Dr. Tristram Riley-Smith holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. He works as a civil servant in London, and is the author of The Cracked Bell, which is reviewed in this issue of the HPR.

HPR: Can you briefly explain the background of The Cracked Bell? What motivated you to write it?

Tristam Riley-Smith: First of all, I want to emphasize that this book is not meant in any way as a polemic. Americans can be anxious, I know, about anti-Americanism, and I think the book was given a bad sleeve note. I don’t think the American dream has become a “nightmare” by any means.

It started in 2002, on the River Tweed, with Graham Baker. I had just been posted to the British Embassy in London, and he suggested I should read The Americans, by Gordon Sinclair. Sinclair was also posted to D.C., during World War II. It is a remarkable book, but a little too psychological and anthropological for me. Even so, it gave me the inspiration to collect my own field notes there and make my own observations, and this developed into an aim of trying to help people and Americans understand themselves better.

The Cracked Bell is half a million words about paradoxes, about consumerism vs. beliefs, about new vs. old, etc. Later, a theory emerged for me about the unifying thread of the ideal of liberty in America, how liberty has been elevated, even inflated to the point where it undermines society. This leads to a dispassionate suggestion: liberty is great, but it can produce problems, especially if there is too much of it, and especially too much emphasis on it. The issue is how to balance between liberty, justice, and equality. Of course, everyone faces these problems, but I think America faces them especially.

HPR: How has America’s history made it especially predisposed to these problems?

TR: I am not coming at this as an historian, but from the field of social anthropology. Being a social anthropologist is about participative observation, and looking at the symbolic and the mythical side of the world. So it’s dangerous for me to be an historian, but I would say that, going back to the creation of America, the founding fathers were very influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment. There was the assumption that the pursuit of happiness involved both the individual and his relationship with society.

Ideas like this formed the backdrop to the Declaration of Independence, and were very important for early America. Then in the early 19^th century, a growing cult of individualism developed, not just in America but throughout Europe too. In Britain, this expressed itself in Romanticism, in liberalism, and in something that was positive.

But this changed in Britain as the 19^th century wore on. With Gladstone we see the beginnings of a shift towards socialism, and you had Lord Salisbury, a Tory, instituting grants for the poor. While Britain was moving in the direction of socialism in late Victorian times, individualism was becoming, and has become, more and more powerful and deeply embedded in America. The question, today, is whether this can change. It would be impertinent, arrogant, and improper of me to suggest a therapy. But since the Old World has changed its outlook, and in a way become more left-wing, it must be feasible for America to do the same.

HPR: What about President Obama? What potential does he have to change America’s mindset regarding hyper-individualism?

TR: In both the introduction and afterword to The Cracked Bell, I write that personal reflections tell me it’s hard for an individual to change a culture. Confucius and Montaigne couldn’t change China and France. Russia is still the same place it has always been. Any revolution has been shown to produce the same systems and tropes.

But we need to remember that America is young. It is still a new country. If you look back to the time of King Alfred, he saw many tribes break away from his kingdom and managed to produce a sustained English identity. America today is still inventing itself in a similar sort of way. So perhaps Obama will end up being more of a catalyst of change, rather than a producer of change.

Clearly, America does have an identity, but it is nevertheless one which is still growing and developing with the challenges posed by changing demographics. We are seeing many Hispanics becoming part of the population. On the other hand, this follows waves of Germans and Irish who came before and have integrated. Germans have become more Anglo-Saxon. So this dynamic will continue, and I am tempted to say that the affect on America’s identity will not be as great as the numbers arriving suggest.

HPR: How do you think America’s influence and power will change over the course of this century?

TR: This is a more interesting issue. America needs to take stock and reevaluate. The level of economic competition and cultural influence will be corrected. America used to be much more revered in the world, with good cause to be proud, but today she seems more insecure.

If you look at the Old World, at Europe, society has been divided by deep class divisions, which have been solved either by revolution or with efforts by a ruling class to create safety nets for the less well-off. In America, these same deep divisions exist between rich and poor, but the problem has never quite become so important because of the deep-seated ideal of opportunity. But, this opportunity is an illusion to some extent. If America does go down in the world, and become less economically prosperous than today, how will that affect this optimism? My sense is that it will lead to new tensions.

HPR: But, at the same time, is America’s elevated view of liberty and opportunity not a good thing, in that it heightens our ambition and happiness, even if it’s a little artificial?

TR: Yes, absolutely. Again, I stress that I am not trying to be anti-American here. America is a modern society, but one that is as enfolded by myth, symbolism, and ritual as a tribe in Kathmandu. This is how humanity comes to terms with the world. For America, she is enfolded by the ritual of liberty. Cultural comfort blankets like this create paradoxes but are very sustaining.

HPR: What can Britain take away from America’s focus on liberty?

TR: It’s so hard to look objectively at your own society, especially after looking at someone else’s. I have recognized that Britain looks backwards while you could say that America looks forwards. This is charming but, equally, makes us weighed down by the past. And, of course, we have an extraordinary class system.

I would give as an example the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Over the past 30 years, this island has seen a great decline in communal activities and spirit. When I asked recently what’s happened to these traditions, a local man said that he thought Social Security had put an end to it. This has had a big community effect, as well as an economic one, in Britain. It is an example of how a well-meaning thing can engender bad consequences.

HPR: Does this mean the U.K. needs more Thatcherism?

