>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. [ Silence ] >> Good evening and welcome. As the Librarian of Congress, it's my great pleasure and honor to welcome you to the 2012 Presentation of the John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the Study of Humanity. This prize is quite unique among major international awards at the million dollar level. It covers by far the widest range of scholarly fields, virtually all of the humanities and social sciences. In honor of scholars who over a sustained period has studied deeply, created knowledge, and distilled wisdom of accumulative record of the human experience. It inspires appreciation for probing scholarship that achieves genuine distinction in the given field of knowledge and also has broader influence that contributes to the betterment of humankind. The selection process is democratic and broad. The library solicits nominations from a wide range of national and international individuals and institutions, uses a multilayer in selection process involving many of the libraries, curators, specialist, who live with and learn from what is here in the Library of Congress, the world's largest collection of recorded knowledge and creativity in almost all languages and formats. And also, we are make great use of two distinguished panels of outside scholars representing different cultures and disciplines. And in assessing a lifetime of scholarly contributions, we are fundamentally concerned with the depth of penetration into the subjects that the candidate deals with but as well with a broader implications of how his or her work on other areas of study or an important areas of public life also have a broader influence. We are deeply grateful to the late John W. Kluge for his generosity in creating the endowment that funds very special prize as well as the ranging research of many visiting scholars at the Kluge Center here within the Library of Congress' Flagship, Jefferson Building, such as the much admired Ruth Cardoso, the late wife of tonight's awardee, and I might say what a pleasure it is to have so much of his family here with us tonight as well as his many friends and admirers. This is the first award ceremony which John Kluge himself has not been with us. We mourn his passing, remember with gratitude how with wisdom and humor as well he enabled us to bring innovation into America's oldest federal cultural institution. We regret that his widow Maria Kluge is not able to be with us this evening, but she has provided a personal gift for each of you that you may pick up as you depart. Now most importantly of all in this institutional symbol of the importance of knowledge to our democracy and these processes, we thank the congress of the United States for creating, sustaining through thick and thin, for 2012 years, the universality of its collections beginning with Jefferson's amazing library which was in 16 languages, divided into memory, reason and imagination, those three ways of organizing knowledge which he used for his library. And the congress has seen to it that the universality of its collections has been developed and sustained as well as their accessibility both on-site here and more recently online everywhere. Congress has been quite simply the greatest single patron of a library in the history of the world. And we thank the distinguished members who are with us tonight even at the midst of an extraordinarily busy time for them. Just a few days ago, we celebrated here at the library the 150th anniversary of the congress passing both houses and President Lincoln's signing of the Morrill Act that brought into being even in the midst of our bloody and tragic civil war, land-grant universities which are our unique nationwide infrastructure for the advanced and accessible learning that made our country dynamic. Justin Morrill was the author of this landmark legislation and he became the longest serving member of congress during its first century and a half. Morrill was also the legislator responsible for building here, in the heart of our capital, this beautiful and uplifting Jefferson Building in which we gather for this occasion. Of the man we honor tonight embodies knowledge leading to democratization in our largest neighbor in the Western hemisphere. He has been an immensely prodigious scholar publishing over 30 books that are on display, you could see them down here on the way to dinner tonight. But that not only those 30 books, but there are about 60 books about him that have developed on in many, many translations. So it's been an immensely prodigious scholar. And from his first academic appointment at age 21 in economic history and then sociology, he went on to develop what he called historical structural analysis. He described this with characteristic modesty as "trying to understand the relationship between economic, political and social processes." In affect, he was fusing together all three, all three of the major branches of the modern social sciences while maintaining a humanistic perspective throughout. He drew on theories about social structures present in all four languages of the Western hemisphere, Spanish, English, and especially French, as well as of course, he's native Portuguese. But he added his own dimension of what he has describe as value inspired human action, both to understand