end up with a pretty broad definition of what constitutes prevention efforts. And even within that broad definition, it still is a pretty low number. And definitely there are some issues within the field itself on defining what is prevention and what isn't. But I think that what's represented in the index definitely isn't as conservative as it could be. So the number in fact is probably a little bit higher than what it actually is. If you kind of remove some of the things that some may not consider prevention, like for example, prosecuting perpetrators 20 years later.  I think only four grants in 2013 went specifically to early warning systems specifically. So it is a very, very small piece. So in that early warning, just some of us who were funding early warning 20 years ago, the argument then was, and I think now is still the same, that we know enough about early warning. It's what to do when we have the early warning. So maybe that prevention, quiet prevention has defined 20 years as Aaron and others have described has evolved. So. Yeah, I think also the response language is a little bit different as well. So we didn't see like early, we used early response as a keyword as well and it didn't yield a lot of, because most people don't talk about their program as early response, right? You talk about election monitoring or access to justice. So we did put in words like that to pull in those grants because again, our first round of things, we had early warning, early response and it was zero. We said there's gotta be more than zero and there was, we just had to dig a little deeper. I mean, I think just what this conversation just now, the past couple of minutes is illustrating is that it's very complex, it's tough as you all know all too well and one of our challenges was to make something that is so 3D, so tough, so evolving and dynamic into something that those not in this room, those that we need to convince to fund more, do more, get more active that they can feel like they're part of it, they get it, they're like, oh, okay, I got it. This is what peace and security, this is what peace building is, this is how I can plug in and so I think we did the best that we could. I'm not trying to be defensive about it but it's gonna be hard as you all know and it's, I think we're trying to, part of what we're trying to do is to make it so that, make it like, yeah, 3D thing into a 2D thing so that it's a little bit more accessible to folks and I don't know, I mean, maybe in a few years it'll look a little bit differently and we'll have different keywords and that's, we really do want you to, I mean, we do say this, we're not just saying it, we really do want your input and your help and we are gonna be forming another advisory committee, hopefully, right, yeah, for this year. So, yeah. What form of feedback would be most helpful? The email, is there a place to comment on the website? E-mailing, my email address is on the website so if you go to the, think frequently ask questions about us, you can find it there and I would love to get emails from people, honestly. Yeah, really, no, really. Before I open up to the floor, so I know many people have questions, I wonder if I could ask each of the four of you a question which is, for next year's index, what would make you most happy to see included or changed in next year's index? I know Rachel's answer. Rachel, can I do a start? So for me, we had our little spectrum of conflict and right now that's how the grants are divided so I'm hoping we're gonna change that so that we're looking more in depth at the issues themselves so next year hopefully you'll be able to look at peace building, see the funders, see more information about the grants themselves, see where those funders are working so just more comprehensive and a better resource for people in the field and also foundations as well. Thank you. I think that when you get the comments from various foundations and foundation offices are not usually shy about expressing their opinion whenever their work is displayed in a report that next year's will be even more nuanced in terms of the categories, the coding and that will make some foundations even happier. I definitely agree with Steve's point and I think it would also be wonderful to see how we can actually use the index over the course of the coming year to be generating greater resources for some of these very under-resourced gaps that we've already discussed. So would part of that perhaps be working with our community, could we be doing op-eds or other kinds of social media or outreach? So there's kind of this communication between the funding community and the grantee community about where priorities could be. Yes. I do. Yes, please use this as the basis of, I mean Rachel said it, how you can use it, you know, of op-eds of drawing more attention to the field, helping us make it better. One thing that I, et cetera, et cetera. And we have plenty of ideas. So do get in touch. One thing that I would add that I think could make it better is, and we're trying, and you kind of got a preview of this at the annual meeting, is that it does not include operating foundations. It does not include individuals. This does not include bilateral or multilateral aid, which we know is a lot. So we're trying to work with our partners, the Foundation Center to see if there's a way in which we can integrate that data and