TR: Thatcher looked to the United States to reform her own country, but societies are more complex than this. In America, opportunism is accompanied by the cult of the new. It is impossibly hard to do the same in Britain. I think that Britain should look to the United States as a model for how a society can deal with migrants. We are now witnessing seismic shifts in the diversity of our society, accompanied by the opening of our borders with the European Union.

So there’s a lot of transformation there, and who knows what will happen. But I think Britain can take some lessons from the United States on this front. Meanwhile, Britain has had her own experiment with devolution. On the subject of federalism, I argue that British councils and local government are too weak. But remember that Britain is a very small area; in this way it is incomparable to the United States.

HPR: How will America’s relationship with the European Union change?

TR: America’s own culture is so dominant, because America is so big, that I think the concept of Europe will be regarded only by a political class. I’m not convinced that America will regard Europe as a unified whole. The Anglo-Saxon link remains very strong. The question is whether or not the European Union can achieve more credibility, and not just in America.

HPR: Has America changed a lot in the last 10 years?

TR: There are three main points here. First, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have left America scarred with a newfound sense of vulnerability. This was added to by the natural disasters, most of all Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 virus, both of which have had a disproportionate effect on the nation’s poor. Lastly, the financial crisis of 2008 nearly brought the economy to its knees and shook America’s confidence in the capitalist system which has been the rallying point for individual opportunity.

Though these have all been serious strains, I think the last decade has shown stresses and paradoxes which were always there. For sure, there are more tests on the way. Global warming is a reality, and no, it won’t go nice and quietly. There’s the question of relations with China, and it’s pretty clear that the Renminbi needs to be valued up. Then you have the Iranian developments.

Most importantly, this is a book that has been written dispassionately. I write it as a big fan of America, who wants to hold up a mirror to the country.

Eli Martin ’13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Babatunde Raji Fashola has been the Governor of Lagos State, Nigeria, since 2007. Previously he was Chief of Staff to his predecessor as Governor and a member of various state councils and boards.

HPR: You’ve been described in many news outlets as a unique leader for Nigeria. What do you think distinguishes you from other Nigerian leaders? Do you see yourself as having a special responsibility, a special view that is unique?

Gov. Babatunde Fashola: I don’t think so. I think that sometimes some things that are said about me are exaggerated. I am only one man and most of what has happened in our state has been developed around teamwork. I don’t think that we have reinvented the wheel. We just go back to the basic understanding of why we are in government, what the focus of government is, and what is expected of us. We believe that the sacred purpose of government is to provide a platform for the aspirations and expressions and the hopes of people who look to government as a delegate of authority, to act on behalf of the majority.

We just work as a business. What would the people expect of us, and what do we expect them to do? Are they paying their taxes, are they obeying laws? What should we give back? These are the fundamentals of business. These kinds of things are not new in Africa, even in my country. It happened when I was a child, the period when the nation ran on the basis of three or four regions and there was prosperity and life was pretty orderly and busy. So nothing has happened then, we’re just going back to business.

HPR: What do you see as your role as governor of Lagos State within the context of Nigeria as a whole?

BF: When you look at the role that Lagos plays not only in Nigeria’s economy, but in Nigeria’s politics, and in the politics and economy of the subregion as a major hub for commerce and industry, a melting pot for all ethnic nationalities in the country, a point of safe-haven for displaced peoples of the subregion, it is important that the government that exists in Lagos recognize its responsibility to ensure safety and security of the lives of the people and their properties. Lagos must continue to remain alluring for people of all diverse backgrounds, religious backgrounds, social and economic levels. If you go to Lagos, from whatever background or country you come, you will find somebody that either dines like you, cooks like you, dresses like you, or has tribal marks or accents or speaks your dialect. There is a place for everybody there.

HPR: According to the United Nations, Lagos will become the third most populous city in the world by 2015, with around 20 million people in the greater metro area. This presents immense challenges as governor. There are so many elements that you have to take into consideration. How do you function with all these different elements?

BF: We try to run government like a business, coming to terms with what needs to be done today, what needs to be done in four years’ time, what needs to be done in twenty years’ time. We understand that population growth can be a liability and can be an asset. Large populations provide a market and Lagos has benefited from that market as a favored destination for trade and services. That enables us to contribute a huge percentage of the country’s GDP.

But it has, of course, its own burdens. More people means more traffic. More people means more children, who need healthcare. More children need education. More mothers who need antenatal and postnatal care. More people requiring safety and security, so you need more policemen. So it requires a busy public expenditure, balanced against the objective of making life bearable and livable. Now, coming from the background of the political instability that has characterized the [country] in the last two decades, this has more or less taken the attention of the government away from development.

HPR: How do you plan to refocus government efforts on development?

BF: We need to arrest the deficit of infrastructure. That’s why here, since 2007, our projects have been directed towards building public infrastructure, roads, bridges, schools, water supplies, and healthcare facilities. We know that to mitigate desperate conditions, we can arrest the situation, we can arrest crime and then we can begin to plan for the future. We are already making plans to make Lagos habitable and livable for 40 million people. That’s the plan, long term.

We are doing a new regional master plan for the state, breaking that region into cities that are manageable. This will help us define what are the principal infrastructures to link new towns so that people can really spread. The congestion in Lagos now is likely attributed not to the population and urbanization but because the population is heading only in one direction in the state, where the infrastructure exists. So, [we] are building on the eastern edges of the state an expanded highway, expanding from four lanes to six lanes, to open up that side of town. And on the western access, we are expanding from four lanes to ten lanes, with a rail facility line in the middle. People will know that they can connect any part of the city, especially the center, which is the central business district, in at most 30 to 40 minutes.