and to advance the human adventure. He is continuing study of empirical realities let him to challenge the fashionable thesis that authoritarian political regimes were preconditioned for economic progress in underdeveloped countries like Brazil. When the situation Brazil created an opening for productive political activity, he moved into the legislature, served briefly as foreign minister then finance minister, and is elected twice to two terms as president of Brazil. He had a passion for improving his country by nonviolent democratic means and overcoming prejudices of all sorts with what his friend Albert Hirschman describe as A Bias for Hope. He is that rare political leader whose policies and perspective were grounded in decades of prior probing intellectual analysis. His scholarship laid the ground work for his political leadership in helping transform Brazil from a military dictatorship with high inflation into a vibrant more inclusive democracy with a strong economic growth, from the land of persistent poverty and considerable illiteracy into the world's 6th largest economy. There are maybe an implied prescription for other developing nations in his description of what he hope to have-- helped accomplish in Brazil. And I'm proud again, The consolidation of democracy and the strength of institution. Certainly that emphasis on the slow business of building the infrastructure of hope is something to be admired and to be emulated. Certainly, his career demonstrates the practical potential of deep sustained original scholarship to help transform human lives for the better. So I'm happy to present, on behalf of the Library of Congress and many other I think, the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity to the Former President of Brazil, now, Professor Emeritus at the University of San Paulo, builder of Brazil's first Presidential Library, ladies and gentleman, a true citizen of the world and the recipient of this prize which we do with great gratitude for his long time service and he's continuing dedication and also for having his family here making it a complete evening all the name of, ladies and gentlemen, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. [ Applause ] >> Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Thank you again. [Applause] Thank you. [ Applause ] Thank you very much. You know, when I'm in my country and some people applaud me like you did I used to say, "Please don't do that, because I will repeat what I will say today-- tonight." It is a long speech. Thank you very much. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, esteemed Dr. Billington, distinguished guests, fellow Brazilians, colleagues, friends, it is with great emotion that I stand before you this evening. I feel honored, and humbled, to receive this most prestigious prize. I must confess to you that I also feel a bit nervous, perhaps overwhelmed. This may sound slightly ridiculous, coming from someone who was the President of Brazil for eight years, and who spent many decades lecturing at universities in the United States, France, Latin-America and in my own country. But I insist that it is true. My emotions can be explained partly by circumstance. As has been said by Dr. Billington, I speak-- I can-- I am able to speak some languages, but English is my fourth language, one in which I am prone to making atrocious errors. In addition, since I gave my first university lecture at the tender age of 21, I have preferred to speak not from a script, but in a more improvised, informal fashion. You know, this has always been the Brazilian form to speak. As anthropologists tell us, the indigenous people of Brazil, the Tupinamba culture gathered everyday at sundown to trade stories and gossips that's a fine oral tradition, one that has endured. But I am afraid that this distinguished group of people gathered tonight, and the high standard set by the scholar who won this award before me, preclude me from being so daring as to speak extemporaneously. Above all, though, I am deeply moved by one essential truth. I am deeply moved by how unexpected this honor was for me. I am the first Brazilian and the first Latin-American to receive the Kluge Prize and this is a true privilege. There was a time, not so long ago, when such an honor would have been difficult to imagine. I spent a portion of my academic career studying the relationship between the wealthy core of countries in Western and North America and that was then known as the periphery, countries such as Brazil that were distant, economically and geographically. Fifty years have passed, Brazil has changed enormously. So has the world. Brazil is now, as been said by Dr. Billington, the world's number six economy, it depends on the excellent rate, bigger than Britain or Italy, and is closing in on France. My country still suffers from a great many problems and injustices, but it has also become a leader in many areas. Indeed, the economic dynamism of the world has now come to depend to a large extent on the former periphery, the BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and others. Meanwhile, what we once called the core is now mired in a seemingly eternal crisis with an uncertain future. I must confess that most people from my generation never thought such an inversion in the global order would be possible. The