The next item of business is portfolio questions. The portfolio questions today is social justice, housing and local government. If a member wishes to request a supplementary question, they should press the request-to-speak button during the relevant question or enter the letter R in the chat function. Again, I would make a plea in order to get as many members in as possible for succinct questions and answers to match. We heard at FMQs earlier this afternoon about a report by Glasgow University in the Glasgow Centre for Population that, due to Tory austerity, 20,000 more deaths in Scotland than expected were recorded in an eight-year period. What recent engagement has had with the UK Government regarding the impact of the cost-of-line crisis on poverty levels in Scotland so that we can avoid similar excess deaths in the future? I certainly share the member's concern, as expressed by the First Minister, about that shocking report. The First Minister and the Deputy First Minister have made repeated calls for immediate action to support households following the UK mini-budget. The Deputy First Minister has again written to the Chancellor seeking a reversal of the damage inflicted on people who are already bearing the brunt in having to choose between going hungry or cold. We will continue to use the limited-power and finite budget available to mitigate the impact of actions that, under minor efforts to tackle poverty and to press the UK Government for targeted support for householders and businesses, increases to social security and for greater financial powers and resources. That report that Paul McClellan referred to was looking back to the previous austerity, and it is very frightening indeed that we could see that repeated again and more so with a new era of austerity, which, of course, we want to avoid. Paul McClellan? I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. There is no doubt that UK Government policies are adding huge pressure on those who are already struggling to stay afloat. Does the cabinet secretary share my frustrations that, while the Scottish Government is doing all that it can tell the people, the reality is that there is a limit to what can be achieved without the full fiscal powers and boring powers that the UK Government has? Cabinet secretary, I share that frustration, and while the decisions of the UK Government continue to put people into hardship, we have allocated almost £3 billion this year from our fixed budget, which is a budget that is worth £1.7 billion less than it was in December due to inflation. The harsh reality of a fixed budget means that every pound that we spend to help with rising costs will have to be funded by reductions elsewhere, and that is why it is vital that this Parliament should have the full powers to be able to tackle poverty and the cost of living and support those in need. Ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to provide additional financial resources for the third sector organisations that are on the front line in providing advice and support services as the cost of living crisis continues to deepen. The third sector is hugely diverse, often providing lifeline services to our most vulnerable communities. That is why we have invested £12.5 million to support the provision of free income maximisation and welfare and debt advice this year. Although we do all we can, our largely fixed budgets and limited fiscal powers mean that we need the UK Government to take urgent action to support those in need. We continue to deliver on key commitments to the third sector around fairer funding by providing multi-year funding where we can to provide much-needed stability in those uncertain times. In the summer, I met a wide range of third sector organisations across West Scotland, including the Lockwinock Community Pantry and Starterpacks and Verclyde. New research from SEVO has revealed the precarious situation that third sector organisations are facing, with figures showing that 64 per cent of third sector organisations have reported an increase in demand and 61 per cent have described facing imminent financial challenges. Many indeed are worried about how they will keep the lights on and the doors open. Will the cabinet secretary commit to establishing a new third sector resilience fund, as was the case at the start of the pandemic, to ensure that third sector organisations can continue to support the most vulnerable rather than being focused on their own survival? Paul O'Kane raises some important points. He is quite right to highlight the work of important front-line organisations that are really helping people during the cost of living crisis. SEVO has estimated that the public sector is a whole investor of £1.8 billion each year to support the work of charities and social enterprises. Of that, around £500 million comes from the Scottish Government through a broad range of programmes, including supporting mental wellbeing, community empowerment, children, families, health and social care. We are talking to the sector about how we move more to multi-year funding, because we know that stability is important not least to be able to retain and recruit staff, so we will continue to have those discussions. As we take forward discussions through the emergency budget review and the budget beyond that, of course we will give consideration to the points that the member raises. Cabinet Secretary, in the debate on Tuesday night, you said that your officers and yourself meet regularly with SEVO to talk about different issues. Will you commit now for yourself to meet with SEVO to talk about three-year funding packages? Will you commit to meeting with them? As I have just said to Paul O'Kane and my answer to him, we will continue to meet with SEVO and others to talk about multi-year funding. That is what we are doing already. We will continue to have those meetings, but the point that I need to make to Jeremy Balfour is that if we see continued reductions to our budgets, either through inflation and the £1.7 billion reduction in value of existing budgets, plus the potential £18 billion worth of cuts to public services that could come at us from the UK Government decisions, that puts at risk funding across the board, including the support that we give to the third sector. Therefore, I urge Jeremy Balfour to be having the same discussions with his UK counterparts about the importance of maintaining Scottish budgets for those very reasons. As a former third sector worker, I recognise just how much organisations across Scotland support our communities. It is abundantly clear that additional funding is required from the UK Government to meet the demands of the current cost crisis, especially as the cabinet secretary has outlined the £1.7 billion reduction in our budget due to inflation. Therefore, what engagement the Scottish Government has had with other devolved administrations regarding that specific issue? The Deputy First Minister spoke with the finance ministers from Wales and Northern Ireland last month, who are facing similar pressures. The Deputy First Minister and his counterpart wrote to the chancellor last week to request an urgent meeting and called for additional funding to deal with that crisis. It is really important that that meeting takes place, because it is not just the Scottish Government that is voicing those concerns. The same concerns are being voiced from the Welsh Government and from the Northern Ireland Assembly as well. 3. Fulton Gregor To ask the Scottish Government what its response is regarding the impact on Scotland of the UK Government's reported plans to withdraw the Bill of Rights Bill. It was very welcome to hear the UK Government postpone their dangerous, ill-conceived Bill of Rights Bill, which was an unwelcome attempt to private all of the rights and freedoms that are the foundations of a modern democratic society. It would also have undermined the Scottish Parliament and the devolution settlement. I was therefore concerned by comments at the weekend from the UK Justice Secretary who said that he remained committed to reforming the Human Rights Act. I would instead urge the UK Government to reverse the plans and instead focus on making rights real for everyone across the whole of the UK. Fulton Gregor I thank the minister for that response. I wonder if she can outline what steps the Scottish Government is taking to ensure the protection of EU, international and domestic human rights law in Scotland as a right-wing UK Government, whether it is through the Bill of Rights or just a general approach to the United Kingdom, continue to threaten them. In contrast to the regressive approach of the UK Government, our priority is to strengthen the domestic legal protection and practical application of international human rights standards. We have already committed to introducing a new landmark human rights bill during the current Parliament and we also remain committed to incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as far as possible within devolved competence and to aligning with European law in devolved areas where that is possible and appropriate. I continue to urge the UK Government to reaffirm their commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. 4. Arianne Burgess To ask the Scottish Government how it will overcome reported significant skills and supply change shortages in the Highlands and Islands to deliver 11,000 rural and island homes by 2032. The Scottish Government is aware of the global issues affecting construction that are impacting on affordable housing delivery. We are working closely with the construction industry and housing partners to mitigate this where possible and we operate a flexible grant system that can take account of increased costs. More than 6,000 affordable homes were delivered in rural and island communities over the previous Parliament and we have started towards our next target. We are aware of the barriers in those though and that is why we are developing a remote rural and islands housing action plan to help deal with that. 4. Arianne Burgess I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. While the challenge of the housing crisis in the Highlands and Islands is significant, so are the opportunities for job creation and investment. Therefore, can I ask the cabinet secretary to tell me what work has been done to estimate the required jobs and skills training programmes needed in the Highlands and Islands to tackle this crisis? 4. Arianne Burgess With partners, we have identified very much the opportunities that Arianne Burgess refers to around job creation and investment. We know that the skills are shorted, particularly in the construction industry. Skills development in Scotland and other partners are really important that we are encouraging young people into those trades and careers. That also has the benefit of keeping young people living in rural communities. It is not just about providing housing, although affordable housing is key. It is also about the jobs and other opportunities that go with that. I am very happy to keep Arianne Burgess updated about the progress that is being made. 5. Arianne Burgess As well as skills shortages, another issue that is affecting the delivery of new housing in the islands is the unwillingness of energy supply companies to install metres in new-build properties. I wonder whether the cabinet secretary might be minded to liaise with our cabinet secretary colleague Michael Matheson in making representations to him about how this market failure might be addressed, not least by lifting the ban on distribution network operators fitting metres while they install the supply in new properties in island communities. Liam McArthur raises an important point. It is not just an issue that affects Orkney and the islands, but it is an issue that has affected other new-builds, and it is being able to get them ready for occupation. That is very frustrating. I am happy to speak to colleagues and to come back to them. Of course, it is important that we raise those matters as frequently as we can to try to get progress made so that it does not hold up particularly affordable housing supply. 