again, make it a more comprehensive picture. I'm a sense of empathetic with the challenge and it seems to me the tension between defining the field, whatever we call it, too broadly and too narrowly. But many of us have been involved in the debate over what it is. I think we have to move beyond the semantic argument. But by the same token, I wonder, I've used this line in many contexts and it occurred to me in peace building, the Moliere character who discovered he'd been speaking pros all his life. There are many peace builders who might be surprised that they're doing peace building, but that's okay, but it does also raise the specter of diluting the object of analysis. So I don't have a brilliant idea on how to balance that, but I think that that's a living challenge with this kind of survey. When you say diluting, do you mean it's not really peace building or do you mean in the sense that what we really should be looking at is capturing those stray electrons who actually are doing peace building and get them into the orbit? Well, again, it's sadly, it gets down to a semantic argument. A Norwegian NGO on whose board I served two weeks ago decided to drop the term peace building from their title. And the argument was that it's kind of passe and too narrow. And I was the only American on the board. And by the way, you in particular, Mellon, you'd be intrigued to know that the new term that came up was conflict resolution. So I very diplomatically is the only gringo in the group trying to explain that there had been a discussion about this a couple of decades ago. And in fact, peace building is rather expansive and everything you're trying to do.  So if we look at it, if we can somehow delimit this universe, so it isn't everything and nothing at the same time, I think we'll be okay. So interesting. So you're not changing their programming. It was just the way of what's being described. Okay. On that note, let's open up the board for questions. And why don't we cluster a few at a time? We have mics going around. John Rudy, Lines for Peace Building and Elizabeth Town College. We've heard this week, the Institute of Economics and Peace, I believe, says violence costs 14 trillion for the globe every year. If we could have like 0.5% of that, we'd have a pie so big we'd be obscenely obese. Can we connect? Are you connecting the social impact bonds and the social enterprise in that database? And would that just, if those kinds of things come online, as they come online, how is that going to change the nature of what this panel's discussion? Great, thank you. Let's cluster a couple of questions. Beatrice? Yeah, Jackie Wilson. Very interesting presentation. My question is about the other, if I'm understanding the numbers correctly, 9% of the funding. So what is the other 90% going toward? Are there big categories? I haven't been on the website. And is the reason for the gap in peace building funding because of challenges with monitoring, evaluation and delivering are being able to demonstrate impact? Or is it some other reason that kind of builds on what this gentleman was asking? Thank you. Beatrice, down here. Hi, Beatrice Polini. My question, it doesn't have to do with eliminating the field or the definition, but the remarks Steve you made about the agenda the past two days and the type of issues and the type of disciplines were brought in. But there are all those two. One of the challenges, the big challenges is that, and as you know, because we've known each other for a long time, among many people here, I like to take risks. And I think the way we, he said yes. The way we, and it doesn't mean that we fail when we do that, but we try to push the envelope and try to understand better, try to find ways to do our job better. The problem is how do we finance when we bring in other disciplines, when we do things that are unusual? There are countless of projects. Many people here could talk about the projects I've tried to do that were on the edge. And you cannot find, it's very difficult to find funding in the usual suspect, in the usual donors. Very difficult, for instance, the terms of neuroscience in the neuroscience community, they have trouble finding money to work on that. So how do we, how do we resolve that? And sometimes we're lucky to have people like USIP put in the first, taking the first risk, but you still have to raise more money if you want to do the work. So how can we, how do we do that? And we have people like Ina who are helping to push the envelope. But I think on a number of topics, we need to find a way to tap into new resources in order to take those risks, to risk to fail, to push the envelope of what we are doing and bring other disciplines and other people in our field. So why don't we take these three because they're such substantive questions. The first was on the remark of just the percentage of the 14 trillion, but are we also looking at some of the social impact bond, social enterprise kinds of funding? From Jackie, where is the other 90% going and is M and E still a barrier for our field for funding? And then the question around, how do you fund risk? Do you want to start, Alex? And take any or all. Yeah, I, I'll just take the one of them and I think Rachel has more of the data she can answer that a bit. But at the PSFG annual meeting a few weeks ago, this is a panel that we specifically had was on different types of investments