These are, in my view, the plans to make the city sustainable because you cannot stop the people from coming in. And we are already seeing results. Property investments in these places are beginning to move. We are already planning how to expand the water supply. We are planning waste management, opening new landfill sites. We are constructing new abattoirs to provide animal slaughter sites. So, it’s a lot of work in progress for the future.

HPR: I’ve seen also that you’ve developed a green program, “operation green.” How do you see this program as part of your long-term development goals?

BF: It depends on where you are coming from and what you seek to achieve. The green program is only a subcomponent of our total environmental policy. Lagos is a coastal state, so it is threatened by the Atlantic. There are also projects, civil works, and engineering projects that deal with that. There is the problem of solid waste management, and there is still a long way to go in recycling and reuse. In terms of green, Lagos had a reputation for being a chaotic city. I am a firm believer that the environment itself has a huge impact on how people behave. If the environment is disorderly, people will act in a disorderly manner, and that was one of the underlying reasons for the green program.

The other reason, of course, was that many of the green spaces that we talk about today in Lagos used to be refuse dumps right in the heart of the city. So we cleaned them up, and we found, as we expected, that there is a reverence for green. It has given us a cleaner city, and the people who lived off that disorder became more useful to themselves and more useful to the state, needing fewer policemen to police them because they are now employed. They pay taxes. There is a sobriety in the environment. People feel safe. People feel comfortable.

HPR: If you could tell Harvard students one thing about Nigeria, what would it be?

BF: I think that Harvard students particularly and people generally should take a second look at Nigeria. I think they should take whatever unpleasant information about Nigeria in context. I think most of that information is coming from Nigeria. I don’t read it as indicative of how bad the country is. On the contrary, I see it as indicative of the very high expectations that we have set for the leadership. Leadership must rise to those levels of expectation because clearly that is what people want.

The Nigeria that is posted in the news has so many other pleasant stories to tell and you need to encounter it to see, and I say this with every sense of responsibility. There are a lot of good things happening out there, but I still think that because it is a work in progress, our people think that it is not enough and there’s this feeling that we can all do more. I acknowledge that we can. That is the context in which to see Nigeria. It is an extremely high expectation of government, especially from a people who have lived on what I call “a diet of broken promises” over the decades. They are tired of promises. They want to see things happen.

Felix de Rosen ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

M.C. Andrews was Special Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Global Communications from 2003 to 2005. Prior to that, Andrews was the Director for Democracy on the National Security Council. She is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

HPR: What’s wrong with the way that America communicates with the world, and how should we go about fixing it?

M.C. Andrews: The infrastructure of our communications efforts dates back to the Cold War. From the 1950s up until 1999, there was an agency that dealt with developing our communications called the United States Information Agency. The 1990s congress got rid of USIA. It was a cost-saving measure. Nobody believed we needed it anymore because it was the end of the Cold War and there was no war of ideology.

In getting rid of USIA, the most important functions were given over to the State Department, the budgets were dramatically decreased, foreign service officers lost their USIA identity. There are a lot of legislative constraints that are keeping us from being able to modernize our apparatus. This largely goes back to the 1950s when Congress wanted to make certain that the American government didn’t propagandize their citizens. They put up this firewall called the Smith-Mundt Act. The law remains on the books, and today, technically this means that the State Department can’t legally use the Internet for communicating with foreign audiences. There’s a tacit agreement to circumvent this law from the media. That’s the fundamental problem here: that there are a lot of laws and a lot of traditions in the world of public diplomacy. That’s why we need to whack it all down and start over again.

HPR: As Special Assistant to the President for Global Communications, what changes did you see being implemented? Were there efforts to move towards new media?

MCA: There were incremental changes, some in new media, they were tinkering around the edges with money especially after 9/11. Some went to exchange programs, or to setting up resource centers in other countries. The activities are necessary but completely insufficient to be able to change the way that we communicate with the world. It’s going to take a lot of political will to ultimately change. It is completely impossible to make the kind of legislative changes, funding changes, and people changes that need to be made incrementally. I am convinced of that. I was convinced of that while I was still at the White House. I’ve watched another generation of people go through the Department of State trying to modernize public diplomacy, and another generation of people going through the broadcasting world and trying to modernize that. It will not happen without presidential leadership.

HPR: Could you give us a few more examples of the incremental changes that you mentioned?

MCA: I mentioned the American resource center in some libraries around the world, increased money for exchanges with Muslim countries, there were new websites and even the attempt by the State Department to create a blog. There was the creation of a magazine that lasted for six months called Hi! Magazine, there was the creation of the Arabic language television and radio stations, al Hurra and al Sawa. Every one is necessary, but none are sufficient to change America’s image in the world.

HPR: The responsibilities of the Special Assistant to the President for Global Communications have been taken over by the State Department. How do you think that will work out?

MCA: I believe there are certain things that need to be done at the White House under the auspices of my former position. There was a decision to take a number of the functions, although not all of the functions, over to the State Department. What most people don’t know or understand about the White House is that you don’t have budgets, and you don’t have enough people to make huge changes in policy. The White House coordinates policy in the interest of the President. There’s a lot of paperwork and hours of negotiations to try to get the other agencies to take actions in concert with the President’s agenda. Giving the State Department these responsibilities didn’t work. And I even hear from international journalists that they have no access at the White House. I am somewhat sympathetic to trying to give the State Department the prominence to coordinate public diplomacy, but that isn’t working either. It is time to do something new.