5. Arianne Burgess Some of the several severe unintended consequences of the SNP's rent-free proposals in the words of the Federation of Housing Associations has a negative impact on the development of new homes, improvements to existing stock and pursuit of net zero targets and a reduced development of rented homes in both the social and private sectors will inevitably reduce availability where supplies are already stretched. What analysis has the Scottish Government done on the impact of the legislation going through at the moment on housing availability in rural and island areas? First, we have a good track record of delivering affordable housing, whether that is in urban Scotland or in rural and islands communities. The latest figures out on Tuesday show that we have delivered nearly 113,000 affordable homes since 2007, over 79,000 of which were for social rent. That is 62 per cent more affordable than how homes are being delivered per head of population than in England. The context to our affordable housing supply programme is important. We have debated over the last two days the emergency measures that we are taking in order to support tenants and avoid them losing their homes and not being able to afford their rents. We have spoken to the SFHA in detail about working in partnership around an agreement that can be put in place that makes sure that the investment in social housing, whether it is in rural Scotland or in urban Scotland, continues to be made. I would make this point that is being made not just by the Scottish Association of Landlords, but by the Scottish Association of Landlords. The key problem for landlords at the moment are interest rates that are putting their costs up. Perhaps a member should pay more attention to that. Finally, it is well seen what side the Tory party is on when it comes to supporting tenants. Perhaps that is why they are where they are in the polls that have been published this week. To ask the Scottish Government how the needs of mobile home residents will be incorporated into the final new deal for tenants. The consultation on our new deal sought views on how we can improve accessibility, standards and affordability choices across the whole rented sector. The focus of the question on mobile homes were issues for people who have a standard tenancy on a mobile home owned by a landlord. It also committed us to a post-implementation review of the mobile home site licensing scheme. We are now considering our responses to the consultation about issues for renters of mobile homes to identify potential gaps in protections that will inform our housing bill. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. The draft new deal for tenants underlined that the Scottish Government intends to carry out a post-implementation review of the residential mobile home sites licensing scheme before the end of this Parliament. While that is welcome news to constituents who live in mobile and park homes, many of them worry that issues around enforcement of the licensing scheme are not being addressed quickly enough. Can I ask the cabinet secretary's assurance that the needs of mobile home residents will be considered with the same urgency as those living in other types of residents? I am committed to ensuring that people living permanently in mobile homes have appropriate protections. The new site licensing system for residential mobile home sites was introduced in May 2017 and came fully into force in May 2019. It provides local authorities with a range of powers to help them to issue, manage and revoke site licences to ensure sites meet modern standards, including the behaviour of site owners. And while the review will seek improvements for the licensing framework, local authorities remain responsible for enforcing licensing conditions in the meantime. We are happy to keep the member updated of progress. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Pitch fees for my Cunningham South constituents who live on mobile sites rise by a maximum of RPI annually. The gap between RPI and CPI is increasing with pitch fees growing faster than pension incomes. Can I ask the Scottish Government to look at addressing this by moving uprating to CPI? Mobile home pitch fee increases are regulated under the Mobile Homes Act 1983. Under the act, there is a presumption that pitch fees rise by a maximum of RPI annually. We have heard concerns that the gap between RPI and CPI is growing with the result that pitch fees are growing faster than pension incomes. We will therefore undertake the required consultation on moving the basis of upgrading from RPI to CPI in time for the forthcoming housing bill. That would slow the rate of pitch fee increases in the future. I am happy again to keep the member updated. To ask the Government what action it has taken to tackle rural isolation and loneliness, particularly in the approach to the winter period. We recognise that challenges relating to isolation may be increasing in rural communities due to the pandemic and cost crisis. We support the national rural mental health forum, which helps people to maintain good mental health wellbeing by developing connections between rural communities. Our communities' mental health and wellbeing fund has provided £36 million to community groups to tackle isolation, loneliness and mental health inequalities, including 468 projects that support people disadvantaged by geographical location. Our forthcoming social isolation and loneliness plan will outline a range of actions across the Scottish Government that impact positively on social isolation and loneliness. The Tory-made cost of living crisis will do nothing other than exacerbate social isolation and loneliness, particularly for those living in rural areas such as Dumfries and Galloway in the Scottish Borders. People are being forced to make a choice between eating and heating, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation stated that 19 per cent of people in Scotland currently state that they cannot afford social outings. Can the minister outline any further action that the Scottish Government is taking to support people's wellbeing this winter? Does she agree with me that, ultimately, Scotland must have independence to be free from constantly mitigating the harms created by the UK Government? We are taking action within our devolved powers and fixed budget, which will help those facing the combined effects of higher energy bills, rising inflation and the impact of the UK Government's policies. Just last week, we launched a new cost of living website, so that people can find out about the help and support available to them. The Scottish Government has continually urged the UK Government to focus its efforts on those that are most impacted, but they have prioritised tax cuts and bankers' bonuses rather than help for those who need it the most. Yes, I very much agree that only through independence will we have the freedom to make the fiscal decisions required to ensure that Scotland prospers, and those who need financial support the most get it and are not forgotten. That website is www.gov.scot.com backslash cost of living support. I would urge everybody to have a look at that. Thank you. To ask the Scottish Government how it is ensuring the availability of affordable housing, including for students at Scottish universities. Scotland has led the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK with almost 113,000 affordable homes having been delivered since 2007, over 79,000 of which were for social rent, including nearly 20,000 council homes. The Scottish Government's per capita spending on affordable housing is more than three times higher than the UK Government's. We are also committed to delivering a student accommodation strategy for Scotland, informed in part by a review of the purpose-built student accommodation. The review will look at a number of issues including affordability and supply. I thank the minister for that response. In my own region, students at St Andrews University are being housed in Dundee due to a look of affordable local housing. We have heard students being advised to defer courses as they cannot find somewhere else to live. While the Government is not directly involved in student housing, it has to work with the universities, the majority of students are in social or private housing. While the rent freeze is welcome, there is still a housing crisis in Scotland, with more families now homeless and housing completions still below pre-COVID levels. When the housing bill will be introduced to Scotland, is the intention still next year, and how will it ensure increased provision of quality affordable housing? The timeframe for the housing bill is the same. The pre-COVID levels that the member referred to have been important because there has been a lag of recovery given the pause in construction and then trying to get things back on track has been challenging. As the member herself said, she recognised that the Scottish Government has no direct role in the placement of students in accommodation. However, we are working with impacted institutions to better understand the issues and to help to seek urgent resolutions. Further meetings are scheduled to take place over the coming weeks. In the discussions with institutions, we have cited a number of challenges that institutions have sought to provide reassurance on the steps that they have taken to expand the availability of accommodation to students. Our affordable housing supply programme continues to expand with projects coming in from all parts of Scotland. Of course, we want to encourage that, but we will work with institutions in the shorter term to see if there is anything more that can be done. Can I ask the cabinet secretary to outline how the emergency cost of living legislation progressing through Parliament this week will support students in college or university halls of residence or other types of purpose-built accommodation? The Parliament, the emergency legislation will ensure that student tenants in the mainstream private rented sector and in student accommodation, both university and college halls of residence and purpose-built student accommodation, will not see their rent rise and will ensure that they can remain in their homes. The legislation will be in place until 31 March next year. We recognise that tenancies in halls of residence and purpose-built student accommodation are structured differently from other types of tenancies. However, we are committed to the parity of protection. International evidence demonstrates that, for many universities in different countries, Ireland being one of the key ones, the introduction of rent controls has resulted in students being further away from being able to access private rented accommodation. Can I ask the cabinet secretary to look at what impact the Government has done on any work to ensure that rents are affordable and that people are not evicted through the winter period and that they remain in their homes? It just astonishes me that, yet again, the Tories are always on the wrong side of the argument and are never on the side of people most impacted by the cost of living crisis. Perhaps that is why they are where they are in public support. We will continue to support universities, many of which have had issues for quite some time, well before any discussion was had around the emergency legislation. We will continue to work with those institutions to help them to resolve some of those issues and to get on with the work that we are doing to make sure that we continue to expand the affordable housing supply programme. I can squeeze in question 8 if I get to sync questions and answers. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government how its housing strategy will support action to deliver the target of 1 million homes to be retrofitted with zero carbon heating systems by 2030. Housing to 2040 and our heat and building strategy work together to deliver our statutory targets for climate change and fuel poverty commitments, like the aim that all new homes delivered for social rent are zero emissions by 2026. Provide a strong foundation for our heat and buildings programme as we continue to retrofit all homes by 2045. We are also committed to introducing a new housing standard by 2025. We will explore how the proposed housing standard and heat and building strategy can be aligned to achieve fair and just implementation. The Ecoforce scheme is a UK Government scheme of value of £1 billion which councils can apply for and designed to improve the energy efficiency of low-income and vulnerable households. What is the Scottish Government doing to encourage all Scottish councils to take full advantage of the scheme? I will certainly get the minister to write to the member about that specific point about the scheme, but I would say to him that for Scotland alone, we are allocating at least £1.8 billion just in Scotland over the course of this Parliament to accelerate deployment of heat and energy efficiency measures and to support those that are least able to pay. We have set up the green heat finance taskforce to recommend ways to increase individual and private sector investment.