and different types of social impact bonds and divesting investing things like that. I mean, it's not exactly what you're talking about, nor what the first gentleman asked about specifically, but I think there are conversations that are starting or continuing to happen. I haven't, I've only been in the field 10 years now. So perhaps, you know, maybe this is deja vu again, but there are new ways of thinking. I think two, to that point, that maybe to answer a little bit your question, there's a surge in Silicon Valley philanthropists who do have experience. And if you're not failing 80% of the time, then you're doing something wrong. And I think that thinking is coming online now and you're starting to see some new foundations popping up who have much higher risk tolerance. And there's lots of reasons why, you know, different types of risk tolerances which my colleagues can talk about if they want. But I think it's, it's not an easy answer, but I think there are some new players on the scene. I mean, I think this point about failure is a really, really important one and I think our community as a whole needs to get much better about talking about failure and about being honest about it. Because, and donors absolutely, I think have a really important role in encouraging more open and honest feedback about failure. Because I understand that if, you know, you're talking to a donor about a project or an initiative that didn't turn out the way you thought it would, that can make you quite nervous about that perhaps jeopardizing future funding. And I think that's, you know, a concern that's, you know, not an irrational one on the part of grantees. And, you know, at H.U. we talk a lot about adopting a fail smart approach. And by that we mean, you know, if we are on this, you know, in the Silicon Valley more risky side of the philanthropy space, you know, if we're saying that we want to take risks and we want to be funding on the cutting edge, we need to be comfortable with the fact that some of the things we fund will not succeed. What's important though is understanding why it didn't succeed. And then how can that learning then inform future partnerships as well as then how can we be pushing that learning out to other donors and other actors in this space? My boss, the inimitable Vritan Grigorian has written and talked about what he calls the illuminating failure. And at Carnegie, we understand the philosophy behind that, but it's difficult in practice. If I had enough illuminating failures, I probably wouldn't be here today. But let me say a couple of words about the new philanthropists and the old dinosaur philanthropists. Because as you well know, after the financial crisis, there was this, I was gonna say, obsession with, and I will you say obsession, with strategic philanthropy. And what's happened in a number of philanthropies is that our guidelines have become more narrow. That's been the practical effect. So trying to be interdisciplinary, trying to be creative, recognizing as we did 25 years ago that these are inherently interdisciplinary problems when the actual guidelines are written in a very narrow way suggests great creativity needed on both the part of the grant writer and the grant officer. That's old philanthropy. And new philanthropy, I think there is a great opportunity. However, and I claim no real understanding of that sector of philanthropy. But it seems to me that the real challenge is explaining that promoting positive social change is a long-term undertaking. As we heard this morning, in the World Development Report in 2011, generational 20 years. And my sense is from the handful of new philanthropists I've met, that there is perhaps even more impatience to see the fruits of their investments as they did in the private sector. So the discussion, Robert Sigliano's way termed it, you need to have a North Star and a Near Star. I think the Near Star is more easily addressed in the new philanthropic world. The North Star, which is really important one, investing individuals and institutions over the long haul will be the greater challenge. But I speak from a great foundation of ignorance on that subject. And John Paul Adirak in his remarks this week talked about decades thinking. So you're not seeing a trend in foundations towards that kind of 10-year, 15-year support. No. Just checking to see if there's some undercurrent. But I do think you see long-term commitment to the same goals and ideas. It's not like foundations are flipping every three to five years. They do have 20, 30-year strategies. The grant cycles may just be short within those 20-year, 30-year strategies. Even if they are supporting. Strategies or issue areas. Because I'm not sure what strategies mean really. Strategies probably maybe some five to 10 years, depending. I think it's difficult to have a 20-year strategy in any context. That's Keynes said. But just in regards to the other 99%. So we are part of the 1%. So that actually is, you can find some information on the Foundations Center website, but it's really in a variety of areas. Not every sector has done a mapping. So it's not really a beautiful pie that you can just look at and say, okay, education is 75%, healthcare is 20% or whatnot. So there is some information on the website, but we are definitely a very small piece of the pie. In terms of including social impact bonds and alternative forms of funding