>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Dan Turello: Welcome back to our second panel. And if you are just joining us this morning: Welcome to the Kluge Center. Welcome to the Library of Congress and welcome to our first ever edition of "The ScholarFest". I am Dan Turello with the Kluge Center and before we proceed this is the point in the program where I ask you to please turn-off your cell phones; any other electronic devices which might interfere with our conversations. I also want to remind you that we are filming today's conversations for future webcast and that we are tweeting all day with a #@scholarfest. ScholarFest is all about celebrating 15 years the John W. Kluge Center. The Kluge Center was founded in 2000 thanks to a very generous donation by John W. Kluge. And since then, we have had the privilege of hosting 100's of scholars from all over the world. Who have come to the library to use our collections and in doing so, have brought their wisdom and their ideas to Capitol Hill and to the broader community in Washington, D.C. We're thrilled to have so many of our scholars back with us today to help celebrate this anniversary. And today is really all about showcasing and celebrating their ideas, their work and their research. Our theme for this morning's session is "Right/Wrong: Perspectives on Notions of Morality" ad we have a very, very creative format for you. In this case, we have 5 pairs of scholars. Each pair will be taking the stage and engaging in a 10-minute lighting conversation about a topic related to the overall theme. Please save your questions for the very end. We will have a time of moderated Q&A. And you also have notecards on which you can jot down thoughts along the way should you wish to. Finally before we begin, I am not going to introduce each of our panelists because we will be here all morning. Instead they will simply state their name on taking the stage and invite you to refer to your program which has detailed bios for each of our participants. So without further ado, let's begin. [ Applause ] >> John Witte, Jr.: So, Good Morning. My name is John Witte. It's a joy to be back here in the Library of Congress in the Kluge Center. I had the privilege of being here a couple of years ago in the Maguire Chair in Ethics in American History. And I want to acknowledge and give deep thanks to Mr. Maguire and his family for their generous support of the Kluge Center and of the Enterprising Scholarship that goes on in that Chair, except for the year I was in it. [Laughter] Marianne, you work on issue of nineteenth and early twentieth century women and women's rights in Central Eurasia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, some of the other Stanley brother that we have in the former Soviet Union. And you've discovered this wonderful archive of material dealing with women's rights advocacy in 1917. Right around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Right around the time where women's rights movements were afoot in many parts of the world. And you've lifted up a whole series of interesting insights that women's rights advocates, particularly in Muslim communities, were pressing. And I'd be interested to hear about the sources of those women's rights that they're advocating. Are they indigenous to their local community? To the Islamic Faith? To a global Islamic movement? Or are they absorbing what's going on in the West? And secondly, I am interested in the object of that women's right advocacy. Which is not only oppressive social and cultural conditions toward women but also especially the role that religious legal systems play, Sharia in particular, in instantiating a status and a role for women that was viewed as unbecoming in the eyes of those women's rights advocates. Can you open that world for us a little bit? >> Marianne Kamp: So this is a reference to an article that I worked on this year and that is coming out in The Journal of Women's History and it's called "Debating Sharia". And it refers to a women's congress that took place in 1917 in the city of Kazan. Where mainly Qatar women were of a Muslim ethnic group within Russia, discussed what kinds of rights they thought women should have in this newly liberating context of Revolutionary Russia. And they particularly expressed this as a debate about Sharia and the core question that they wanted to deal with is polygyny. That is a man marrying multiple wives. Would this be a right that should be preserved, limited or gotten ridden of in a new and liberating system? And this is a fascinating debate and the transcript of it was published by advocates who wanted to see change. And the two sides in this debate came from rather different places and one of them said: "Islamic law is eternal, enduring and the most we can do is understand it in a way that will defend women's rights somehow but we can't just toss out man's right to marry more than one woman because it's in the Quran". And the others in this debate said, "If we assume that the Quran at a fundamental level is really about justice and we recognize that we have changed in our definitions of what is just over time, for example now we don't practice slavery anymore, do we? But that was in the Quran too. Maybe it's time to recognize that this is an unjust system and not really in accordance with the ethic of the Quran". >> John Witte, Jr.: This a-- >> Marianne Kamp: This is a 1917 debate. >> John Witte, Jr.: Yeah. Does the Quran mandate polygyny or merely permit people given on certain conditions >> Marianne Kamp: Most interpreters of the Quran say that it allows it but not that it mandates it. >> John Witte, Jr.: Right. Yes. And is it a feature of faith? Does a faithful person who was multiple wives serve better in social standing than a person who has merely one wife? >> Marianne Kamp: That would be entirely a matter for a faithful Muslim to state. I cannot possibly state that. I can mention [phonetic] an article that is all about that. But we came up with this topic, in fact, because you have been thinking about changing marriage laws in United States. The ways that Americans are now debating what is marriage? And what is the role of the state at the end in limiting [inaudible] and giving rights and so forth. And for you-- this too has raised actually the question about polygyny or polygamy as Americans say-- >> John Witte, Jr.: Right. >> Marianne Kamp: is about having multiple spouses and I wonder why that's been an interesting question to you? And what kinds of findings you have at this point? >> John Witte, Jr.: So there's-- the findings are set out in a 543 page book by my wife's husband called "The Western Case for the Monogamy of the Polygamy" What I did in that book was try to discover the historical arguments about polygamy in the west. I thought when I came into the Maguire Chair there would be some nineteenth century German historian who has done 19 volumes on point. I could simply crib his or her footnotes and go and find all the sources and write my history. But I realized that we really don't have a definitive history of monogamy versus polygamy in the western tradition. And I tried to at least make a start and I hope somebody does a better book. And it's an issue that obviously has come up in modern life. Right next door the Supreme Court is debating the question of the form of marriage and whether marriage can now be defined in a way that would include same sex marriage legitimately as a matter of Federal right. The next question on the frontier of course is going to be the ancient Beck's question about whether a polygamist union or polygynous union is permissible on gender neutral or on gender specific grounds. And it's a question in part of liberty, equality, non-discrimination. It's a question in part of religious freedom for those groups that advocated. It's a question in part about the autonomy of religious groups and their voluntary faithful to set their own internal legal systems with respect to marriage, family and other intimate matters. And that collision is coming quickly and I thought it useful in the writing of the book to set out a bit of the historical argument that the west has offered us in thinking through the question of privileging both historical heterosexual and monogamous marriage and arguments against alternative forms of marriage. And the book tries to make that case. But what I found striking about your article is that