shift of global power is surely one of the great defining events of our time. How did this transformation occur? How did Brazil and other emerging countries overcome many of their problems, and give rise to a new order? How did a sociology professor, like me born in Rio 81 years ago into an impoverished and overwhelmingly illiterate country in the grip of a Great Depression come to stand before you tonight in these halls of the United States Congress? I cannot attempt a comprehensive explanation here tonight. I hope you will forgive me if I focus instead on relating my own personal experiences, both as president and professor. I am entering my 9th decade of life, this is not good, and I have found that the line between knowledge and memory becomes blurred. I also-- it also becomes more difficult for one to say something new. I should tell you in a story, sometime ago I was fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study because of my friend Albert Hirschman. So when came to this place, I was astonished. A lot of young people, PhD, very good PhD were-- have been selected to stay for some time at the Institute there in Princeton and they were, you know, trying to creating something, the young people. And they have a kind of anxiety because in some sciences, in pure mathematics and in pure physics, it's so nice to be very young to be capable to create. How far time has gone on, it's more difficult to imagine something new. Maybe you become more wise I hope, but this is maybe also an obstacle to innovation. So,-- yet, I hope that perhaps by telling you some of my story, I can-- might shine some light on the experiences of others, on the experiences of Brazil and other countries on a broader and more important story. As we used to say in the ancient time, De te fabula narrator. Over the years, many wise people have spoken of the difficulties faced by those who attempt the dual vocations of politician and academic. Max Weber, as you know, composed admirable essays about both conditions. In times of difficulty as president, when I needed to explain one political decision or another, I myself appealed to the well-established dichotomy between the ethics of responsibility, those of the public official, and the ethics of absolute, final values, those of the priest, prophet and professor. Some have said that reconciling this dichotomy requires a pact with the devil. That has always struck me as an exaggeration. But my story, in many ways, is deeply rooted in those same choices between values and practice, between reason and emotion. In the beginning, though, my choices were simple ones. Instead of choosing the established paths of law or letters, I went to study sociology at the University of Sao Paulo. In truth, I didn't really know what I would learn. I suspect my classmates didn't, either. We were studying to be sociologists, I think we really wanted to be socialists. But I was 70 years old, and I wanted to change the world, or more modestly, I wanted to improve life in Brazil. There were so many things that needed improvement. Brazil was still deeply rooted in the past, a country that had been both a colony and a seat of a European empire, a country that had imported ten times as many slaves as United States, and did not abolish the abominable practice until 1888. As I began university, in the late '40s, more than half of Brazil's population suffered from chronic malnutrition. A similar number could not afford shoes. Only one in three children attended school. In vast rural areas, half of the babies did not survive to see their first birthday. The average lifespan was just 46 years, versus 69 in the United States. It was a tremendously poor, unjust country. I came from an upper-middle class family in Rio. My father was a general, as well as my grandfather. Many of my ancestors had also served both the Empire and the Republic. When I was a child, Rio was still Brazil's capital, a place where the middle class clung to an insular life of small privileges. Yet, by the time I went to the university, Brazil had already begun its profound change. My desires and my values reflected this changing environment. The egalitarian impulse that Brazil received upon joining the Allied cause in the Second World War created a unique impetus for us to develop and democratize. Brazilian military who fought and died for democracy in Europe knew they could no longer defend a dictatorship at home. Inequality and under-development were my focus as I began my studies. Yet, I must admit that some time passed before, I saw the connection between my social and political concerns and the academic formation I was receiving. If Descartes whose work was taught to us in French, by a professor from the College de France could be assimilated quite easily, Kant, with his a priori principles, was more difficult to understand. In Durkheim, Les Regles de la Mehode Sociologique I found the clarity Descartes advocated for. I was persistent, especially in my desire, even then, to find a link between academic practice and real-world action. I read Weber furiously. I saw in his action with purpose in his descriptions of the various forms of domination, or his vision of charisma as the counterbalance to bureaucratic banality, my first-- the first flickers of the life that awaited me. I read with passion Karl