The main challenges the UK banking sector faces today is the regulatory environment we're operating in, as well as the overall economic environment we're in. And dealing with those challenges requires being very focused on capital and liquidity. Fortunately, most banks have a much stronger capital position today than they did three or four years ago. At Barclays, for example, our Tier 1 capital ratio has gone from 5% to 4 years ago to over 11% today, and we have over 160 billion pounds of surplus liquidity. Our relationship with the CBI is very, very important to Barclays. Both the CBI and Barclays share the objective of getting the UK's private sector to grow again. And to grow requires having more confidence in businesses and the economy generally. Our initiatives and partnering with the CBI are designed to foster and boost that confidence. Export growth is the key theme from virtually every UK company I visit. Most of the growth they're experiencing in their businesses come from export-related activities. So being able to boost that activity was important to us as well as to the CBI and the economy generally. At Barclays, we're very focused on helping our customers deal with their cross-border activities. In a word, the most important message from today is confidence. We need to collectively have confidence in the ability of the UK as a nation to compete. We also need to have confidence in our ability as individuals and businessmen to compete. Clearly at Barclays, we are confident we view the current environment we're in as an opportunity to invest in our businesses and to help our customers achieve their objectives.


Thanks everybody, good morning. It's nice to be here in San Jose. It's, I'm not complaining about the two hour commute from the city, it wasn't too bad. It is a pretty exciting time in terms of artificial intelligence general, generative AI in particular. You know, it's already impacting so much of the work that we do for mundane tasks. I'm using generative AI tools to write a weekly newsletter to advance medical research, which is really showing incredible positive signs of breakthrough, custom vaccines, cures for diseases that, you know, up until now we thought we didn't, it'd be years and years and years and decades away from finding real cures for these disease. So generative AI is just such a fundamental new technology. In fact, it's being compared really to the early days of the internet, that sort of for generative AI right now or at the same point in time that we were sort of in the Netscape early days of the internet. And I think that really relates to this concept of openness when it comes to generative AI because just like the internet, generative AI, large language model technology was really built on openness. And that's the big message I wanna leave you all with today. If you remember, one thing is that the thing that makes generative AI so great, the reason we got here and where we're going is because the world really wants to see an open AI ecosystem. Open source software that enables us to build foundation models, machine learning models and so forth, open data, open research. Every component in generative AI, people are thirsting for openness. It was built on open tools, tools like PyTorch, open data sets, open academic research. And today, unfortunately, we're starting to see a little bit of a trend moving away from openness in generative AI and towards more closed foundation models that are only accessible via APIs. Even worse, we're seeing calls from regulators in some corners of the world to ban open source foundation models out of some vague concerns that someday in the wrong hands, this technology could be too dangerous. I find those arguments pretty vague and pretty unconvincing. And in addition to sort of these theoretical, somewhat unconvincing concerns, our actual real concerns we should have about generative AI. Things like bias, ethics, hallucinations, data privacy, security, those are meaningful concerns we should all have. But when it comes to openness, I think it's a pretty open and shut case for lack of a better term. You know, we've heard arguments before about new technology and how that technology be an open and freely available to everyone is scary. In the 1990s, the US government tried to restrict open source cryptography. They even prosecuted Phil Zimmerman, the inventor of PGP, out of fear of this open technology. And what we learned in retrospect is that one, openness in cryptography didn't actually make the world a more dangerous place. It's actually made the world a more private and a more safe place. And it's allowed a ton of new form of innovation. And most importantly, and this is a big ethic of the Linux Foundation, open innovation isn't just a way to create interesting technology. We believe it is a basic freedom of expression. We also know how futile it is to try and lock down open innovation.  It's anti-competitive, stifles competition, restrictions on openness tend to benefit a small set of incumbents. And it's also just technically kind of almost impossible. One of my favorite lines about this is from Mustafa Suleman, the founder of DeepMind, who described the futility of trying to restrict open source as kind of like catching rain. So, you know, calls for restricting open AI, foundation models and tooling are futile at best and a sort of cynical regulatory capture by incumbents in its worst case. But those are just sort of like the tactics of it. I think my favorite argument for why AI and generative AI needs to be open come from Percy Lang, the, who's at Stanford University and heads their human AI lab. And he talks about the three fundamental things that generative AI and openness of generative AI benefit from. And that is transparency, trust and attribution. Transparency into how these models actually work. You know, one of the things that is a little bit odd about large language models is we really don't quite know right now the world how they actually work. And by not knowing how they actually work, it's very difficult to get the second attribute which is trust, right? How do we know when hallucinations happen why that's happening? How do we know where the data is coming from? How do we know that privacy problems aren't going to happen? It's through transparency that we get trust in these very immediate and specific concerns around privacy, bias, hallucination and other attributes. And that gets us to the final point around the benefit of openness which is attribution. Remember, in a foundation model, the model is the data and the data is the model essentially for lack of a better way of describing it the simplest way. And it's very important that we understand where this data comes from, who created the original data, who owns that data and so forth for privacy and for participation in the value chain. You've seen tons of different arguments and controversy around how writers, photographers, scientists, academics can all participate in sharing data whether they wanna share it freely or whether they wanna participate in some way in the value chain across the generative AI economies that are just now emerging. And at the Linux Foundation and in this crowd, I don't have to argue that hard for openness but one of the things that we decided to do is look broadly at how the world thinks of generative AI and how it relates to openness. So our research group went in September and kicked off a research study to ask these very questions. And from a big picture perspective, I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, the world is rapidly adopting generative AI tooling. Half of the organizations we talked to are already implementing these tools. The majority plan to the vast majority plan to significantly invest. Most people see it as important to their business and are embedding it in their existing products and workflows. In fact, the only thing holding people back right now are security and data privacy concerns as it relates to generative AI projects in their organizations. Anecdotally, I think one of the other things that are holding people back is that people are just now waking up to the fact that in order to benefit from large language models and AI, a predicate is getting your data act in order, having good structured data accessible and many enterprises aren't very good at that. But when we ask people specifically about openness when it comes to generative AI, the overwhelming answer was we want open. Almost all of the people that we talked to said that it's important that the technology that's used to build generative AI tooling and foundation models be open and be housed in neutral organizations that they can count on for long periods of time for such a fundamental technology as this. The vast majority of organizations, 41% versus 9%, the others being sort of neutral, wanted to see open source generative AI technology as opposed to proprietary solution. All of them wanted to collaborate in the open and support the collective inner-gravation that's happening and saw openness as easing integration into their products and services. They thought that the vast majority feel that just like Percy Lang described, the transparency that comes from open source really gives them confidence in terms of increased control over their data and transparency into data that they're using for business decisions and outcomes. So I'm pretty happy to see that the world not only wants open generative AI, I'm happy just this week in the European Union, regulators released the regulation on AI that they were working on. In the original drafts, there were actually restrictions on open source foundation models. I'm happy to see that that did not end up in the final legislation. And I'm even happier to see that almost the day after European regulators issued this legislation in France, we saw one of the most high-performing open source foundation models released, it's literally almost immediately. At the Linux Foundation, it's our goal to continue to provide a neutral home to first-class open source tools for building foundation models, machine learning models, from PyTorch to MLflow to others. We wanna continue to support standards like ONIX, which provide an open format for that represent deep learning models. Standards around unified acceleration in computing. Our unified acceleration foundation provides an open source programming model for acceleration in semiconductor and technology, things like GPUs. We want to provide tools for attribution. Our C2PA, the content, the coalition for content provenance and authenticity are producing things like digital watermarks, which are now being embedded in Leica and Sony cameras that allow for data traceability across the entire LLM value chain. And finally, we wanna make sure that everybody understands, whether it's regulators or industry, that openness will allow for transparency, trust, attribution, will allow for competition and innovation. And I hope that you all join me in participating in building these wonderful tools and helping us realize the actual potential of generative AI in curing disease and fighting climate change and doing good for the world. Thank you very much.