many of the arguments being pressed by the women in that women's rights conference. When you start digging into those arguments they sound very much like the traditional western arguments against polygamy. Part of the problem is the rights of women and their equality in the home. The rights of children and their ability to be supported by the patriarchal man. The rights of the non-married youngster who cannot compete economically and the like. I mean can you say a little more about some of those arguments and how they cash out in and on Muslim terms in your region? >> Marianne Kamp: So I will mention a little bit about [inaudible] going on recently in Central Asia. Since-- throughout the Soviet period why the entire Soviet Union was secular. And the laws on marriage that one man, one woman and marriage has to be consent based and voluntary and one cannot possibly-- you would have to divorce one spouse before marrying another. After 1991 when the Sam's, as we call them, the colony became independent. These suddenly became new conversations and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in particular and even parliamentary debates about whether polygyny should be made legal. And the ideas behind this, the drivers on the side for "Well, let's make this legal" were fundamentally the people that were already doing this and maybe [inaudible] and then Sheik practice. And that however the people really arguing for it tended not to put this in religious terms. They tended to put it in terms of tradition, we used to do this, we do do this and so why isn't it okay? But they also put it in a few other terms where they have perceived problems. Women not finding the spouses that they would actually like to marry and so funny thing, parliamentarians most of them would be older, more powerful men but suggesting, "I think that I'll solve that". [ Laughter ] >> John Witte, Jr.: Well there aren't older legislators here, I think, across the road, that are making the same arguments. What is interesting here is less a matter of state law and much more the autonomy of religious communities to devise their own internal religious legal system to deal with fundamental questions of sex, marriage and family life. Especially religious communities that are counter-cultural in some of their habits including about the form of marriage. Also religious communities that find disquieting the increasingly thin character of marriage and family life that obtains that state law. And there is a strong pressure afoot now to-- for voluntary faithful to opt out of state law and into the religious legal system of their own home community. With an exit right from the community and from the legal system guaranteed but with a desire to have their marriage and family law questions dealt with by their own faithful, religious leaders. Rather than turn to the state with this increasingly moral libertarianism or libertine-ism governing the marriage and family questions. And that for a while was okay when it was Halaja and Jewish law. When it was the canon law of the capital church, when it was Native American Indian law. The question is now very much at a head when it comes to Sharia and how do you solve a problem like Sharia? Is going to be a big question going forward and that is the title of an article by my dear friend Mark Hill in the ins of court. That's going to be the big one. And I think going forward we'll be back for another conversation with Marianne about that question as Dawn says. Thank you. >> Adeeb Khalid: Alright. This is the morning of stands actually and Marianne and I work on very, very similar times and theses and archives and Temur works on Mongolia studies. This session is-- this conversation is basically from the stance looking East. And Temur has come the longest, I think, of anyone to attend this ScholarFest. So he has come all the way from China and since you publish mostly in Chinese that would just completely beyond my can unfortunately. So would you tell us a little bit about what you do? Or what you work on and what you did at the Kluge Center? >> Temur Temule: Yeah, thank you. I'm-- it is my special honor to be here. I am very thankful for Kluge Center to have us back to D.C. I have been working nomadic sedentary relations in Central Russia, promote in Central Russia and many scholars worked on this topic. The relations between the nomadic people and the sedentary in pre-modern Central Russia has been one of the most important topics in the Central Russian studies. And that many people has been asking the same question that why did the nomadic people have to attack and plunder upon the sedentary people-- sedentary society? And they made every effort to try to answer this question in many ways. And I worked on the Sino-Mongol relations along the great wall in fifteenth and sixteenth century. And my conclusion is that the Xin Han Din-- Xin, Han and the Song and the Ming Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty and they are not that pure on China's Dynasty. Under the nomadic people, my research based on-- my research on the borderland people-- made to come to the conclusion that the nomadic people also have many sedentary refugees among them. So, I think there is a problem with the question that why did the nomadic people have to attack and plunder and raid upon the sedentary society? The question is problematic. And I found that-- this is also one of the discoveries I did in Kluge center, sedentary society is not the only part of the people who was plundered. They are completely passive party along the Great Wall. And in many ways we have to say that nomadic people-- they revenged upon the plunder from the sedentary society. That is what I did, I think, thank you. Yeah. Adeeb-- >> Adeeb Khalid: Yeah I was thinking about sedentary nomadic relations in central Eurasia in the morning session which was about identity and about the other and in some way would you agree that for people in Central Eurasia the nomadic sedentary divide is-- basic to how they see the world? >> Temur Temule: To-- >> Adeeb Khalid: To how people in Central Eurasia imagine the world as being made up for nomads versus sedentaries? >> Temur Temule: Yeah. A father whom reservist, who live in Arlington, Virginia, he asked the same question many years ago. Nomadic people and sedentary people, they never understand each other in any way. And I have been asking a question in recent days: Are there the notion of right or wrong for the sedentary people when they plunder upon the nomadic people? Also the question for the nomadic people during that time. My answer is yes, there is many-- historical sources came from the Chinese source of Ming Dynasty. They know they have been doing cruel administration by killing nomadic people by plundering their horses and other things. When they do that they know that it's wrong but they did. And the nomadic they revenged upon that because of that nomadic people launched war against the Ming Dynasty. I think they have the notion about wrong and right. >> Adeeb Khalid: So my work has been connected with the-- is based on early twentieth century and completely different notions of, well, civilization and progress and modernity come to Central Asia and that begins to re-shape what they think-- what people, at least the intellectual people I am interested in begin to-- how they come to see right and wrong. Because then the notions of progress and modernity and the nation become the prism through which they see that. Would you say something similar has happened in nomadic sedentary relations? >> Temur Temule: Yeah, I think it-- I would say yes, for my case that is. I think your studies also met with nomadic Muslims and sedentary Muslims, the relations between them. >> Adeeb Khalid: Right. >> Temur Temule: Yeah. >> Adeeb Khalid: Yeah I mean, in some ways that has been one of my points of entry into this. That one of the burdens that all historians of Central Asia carry is this unstated assumption that Central Asia was somehow a united cultural space that then imperialists with the Chinese and the Russians undermined or destroyed through divide and conquer. But-- and so that is something again we all have to tilt, we all have to battle that notion. And for me it is quite clear that the cultural imaginary of Central Asians-- pre-modern Central Asians up until the Russian conquest really divided the world into sedentary versus nomadic. Even within the