Mannheim's books on Ideology and Utopia and Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning. The seduction of great theories did not stopped me from looking for empirical community studies and the functionalist method prescribed by Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton. I was also influenced by authors dedicated to understanding the basis for social interactions, including their constituent moral or value dimensions. Great theoretical construction based on systemic or purely structural analysis, without the dynamics of human interaction, hide more than they reveal. In dialogue with Weber, Ferdinand Tonnies insisted that without human will no action is possible. People relate to each other either by sharing a common experience in community life or by entering into contractual relations in societal life. For Tonnies, community and society are basic forms of society, the mineshaft on Gesellschaft as they used to say. Finally, it was Marx, and authors such as Tocqueville, Mannheim and Schumpeter, who consolidated my vision as a sociologists. Structures are basic to explain society but they are not enough to account for change. Without taking into account value-inspired human action, we cannot explain the dynamic of historical process. Drinking from these multiple sources, I gradually forged what came to be called a historical-structural approach as Dr. Billington described it. Structures provide the field of possibilities for human action but it is the will of individuals, groups and classes, driven by values and ideologies that create the opportunity for change. That is why sociology is a human science. Or, if you prefer, as was said in the old times, a moral science. This vision enabled me to link my academic training with my impulse to promote change and influence reality. My first work as a sociologist was on that timeless Brazilian issue, race. This was in the 1950s, and the official line was that Brazil was a racial democracy. That, despite our history of slavery, the country did not discriminate on the basis of skin color. It was true that there was no official segregation, as the time in the United States. But it was plainly obvious to everyone in Brazil that darker skin equaled greater poverty. The myth of racial democracy was in fact quite pervasive. It masked reality, and yet, contradictory, also expressed the aspiration to accede to more tolerant racial relations. We set out to explode this myth. To do so, we needed empirical evidence. Guided by my mentor, Professor Florestan Fernandes, we ventured into poor neighborhoods in the Southern State of Rio Grande do Sul. We must have been a strange sight. We were young white men asking pointed questions about how blacks and whites interacted in Brazil. The people we talked to were forthcoming but the data we collected was damning. There could be no doubt that the legacy of slavery continued to influence inequality in Brazil. In my doctoral dissertation, Capitalism and Slavery in Southern Brazil, I endeavored to study the historical structure of the intricate relationship between masters and slaves. In order to understand it, I took into account its general causes, that is to say, the functioning of mercantile capitalism at the global level. However, I also stressed that the relationship between masters and slaves could only be understood if they were, at the same time, included in the specific dynamics of the Brazilian colonial society, which was not a mere extension of the international productive system. In later years, the topics of my research would change. But the objectives never did. I wanted to understand what was happening in contemporary Brazil. I wanted to tear down myths and expose truths, both left and right. One of these myths was the assumption of a potential alliance between progressive entrepreneurs and the working class to oppose the block made up by agrarian landowners and foreign interests. My research in the book Industrial Entrepreneurs and Economic Development in Brazil demonstrated that this interpretation was a mere illusion. In 1964, reacting against the call for land and other structural reforms, most businessmen supported the military coup-d'etat to stop the so-called populist subversion. As part of the wave of repression, I was forced to leave the country with my family. We moved to Santiago of Chile, then a haven of freedom in South America. And these were times of political radicalization. The Cuban Revolution, at the height of the Cold War, led to an extreme polarization between revolutionary movements and military repression. Within this framework, a theory became fashionable to explain underdevelopment in Latin-America. The so-called periphery was condemned to a permanent state of submission by the rich countries of the core. This theory held that only a total rupture, a global socialist revolution, would be capable of changing the capitalist order thus removing the obstacles to economic development. Working with my colleague, Enzo Faletto, we wrote a book, Dependency and Development in Latin America that described a far more complex and dynamic world. Starting with the economic analysis of Raul Prebisch and other thinkers of the Economic Commission for Latin America, we realized that the periphery was far from being homogeneous and static. We underlined the historical