Hello everyone, I'm Maria Goldberg. I'm a senior editor at Pantheon Books and I'm so pleased to be here today and to be introducing Tamiko Brown-Nagin. She is Dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and a member of the History Department there too. Today we are here to be to discuss her latest book. It's called Civil Rights Queen, Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality. It explores the life and times of Constance Baker Motley. And without further ado, here is Tamiko. Thank you for that introduction, Maria, and for serving as my interlocutor today. I'm excited to be here and thanks to the National Archives for hosting me today. I am going to begin this discussion with a reading from my book about Constance Baker Motley's most famous case and that was the battle to desegregate the University of Mississippi Ole Miss. This man has got to be crazy. Thurgood Marshall yelled to Motley in January of 1961. That's your case. Marshall had descended upon Motley's office waving a letter from James Meredith. The missive contains such a preposterous idea that Marshall thought the writer must be out of his mind. I am submitting an application for admission to the University of Mississippi, Meredith wrote. And I am anticipating encountering difficulty with the various agencies here in the state. In view of the growing trouble, Meredith requested Marshall's legal assistance. After Marshall finished laughing about Meredith's proposal to sue Ole Miss, he washed his hands of the gaze. Marshall knew that Motley had the smarts and the courtroom skills to do the job. And he thought her gender would be an advantage. The fight to desegregate Ole Miss might get someone killed. But in the context of Mississippi's white supremacist, yet chivalrous culture, as Marshall saw it, a black woman would fare better than a black man.   Instead, he used only indirect references, calling Motley her or she. At one point early on, Motley jumped to her feet in a bid to put an end to the charade. But the tipping point occurred when Chan's called her a constant. Motley immediately objected. I would like for Mr. Chan's not to call me by my first name, Motley insisted. Henceforth, the lawyer referred to Motley as the New York Council. After months of struggle and endless delays, Meredith had had enough. Browled beaten by the white resistance, Meredith wrote to Motley, again, resigned. I will not attempt to obtain an undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi, the letter proclaimed, keenly aware that Motley, who had poured herself into the case, would be disappointed in his decision. Meredith pleaded for understanding. I am human after all, he wrote. Meredith had grown tired of waiting for deliverance that never came. Life had passed and by. His peers had graduated from college, begun careers and moved on with their lives. In the meantime, he and his family had endured a high cost, literally and figuratively, fighting to integrate the University of Mississippi. Motley was stunned by this message. In order to salvage her case and support her client, she morphed from lawyer to therapist, a role she often played in high stakes civil rights cases. To get a handle on the fraught situation, the pair would talk in Motley's New York City apartment where Meredith could taste freedom. There, Motley cajoled Meredith. She persuaded him that he had gone too far and that too much had been invested in the case by the Inc. Fund and the Federal Court of Appeals to abandon the litigation. Justice Meredith reached his breaking point, support arrived precisely as Motley had promised. On September 10th, 1962, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black intervened, halting any further action preventing James Meredith's matriculation to old myths. While in Mississippi, Motley built community with a small band of lawyers and activists who took part in LDF's effort to end Jim Crow in the state. She leaned on Megger Evers, the NAACP's most prominent operative in Mississippi, who often invited Motley to his home where she enjoyed home-cooked meals and fellowship with Evers, his wife, and their children. But only one month after Motley left Mississippi for the last time, Megger Evers was assassinated. It devastated her. Motley couldn't get out of her bed for weeks following his death. She couldn't even bring herself to attend his funeral. Nevertheless, she had left the state victorious. Constance Baker Motley emerged as one of the most respected lawyers in America. A story in the New York Times titled, Integration to Advocate, captured the professional heights to which Motley has soared. A tall, striking woman with piercing dark eyes is almost always in the courtroom in the eye of the hurricane surrounding the struggle for civil rights in the South, it wrote. Motley's fight to desegregate Ole Miss brought her public esteem and professional success along with devastating loss and profound pain. Thank you. Thank you, Tamiko. That is such a moving part of the book. It is one of my favorite passages, and it's so wonderful to hear you read it now. I am so excited to be in conversation with you today about this book, which I've been describing as a towering achievement, about a towering figure. It's really an inspiring story about an extraordinary woman, and it's also such a thorough and rigorous work of biography and of history. So I wanted to begin with the woman herself with Constance Baker Motley. As you say, she was one of the greatest civil rights lawyers we've ever seen. She also became this incredible justice. She was a political figure. She was a woman who accomplished many, many firsts in her time. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about where she came from, because this path for her was not predetermined, right? Absolutely not. It was most unexpected that Constance Baker Motley would grow up to be the civil rights queen. After all, she started life in a working class immigrant household in New Haven, Connecticut, where she grew up in the shadow of Yale University. Her father and virtually all of her male relatives worked at Yale in positions like Chef or in some capacity where they were in service to the wealthy young men who attended Yale University. The immigrant experience of her parents who had come to the country in the first decades of the 20th century from Nevis in the West Indies were vitally important to Baker and shaped her culturally, socially, and politically. Her parents were socially conservative. The mother was religious. The father read his privilege, read the privilege, excuse me, of the young men he mingled with at Yale into himself, he thought of himself and all West Indians as superior to African-Americans. Didn't even let his children play with migrants from the South, black migrants from the South. And yet, as I explained in the book, I think that the sense of superiority actually was a kind of protective armor for Baker once she started on her journey, which was often dangerous as the Mississippi case suggests as a civil rights lawyer in the South in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Yeah, and actually, I mean, her path even into law is not straightforward for all the reasons that you just mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about what it was, how she even entered law school, how she found a job. This was not easy to do for someone of her position. Not at all.  She is highly intelligent, precocious, and she does come into contact with George Crawford, who is a black lawyer collaborator with the NAACP who tells her about the NAACP's litigation against segregation. She is aware of Jane Boland, who is a black woman who graduated from Yale University and became a judge on the Domestic Relations Court in New York. And so she develops this idea that she wants to contribute to the world through law. And she is a highly politically conscious person, even as a teenager growing up in the Great Depression, which is a circumstance that would yield political consciousness in the right person. And so how does she actually get into college? Her parents don't have money to send her to college or to law school, and it's through the generosity of a benefactor, Clarence Blakesley, who is a wealthy New Haven contractor that she finds her way first to FIST, then to NYU, and ultimately to Columbia Law School. Blakesley had overheard Motley speak at the Q-House, which was a civic organization for blacks in New Haven. He was so impressed with her, invited her to his office, and offered to subsidize her educational career. And Motley says later on that it's like a fairy tale. She had an angel watching over her in the form of Clarence Blakesley. And so that is the story of how she was able to afford to go to college and then law school. And in doing so, she defied convention for working class black people, for African Americans generally, for young women. She was quite a trailblazer, quite precocious and determined, even as a very young woman. Yeah, and there's a line in your book that really contextualizes this really beautifully where you write that her family's expectation of her was that she would become, she would get a good job as a hairdresser or something like that, right? But then after law school, she does what every graduating law student does and she begins to apply to law jobs.  And that meeting you described in your book changes her life, right? Right, she is forever grateful to Thurgood Marshall for making her career and giving her a chance when other white male lawyers who are working in New York City law firms, the most prestigious and lucrative sector of the legal profession will not give her a chance. She writes about in her autobiography, essentially having the door closed in her face when she arrives at one New York City law firm. Marshall was the opposite. He welcomed her to the Ink Fund when she applied for a job there in 1945. This was even before she had graduated from Columbia Law School. She went to see Marshall on the recommendation of a classmate who was working there at the Ink Fund as an intern and Baker wanted to take this individual's place. And Marshall greeted her warmly, regaled her with stories about other black women professionals. These would have been school teachers who had been meaningful to him and invited her in and she eventually did become a member of the legal staff there. She was for most of her time at the Ink Fund. She was the only woman lawyer and she worked there for 20 years and just had a tremendous impact on the law through the variety of cases that she litigated. Yeah, and as the passage that you read illustrates so perfectly, the work that she was doing was really dangerous and really pathbreaking as you say. I mean, she traveled to all these places throughout the segregated South and for our younger audience, I mean, this wasn't that long ago. I mean, she was putting her life on the line being there on the one hand, she was there and she was celebrated. People you write would pour in to watch her stand there and stand up to these white Southern justices but at the same time, she was putting her life on the line. Can you describe what the environment there was like? Sure, a good example, Maria, would be from her very first case and trial and trial court and this occurred in Jackson, Mississippi where she and her colleague, Robert Carter, were litigating a case on behalf of black school teachers who were challenging a pay disparity. They, no matter how qualified they were, these teachers were always paid less than whites and Motley challenged his practice and when she arrived in Jackson, was just astounded by the sense that time had stood still since the Civil War practically and this was manifested in how she couldn't stay in hotels, she could barely find white-owned hotels, she could barely even get enough food to eat, she writes about always losing weight when she went to places like Jackson and she and her colleague were in situations where they had to contend with the racist attitudes and behaviors of whites, for instance, she and Bob Carter once attempted to buy fruit at a store and were badly mistreated by the proprietor and Motley was particularly protective of Carter who had served in the Army and who was a grown man who was being mistreated by the store owner who just did not recognize him as an equal and Motley wanted to fight back, but she did not, her fighting back had to occur in the courtroom but even there, Maria, the white supremacy was quite present in the way in which the black lawyers were treated by counsel in the display of black inferiority by their local co-counsel, Jess Brown, who was a black man who, when he was in the courtroom, never turned his back to the judge and went, walk bent over, just as I said, just displaying what was expected of him which was