realm of Islam, even among sedentary Muslims and sedentary nomads where maybe a part of a single community, only the most global sense so global that it might as well be irrelevant. But otherwise, as far as the sedentary populations were concerned, nomads were Muslims in every different way, different rules applied to them and that sentiment was reciprocated. And for that reason the twentieth century trajectories of nationhood and modernization have also been quite different. >> Temur Temule: So the forces for the religious begins the-- in your area, were produced by sedentary Muslims? >> Adeeb Khalid: That is a fundamental problem. I think that all studies are nomadic societies that-- >> Temur Temule: Yeah. >> Adeeb Khalid: they're certainly not very generous with producing sources about themselves. >> Temur Temule: Yeah. >> Adeeb Khalid: So we are left to deal with what sedentary-- scholars would say about them. So there is that built in bias but the Library of Congress has amazing amounts of sources, a lot of them completely catalogued, and that was my great joy to get my hands on when I was here. And that was the single defining memory I have of that here. Alright, I think our time is up. Thank you very much. >> Temur Temule: Thank you very much. >> George Saliba: Good morning everybody and I am very happy to be back at the Kluge Center. I am celebrating my tenth year so [laughs]. When I was here 10 years ago I was already convinced that everybody in the scholarly community understood that there was a tremendous influence of Arabic science on Medieval Europe. And everyone knew that the thirteenth century were created the renaissance in Europe. I thought at the time that I was pushing the frontiers way, way ahead to see if there is anything that went on beyond the thirteenth century and to my great luck and to my great time here at the Kluge where I, by the way, characterized it the acknowledgement of my book at the time. That this is the closest you have ever been to heaven. [Laughter] Why? Because my image of heaven is that all of us good behaving citizens God will give us a little computer and we will type the names of the book that we want and then little angels will run-- [ Applause ] And before you know it, the book materializes and it sits on your desk until you say, "Take it away" [Laughs]. This is incredible but I was lucky. I felt at the time that I was so happy that by the fifteenth century I could document on my area of research. By the way, my name is George Saliba. I work at Columbia University and all of that. But my area of research at the time was to document the history of astronomy which is very technical subject. But technicality also is very interesting because it is not like a foggy influence here, a foggy influence there, it's a matter, a matter of style, it's a matter of mathematics. If you don't get it right, it's wrong so it's easy to document it. And I was happy to be able to document the influence of Islamic astronomy onto August, figures like that of Copernicus. And that I think-- I felt at the time, it needed to be celebrated and talked about. Since then and there at the time, 10 years ago, I felt that I had already four frontiers that I would never cross. Since then things have developed that not only turns out, not only Copernicus was very much interested in this Islamic astronomy and the mathematics he was inherited. Turns out that his friend Galileo-- not his immediate friend but about 50 years ago-- 50 years later, Galileo was also interested and he got his ideas from whom? From Copernicus, who in time go them from the Nasir al-Din Tusi, thirteenth century? So this-- there is a chain of things that happened and they continue to happen and then all of the sudden I discover that his own contemporary, the very famous Vesalius by the way, that very few people know. That Vesalius has written-- direct evidence that he had when he was writing his "Fabrica". He had ledges that Jew sitting right next to him translating for him through Hebrew from Arabic the names of the bones of the body so that he can document them in his "Fabrica". That I thought was very good news, alright? So I began to dig further. Then it turned out last summer, I was spending my whole Spring Term Sabbatical at Oxford, and I was looking at the Bodleian Library collections to find out that the famous astronomers of the seventeenth century, now we are not in the fifteenth anymore, seventeenth century were reading Arabic astronomical text in Arabic and annotating them on the margins with Latin and collecting data from them to be able to use it in their own research of the seventeenth century. This is how, by the way, the famous Halley could discover that the comet Halley will reappear every 75 to 76 years because he had these records that go all the way back. And he could actually now calculate the cycles. That is a new frontier that I didn't think I will get to it in only a matter of 10 years. And then, I began to raise the question why did all of this seem to disappear in Islamic civilization? What were they doing? And only recently, by the way, I began to look into material I would never dreamt of looking. There is no reason for a mathematician trained to think in mathematical astronomy to go and read Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations". This is sort of way out of my field. But then it turned out that Adam Smith has actually documented and said, "The 2 most important events that changed world civilizations and world history were: the discovery of America, 1. 2, the discovery of the route around Africa to go into Asia". And that began to give me ideas as to what happened, not only to Europe with the wealth that came to Europe as a result of the discover of this, as what happened to the rest of non-European world in going to tremendous decline which it still suffers from up to this very day. I am so happy to be here with Chet. The pairing is working very, very well because this question should be addressed to Chet as a matter of fact. When we know at the time of the fifteenth century, sixteenth century already we have documented 3 major civilizations of the time: The Chinese, the Islamic European Civilization were more or less on the same platform. Now all of the sudden Europe began to take off and leaves all these other civilizations behind. Lots of people answered the question by what went wrong in Islam? All those kinds of questions that are totally ridiculous instead of thinking at the global ability of Europe to actually benefit from all of these and think of when the posi-- and the question to you Chet: When they didn't even have proper maps, the maps that Columbus was using or at least was acquainted with, were maps that any Muslim geographer or any educated geographer in Europe at that time. Which this is totally ridiculous, the globe is not that small. And yet, they used those maps, Chet works on them, he can identify them. He knows them exactly. Tell me how could it possibly happen that in the end of the fifteenth, beginning of the sixteenth century, you can have a globe constructed of that [inaudible] or a map similar to it speculating that Japan is just a stone throw away from Portugal and people believing it? Isn't it ridiculous? No. >> Chet Van Duzer: [Laughs] My name is Chet Van Duzer. I am going to give a very circuitous answer to that question or at least try to. What George and I talked about doing in this session is first describe our Kluge project and then what we have been doing since then. And my project in the Kluge Center was to study a world map which is on permanent display upstairs in the Early Americas exhibition. If you haven't been there, it's worth going. If you go all the way to the back, there is 2 large world maps. Both made by Martin Waldseemüller. The one on the left in 1507, which is famous for being the first map to apply the name America to the New World. And the one on the right made 9 years later in 1516. And the 1507 map gets a lot of attention because it is a sort of birth certificate of America. I chose to study the other map, the 1516 map and my project was to study all the text on the map. Transcribe it, translate it and determine the sources. So figure out how this map was created. Since leaving the Kluge Center I've come to study in a way the other map. There is a large world map at Yale University which scholars had noted is very similar in layout and geography to