formation of social classes of the state as well as the different linkages with the world market. These differences paved the way for alternative forms of economic and social development contingent upon human agency. That is to say, we're not condemned to permanent backwardness but challenged to find the appropriate ways to overcome structural barriers. This seems evident today, but I can assure you, it was considered heresy at the time. We were one of the first, in the late '60s, to talk about the internationalization of domestic markets. This process, in retrospect, was in the initial phase of what later became known as globalization. You must remember that at that time, even the idea of a multinational was nonexistent. The concept of multinational was found in the '70s. When we wrote this book, we had to concepts to describe what was the reality. So uses-- this come-- lots of word to say a simple thing. We said, "Well, we have the internalization of the internal market." [Inaudible] sounds bad. But you know, the way we had to express [inaudible] another was really the globalization, the beginning of globalization. It started in the '70s, more profound, extended to the financial market in the '90s, going much beyond the internationalization of domestic markets to encompass the global productive system. This force and the ability of governments to properly harness it would be absolutely critical in determining the rise of the BRICS countries, some years later. After living abroad with my family from '64 to '68, working in Chile and teaching at the University of Paris, I returned to Brazil in October 1968. At the time, democratic pressures seemed to be opening space for some degrees of freedom. It was an illusion again. A coup by the military hardliners in December 1968 led to a re-imposition of torture and repression. I was stripped of my professorship and forced by the military into early retirement at the age of only 37. Many people, fearing for my personal safety, urged me to leave Brazil again. I had received invitations from Yale, from [inaudible] to go back to France and others. My decision on these very difficult days was to stay and resist, doing the utmost to preserve spaces for critical thinking. This decision was not without risks. My work was frequently censored. Peter Brown [phonetic] is among our guest here. And Peter at the time was the 4th representative and he knows quite well how difficult it was and how important it was, his action and the action of other international organizations to help us to keep our freedom and to try to express our views and to continue our work in brazil. Well, I had to endure long hours of questioning in one of the most notorious center of torture in Sao Paulo. Many friends and colleagues had to pay a much higher price, much higher price. But with many other groups of civil society and political opposition, we managed to pursue a 10-year struggle to restore freedom and democracy to Brazil. We founded an independent think tank supported by several people across the-- in Brazil and across the globe, the name is CEBRAP that became a kind of monastery in the Dark Ages keeping alive the flame of resistance. I published one of the first books openly criticizing the authoritarian regime, Authoritarianism and Democracy in exploring the ways leading to a political transition from a military rule to democracy. The dictatorship spoke of a Brazilian miracle, but there was far less progress than met the eye. CEBRAP published a book called Sao Paulo: Growth and Poverty. The book showed that during the years of the so-called miracle, 80 percent of Brazil's population suffered a decline in real income. This role I assumed of a public intellectual committed to democracy led me to engage in political life. I ran for the Senate in 1978 on behalf of the opposition party and I was elected as Deputy Senator from the State of Sao Paulo. In 1983, I became a full senator until my election as president. Actually to tell you, in 1982, I was visiting a professor at Berkeley. At the end of my class, the head of [inaudible], Professor Robert Bellah an expert in sociology of religions, invited me to take a tea with him. And he invited me to stay to-- he said he could offer me a tenure. I said, "Well, okay. I'm very proud." And he said, "For me, it's an honor to be a professor at Berkeley." But I need to also a seat in the Capitol Hill, because if I go back to my country, I become senator. If you don't offer me seat in Capitol Hill [Laughter] Well, so I became a senator in '88, 1988, after being deeply involved with the drafting of Brazil's new constitution, I helped to form a new political party, the PSDB, whose president is here tonight with us [inaudible] senator who is with us tonight here. Did this political engagement imply a pact with the devil? No, it did not. Did it imply a rejection of my principles, or the academic work I had done? Quite the contrary. The exercise of politics required an ability to clearly diagnose Brazil's problems to understand the structures that were available to affect change, and to accurately gauge what was possible in our society. This was the work of a sociologist. In that sense, the academic and the politician, reason and emotion, they were not only complementary. They were both essential. If there was ever a situation that