HPR: If say, there was a legislative push to change the Smith-Mundt Act, what do you think the most effective way of doing that would be?

MCA: There won’t be. There are too many interests dedicated to keeping the Smith-Mundt Act in place. Presidential leadership is the only thing that will lead to real, meaningful change.

HPR: How do you think the President could go about changing things?

MCA: There is a great model for what needs to be done. The model that works is the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy. In 1983, President Reagan went to London and gave a major speech saying that it was going to become American policy to actively and openly support democratic regimes around the world. Prior to that, all sorts of money going to pro-democratic groups, going to underground groups in the Soviet Union, were mostly through the CIA. President Reagan said, we’re going to stop doing this in secret. This is an American value that we would openly support.

Today, I believe that President Obama needs to make a similar speech and give a mandate to a commission to study and determine how we should change public diplomacy. Put prominent leaders like [Harvard's] own professor, Joseph Nye, on the commission, and have this group of wise leaders make recommendations on a new organization for American public diplomacy.

Adan Acevedo ‘13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.

HPR: Have recent divisions in the labor community hampered labor’s ability to wield influence in Washington?

Richard Trumka: There’s two kinds of unity: there’s unity of name and unity of purpose.  Unity of purpose is the most important thing. When it came to electing Barack Obama, we had unity of purpose. When it came to health care reform, we had unity of purpose. When it came to the Employee Free Choice Act, we had unity of purpose. When it came to re-regulating the financial economy, we had unity of purpose. On all the big issues, we’re still in the same direction. It would be better if we were together, by the way, but politically I don’t think it has hurt us.

HPR: With regard to the Employee Free Choice Act, how satisfied are you with the bill and the process of getting it through Congress?

RT: Well first of all, it’s been too slow. Wages have stagnated for 30 years, and in a consumer-driven economy, the less people have wages, the more the economy stagnates. The best way to get wages spread fairly is through collective bargaining, so the longer we go without that, the harder it is for the economy to recover. I think we’ll end up with a  bill that is very good and that will give us the tools we need to be able to organize people in a fair and responsible way and give us higher penalties so that employers can’t just scoff at the law, take a slap on the wrist, and go on their merry way.

HPR: Could you talk a bit about what “card check” is? It’s a term that gets used a lot, and rarely defined.

RT: Right now the employer gets to decide how the employees get a union. You can have 100% of employees say they want a union, but the employer can say, “I  don’t care, I want a secret-ballot election.” And they use that secret-ballot election to delay and to intimidate and harass and even fire union supporters in an effort to erode union support. Now what card check would do is reverse the situation back to the way the law was originally intended. It would put the decision in the hands of the employees, so that if 51% of employees say they want a union card, the employer is required to give it to them.

HPR: Given that card check has been such a controversial part of the current legislation, do you think that it’s likely to remain in the final product?

RT: A version of it, yes.

HPR: Under Hilda Solis, the Department of Labor has been making a more proactive effort at enforcement of labor laws than under the previous administration. Has the AFL-CIO noticed a change in the regulatory environment?

RT: Oh, considerably. First of all, the approach to everything is completely different. She understands that workers have rights and she wants to make sure that all workers’ rights are enforced. Her budget includes more inspectors, more people who are able to protect those rights. She’s enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ensures that people get fair wages whether or not they have a union. It’s a night and day difference between Hilda Solis and the previous administration.

HPR: Over the past 40 years, labor has experienced a drop in private-sector union participation. Has the labor movement changed as unions become increasingly populated with public-sector employees?

RT: Right now we have about a 50-50 split between public and private employees in the AFL-CIO. We’ve always worked together, and by us being together under the same umbrella, we’re able to educate each other. Public workers need a union as much as anybody, and they help out a significant amount.

HPR: After the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, what are your priorities going forward?

RT: Jobs, jobs, and more jobs. It doesn’t do you any good if the place you’ve organized gets shut down. So we’ll be working on that. We’ll be working on re-regulating the financial economy to get them back in check. We’ll be working on pension reform to make sure that pensions are protected from some of the excesses that caused people to go bankrupt and lose money. Immigration is an important issue for us, too. And we still have a long way to go on health care reform.

HPR: Some have suggested that the recent Citizens United decision will allow labor to play a larger role in elections. Others have said it gives power mainly to larger corporations. How do you feel about the decision?

RT: It’s a really bad decision. We didn’t want the results that came out of that. We had challenged a specific provision that referred to the sixty days right before an election. But our participation is mostly at the grassroots level anyway. That decision made corporate America stronger. They can flood the airwaves using shareholders’ money without the shareholders having any say about it. So I think it’s a bad decision and bad for our democracy.

Alex Copulsky ’10 is the Assistant Managing Editor Emeritus. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo Credit: Bill Burke/Page One

Andrew Breitbart is a conservative political commentator and the founder of an online media empire: Breitbart.com, breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Big Journalism. He has also worked for the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report.

HPR: You’ve defended the Tea Party against charges that it is racist and violent or merely the work “Astroturf” organizers.