the 1507 world map. But all of text on it had faded to the point where-- to the point of illegibility. And I undertook a project to make multi-spectral images of the map to make it possible to read those texts. And thus to compare-- to see just how important a source that was to Waldseemüller and making his 1507 map? And it turned out to be a very important source but more to the point and more to George's question is the fact that that map at Yale is the best contemporary representation we have of Columbus' conception of the world. And so-- yes, so the question is well why does it not show the circumference of the earth more accurately? And I think it's a problem that cartographers, all cartographers of that year are faced when looking at questions about parts of the world or aspects of the world about which they were either-- there was either little knowledge or conflicting knowledge. They didn't have a good basis to decide. Perhaps in the Islamic tradition the question that was more a consistency of the question of the circumference of the earth. But in the European tradition there wasn't and there were multiple figures to choose from. And Columbus had a vested interest in choosing a smaller figure for the circumference of the world so-- >> George Saliba: I love that. If you have vested interest you can really apply for grants and you can really get money and-- [ Laughter ] And the grant donors will have a similar vested interest and then before you know it; your narrative becomes the dominant narrative. >> Chet Van Duzer: Yes. >> George Saliba: Thank you so much and have-- >> Chet Van Duzer: Thank you. >> James Childress: Good morning. I'm Jim Childress. I teach Medical Ethics at the University of Virginia and I am very pleased to have this conversation partner today. A historian, Sonia Lee, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. We are going to focus on one particular debate in the area of moral judgements about drug addiction and societal responses to those. And we're going to build on Sonia's research which focuses on how the debates have been framed about what drug addiction is and about how professionals and the society should respond. So tell us about your research Sonia? Sure, thank you. Thank you everyone for coming here to the Kluge Center and for Dr. Childress for coming here as well. So let me just link up some of the research questions that I have with our contemporary black lives modern movement. This week we are mourning the loss of Kalief Browder. The young man who committed suicide after suffering extreme physical abuse at Rikers Island. And we are also mourning the police brutality that black youth faced in McKinney, Texas, a suburb [phonetic]. Just because they were at a swimming party-- swimming pool party. And then all of these debates I think a lot of us have focused our attention on the role of police officers and the larger criminal justice system. And imagining black criminality as something that is natural and I think that's an important debate. But I'd like to open up the question more broadly to understand how is it that we as Americans, so not just police officers, but all Americans, have come to believe that African Americans are prone to violence and prone to irrational behavior? This is so pervasive and yet we don't know how to answer that question. And I think one of the ways that we can answer that is to ask how a psychiatrist and psychologists, as those who are deemed to know the workings of the human mind, right? How they answer that question and how they either reinforced or challenged the notion that black violence or black irrationality is somehow natural? So one of the key historical moments that I try to look at to answer that question is 1960's and 70's when we faced a huge crisis with heroin addiction and crime. This is the time when the majority of heroin users are black and Latino. And a lot of historians who look at the whole history of the war on drugs and mass incarceration often talk about governor Nelson Rockefeller as one of the prime movers of history because he was the first politician to impose extremely harsh penalties on drug users and sellers. The one thing that we haven't really answered is that the only reason why he was able to offer prisons as the only solution to drug addicts was that he said, "There is no other cure for drug addicts". And my question is, "Why could psychiatrists and psychologists not offer an alternative to that?" And I think that part of the reason is that we as a society were so conflicted over our definitions of rehabilitation, right? What it meant for a drug addict to the fully rehabilitated and I think it's a question that we still haven't answered. So is it enough for the drug addict to simply stop committing crimes? Does that mean that he or she is rehabilitated? Or according to the methadone maintenance advocates is it enough to simply give them some kind of chemical that is going to stabilize them so that they can hold a job or go back to school? Is that enough of a rehabilitation? Or according to the psychotherapist does it actually revolve a process of self-examination, self-knowledge, self-transformation, so that the person comes to know the deep roots of his anxiety or depression? Or according to the black power advocates in the 1960's and 70's, their rehabilitation involved a process of political reawakening, right? So that especially for the majority of the black and Latino heroin addicts they would come to understand why it is that they started experimenting with drugs in the first place? Which was rooted in their condition of poverty and racial marginalization. So we have all these different definitions of rehabilitation and I think the reason why we couldn't agree at a definition of rehabilitation was that there were multiple shifts happening within psychiatry and within racial politics. And I think we are still struggling with that but within this whole thing I have been struggling myself as a historian to really try to understand the perspective of the psychiatrists and psychologists, right? These professionals who are given the sort of authority to say something about how the human mind works? And yet their politics I think have shifted a lot and so I wonder if you can talk about that as you see it? >> James Childress: Well, let me focus on the lens you are using to frame-- now that is what you've seen and the debate and how you are framing it in terms of the biological, the criminal and the political-psychological and I think all those lens are important for helping us understand what happened. I think that a lens is very important in a contemporary debate that actually could encompass those perspectives and contribute to a great deal more is public health. Because public health is not wedded simply to a biological model or 2-- psychological or political model or to a criminal model though it recognizes a role for criminalizing behavior in certain settings. And I guess one of the things that has really brought this to mind for me-- you focused on some examples at the outset, is the dreadful experience that is now occurring in Scott County, Indiana. This county of 24,000 people, a roughly poor county has had an average of 3 HIV cases each year over a long period of time. Since December, it's had 150 HIV cases. 