to be less than and there are many examples that show that Motley was, she was a brave person, that she had to be brave in order to do this work and she was litigating for her clients, but also on behalf of herself, one has to appreciate when one considers the discrimination that she faced even as she was working as a civil rights lawyer. Yeah, it's incredible. And at the same time, she leaves this enormous legacy and then she's a huge part of desegregating the South in the James Meredith case that you spoke to earlier, but in other ways too. I mean, she represents Martin Luther King. Can you just give us a, I mean, I'm sure the list would be long but can you name off just some of her accomplishments as an attorney? Sure, well, first we need to cover Brown versus Board of Education where she wrote the original complaint in that case and thus as the cases were litigated through the Supreme Court, the real sense in which the lawyers were building on her intellectual and anti-work. Then after Brown versus Board of Education, this great triumph where the court unanimously held that racially segregated schools mandated by law were unconstitutional, she helped to desegregate a number of school systems in the South, Atlanta, Birmingham and also to desegregate higher education including she litigated a case challenging segregation at the University of Florida College of Law at the University of Georgia at the University of Alabama. She represented Dr. King and Birmingham in the apocal campaign of the civil rights movement where Bull Connor turned the dogs loose on young people who were protesting segregation, represented King and also some high school students and middle school students who were expelled from school as a result of their activism. And she represented a variety of civil rights protesters also criminal defendants. Her first argument in the US Supreme Court was her representing a criminal defendant and that was just the first she argued and won nine of 10 cases at the US Supreme Court. She really was just a phenomenal civil rights lawyer of tremendous impact, the counterpart of Thurgood Marshall. Yeah, and then I wanna talk about, so this really just marks the first act of her life which is amazing. But so when Thurgood Marshall receives the nod to become a Supreme Court justice, there's people start looking for the next person to head the legal defense fund at the NAACP and she's passed over. And you write about this time in her life I think so wonderfully because you describe what happens and you also bring the lens of a kind of gendered analysis and to the start. Can you describe what happened and how she felt what had happened too? Sure. So this is 1961 when Marshall is being appointed to the Court of Appeals, the second circuit and he's leaving his position as director council of the Inc. Fund and he's going to have a successor and Motley and a number of Bob Carter whom I mentioned from the Jackson Mississippi case and a number of black lawyers thought that the torch would be passed to one of them. And it was not Marshall instead and the NAACP chose Jack Greenberg who was another wonderful lawyer, Matthewing Funn, a white man and Motley was disappointed and she thought that not only race but gender was a factor in her having been passed over. She thought that Marshall was just, it would have been a bridge too far to appoint a woman to this high profile position. After all, there were not women heading similar organizations like the ACLU for instance and she was disappointed in her mentor. And yet she, as I said, always spoke highly of Marshall for having given her the chance initially they were always friends and friendly and yet that was a great disappointment to her being passed over and is illustrative of how gender shaped opportunities for her and how even though she was a counterpart of Marshall and right there in the arena with these other civil rights lawyers she was set apart by her gender including when she was pregnant and then had her child, her only child around the same time that Browner's support of education was being litigated because after she had litigated that pay disparity case in Mississippi she actually went into Thurgood Marshall's office and said that she was being paid less than she was worth. And so this incident it crystallizes the phenomenon of how gender shaped Motley's experience in life or professional experiences although ultimately she did achieve all of these first it was not an easy path for her. Right and for the next stage in her career she enters New York politics where she also breaks ground but I wanted to ask you about how she managed that. I mean, one of the aspects of the book that I was also really interested in was in how you describe how she shaped how she was received, how people saw her how she appeared in photographs and in the media because she was a huge figure at this point. Can you yet please tell us? So because she had been passed over for this position at the Inc. Fund she was more open when New York City and New York State Democrats came calling and invited her to stand for public office first to run for New York Senate which she eventually does and later she runs for Manhattan Borough President and she wins there too. And it is a fascinating departure from what she's been doing and speaks to how talented she was that she was able to be successful in politics as well. In terms of how she was received well, the politicians loved her after all she had name recognition which is so important in politics. And she was coming onto the scene in the context of African-Americans pursuing voting rights and opportunity. And so she was a terrific standard bearer for the Democratic Party. And yet there were those who were not so welcoming of her including some black political figures in Harlem who including Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell who thought that she should stay in her lane who did not consider her an authentic black person. So whatever one conjures when one conjures authentic black person Constance Baker Motley was not it. And a part of the reason that she was not it was because she had been litigating for integration and by the mid 1960s integration was already falling out of favor as the priority in the struggle for black freedom certainly for people like Malcolm X. And so she had to work to be accepted and in that she was helped by friends from the Civil Rights Movement who were in New York at the time. And so it is an interesting moment for her because it is not clear at all that she will be successful in politics but she does manage success even while being just under great scrutiny. And there was scrutiny of what she wore that was true throughout her career. How she presented, she was very interesting looking and striking in her appearance and people commented on that. It was mostly to her advantage. She was what they then would say was a handsome woman and people noticed and yet it's always a double edged sword when a woman is known in part for her parents and it was for her as well. Yeah, and there's so many amazing photographs in your book of her is just like looking impeccable and kind of domineering over the men around her in these photographs. That's right, it was important for her to look the part. She was always well dressed and took putting herself together very seriously, put a lot of time into it. And so the question that this raised for me, Maria was how much of this is necessary for her professional position and how much of it was to her liking? And I think of course that it's hard to pull that apart for women given the norms and pressures that accompany appearance for women. That's right, and all the expectations that were placed on her as I said, too. That period in her life is so interesting too to me. I wanna talk to you about this idea that she is an agent of change, that for a lot of her career as an attorney and as a young person, she was doing really radical work. And then as you say, when she enters politics, there's all these other movements that have emerged that are more radical than she is. And you write about this so wonderfully because of course what a radical is changes over time. It's not a static thing. And I want you to describe this incredible moment where she goes on national TV to debate Malcolm X. And I love that passage because, although she is this amazing, amazing figure, your book is not a hagiography and you write about her as a complete full person. And there are moments when, you know, anyway, please tell us about this moment. Sure. Well, one of the reasons that I ultimately decided to write this book, Maria, is because of the longevity of her career, these three phases in which she achieved so much. And what it means to be a leader and how marginalized communities define freedom and equality changes over time such that, whereas Motley and Thurgood Marshall had been radicals called communists when they were working for civil rights, mitigating Brown and other cases in the 1950s and early 60s. By the mid 1960s and really even before, they were considered, their approach was considered passe. And the scene that you're describing from the book is when she goes on to national television to debate Malcolm X. And that's probably the first mistake because Malcolm X famously uses these debates to just hammer home his own points and to oftentimes just make this folks who are supposed to be debating him look kind of ridiculous. And that is essentially what happened. She in her very lawyerly reserved way tries to get him to concede through a series of questions that there's been change in America, racial change. And of course, the racial change comes through her activism. And he just will not concede the point and treats her as if she's no different from a racially backwards white male and makes the point that Motley's here saying that there's been change. And in the meantime, there are thousands of black men locked up in prison. And he goes to that example to really drive home the point that she's out of touch or her conception of the civil rights struggle is out of touch. And this was an experience that would have been bruising to her in part because she believes that she deserves deference and she understands that she has shaped history. And so it is a moment that is telling, revealing and does not show her at her best. Right. And then it's, you know, so not long after she enters politics she has noticed for a position on the federal bench. And it's interesting that she's criticized, you know for being, as you say, passe because while she's being considered for this position there are all these attacks on her for her former involvement in communist radical organizations that she has to endure before she receives her appointment. Can you describe what that nomination process was like for her? Sure. Well, it illustrates the point that how once politics are described whether one is considered middle of the road or radical really depends on the perspective of the individuals or groups who are making those descriptions. So within the context of the Black Power movement she is, she's a moderate at best. And yet when she is nominated for the judgeship there are those who claim that she's a radical. Senator James Eastlin holds up her nomination for seven months claiming that she was a communist and Motley has to endure a couple of different investigations by the FBI. She has to answer questions about what she was doing in New York when she was a teenager. Her associates then it's never proven that she was a car carrying communist. She was like many people when she was a young person that she was interested in and left as causes. She was a progressive. And yet all of this is weaponized against her. There are those who even consider her career as a civil rights lawyer as disqualifying. They claim that she won't be able to be fair and doesn't have the right experience to be a judge on the Southern District of New York where the judges hear many financial problems like cases, complex litigation coming out of Wall Street. And so she really has a time of it as she ends up being confirmed for the bench but not for the position that President Johnson originally wanted her to have, which was the seat on the court of appeals, Thurgood Marshall's seat that he was vacating to become solicitor general. She is appointed to the U.S. District Court. And so it's an historic first for her to achieve that and yet even in this great victory, one can see how she faces limitations because of who she is. Yeah. And I wanna talk about her time on the, when she occupies that seat before we run out of time, can you talk about what her approach is like to her judgment? Sure. Well, when she was nominated to the bench, Maria, she receives notes and congratulations from many of her friends from the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement. People like Pauli Murray who Murray sent her a note saying, hooray for our side. Thinking that with Motley on the bench, that the justice has to, to the outcomes have to improve, that there's a better chance that these progressive groups will win. And that is true sometimes with Motley, particularly early in her career where she decides a number of important sex discrimination cases, but she mostly is a pragmatic judge. She calls it like she sees them. And sometimes that means that the civil rights and women's rights and other progressive causes prevail, but many times they do not, including because she is a district court judge and limited by the law that's been decided by the Court of Appeals and by the Supreme Court. And so there are those who think that her turn as a judge is somewhat disappointing. I think she was a terrific judge and I think the cases, the sex discrimination cases that she decided, for instance, were groundbreaking. And yet it all goes to show that these positions are important and should be open to all and certainly to African-Americans and women. And yet just having a member of one's group in one of these positions does not guarantee any particular outcome, including because Motley was always under scrutiny. People are always trying to figure out if she's favoring the civil rights side. And so it's a complicated journey for her on the bench. Right, and even though she takes a lot of care to read the law to the letter and to not give any preferential treatment, she still, like you said, she makes these really groundbreaking rulings. I don't know how much time we have, but can you describe one of them for us?  