demanded the skills of a sociologist, it may have been the chaos that confronted Brazil in the early and mid-'90s, 1990s. Ours was a country in crisis. While Brazil had recently returned to democracy, the transition had been difficult. Our first democratic president tragically passed away just before taking office. That's to say to you that his grandson is among us, Senator Aecio Neves. Our second was impeached under a cloud of suspicion. Meanwhile, our economy was suffering the cumulative effects of years of mismanagement and growing inequality. Perhaps the clearest symptom was inflation. In 1993, it reached in average the inconceivable level of 25 percent per month. Brazil had seen seven different failed currencies in the last eight years. People were using words like basketcase and pariah to describe our country. I was then serving as foreign minister when President Itamar Franco called me late one night in New York and asked me to become finance minister. I tried to convince the president I was not the person to become finance minister. I was not a trained economist, and I feared the position would be a political death sentencing. I told Itamar, Franco that I was honored, but it would be better not make another change of minister which would have been the fourth in seven months. I went to sleep. The next morning, I began receiving phone calls from journalists, congratulating me on my new position [laughter] and asking me what would be my first decision as finance minister. You can't imagine my wife Ruth, she called on the phone furious. I said, "No, it's not true. I didn't accept." [Laughter] "You are lying." "No. [Laughs] Well, I was appointed by the president during night." "Okay." We knew we had to confront inflation, for political and moral reasons. The truth about inflation was that it damaged the poor the most, it left the majority of society unable to save, or invest, or plan, and thus it perpetuated inequality. We decided to resolve the problem by introducing another new currency, called the "real." The plan itself was concocted by young economists who were brilliant in their financial engineering. My contribution had more to do with the way the plan was presented and in assuring the necessary political support in congress and society. Previous attempts to introduce new currencies depended upon surprise and secrecy to try and slow the inflationary spiral. They all failed. As a sociologist, I knew that in open societies, confidence is just as important as technical competence. Communication between leaders and society is just as critical as the quality of the policies being implemented. I took great pains to explain our logic and our plans to the Brazilian public for months in advance before the real was launched. I truly believe that this transparency was the determining factor of our success. Inflation would fall from above 25 percent per month in '93 to 5 percent per year by 1995. The effect on Brazilian society was instant and profound. People who were living in abject poverty could now retain the value of their money, and could buy basic things like yogurt and chicken. Others, of greater income, could now save to purchase TVs and cars for the first time. It was the very definition of a policy that would both create wealth and reduce inequality. That is why I was elected president in October 1994 by majority vote in the first round. In my two consecutive mandates, we took many other steps to make a more prosperous and equal Brazil. We implemented compensatory policies that address inequalities, including racial, that I had documented so many years before. We implemented progressive policies on AIDS prevention and land distribution that would address the needs of the poorest members of society. We gave a firm impulse in universal education and health care. We sought to invigorate the economy by breaking monopolies and privatizing some state companies without ever abdicating the state's role as in promoting development. My beloved late wife Ruth, an accomplished academic in her own right, established a program called Comunidade Solidaria, which broke with the traditional patronage of social programs. The focus passed from merely satisfying necessities to strengthening people and communities. The Plano Real as the opening of the economy and the policies to reduce poverty and inequality were pursued by successive governments under different political parties expressing a growing consensus around a common ground. This for me was wonderful to see my opening at the time become president and try to continue the basic policy we try to start in Brazil, and this has been continuity. From time to time, there are some changes, but no more. The conjunction is different from one period to another period, but in basic foundations, the Brazilian economy are there as well as the basic foundation were a more healthy social policy maybe in health and education, not to speak about the programs of cash transfer that President Lula gave an enormous impulse. I stopped but he [inaudible] impulse. The collapse of the Berlin Wall had accelerated globalization, and given rise to an unprecedented wave of wealth creation throughout the world. By stabilizing the economy, establishing a political consensus behind responsible policymaking, and addressing the needs of our poorest, we were able