85% of those also have Hepatitis C. What has happened? Well, this is a situation where needles are being shared by injecting drug users and they're infecting each other and then often infecting sexual partners. So we are caught up here in a moral debate about what to do? A public health approach might well take a harm reduction perspective and say, "Look, we are not going to be able to stop drug addiction in any of the ways that have been described so in the meantime let's take an effective approach of reducing harm. How might we do that? We might provide free needles and syringes for example and a comprehensive program that also tries to provide information and resources for helping cure drug addiction." Well turns out that was illegal in Indiana. The governor had to suspend a law, first for 30 days and then for a year for using that particular county to allow it to set up a needle exchange program. Now this is ethically very controversial because this is saying we are not going to be able to stop the activity. And we can call it unhealthy as it is. We can call it criminal. We can label it in a variety of ways. But we need to do something to stop some of the ill health effects, public health model here. It's controversial because that's accepting the activity and then the government gets involved in trying to regulate and even provide funds-- in this case at the local level, for that activity to continue but by making it safer. And that appears to many to involve all us in complicity and evil. It appears to give mixed messages. Symbolically it appears to indicate that maybe the activity itself is not all that bad and so forth. So that's one of the-- I think on balance is something that is quite defensible, the harm reduction approach is quite defensible. And I think there are elements of that already in some ways in some of the programs you've described, is that correct? >> Sonia Lee: Yeah and I think it is that nuance that is so hard really appreciate and to have the American Public also accept, right? Within the particular debate that I have been observing in the 1960's and 70's, there were the definite abstinence advocates. Who said that the person has to be drug free and that is the only definition of a total cure. And others who said some kind of drug maintenance is acceptable. Yes, it is not ideal but is a fine solution to this problem. And the thing is a lot of the black and Latino mental health practitioners at the time were able to embrace both. It isn't as if they were mutually exclusive, right? They understood that you could use psychotherapy. You could use Methadone and you could us political education all at once. You didn't have to align yourself with one over the other. But I think somehow, within this debate, have sort of polarized ourselves and made one side the good and the other side evil [Laughs]. >> James Childress: I've been given the signal here. I want to thank you very much and look forward to seeing the results of this research. >> Sonia Lee: Thank you, thank you. >> Bruce Jentleson: Good morning or good late morning. I'm Bruce Jentleson from Duke University. I'm the incoming 2015-16 Henry Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations here in the Kluge Center. Pretty much looking forward to arriving and the benefits that many of my colleagues are described by. Partner Daniel Schwartz is a historian from George Washington University and one of the side benefits of this whole ScholarFest is we had an opportunity to read each other's work which we might have not otherwise done. And had an initial pre-conversation the other day over a good cup of coffee at DuPont Circle. And we were thinking about many different themes but one of the things that struck us that we both could speak to and really come out of Dan's work is this whole question of identity. And how identity plays in individually and for different kinds of social groups throughout history. And really inter-connects and poses or frames a lot of the questions that are right or wrong. So Dan you want to talk about some of those issues that come out of your research? >> Daniel Schwartz: Sure. Well, first of all I just want to thank the Kluge Foundation both for awarding this scholarship-- the fellowship 2 years ago to really help me to jump start my current project but also for inviting back today to share a little bit about it. What I am working on now is a history of the word, "ghetto" from when it was first used with reference to Jews in sixteenth century Venice up until the present. Exploring how this term has changed as it has moved through time and space. Tracing it from Europe to America and back and back again. But focusing in particular on the role that the term has played as a kind of keyword or basic concept for 2 groups in particular. Namely for Jews on the one hand and for African Americans on the other. Because I think even as this term has come to be very widely used today. It only has that kind of formative significance in terms of the construction of an identity for Jews and Blacks. And I think, you know, one of the things I've seen in my research is that there is this kind of basic core ambivalence that you find in the case of both groups. Wherein on the one hand the "ghetto" is seen as associated with isolation, with segregation, with humiliation, with pathology-- the "ghetto" is a place you want to get out of. And the role that certainly the construction of Jewish identity and also African American identity in terms of getting out of the "ghetto", the role that that has played. But the flip side is-- and this is something that you see very much, you know, in terms of contemporary black culture but it also dates back to the nineteenth century is that for Jews and for blacks the "ghetto" is also been sometimes associated-- it's been a place of nostalgia. It's associated with security. It's associated with authenticity. It's associated with home. So yeah, that's a little bit about the role that identity plays in my current project. What about your work? >> Bruce Jentleson: Yeah, you know, I focus really on the contemporary era American Foreign Policy and International Relations and one of the striking things about this era that we often refer to as "Globalization" and we emphasize the great inter-connectedness of this era. That what you have is a paradox where there's been greater integration in many respects across the world. But at the same time, there has been a lot of fragmentation. And that fragmentation has really in many respects formed around senses of identity. So if some people saw the Cold War era as the politics of ideology. Today much of international affairs and much of tension and conflict is really the politics of identity. Who I am? Who you are? And why the differences between us are sources of tension? Whether it is somebody Shia is really Palestinian? Indian-Pakistani-- and much of it is historically rooted. China-Japan for example, but historically rooted not historically determined; and that is a very important distinction. So if you take, for example, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in Bosnia. Which really went around, you know, Croat Serbs and Bosnia Muslims. Where the statistics that I always found most striking was prior to all that break in 1991-92, was the inter-marriage rates among the 3 groups. At least in urban areas it was about 35%. Now that doesn't mean everybody is getting along but it's different than the notion of this historical, you know constancy. And what has happened in the world frankly in many respects is those sources of identity tensions have been exploited by different kinds of leaders. At the same time, they have been used by other leaders, let's call one Nelson Mandela. They try and find basis of reconciliation. So one of the questions I think that was interesting to me in your work is your emphasis on "ghettos" both as sources of security and also sources of tension. So how do you see the balance between the 2? >> Daniel Schwartz: Yeah. Well I mean it think that often "ghetto" are seen as sources of security when you are no longer there. I mean, in other words, this is the role that often nostalgia plays and I'm not-- I think there might be a difference in terms, you know, we look at let's say the medieval or early modern "ghettos" where they really did serve as kind of-- you know, they helped to-- they served as cradles of an identity. But in general usually, you know, you remember the "ghetto" more fondly than you experienced it. You know and I think that the role that nostalgia can sometimes play in obscuring things is important here. >> Bruce Jentleson: Yeah and one of the things that I find too is that, you know, one of the great questions in International Affairs at the most-- there are so many but at the basic level is man's inhumanity to man or people's inhumanity to people. And we came out of World War II with this notion of "never again". You know, after the Holocaust and many other aspects that were very much based on identity. And to a certain extent, we worked out norms, senses of right and wrong about inter-state conflicts. When one country crossed a border trying to kill the other. We find in the last couple decades is much of this kind of mass atrocity comes inside states. And so how do you balance out notions of the rights that come to states, you know, with their sovereignty with the responsibilities back to the international community? We have not done a very good job of that. Instead of having "never again", we have had really "yet again" in one place