Andrew Breitbart: The most threatening thing in a Tea Party event I’ve gone to are people who dress their dogs in patriotic garb. These people have hand-made signs. It is not Astroturf. The opposition to the Tea Party is clearly Astroturf. Their signs are mass-produced. Organized labor is behind it: AFL-CIO, SEIU, the egg attackers I’ve caught on camera, Democratic Party field directors…

What’s interesting  is the power with which the Democratic Party can set the agenda and set up a baseline of propaganda. When the Tea Party movement started to emerge, the Democratic Party immediately called it racist and homophobic. It is a natural tendency of the cultural Marxist to use multiculturalism and race division in order to intimidate and marginalize a movement. It was expected. That’s why I go to the Tea Party events. I am not so much a political figure as a political media figure. I am trying to create equality in the mainstream media, so that the Tea Partiers do not have to be on the defensive against baseless accusations that cast their motivations in the worst, most horrific light.

HPR: What is the real meaning of the Tea Party in your view and what do you think is its proper role?

AB: There’s never a collective sense of being aghast when the Left organizes and protests and even gets violent. But there is a threat to the Democratic and media establishment when the conservative movement discovers the power of protest. Everybody thinks they are somehow not susceptible to the collective persuasion of media. We are immersed in a media world right now in which we are being inundated and hit from countless different angles. And the Democratic Party has understood far more than the Republican Party the power of popular culture, collective messaging, and aesthetics. Right now, the Tea Party is the sign of early adapters who are starting to recognize, “Wait, we can do the same thing that they’re doing.“

The media establishment is losing the viewership of red-state Middle America conservatives who have recognized that the media has behaved unfairly towards them for more than a generation. They’re starting to stand up and form an insurrection against the Democratic Party and the media. And both the Democratic Party and the media are threatened by this group of people. I’ve even stated that there may have to come a day when we do a Tea Party to the tune of millions of people on 6^th Avenue, Media Row in Manhattan, to show these people that we are serious, that we recognize the power of their propaganda. We recognize their power to frame decent Americans who are worried about the economic trajectory of this country, who are raising legitimate questions about who is going to pay for this Utopia, with baseless and reckless charges of racism.

HPR: We saw large increases in entitlement spending, an expansion of the national security state, and two wars under the Bush administration. Why don’t you think there was this kind of reaction then?

AB: If you’ve ever listened to conservative talk radio, there was no love lost with George Bush leaving the presidency. Many conservatives supported his wartime policy after we were attacked on 9/11, and the Right, which is much more oriented towards national security, recognized the collective threat of radical Islam to a great extent. They looked at the map and looked at where terrorist attacks had occurred around the world, and saw where the money was flowing, and noticed the demographic shift of unassimilated Muslims into Western liberal democracy, and recognized that we are going to have to figure out a long-term strategy to deal with it. It cost money to do.

George Bush tried to make accommodations. These were attempts to accommodate liberal entitlement programs, to try to make nice with the Ted Kennedys of the world. And he got burned for doing it. They still hated him, they still ridiculed his policies, and they still blamed him exclusively for votes that they took in favor of his war.

So George Bush was hoodwinked and bamboozled by the Democratic Party. He made accommodations with them that many would say were not wise, because he didn’t get as much bang for his buck as he could have. But he did make a commitment to the troops that he would follow through on the mission. He did. And I think history will look kindly on him for what he did.

The Tea Party is a radically different approach to what government is obligated to do, and the amount of money that should be put towards government as hundreds of billions in deficits turn into tens of trillions in debt. Tea Party people have legitimate concerns.

HPR: What do you see as your place, your niche, in the movement?

AB: I’m an individual. I don’t look for a leadership position. I’m trying to use my media savvy to protect these people, to guide them through a treacherous process. The media and Democratic Party have a political interest and self-interest in maligning them. Most of the Tea Partiers are not media-savvy. They’re not used to public debate and congregating publicly to vent their political concerns.

As a Jew, I guarantee you that if I sensed I was walking into a racist or anti-Semitic group of people I would run away from it. And I have not been shy to criticize [the Birthers]. The Tea Party has a series of legitimate grievances, and that to me is not one of them.

My involvement in the creation of the Huffington Post was an intentional sign to people that I believe, “May the best ideas win.” I believe in the free exchange of ideas. I helped to create a platform for the anti-war movement to exist. I am now trying to create a platform for the [conservative] side to be able to openly express its concerns about politics. The Left and its cultural Marxist tendencies, steeped in Alinsky and critical theory, tries to deconstruct every opposing argument into multicultural conflicts that put the other side on the defensive, as if they are secretly motivated by racism or homophobia. These desperate tactics are becoming too plain to the American people.

HPR: Do you think that it would benefit the Tea Party to stay as independent as possible of the GOP?

AB: Oh yes. I find it beautiful. Democrats are going to be put on the defensive about whether they are 100% for repeal or not. And the Republican Party is going to find that it now has checks and balances, which should have existed before, which would have kept the Bush administration more honest on issues of fiscal conservatism.

I believe in democracy. I believe in public debate. I am a staunch enemy of political correctness and the Left’s typical and predictable tactics of intimidation to stifle dissent. Wherever the Left finds itself in control, it stifles debate. Whether it is Cuba, or Hollywood, or the mainstream media. Wherever the orientation of the political Left becomes the dominant force, these tactics are used to shut people up.