You've been so many. Sure, I will describe her ruling on behalf of Martin Sostre, who was a black man, Puerto Rican, in New York, jailhouse lawyer and an early advocate of prisoners' rights, who files a case arguing that his confinement to solitary confinement at Attica and Greenhaven Prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And he sues for damages and he prevails in Motley's courtroom. She agrees that solitary confinement is simply cruel, that he had been placed there for retaliation and because he was a black Muslim, because he advocated rights for prisoners, because the guards were racist and it is just a phenomenal case. And the most progressive case of her career, the most controversial case of her career, and one of those that really shows her courage, she did not have to decide that case in that way. Had she not, no one would have held it against her. Even progressives. After all, this is really carving a path that is still a point of contention, that is the notion of prisoners' rights, the notion of just the appreciation of mass incarceration that people can end up in prison when they really should not be there, either because they haven't done what they are accused of doing or because the sentences are so harsh. And so that's the one case, if I only have time to describe one case that I would put before you. Yeah, and I just wanna pause and say to our audience that as we're nearing the end of our programming, please don't hesitate to enter any questions that you might have into the chat and we will try to get to as many of them as we can. I also, I wanna return to something that you raise at the very opening of your book, which is this question posed by James Baldwin, which is, what is the price of the ticket you ask? And in some ways, this question drives the book and drives how you tell the story. And having spent years researching Motley, years writing this book, can you tell us what the cost was, do you think, for her? She's, she enacted change from outside of the system. She worked to enact change from within the system also. And so what is that toll that is taken when people who are outsiders who are first, what happens when they achieve power, do you think? Well, I describe how although there are many people and whole groups who expects particular outcomes from these kinds of appointments, in fact, there are tremendous constraints. There are their personal costs to being a first and Motley surely endured them, including because there were lawyers who never accepted her authority as a judge. They filed recusal motions seeking to remove her from cases, particularly if they involved issues of discrimination or criminal law, sometimes were disrespectful of her. Then there's the personal toll on her of having to perform all the time. And so the price of the ticket is that the system envelops these people. They're not able to, in Motley's case, she becomes a part of the state itself. And so she's just quite traditional. She's pragmatic as I mentioned. And so the idea is that it's just a high cost of being a first, of being a representative of one's race or of one's sex. And it's important to keep this in mind even as we celebrate these icons of equality and of change. And in this moment, Tamiko, we're so, you know, the courts are back in the news in a way that we haven't seen in a long time.  On the other hand, you know, there's a possible ruling coming that might take back a lot of legal work that was done for women's rights. What do you think Constance Baker Motley would have to say about all this? Or, well, one of the points that I made during my commentary about Judge Jackson, future Justice Jackson's nomination and confirmation, hearings was just about how much continuity there was in her experience and the experience of Judge Motley who of course proceeded her by 50, 60 years. And so that was a disappointing reality. And I mean, things like how there was an effort to weaponize Motley's practice background against her and the same was true of Judge Jackson. Nevertheless, unlike Motley, Judge Jackson was able to achieve this historic first appointment to the US Supreme Court. And of course, Motley would be very pleased about that. She always advocated the appointment of more women and people of color to the bench because she thought that it strengthened democracy to have a diversity of people on the bench. She served on the bench for so long herself that she would have been well aware of the ways in which new personnel can undermine gains of the past. She saw that during the Reagan era, for instance. And so she would be unhappy, I think, with some of these developments, to the extent that rights that she helped to fight for are at risk, for instance, access to higher education and the road decision in so far as the underlying principle is about women's autonomy. I think she would be disappointed in the way things are going. And yet she also was a person who just could not, she was a person of great resilience and strength. And so she would say to those who are disappointed, step up. There are many ways to lead and to contribute as she showed through her life in as a practicing lawyer and politics and on the bench. And so there are many ways to seek change if one is dissatisfied with current developments. Yeah, that's good to remember, I think. And in fact, at the end of your book, you spend some time writing about her legacy and it's so moving to me because despite her prominent position, she always takes a lot of time and care to mentor others, which you alluded to earlier. But can you describe what that looked like because it was a significant part of the work that she did later on in her life? It was, she mentored a generation of lawyers who served as her law clerks. Of course, these are elite important positions that set lawyers up for careers in law firms and as law professors and as judges. And she was very pleased to mentor this new generation. And I think it's wonderful that she took that position. Of course, having experienced exclusion herself, the discrimination herself, one could imagine that she would take a different posture that she would not try so hard to give to younger people what she had been deprived of herself. That is exactly what she did. And as an example, she was very welcoming to then judge Sotomayor who joined the Southern District as Motley was taking senior status. And there are a number of other people whom she mentored, including her niece, Constance Royster, who became a lawyer. And it was important to Motley to remember her roots in New Haven in the West Indies. She always, annually, she visited the Nevis and enjoy just being among people who were culturally familiar and who remembered her parents. And so one of the points that I certainly seek to make in the book is that, yes, she was this important person, but she was a great person too. She was a gracious person. And I think that's important to know. Yes, wow. And since we're speaking at the National Archives today, I wanted to ask you too about your work researching this book. I know we first talked about this book now years ago.  So there is just this vast wealth of material and that has gone into this project. So can you describe what your research process was like and what it's like getting to know someone, a historical figure so intimately through that process? Sure. Well, Maria, I conducted a great deal of research for this book for many years, including at the National Archives, which has invaluable resources, including about the cases that the NAACP litigated some of them. And Library of Congress was important to my research. Archival papers, personal papers at New York University at Columbia Law School. And then, of course, the papers of individuals with whom she interacted like Pauline Murray, organizations like the National Women's Political Caucus, whose papers I found at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. So there were a lot of sources, a lot of ground to cover. And it was really important to me to make sure that as a writer of a biography that seeks to cover the life and times of this important figure and important movements, that I did do my very best to paint a full picture of her. And that wasn't easy because she was reserved. She didn't leave a lot behind in terms of personal reflections. And so I made it a point to interview people who knew her inside or family and outside to really get to know the places that were important to her, New Haven, of course, but also Nevis, to which I traveled a couple of times. And the secondary literature was important too, but a lot of original research went into this book. Yeah. And in fact, you came across her first when you were writing your previous book, which was about a number of figures in the civil rights movement. And just from my last question, I mean, if there's any thoughts you want to leave us with, please, please say them. But I wanted to ask you why her? There have been so many people who have been overlooked from that time, right? And I feel like finally we're in a moment where people are giving them the recognition and the credit and the scholarship that they're due. But what was it about her that compelled you to take on this work that you ended up taking on? Right. Well, I really did think, Maria, that given her tremendous impact on the law and in politics, that it was a kind of historical malpractice to not know about her, to not have a commanding biography of this figure, this towering figure. And I wanted to correct the historical record. And I also wanted to write this book because I do think that one reason that she's been overlooked is because she was a woman and a black woman. So it comes down to gender and race, shaping what history is, who are considered figures worth remembering. And I wanted to write about her as well because she's an inspiring figure and has inspired so many individuals who have themselves gone on to great careers, including the vice president, Kamala Harris, my late colleague, Lonnie Guinear, who talked to me about how moved she was in seeing Constance Baker Motley on the television screen, escorting James Meredith to and from the courthouse in that case that I opened up with. And so she deserves to be remembered and studied, and especially so by all of those whom she visibly represented, but truly by every American. It's important to appreciate how the country was reshaped during the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movement. There's few people better than Constance Baker Motley to give us a window onto that change. That's right. Well, thank you so much, Tamiko, for this wonderful lunchtime conversation. Thank you to the National Archives also for hosting us and all of the members of our audience today. I'm gonna hold this book up for you all. I hope you all find a copy wherever books are sold and pick it up and read about Constance Baker Motley and her incredible story for yourselves. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. And thank you to the National Archives. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.