after another. And I think are there many other issues that really translates to one of the core issues amongst societies as well as inside societies as well. >> Daniel Schwartz: Yeah no, I mean, I agree. I think, you know, in terms of this larger issue for this particular session of perspectives of right and wrong. I mean, if you look at the history of the "ghetto" you really see kind of the-- there is a kind of relativity there that, you know, in pre-modern times with respect to Jews "Ghettoization" is seen as not only just but in some ways necessary. It's necessary to separate groups that shouldn't be inter-mixing. In the case of Jews in particular in Christian Europe, there is the idea of trying to apply almost kind of like maximal pressure to convert in which case the "ghetto" can almost be seen paradoxically as an expression of Christian love, of trying to save the Jews. That changes you know, in the enlightenment and now, you know, the "ghetto" is seen as a problem. It's seen as an anachronism and there is this idea that we have seen now for the past few centuries that, you know, because we're living in Modern times "ghettos" should be, you know, on their way out. That should be the natural order of things. And yet, you know, we keep finding time and time again that that doesn't play out that way. It doesn't materialize and "ghettos" keep getting produced and reproduced. One of these issues I think of in terms of within societies that you are mentioning. >> Bruce Jentleson: Yeah, one of the interesting twists on this came back in the late 1990's during the conflict of Kosovo following on Bosnia where it appeared again that slogan on Milosevic, the leader of the Serbs, was starting to slaughter again in this case, Kosovo Muslims. And in that case the international community did respond a certain extent. The NATO forces and the United States took military action but they didn't get UN Security Council authorization because Russia and China blocked it. And so this relates back to our lawyer friends where the debate developed afterwards and it didn't solve all the problems but it prevented some of the situations from getting worse. And there was an International Commission appointed afterwards, not governmental, but scholars and ethicists from around the world to try to determine what the precedent was in Kosovo. And they came up with this really interesting formulation in which they said, "According to International Law, it was illegal that the intervention was done inside another state without the authorization of the UN Security Council". But according to international ethics, it was legitimate. And we're used to thinking of things at every level of society, legitimacy and legality go together. And illegitimacy and illegality go together. But here you had a situation saying it was illegal but legitimate, consistent with the universal declaration of human rights, the genocide treaty. So one of the things we struggle with, I think, inside and outside societies really is how to balance, you know, our norms and our senses of legality and justice on a whole variety of issues that our colleagues have spoken about. And I think at this point we get the-- I'm going to turn it over to all of you for your comments and questions. Thank you. >> Daniel Schwartz: Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Dan Turello: Thank you so much for that wonderful array of topics and conversations. We now go into our Q&A and we are going to do this town hall style. So there will be a microphone roaming around the hall. Please identify yourself and tell us who your question is for. So we have 1 right over here. >> Farzana Shah [phonetic]: Hi, My name is Farzana Shah and used to volunteer at the Library of Congress. Please correct me if I am wrong and this is-- I am addressing to Marianne and George. As far as I know polygyny in Islam is allowed but under certain conditions. Even in the first marriage of Prophet Mohammed, he had only 1 wife. I wonder what is the main cause of polygyny. Is it social-economic conditions or male dominated conditioning or contradictions due to bloody views of right and wrong? >>Marianne Kamp: That is a wonderful question. And from-- I will simply answer it with a couple of quick observations. In what I have seen among friends and people I know in Uzbekistan, where polygyny became more common over the past 2 decades. A fundamental driver is economic. It's about people seeking security in one way and another, right? Through having children, through finding a spouse that can take care of them or something like that. But there is also a constant social questioning about right and wrong. And who is right and what is right? And is the moral thing that which is-- comes to people from law or is the moral thing the thing that solves their immediate and current problem? And I think that people address that in very, very different ways depending on their upbringing, their family circumstances and their social circumstances. >> David Fanextine [phonetic]: My name is David Fanextine and I have a question for Daniel about-- regarding nostalgia for the "ghetto. And I am wondering how much of that is based on proximity to family, where in the "ghetto" you are living among brothers and sisters and cousins and grandparents. And outside of the "ghetto" family can be scattered thousands of miles apart. And you mentioned that the "ghetto" would often be remembered as much better than when you were actually experiencing it but does that sort of legitimize nostalgia a little more considering family? >> Daniel Schwartz: Thank you. That's a great question. I think that you're right. I think that one of the sources of nostalgia is this idea of almost a kind of hominess. And that you're surrounded by family, extended family and I would say, even the group as a whole in some ways, as imagined becomes a part of that extended, you know, family. And sometimes that even can paper over some very profound differences in, you know, the "ghetto" sort of speak. But yeah, I mean, I think that that is one of the pulls that it exerts. You know, it's this memory of a time where you lived in a more of-- you know, the German term of Gemeinschaft, you know, is a more kind of organic community, a holistic community. As opposed to, you know a kind of contempo-- as a somewhat alienated individual. It's a different type of isolation. >> Mindy Reiser [phonetic]: Thank you. My name is Mindy Reiser. I've worked in the Islamic world and in Central Asia but my question is to the gentleman from Columbia University who worked on some of the scientific work. Did you see much beyond the grappling with the immediate scientific questions in terms of any appreciation by the western scholars about Islamic civilization? Did they go beyond their immedate scientific work to look at more broad, cultural trends and themes? >> George Saliba: Yes and no. It depends on which western scholars you are talking about. The so-called the humanist by the way, they didn't spare a moment from vandalizing at the same time also demonizing Islamic culture and that I think is the current that we inherited from there on up until now. I think we still think of Islam as evil ta-ta-ta. But the scientists were completely different. They are a little bit wiser because they wanted to know where is the latest information they can get? And the latest information they can get to their bad luck or good luck happened to be in the Islamic civilization. That is why they were extremely grateful for anybody who could bring that information to them. Now, we do know that they appreciated it even for example somebody like Guillaume Postel, a French Orientalist, who was born about 1510, died about 1581. In his own work, he says for example, "reading one page from Avicenna is worth reading 4 volumes of Galen's works". So which means is literarily posting himself in between the humanists of his time who were glorifying only the Greco-Latin antiquity and this is the backbone of European ideology ta-ta-ta. And this guy is telling them, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. This guy Avicenna is much smarter than all of these and read his works". So you find both of those types there. >> I just had a gloss about the legal world, contemporaneous with the scientific world that we received in the west from the Muslim traders in the ninth and tenth century of the Roman law text, "The Corpus Juris Vivilis of