I take this battle very personally. Having lived in L.A. most of my life, and I have an apartment in New York, I know how Leftists are. I know how they believe that their enemies are evil like Nazis. It’s not inexplicable that when given the choice between hiring someone who agrees with them politically and hiring someone they think is a Nazi, it is understandable that they would hire the non-Nazi. So that’s where I come from. I’ve witnessed and studied the Left. I find their tactics and their mindset deplorable and anti-democratic.

HPR: You have already launched several blogs focused on the “institutional Left,” such as Big Government, Big Hollywood, and Big Journalism, and you’ve said there may be more to come. Should we expect some kind of Big Academia, which would focus on the academy as a bastion of the Left?

AB: Yes. It’s going to be Big Education. It’s the one I will be the most passionate about, because that is the origin of this problem, that the Left took over academia at some point. There had always been a strong movement towards progressivism and even a movement towards economic Marxism during the 1930s and the Depression. But the arguments of economic Marxism never took hold in the United States in the way they did in other countries, because America had a unique makeup and a unique narrative. It was the idea that anyone could come from Ellis Island, and within a generation their family could pretty much be at the top of the heap.  So economic Marxism was not a particularly strong [ideology] in America.

But it was the Frankfurt School—people like Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno, who fled from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy—these people were Marxists who translated economic Marxism into cultural terms. That critical theory, that “deconstruction,” that language of [dividing] the country from e pluribus unum and split us up into little multicultural segments pitted against each other. And that is what I fight against—how the Left has used culture, especially academia, to pit people in groups against each other in order to achieve political gain.

That is my battle. That is what Big Education will fight mercilessly using video cameras and Alinsky tactics, to make life hell for totalitarian Marxist professors. [Families] are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or, God forbid, students are taking out hundreds of thousands in loans in order to be turned against the system that they are about to graduate into. And I was one of those idiots.

And now I’ve turned against my master, and I’m pissed.

Alexander Sherbany ‘11 is the Managing Editor. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo Credit: Flickr (shalf)

John Sweeney was president of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009, and is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

HPR: When you were president of SEIU Local 32B in New York in the ’70s, you led a strike against the New York Realty Advisory Board and won some major contract improvements. What is it like to lead a strike?

John Sweeney: The most important thing is that you have to have strong support from the workers themselves. Any strike is a tremendous sacrifice on the part of workers and their families, and you’re never sure how long it’s going to last. Whoever is leading the strike has to feel comfortable that they’ve built up the support of the workers and that the workers are firmly committed to achieving some success.

Having that support makes it more comfortable in terms of the charge that you’re leading and the issues that you’re striving to achieve, to get some negotiating success. I never went on strike without having that kind of spirit and that kind of enthusiasm.

HPR: You merged the Service Employees International Union with many other unions during your presidency. Was that effective? Do you find that broad unions are better than industry-specific ones?

JS: It depends. The greatest number of mergers that we had within SEIU were with independent, public unions such as state employees. They have to be convinced that the program the national union is proposing is something these folks understand, that would improve their representation of the workers. It makes their organization a lot stronger and more effective in dealing with employers.

We had a pretty good track record. We were pretty successful in merging those types of associations. For the most part, they stayed affiliated with SEIU for years.

HPR: What do you feel is the biggest threat to unions and unionization today, and how should unions respond?

JS: One of the biggest threats is the impact globalization has on workers and on their organizations. It’s important to recognize that the AFL-CIO isn’t going to stop globalization, but it certainly is going to strengthen its program in making globalization work for workers. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the impact globalization has had on the lives of workers.

There are a number of issues that the AFL-CIO has to focus on to represent their affiliates and their members. Rich Trumka, the new AFL-CIO president, has a very ambitious campaign focused on growth in the labor movement and raising member participation in the activities of the labor movement.

HPR: You won the only contested presidential election in the AFL-CIO’s history. What did you learn from the campaign and how did that affect your presidency?

JS: When I say it was the only contested election, you have to be mindful that the AFL and the CIO were two separate federations until they merged in 1955. It was the first contested election after the merger.

One of the things we learned was the importance of solidarity. It was so important for the affiliates to be united. The more united you are, the stronger the federation is. Once we won the election, it was important that we unify all the affiliates—those who had supported us and those who had supported Tom Donahue. That was what we were going to be stressing in all the proposals we were making as the new administration of the AFL-CIO.

HPR: How involved do you think unions should be with politics? Is it more important to focus on organizing members or on electing candidates?

JS: I think they have to do both. There’s no question about it, organizing is important and it has to be strengthened, but I also think it’s important that some of the organizing is focused on politics and mobilizing workers in support of candidates who support them and who are committed to an agenda that improves the lives of working people. You can’t do one without the other. You have to elect supportive people and hold them accountable to approve legislation that’s going to strengthen working folks and their families.

HPR: What do you think is the future of the Employee Free Choice Act? Will it pass? Will it have to be modified?

JS: I’m very hopeful that EFCA is going to pass and hopefully pass soon. I think it’s long overdue in terms of reforming our national labor laws. I believe that workers have been discriminated against in the way the National Labor Relations Act has been interpreted by administrations in the past and by judicial decisions on issues that affect workers. It’s about time we took a hard look at how workers can express themselves as to whether they want to unionize or they don’t want to unionize.

If we look at what different countries around the world do, there’s a number of different ways in which countries have changed their own labor laws, favoring workers, and strengthening collective bargaining and strengthening representation.

Kristin Eberts ‘13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Wendy Kopp is the founder and president of Teach for America, the national non-profit teaching corps. She also serves as CEO of Teach for All, an organization that works to introduce Teach for America’s methods around the world.