to ensure that Brazil fully harnessed that titanic force. Looking at the world today, the challenges and problems facing all of us are in many ways familiar to me. In several countries, including some in the former core, deep inequality has paralyzed progress. Other countries still face the tyranny of a tiny elite that refuses to let go of power, and continues to dominate wealth and privilege. Experience has taught me to be optimistic. Brazil's example, I should say, a bias for hope. Hirschman phrased it in my [inaudible] in that sense. Brazil's example shows that even a country deemed hopeless can reverse its fortune quickly. Plus, there are new structures and tools available to us for social change that are more far-reaching, than the ones I first studied at the University of Sao Paulo some six decades ago. In some respects, there has been a reencounter with concepts such as humanity and community. Social structures, social classes and national states by themselves no longer account for the diversity of actors engaged with global problem and challenges affecting the whole of mankind. As outlined by Alain Touraine, global social movements of an incredible variety express a point of view of humanity. I think that the notion of humanity, now again, become very important to understand what's going across the globe. New forms of identity and community are being recreated without necessarily implying a face-to-face relationship. I refer the beginning to Ferdinand Tonnies ideas of, you know, community as something that requires a direct contact, face-to-face. Now, in our days, the positive role of social media such as Facebook and Twitter is marshaling social change and causing a rupture in existing social structures, in cases such as the Arab Spring that has been well documented by Manuel Castells. I can-- a new form of community, if I can put it like that, linking people from different parts of the world is on the way. It is as if we need to rediscover the dialectic between the thinking of Rousseau and Montesquieu in order to allow for a future synthesis, or at least an accommodation between the institutional order and spontaneous movements. I don't know what will come of this relationship in the future, but it's clear that some of the old concepts are now insufficient to understand today's world. Yet, that doesn't mean we should turn our backs on the classic lessons or methods of the social sciences. Far from it. This group of distinguished people gathered here tonight is a celebration of the great and important role that the humanities can play in our modern world, in politics, academics, and human thought more broadly. I hope that people will look at the Brazilian experience and realize the importance of tolerance and diversity. I mentioned earlier that the notion of a 'racial democracy was both a myth and the expression of a genuine desire for this to be true. Today, thanks to the compensatory social policies and the pressure toward greater democratization, combined with the lack of big cultural divides, there is a growing trend toward the acceptance of differences and of conflicts in Brazil. This attitude, strongly criticized in the past as proof of a permanent political conciliation among the elites, now takes a much more positive meaning. I believe that the current power shift underway means the Western world, in order to assure its continued influence and legitimacy, must become more accepting and inclusive of others' cultures. Brazil's story shows how a diverse country can become part of the modern world. The globalization of the economy and the acceptance of the market as the regulating force in many aspects of life cannot become a straitjacket. There will always be room for cultural alternatives, for national morals and behaviors that will keep things from becoming flat and boring in this world. Hopefully, Brazil, with its creativity and imagination, can be an active agent in the construction of a political and economic order which allows not only for increases in GDP, but in the happiness of countries. Perhaps I have played my small part in furthering this debate. As for me, I continue to remain active, focusing not on day-to-day Brazilian politics which I abandoned upon leaving the presidency, but on international issues such as democratic global governance, the restructuring of the financial order, and international drug policies. By the way Mr. Paul Faulkner [phonetic] honored me being here and is also a member of this commission on new policies for drugs. This has been difficult. It reminds us that time is passing, and-- [inaudible]. I have lost many loved ones, many loved ones in recent years is noble at my age. That has been difficult. It reminds us that time is passing, and soon nothing will be left to judge us but history. Yet, I continue to try to do my small part, still relying upon those reserves of reason and emotion. Standing before you tonight, perhaps that dichotomy is a bit out of balance. I said at the beginning of my remarks, it is emotion that I feel most acutely at this moment. I feel truly overwhelmed, overwhelmed by gratitude, gratitude to my country, gratitude to this institution, and gratitude to all of you for making tonight possible. Thank you for this great honor. Thank you so very much. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.