Justinian". And in many ways from the eleventh to the sixteenth century there was a reception of Islamic law. Islamic glosses on the Roman law and then Islamic jurisprudence that was appreciated by the western medieval candidates and civilians and common lawyers. And until the seventeenth century was considered to be a legitimate source to call upon for the old and jurisprudential sophistication. And in some ways complements your story. Anyway, by the time we get to the seventeenth century and we are beginning to create the encyclopedia movement of the world's ideas about certain things. Islamic sources become an important source of that exercise. >> This session is about morality but I think this is the toughest topic to deal with at an age of globalization. Of course, the Japanese concocted the rice burger, that's trivial when we talk about [inaudible] but then we have multi-culturalism. Which is supposed to give equal value to different traditions but when it comes to some whether it's democracy or feminism, very often they do come from the western tradition. And then an amazing number of constitutions after World War II, actually were written by Americans and so Pax Americana started. The Japanese constitution was written by Americans and then the "Equal Rights for Women" was drafted by a Jewish woman, Beate Serota, to the constitution after World War II. So what I-- question is when it comes to morality we have a very intricate complex situations, to what extent Pax Americana or Cultural imperialism now accepted as universal moral standard and it is such a complex question so I don't know to whom I can address to. >> Dan Turello: Bruce or Daniel do you want to address that? >> Bruce Jentleson: I think you stated it extremely well and is a very difficult issue. There was this notion among some in the west that the definition of progress was the adoption of western liberalism globally. And I think when one thinks about what is universal and what is unique to culture-- I actually do this to my students. I ask them what they think are universal values and what they think are unique values? And then how do you bring them together? You know, one small anecdote I remember a number of years ago I was in Beijing setting up some relationships between Duke and the University there. And I was giving some lectures and some free time and they took me for a walk around the campus. It was a nice day in May and I made a comment that at an American University all the students would be out playing Frisbee. And my guide said to me, "Oh no, we are not allowed on the lawn. There's too many of us". And my first reaction was how oppressive. And then I thought about that, you know, and this doesn't apply to everything by the way in the debate [inaudible] but there was a sense of community values there. That you'd made some trade-off between your individual rights and community. So I think working that out in today's world where there is so much contact, you know, is a core issue but a really interesting and challenging one for those that try various aspects of it. >> Dan Turello: Thank you. There was someone in the back. >> Yes, I'd like to make a comment about "ghettos". Sometimes in history, there was a period in history when "ghettos" not necessarily-- it was mandated. And the point I would like to make for the most part is basically some of the most prominent Jews, especially in the banking industry, they lived in "ghettos" like the Wasburgs actually helped save Austria. And then of course when the founders came, he helped with the Federal Reserve. But they were basically mandated to live in these "ghettos" all while they were very, very wealthy. And so the conditions for different "ghettos" were sort of different. Sometimes it was by law, it was against the law to live in any other place even though they were basically at the hierarchy. And actually in some cases, actually saved their country and actually finance wars but I don't think that was sort of brought up and I just, you know, wanted to make that point. >> Daniel Schwartz: Thank you for bringing that out. I mean that is one of the things that I am really interested in and this project is the way a single word can accumulate so many different meanings and implications and resonances. And one of the big, you know, conflicts is between this idea of the "ghetto" as a legally mandatory place. In other words, you know, by statute, "Jews have to live in this area regardless of how rich or poor you might be". Which is certainly the case, let's say in the "ghetto" of Venice, the "ghetto of Rome. Maybe-- I couldn't hear who you were referring to maybe the Rothchilds in the "ghetto" of Frankfurt. >> The Wasburg's and basically [inaudible]. It was just a very prolific family of Jews, especially German Jews. I mean, they are basically now all over the world. They actually were the ones [inaudible] mandate rich people [inaudible]. And probably the most wealthy and [inaudible] at the end of the war even though history doesn't report that. And of course, now they don't want it because of the atrocities they suffered during the war [inaudible]. >> Daniel Schwartz: Yeah I mean certainly families like the Rothchilds were more the exception than the rule in these "ghettos" which were largely poor. But that is still is different from, you know, more contemporary "ghettos" where the kind of compulsion tends not to be legal or statutory so much as socio-economic, you know, or just kind of a more general racial-- racist attitudes. >> [Inaudible] period of time-- >> Daniel Schwartz: Yeah, no I appreciate it. >> So I just want to make sure [inaudible]. >> Dan Turello: Someone else in the back I think or right here. Great. >> The overarching philosophical question is one of universal versus relative moral truths. For example, identity politics are increasingly bearing towards relativism at least in the United States in academic circles. And I just wanted to mention briefly the stoic notion of natural law and how that has been a natural right and how that has been described in our declaration of independence to the French rights and so forth-- that-- how will that fare in the future when the globalized perspective of some [inaudible] 9 European cultures, are there truly axiological, universal, moral truths and if so how do we ascertain them apart from any kind of religious interpretation? >> Dan Turello: Question about Natural Law. Who wants to address this? [Laughs] it's the hot item for the day. John, Bruce-- >> John Witte, Jr.: I'll take a crack at it. It is obviously a deeply vexed question and one that is increasingly controversial in part through evolutionary science. In part through increasing cultural relativism as you say. In part because our understanding of how religion-science get along or don't get along is increasingly contested as we think about the boundary line between human and non-human and a certain behavior that that implicates. I think what's happened in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is that we have at least deposited the product of natural and natural rights thinking in the universal declaration of human rights and in its progeny. And have looked to that as a statement of what the human nature needs, what dignity entails? What human equality implicates and what a human society needs in order to be truly human? And while that is a provisional statement that was created by a variety of different religious and cultural and philosophical views in a day; it nonetheless was viewed as a necessary consensus that the world having been raked by 6 years of devastating war and by atrocities beyond measure came to as the necessary starting point for a conversation about what it means to be a person? What it means to be a people in community? And while I think the universal declaration has begun to veer into a number of different directions with special interest groups capturing some of its norms and using them for particular interest causes. Nonetheless I think that the universal declaration stands as a mirror into which every religious and cultural community can begin to reflect upon itself. And every person can begin to measure his or her ways of being in his own right and also in community with others. And the indigenization of rights norms in religions and cultures I think is an important part of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries raproshma and whether that is consistent