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW: What are your thoughts on charter schools and do you think is it feasible to implement them on a wider scale?

WENDY KOPP: I think what we are seeing in charters are the possibilities when you enable people who are pursuing incredible results for kids and give them flexibility over where the resources go. We’ve seen many driven TFA alums move into charters because they feel it gives them greater freedom and flexibility to meet the needs of their kids.

And I think the question, as we think about the scalability of charters, is really whether we can move to a situation where we have whole systems of charters. We’ve seen in the last few years school systems actually try to replicate that approach within their system by giving principals greater flexibility and freedom over where their resources go in exchange for greater accountability for results, so I think we’re learning a lot from charter schools that we can apply more broadly within school systems.

HPR: Recently, in Rhode Island, all the teachers at an underperforming school were laid off. Is that the way that teacher accountability should be enforced?

WK: This is such a tough dilemma. There are schools in our country which have literally single-digit graduation rates, schools where that has been the case for years and years and years. You can’t just leave the kids in schools that are completely dysfunctional. But systems have really struggled to figure out how to turn these failing schools around. So, as a matter of policy, there are a lot of people trying to figure out how we can turn that small handful of dysfunctional schools around.

And I think in this case, asking all the teachers to reapply, bringing in a new leader, and giving that person flexibility over who to hire might be an appropriate solution. When you talk to any successful principal and ask them what the key to success in their school is, they’ll say that it’s their teachers. And what you realize when spending a lot of time with good principals is that they spend an enormous amount of energy working to surround themselves with good people. So I think that one path in turning around the schools is to bring in new leadership and give them the flexibility they need to determine who is on their staff.

HPR: How do you propose that the American school system find talented, energetic teachers?

WK: I think that our school systems need to do what any successful organization does: recruit talent aggressively in order to find enough people with the personal characteristics necessary to succeed, and then invest in their training and development over time. Ultimately we need our school systems to develop the same kind of “people development” human capital systems that successful companies or other successful organizations have built.

HPR: Are standardized tests good benchmarks for measuring the quality of a teacher?

WK: This is another incredible dilemma. Ultimately, I think we need clear, rigorous standards towards which our teachers can teach. We do need strong assessments, both to inform teachers of what their students don’t understand so that they can teach more effectively, and to hold teachers accountable, and to hold their schools accountable. At the same time, you need a balance because the last thing I want to do is convey that I think meeting low-level standardized tests is all we need to do.

In terms of how teachers should be evaluated, I think we should give principals flexibility in determining who is on their staff. If we hold principals accountable for school-level results, give them more freedom over who they hire and how they retain their teachers, and invest in the development of principals, I think we’ll move toward a better system. And different principals will want to approach that in different ways.

HPR: Another issue that’s been in the news lately is national education standards. Should the same curriculum be mandated for Boston and for Houston?

WK: I think it would conserve a lot of resources if we all came together around a common set of standards because then we could do a lot better at capturing and evaluating what the best practices are, across different contexts. We could make investments in truly sophisticated standardized tests once, rather than fifty times. I think we could gain a lot by coming together around common standards.

Meredith Baker ’13 is a Contributing Writer. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo Credit: Flickr Stream of Hekerui

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Rene Belfer Professsor of International Relations at Harvard University. He is also the co-author, with J.J. Mearsheimer, of The Israel Lobby.

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW: Your blog is subtitled “A Realist in an Ideological Age.” When you say realist, what do you mean?

STEPHEN WALT: I think that realists in general try to analyze the world as it really is and try not to be too wedded to a particular political program that follows from some normative vision about how the world ought to be. That doesn’t mean that realists don’t have moral preferences, a set of moral standards, but the central tenet of realism is that you start by looking at how humans actually behave in international politics. Realists try to make the world better, but bear in mind what’s likely to be feasible. Realists also tend to be fairly skeptical about ambitious plans to remake the human condition. You might even say that realists have a sort of “first, do no harm” approach to foreign policy.

HPR: Is realism a sort of balance between optimism and pessimism?

SW: Not necessarily. Realism is a pretty gloomy way of looking at world politics and realists tend to highlight the inevitability of security confrontations, the pervasiveness of insecurity, and the fact that countries sometimes do really brutal things to one another. In a sense, realism is a sobering way of looking at the world. At the same time, I think realists recognize that there are certain circumstances that are better than others and that prudent statecraft can avoid some of the really big disasters. Even a realist would concede that the last twenty years of world politics have been more peaceful than the previous eighty years.

HPR: How does realism function as a lens on the situation in Israel and Palestine?

SW: You can’t understand the Middle East, either American Middle East policy or the nature of the conflicts occurring in the region, solely by applying realism, although I think realism does tell you certain things about why the conflict has not been resolved. I think that the combination of Israeli preference for land instead of peace, the dysfunctional relations within the Palestinian community, and the fecklessness of American policy are combining to make a two-state solution increasingly unlikely. However, I do think that when people are faced with a really unpleasant future, they can sometimes find the goodwill and imagination to go in a different direction. But right now, I don’t see a lot of wisdom in any of the three parties, and particularly in the American and Israeli sides.

HPR: The Onion.com recently featured an article titled “Massive earthquake reveals entire civilization of Haiti.” Indeed, Yemen and Haiti are two countries that had been largely forgotten by the developed world. Can you think of another country that has been similarly overlooked?