in the index, it is a challenge. The Foundations Center, unfortunately, is a little bit bound by their name. They do work with foundation data. And so even operating foundations, it's difficult. They support who essentially fund their own work. It's difficult to quantify sometimes the amount of money that is being poured into certain areas and kind of match the data with grants data. So we are working with them on it and it's a long-term endeavor to get them to include different types of support and funding. And also just to echo Alex, the individual donors and next-gen funders as well are a huge opportunity. And so I hope that you don't see this as, okay, there's only 38 funders. What are we gonna do now? Because there are so many new funders entering the scene and looking for things to fund and who have enormous amounts of money. And so we just need to tap into them and convince them to get on our boat and join our team. So we have time, I think, for two more really quick questions and then maybe an answer and a wrap-up before we end our day. So yes. Thank you so much. Hello. Can you hear me? Joanne Lauder-Young Kelly with Corona Center for Peace Building. I live and work in Myanmar. So very challenging context and a lot of discussions in the last year about funding and funders. Those more cynical than I, who talk about the Peace Building Industrial Complex. And a lot of discussions around conflict sensitivity and Peace Nexus did a report recently looking at South Sudan and Myanmar and donors and conflict sensitivity. They found that conflict sensitivity tends to get pushed down the chain to the implementers. And by the time you have an accepted proposal and a contract and a log frame, you're really caught between a rock and a hard spot to implement if conflict sensitivity wasn't part of the country strategy of the donor in the first place. So I'm curious to know your thoughts on that if any of your organizations, if that's being discussed, if you've ever used a conflict sensitivity advisor or just your thoughts about having that more at the strategic level then sort of pushed down the chain to the implementation level. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Bob Rie. Woo! With some peace direction, USA. For Rachel, could you comment on the amount of funding for beneficiaries or United States? And also then to broaden to the other funders. What's kind of the discussion in your space around the absence of peace in the United States and the role of philanthropy and particularly your types in U.S. domestic peace building? So would you like to start, Rachel? Then we'll go down. Sure, so there's actually, when we developed this, we realized there's actually two questions, right? It's recipients who are in the United States and working on issues within the United States because we do have a lot of organizations that are doing U.S. policy advocacy versus organizations based in the U.S. that are doing work abroad. And so we tried to separate that out and you'll see in the report there's a little discussion on that. And we did find that it's not an 80-20, it's less than that. So most organizations are, I think it's just above 50%, I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's not all U.S.-based organizations. There is a lot of funding going to other countries and other contexts. You can see it on the website, peace building specifically in this iteration, you cannot see the breakdown of where the funding is going by region geographically, but you can see within the resolving space, kind of how that funding is broken down. But it's really clear on the website, so I really encourage you to look on that on the website, it's beautifully represented. On the conflict sensitivity question, in recent years we haven't supported direct on the ground peace building. We have supported a lot of research that elicits and applies local knowledge, which is our mantra, particularly in Africa. And almost as a matter of course, and by the way, just to mention, we know that local voices and getting local insights has been around for a long time. We don't romanticize the local, we don't treat it as a monolith, but conflict sensitivity issues inevitably come up when people are writing who are living in conflict-affected regions, so it's been a knock-on effect of some of the work we've supported. I mean to the conflict sensitivity point, I'll use the example of our work in Burundi over the past year, where Humanity United has worked with a number of groups on the ground, as well as some international advocacy as well. And with our grant making in Burundi, we intentionally used or gave our grantees maximum flexibility to adapt their programs, particularly over the past year as the crisis has really unfolded. Some of the projects and ideas that we had over a year ago by the end of the grant cycle were pretty much irrelevant. And so the way that we did that was, we set up monthly phone calls with our grantees that we did in lieu of them filling out a log frame and used those as really real-time learning opportunities and those conversations definitely fed into our subsequent grant making, but also made sure that we were up to speed on how things were changing on the ground and how our partners were adapting accordingly. Yeah, and I'll, I mean my sort of last message as we're running short on time is that, you know, the peace and security funders group exists because funders want to collaborate with one another and with partners. So Mellian and I have a very regular check-in. So we do plug in, we're trying to not just, you know, be over here and every funder sort of doing their own thing. We work regularly with USIP, in fact. We have, the risk end is a very close partner of the PSFG and even within PSFG, I mean there are two working groups that come to mind, the locally-led peace-building working group where funders are really trying to hear from those on the ground and share lessons and then there's the conflict and atrocities prevention working group where, again, there are bridges amongst funders themselves but then also between funders and the practitioners who are on the ground.  