This course is on implied volatility, which I call as the wild card or the semi-hidden factor in options pricing. Unlike other factors like price movement and time decay, implied volatility is a bit more difficult to understand and also observe the changes in implied volatility directly. Although trading tools like thinkorswim and others do a fantastic job of calculating implied volatility and presenting this information to users. Implied volatility is a wild card because it can have pretty dramatic impact on your options position.  We'll be looking back at our land example that we introduced in the call options course. We'll also introduce the concept of implied volatility or volatility in general to this land example. We'll do a recap of what we looked at in terms of stock volatility and then we'll use our real world example for option pricing in the real estate example for the land. Then we'll study two different definitions of volatility as it pertains to options. One is historical volatility and one is future volatility or expected volatility which we call implied volatility in the world of options. Then we'll be looking at a real example, real options. We'll look at caterpillar and Netflix and this example should make it absolutely clear what implied volatility can do to your options. Then we'll look at implied volatility from a buyer's standpoint and a seller's standpoint and for different kinds of options whether it's at the money, out of the money and even different expires, whether it's a near-term expiry or a far-term expiry and how your options positions will change based upon implied volatility on these kinds of options. Finally, we'll introduce the Greek vega that quantifies changes in implied volatility. So we'll only be introducing this term here. However, the next course is dedicated to the Greeks completely. Let's come back to our factors that affect option pricing.


Nifarderwyr, maeел ddigresol yn llunio'r diolch iawn dday, dwyfodol, ond da Ryntgen which I. Pwyllt future yllcast y Sgyntaf yn gwirbwynt yn arddirschetaeth gylaiiedol o yn maen nhor hynny i fynghyn weithredol Wrth hyn, ond opaheo'rŷ ffordd Lifeguats iawn. I, mae mdwy 역시 i fynd am bullwgag ArF miel meithw+, Hand Fins, ac mae Llywodraeth Arnghiniwain i fynd i Ryntgen unrhyw discussions o'i gwestiwch sy'n trefious times as the new facilities are in place. The Scottish Prison Service has taken decisive action to address the shortcomings at Compton Vale through accommodating women at other facilities and undertaking significant refurbishment work. SPS will continue to work hard to ensure that the improved conditions for women in custody are maintained, including taking steps to move young women out of Compton Vale. Although Compton Vale location may still have a use as part of the female prison state in the future, I'm clear that Compton Vale prison, as it is presently configured, will have to close. It will be part of our future plans to consider how and when this will take place in line with our new direction. The Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to providing a high-quality custodial environment for women, but I'm determined to ensure that we move to the right sort of facilities and take a new approach to how we look after women in custody. Let me warmly thank the cabinet secretary for listening to the voice of reformers and for taking what was a bold decision. I share his ambitions for a fair and progressive justice system, but it is essential that in the interim to tackle the known shortcomings that we still know are in the system, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment recently commented adversely on the difficulties and delays caused by the lack of high-security mental health provision for women in Scotland. The Government has been urged to put in place arrangements to ensure swift transfer to an appropriate psychiatric facility from a prison. Last year, it took more than nine months to transfer an extremely vulnerable prisoner to Rampton. In light of the recommendations from those two organisations, what steps has the Scottish Government since taken? Well, I recognise the concern that the member has made. The member will also recognise that the secure environment for those with a mental health condition is a matter for the NHS. In the provision of, for example, that we have at the state hospital and also in our medium and in low security units, I understand and recognise the concern that the member has raised. What I am determined to do, particularly in the prison estate, is to make sure that we have facilities that are fit for purpose. Following the decision that I made regarding Inverclyde, what I want to do is to make sure that we have a process within our criminal justice system that is much more focused on dealing with the underlying causes of criminal activity and mental health is one of those factors. We need to make sure that the system, whether it be the Scottish Prison Service or NHS and its other partners, are working much more collectively and effectively in achieving that. That includes in the provision of custody facilities. As we go forward with the direction that I have now set in terms of our penal policy, I am determined to make sure that we get that balance right in the future estate of the prison estate in Scotland. The cabinet secretary will know that I have been gravely concerned about the number of young women held in Caunton Vale for extended periods of time in solitary confinement in the separation and reintegration unit. The compound distress and trauma underlying behavioural problems for those women contained in this way is immense and the prolonged isolation can only add to the real health. The HMIPS agreed to undertake a thematic inspection of the segregation procedures. Your predecessor advised me in writing that this work would be concluded by February this year. Are you in a position to update the chamber on the progress of that work and whether it will report on time? Are you able to agree to review the checks and balances currently in place around the rolling use of rule 95 and look into the provision of independent advocacy for those vulnerable prisoners? In relation to the segregation provisions at Caunton Vale, I am aware of the issues that are there. The SPS has taken action in order to address some of those issues. I know that there were concerns as well around the procedures that they were using. I recognise that the facilities from which I understand for segregation in Caunton Vale are not suitable for on-going use, and changes have been taken place as a result of that. My understanding at this particular point is that that work is still on-going. However, the Scottish Prison Service is confident that the process that it now has in place is fit for purpose and that it complies with what is required. However, I am more than happy to make sure that the member is kept up-to-date, given her long-standing interest in the matter, kept up-to-date once we have the final details from the inspector on the issue. I welcome the decision, Mr Cabinet Secretary. I think that it was the right thing to do. Understandably, most of the focus today is on the issue of the female prisoners. I understand that, but I have got a significant constituent interest as far as Caunton Vale is concerned. I wonder whether you could say a bit more about what the future might hold for the Caunton Vale estate itself and what discussions are being held with the staff, because, obviously, it is not quite what they expected to be the longer-term outcome. Will the minister commit today to writing to me once he is able to do so, with all the detail that he possibly can, about the future of Caunton Vale and the impact on his staff there? Cabinet Secretary, I think that the member raises a really important point, because in all of the debate around the future of the estate, it is important that we do not forget the professionalism and the dedication of our prison officer staff. We should be tremendously proud of the work that they undertake for us on a daily basis. As I outlined yesterday, we are now going to undertake a period of intensive work with a range of stakeholders before we come to a final position on the configuration of our prison estate going forward. That will involve a combination of appropriate, secure facilities at a national level, to deal with issues such as remand and issues around the short-term prisoners by the use of more community-based services. What I will recognise is that the traditional role of prison officers in prison establishments will inevitably change with the change in our penal policy. It will result in them having to look at the traditional role that they have in, for example, establishments such as Caunton Vale and possibly being based on some of the more community-based facilities. That itself will require a change of working practice, but I also think that change also provides an opportunity for them to be able to develop their skills and knowledge into areas that presently might not be available within the present confines of the prison establishment. On Caunton Vale, my view is that we will continue to require a national facility for long-term, serious offenders. My preferred option would be for that facility to be based at Caunton Vale in a new-build facility, because I believe that particular site is more accessible than in Verclyde. It is a site that will allow us to develop a facility that is fit for purpose and allows us to take forward an approach that will improve the outcome for prisoners and, in doing so, reduce re-offending behaviour among female offenders in Scotland. In light of the Angelini report, the cabinet secretary said that the community served rehabilitation of women as best served in the communities. Will he be reviewing that or when the announcements will be sought for the review of the funding for some of the community programmes? It may be helpful if the members are aware that a range of work has been taken forward off the back of Ailey Shangelini's report, so there are some 16 projects that were commissioned as a result of that particular initiative. The other thing that the member may wish to consider is that the Angelini report was not calling for new money. What the Angelini report calls for is a change in the use of the existing resources. That is what we have been facilitating, a change in the use of existing resources so that they are much more focused on improving the outcomes for women rather than the process that they go through. I think that there may be an element of misunderstanding, and I have saw some comments in the press about a misunderstanding of what the Angelini report calls for. If the member wants to look at the report, he will recognise that it is actually looking for a use of the existing resources in a much more effective way. That is the approach that we have been taking forward since the report was published. 