with traditional understandings of natural law or natural reason. Whether religious communities or cultural communities can accept in totem any every statement in the universal declaration of human rights is obviously an open question. But the fact that we have a certain form of human nature and a certain way by which humans interact with each other I think is one of the achievements of that twenty-first century and twentieth century movement. That I think won't give way very quickly. The issue is going to be whether it is nibbled to death by special interest and whimsical extensions that really betray the fundamental purpose of it in mid-twentieth century. >> Dan Turello: Thank you. I think James is going to add to this. >> James Childress: I very much agree with what John has just said. Essentially one of the important things is that with each disagreement about basically certain fundamental things, even apart from metaphysical agreement. So I don't think we can expect that in a pluralistic world but I guess I wanted to ask Profession Jentleson a question too because in his discussion toward the end. The distinction between what was happening in terms of a moral norms and what was happening in terms of legal norms. One way in which we've had a convergence here is the effort to develop the notion of responsibility to protect which was sort of implicit in yours. Where there are certain human rights violations that are so egregious that it may be appropriate for a state-- another state to take action against this state that has failed to prevent those human rights violations or has actually engaged in those violations themselves. It seems to me this is an interesting area for further conversation. >> Bruce Jentleson: Yeah very much so. And in fact I have both written on this as a scholar and when I was serving in the first couple of years in the Obama administration I actually worked a lot on this. This whole notion that came out of these in the 90's Rwanda, Bosnia and the others. And it gets to this notion of the world is organized according to sovereign states in an emphasis on the rights of those states. But what are the responsibilities to their own people? And-- it's a fascinating debate because I think one of the things that has happened-- John talked about the exploitation by special interest to certain concepts this is has been exploited by certain, you know, sort of people that weren't really committed to it. I won't name names or countries. And so many people in the developing world are worried that it's another form of colonialism, right? And imperialism. At the same time, many leaders in the developing world use it as a cover story for killing their own people. And it has been around now for 10 or 15 years. It was also developed by an independent commission. A lot of credit goes to Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister who intellectually and politically really worked this through. But you are actually-- to me it's one of the actually crucial norms about what is the scope and limits of sovereignty because we do live in a world. I mean, you go down the list here, there is so many other places where so much of the killing is happening inside states. The good news is less is happening less between states. That's the progress we've made since 1945. And so the debate is live. There is a lot of debate among colleagues of mine. In fact, there is a whole-- Oxford University Press, whenever a concept gets important they created a handbook. So there is a new encyclopedia called Oxford Handbook on Responsibility to Protect" that is coming out that I, as well as many others, did articles for. But it really gets at these issues in a normative way and I think finding some common ground on it across the globe is really crucial to this question of, you know, of the "yet agains" of mass atrocities. >> Marianne Kamp: Since we are on that topic of universals versus cultural particulars, I'd like to point out that a follow on to the "Declaration of Human Rights" of course was CEDAW- the convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. And this is a convention that many countries in the world have signed, including all of the STANS-- the places where I work and Russia and various-- not the U.S., not the U.S.? And when these issues then are debated legally in-- especially countries in the Islamic world, that tool, that CEDAW agreement. The fact that a country has signed it comes into the discussion of what then is morality? And what is law? And should there be ways that this gets interpreted local? Locally it fist different than something that is universal and yet, the underlying principle that so many countries have signed on to is that they recognize equality between women and men. And that to me is an enormously important step of progress since World War II. And it is also an enormously stimulating moment for debate as countries work out how to morally enact their culture and their laws. >> I just have a question why did the United States abstain? >> Marianne Kamp: Why did the U.S abstain? [Laughs]. >> There must have been a rational [inaudible]. >> Marianne Kamp: So I think we know that the U.S. often does not sign international conventions because of the fear that somehow that would put international bodies over the U.S. in deciding anything. And besides, hey, aren't we the leaders in this? [Laughs]. >> Dan Turello: We are going to take 1 more question before we break for lunch and all done at the very end. >> Poor Professor Jentleson is on the carpet more than anyone else here so I don't think he should leave that position before we leave. Just as a follow-up question to what we've been discussing. This question of universal rights and how they apply-- how the law applies between states. I'm wondering about-- contrast it with how it applies within them? And I'm wondering if you would address the whole issue of our own country's ambivalence stance? I'm an ex-letter writer for Amnesty International. I don't think I could write the letters I wrote in graduate school today and it is because of the war on terror, which we haven't talked about. And I'm wondering if you would address the whole issue of essential the creation of the category "enemy combatants" and the legal approval of what we use to call "torture"? water boarding, stress to the point of organ failure-- just short of major organ failure. Would you think that since it is an academic who designed it, John Yu or Wu, back in academia teaching out of Berkley, I 'm wondering how you would approach that? With that be say water boarding in the instance of the reverse of what you talked about the bombing of Kosovo a case legal but illegitimate? >> Bruce Jentleson: So I'm going pass-- I would pass the microphone to my lawyer probably. I can't really-- I'm not an expert on the legal aspects, you know. I can say a couple of things. One is about Amnesty International, so the book I am writing here, what we have been calling, "Transformational Statesmanship on Major World Leaders who made Major Breakthroughs on Global Peace in the Twentieth Century and what are the lessons of the Twenty-First Century?" Well, I've actually included not just leaders of states but in the human rights movements as well to really make that into a movement not just a thing. You know, I think that if you look at American history, we have had a long tension between national security and civil liberties, right? So think McCarthyism, right? Think the Palmer raids after World War I. think the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and this is not to justify but as people as we play this out one of my concerns is we have often in the moment erred on I believe-- in my view the excesses of the national security rationale, right? And so I think this is not just a function of 9/11 and terrorism but this has been, you know, a very, you know-- Richard Hofstadter's story called, "The Paranoid Style in American history. So I really think it's a tough issue. So I really can't comment on the legal aspects but I think it does it at value-- not only as we see it but how others in the world see it from their perspectives. >> Dan Turello: We will go from that to serving a very light lunch in the northeast Pavilion. There will be folks to the direct you there but before that please join me in thanking our very eloquent panelists. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at: loc.gov.