Not that people are saying that that's what they're doing but it's what they're, except for Steve. Steve's never in his office. He's always on the road, as is Mary. But I think that there's really a, what was, someone who was with us for our annual meeting who is not a funder but was there in the capacity of representing a funder said that, you know, it's really, she pulled me aside and said this, it's really heartening that you're having these really tough conversations and that you do it with great intention and with great humility and with really just open minds and open hearts and she's like, I didn't know that this happened and it does every day and this is why Rachel and I are employed. And so, you know, we do need email us because we do want to engage. And so that's sort of what I would like to close on what I would like to know to let all of you know as well. Well, I want to thank all of you first for this tremendous resource. It was just incredibly rich and seeing, I know the work that you put into it over the course of the year. So thank you for that but also to thank all of you for your partnership that just in the very truest sense of the word, I feel that you are engaging with us, you care about our values and we really feel supported in the best possible way. So thank you for being with us today and for your candor and your insights. And it's time now for us to close our conference and I'll say a few words then Nancy Lindmore can have the final word but every year at a Passover Seder you say next year in Jerusalem, I'd like to say next year to USIP and for all of us to come together again for another set of wonderful conversations and fellowship. So many people have come up to me over the last few days and said, I feel like I'm home, I feel like I can talk about these issues that it's just a place of not only excitement but also a bit of sanctuary. So I thank all of you for making that atmosphere possible and being with us. I wanna thank all of our peace builders who came from around the world and it just was very striking to have your voices here and I also want to thank all of our American colleagues for being very open about that peace building doesn't happen over there but we need a lot of it here at home. I'd like also if we could bring our AFP full time staff here so we can give a group, thank you for everyone who's worked so hard. So I don't know, is Sarah here? Thank you, so thanks to all of you, Emily, Liz or Bob. Did you want to have a few words before we close? Well, last week I attended for a whole week a conference of Europe's leading academies of sciences and I am here to tell you it was dull. This week, this week, 155 speakers which made us a lot of new friends. Wonderful issues, evaluation, finance, youth, team building, storytelling, proposals to work on media which I think we better take advantage of systems. We launched a really important report on smart security which is necessary for smart peace and by golly I hope one of these wonderful funders will help us with a marketing strategy for something that I think will have worldwide implications. The SDG-16, the neuroscience.  So thank you very much, bravo to you and bravo to you and you. Thank you Bob for making this day possible at USIP. Well I will just simply add my thanks to everybody who's here today. What a great day and the close of three really fantastic days. I think a conversation that's happening at a time that is more important than ever. And it may in fact be iterative. I'm looking off stage here where we're rediscovering truths that we knew or practices that we've known in the past as Steve mentioned but the time has never been more urgent and we are seeing an important coalescence where the World Bank, as Alex was saying, held a fragility form in which the overwhelming banner was no peace without development, no development without peace. So there's an important moment of coalescence here. The conversations that you all have had, I think are critical for validating, for coalescing, for crystallizing things that we're all thinking and doing, we are delighted here at USIP to be able to have this event here for the fifth year of partnership. Alliance for Peace Building is an incredibly important partner for USIP and it encompasses this extraordinary membership that you have. So I want just to once again thank everybody for being here at USIP today. Thank you to Robert Berg for your wonderful leadership and energy and please join me in once again giving it up for Melanie who has been a stalwart in this field for so long. I like your membership surveys. And her wonderful team, thank you everybody. Enjoy the long weekend.