2. Dave Thompson To ask the Scottish Government what data has been gathered on safety following the introduction of speed cameras on the A9. The First Quarterly report covering speed, journey time and journey time reliability to monitor the performance has been published and is very encouraging. On excessive speeding, for example, instances of driver speeding at over 10 mph above the limit have been cut by 97 per cent, leading to an eight-fold decrease in the number of people caught speeding. The figures have been welcomed by Police Scotland, the Road Haulage Association and the Institute of Advanced Motorists, among others. After only three months of average speed camera operation, police injury accident figures are not available and a longer time period is required to evaluate safety performance, typically three years before and after in the case of road safety schemes. It is likely to be the third quarterly report before the first injury accident data can be reported on. Dave Thompson I thank the minister for that reply and welcome the publication of the data, which I believe indicates the action taken by the Scottish Government and the A9 safety group. Will the minister join with me in urging critics of the scheme, such as MP Danny Alexander, to end their reckless and now discredited campaign to undermine those very valuable safety measures? Minister? The evidence says that overall speeding is down from around one in three drivers to one in 20. Excessive speeding, as I have said, is down 97 per cent. Journey times have increased, but in line with predictions, and journey time reliability has improved. There is no evidence that drivers are avoiding the A9. That, I would suggest, is good news for the area and good news for road drivers. As transport minister, my focus is on safer roads and the evidence is that the average speed cameras are playing their part in that. If Mr Alexander and others choose to ignore that evidence, it would be rather unfortunate for them if they are judged to put cheap political point-scoring before the safety of their constituents. Mr Thomson? Thank you, minister. In the Inverness courier this morning, the headline is that they have kind of shifted tax slightly because they were supporting Danny's campaign, I believe, until now. The headline is that it will affect the economy of the Highlands because, as their headline says, journey times have increased by 14 minutes. Of course, it is up to 14 minutes. The average is nine, which means that some have increased by only three minutes. Can the minister maybe elaborate on his view as to what impact that will have on the economy of the Highlands? He mentioned the speed limits, and it may be particularly in relation to the speed limits of HGVs. The reported increase in journey times is exactly in line with our projections and reflects reductions in excess speed on the A9. The road haulage association reported in its trade magazine that there are journey time savings of up to 30 minutes for HGVs travelling between Perth and Inverness. Now, reductions in the number of incidents and the disruption associated with them create better journey time reliability, which does support the economy. Finally, arguing that speeding is good for the economy is simply not defensible. A safer A9 with fewer reckless drivers and better behaviour by the vast majority of road users can only be good for the Highland economy. David Stewart Could the minister confirm, if it is the policy of the Scottish Government to increase speeds of HGVs in single-carageways to 50mph across Scotland if the evidence supports that in the A9 pilot using, of course, evidence from the average speed cameras? Minister? Well, our officials will use all the evidence that is available on specific roads, and the limit will reflect the circumstances on that road. If we have a partnership and a package of proposals, like we have had on the A9, then we can change the speed limit accordingly. We will be flexible, but safety will always be paramount when this Government takes action on Scotland's roads. The speed reduction measures on the A9 were, of course, brought in in conjunction with an increase in the HGV speed limit to 50mph, which Mr Stewart referred to, which came about because of a very vigorous campaign by some people in the chamber and many people outside. When will the Scottish Government assess the impact of that increase in the HGV speed limit? As Mr Stewart said, if it is deemed to be successful, what is the need to stop us rolling it out on other major A roads across the country? We will consider that very closely. We are also mindful of what the UK Government is doing around speed limits, but we will do it with safety as our first consideration. It has been successful as part of that package on the A9, and so, too, will the case be around dualling as well that the Government has committed to. We will look at the evidence from this and other work and take a judgment over what is appropriate for the rest of the country. Thank you. That ends topical question time. The next item of business is a statement by John Swinney on the Smith commission. The Deputy First Minister will take


Hey everybody, this is Brian, and welcome to the 106th tutorial with C++ and GUI programming. And we're just going to make a new QWidget project, and we're going to make a GUI application. And let's just put it wherever you put your stuff. And we're going to call this complete. We're going to cover completions. Completions are actually very simple and very, very cool, and I'm starting to sound like a Nokia salesperson. Some more I do these videos, but it's all good. So we've got our simple project here. We're just going to open it up, tick, tock, tick, tock. There we go. And we're going to throw some stuff on here real quick. Throw a line at it, one line at it, two, throw some labels on here. All right. And then we're going to just go like this, like this. There. So we've got our nice, neat form, and we'll say names, and we'll say files. So what we're going to do here in a nutshell is when we run this thing, we're going to type in this box, and we're going to have automatic completion for names. And if we type in this box, we'll have automatic completion for the file system. So let's just go ahead and give this a good whirl here, let it build, run. And when you see right now, nothing happens. So let's make the magic happen, as one of my co-workers says. We're going to open dialog.h, and if it's been a while since you've done a widget or a form-based application, don't worry, we're going to explain all this stuff. So first thing we need to do is our occludes. So we need to go, we'll add QCompleter, and let's also add the QDurrModel. And my daughter always giggles whenever I say DurrModel because she thinks of like a supermodel saying Durr.  So now we're going to make two of these, one for a string list and one for a model. And if you don't know what I mean by model, go out to my YouTube videos and look up how to work with models within Qt. They're very simple, very easy to understand. So we got our string completer and QComplete, and we're going to make a pointer to our model completer. Now I should note that both of these are just QCompleter objects, or I should say pointers to QCompleter objects, but you can handle them differently. You can say give it a string, or I should say string list, or give it a model. And you'll see what I mean here in a second. Go ahead and open up dialog.cpp. And this is where we're going to actually set this up. So we'll say use the string list, QStringList. Wow, I cannot spell today. So we got our completion list. Now we want to add a few items into this list here. So we're going to say, let me just grab some names here. My name, Brian. And boy, what are some names? Spart, just making names up here. And we will say Brad. And if you've kind of noticed, I'm starting all these with the letter B. We'll say Beth. The reason why I'm doing that is because I'm doing a very simple example of how to use a string list. So when I start typing the letter B, it's going to pop up on a list. You notice how two of these start with Br, Brian and Brad. So when I type Br, the list will narrow down to just Brian and just Brad. And you'll see what I mean by that in just a second here. So stringCompleter equal new, QCompleter. I posted a video on YouTube where I'm kind of frazzled at the moment because I found out my job is being revoked or taken away. I'm not getting fired if my job's being transitioned. So I have to start job hunting if I don't get transitioned with everybody else. So I'm kind of not happy at the moment, but one day at a time. Anyway, so we're going to make a new QCompleter object and we're going to hand it a reference to the completion list or the string list and then give it this or this object. Now we want to do a little bit of extra magic here. So we'll say stringCompleter and we want to set the case sensitivity, whether it's upper or lower. And we're just going to say Qt and we're just going to say case and sensitive because we don't really care. And then now we need to bind that or set the completer. So we'll say UI, line at it because that's our first one. We're going to set completer. Save your work, run it. If you typed everything, all shall be well. Now when you start typing, we'll just type letter X, notice nothing happens. Type the letter B. Whoa, we suddenly have a list, BR, and it narrows it down. Now you can navigate through this list using the up and down arrows. And if you like what you see, you can just press tab. So let's try that again. If you don't like what you see, you just keep typing and it'll change it. Pretty neat, huh? Now we're going to make this bad boy work. This is going to be a model. And we're just going to use the file system because it's a very simple way of populating a model. Use a model. If you have gobs and gobs of data, sometimes models are actually a lot easier than string lists. I mean they're kind of complex once you start working with them, but once you get the hang of them, it's much, much easier. So we're going to make our, our completer. And we want to do set models. All right. Got kind of distracted there. And we're just going to make a new cuter, oops, sorry, cuter model to give it our model completer. I swear at these cats. I am invisible. I know you guys gripe about me complaining about these cats. I'm just, every time I start working on something, they're just all over me. And then it's pretty much the same thing. We're just going to set the completer. We're going to say model completer. That's all there is to it. So let's review real quick before we run this. The first one, we're creating a string list and populating it. Then we create our Q completer, set the case sensitivity to, you know, we don't care case and sensitive. And then we're just setting the completer on the line edit. Same thing when we want to use model. We make our new Q completer. At this time, we're seeing a new cuter model. So we're letting Qt actually generate the model for us using the file system and then handing it off into the completer and then binding that into the, whoops, the line edit right here using the set completer. So knock on wood. Let's run this. That still works. And I'm on a Linux system. If you're in Windows, you type something like that, but because we're on Linux, ta-da! And you can do whatever you want. So if we say like C boot slash and then it, you know, goes right in here. Pretty neat, huh? I bet you guys could probably think of a thousand and one uses for this. Anyways, this is Brian. I'm going to keep this one rather short. I have some engagements for the evening. So I hope you found this tutorial educational and entertaining and thank you for watching.