I think one of the things to remember about foreign affairs is there are 192 countries out there and no matter how well an administration plans its strategy and sense of priorities, there are always surprises. They always end up having to deal with something they didn’t expect, sometimes as with Haiti because of a natural disaster, sometimes it’s because of a conflict, or a government that collapses unexpectedly. It’s almost impossible for anyone to fully anticipate where some complete surprise is going to come from.

That said, I think there are some parts of the world where it’s easy for me to imagine us suddenly being forced to pay more attention than we have been up until now. I’ll give you two. One is Japan. The recent governmental change has clearly altered, to some degree, the relationship between Washington and Tokyo. I think some of that may have been overblown. There are many reasons the two will remain on good terms. But given that there is a somewhat different set of ideas and attitudes from the government in Japan, and given that you have an American administration that is up to its neck in all sorts of other problems, it’s possible to imagine the stakes being made in both places that put things in a much more delicate situation that we’ve been in a while.

The second one is Mexico. Without saying that this is going to happen or even likely to happen, you can imagine some of the internal problems that Mexico is having spilling over in the United States more than they already have. Now, it’s one thing to have a failed state in Somalia, which generates piracy problems and other issues, but is on the other side of the world, and so most Americans don’t worry very much about it. Ditto Yemen. But it seems to me, if we saw Mexico becoming ungovernable, or parts of Mexico becoming ungovernable, that would start to have repercussions that are a little different than what we’ve worried about in the past.

Those are two, but I’m not putting a bet down on either one.

Felix De Rosen ‘13 is a Contributing Writer.

Photo Credit: Justin Ide Harvard Staff Photographer

Tom Ricks is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Fiasco, a New York Times best seller. His most recent book, The Gamble, explores the effect of the 2007 troop surge on the war in Iraq.

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW: How did your views of the U.S. military change between the time you were writing Fiasco and The Gamble?

THOMAS RICKS: Fiasco, which is a very angry book, an indictment, was driven by my admiration for the military. How could this institution, that I really had come to know pretty well, have screwed up so badly? These were smart, dedicated, hard-working people I knew in the military. How could this have happened? And that’s what stunned me. I mean it really was a mess in the first years in Iraq. So why was the institution so slow to respond? And that’s the question I sort of puzzled through.

The Gamble is actually a story of reclamation, wherein a minority of the military sees a new course and pursues it over the objections of the majority. People forget that the vast majority of the U.S. military leadership vigorously opposed the surge. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the head of the Army, the top American officer in Iraq, and the head of Central Command were all against it. So The Gamble is very much a story of a minority view being promulgated and going around the chain of command and the White House jumping on it. I’m not a Bush fan, but I do think that Bush’s approval of the surge and the speech he gave about it was his finest moment.

HPR: You wrote in The Gamble that the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet occurred. What will be remembered from 2010?

TR: 2009 was kind of a year of drift. I call it the unraveling in the afterword of The Gamble. But it’s a slow unraveling. The mistake I made was thinking it was a fast unraveling—especially last spring, spring ’09, when you started seeing former Sons of Iraq and awakening groups fighting the Iraqi army in the streets of Baghdad.

But now I think the big events will be in 2010. We’ll have the election, and the formation of government after the election is the crucial period. And American troops will also be leaving during this same period, so that will be important. If you don’t have a government formed by June and you’re withdrawing 10,000 troops a month, you’re going to start taking troops out of areas that are quite unstable. How Iraqi forces then perform without American support and American oversight will be crucial.

HPR: What is your opinion of the course President Obama took late last year in Afghanistan?

TR: I’m an Obama fan, but I thought the process by which he handled Afghanistan was very worrisome. There was a lot of dithering. If the characteristic flaw of George Bush was macho-bullshit, the characteristic flaw of Obama is professorial dithering—thinking that if we just go around and around one more time we’ll come up with a better answer. Time is important, and that took a lot, a lot of time. Also, it’s still not clear to me quite what they intend to do about the biggest single problem in Afghanistan, which is the Karzai government. The Taliban is a tactical problem, but the Karzai government is the strategic problem. The Taliban we can handle militarily. The Karzai government, through its abuses and corruption, is driving Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. And until they figure out what they are going to do about it, you are not solving the basic problem.

HPR: President Obama announced in his State of the Union that he intends to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” What do you think the effects of a repeal would be?

TR: My guess is there will be some initial turmoil, and ten years from now people will wonder what the fuss was about. We have allies that have openly gay soldiers. The question is not whether you are going to have gay people in the military. You have thousands of gay people in the military. The question is, will they be punished for their sexual orientation? And there will be some initial problems. You’re dealing with 18-year-old psyches, in vulnerable states in boot camp and stuff. But I think the military will handle it with surprising ease. It’s a question whose time has come and gone. It should have been dealt with ten years ago.

Robert Long ‘11 is the Books & Arts Editor.

Jo Luck is President and CEO of Heifer Project International, a position she has held since 1992. Heifer, founded in 1944 and based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, provides livestock to impoverished families in over 125 countries.

HPR: What can you tell us about Heifer International’s approach to alleviating global poverty?

JL: Our approach is to involve the people on the ground and in communities to decide what are their goals, and what are their needs. And they always think, well do we want a cow? Well, you know they see the pictures of the cow and think well that would be great, but they don’t always have the land for that, so we sit down, and say we need to talk: What are your resources, what’s your environment, what’s your capacity? Then we require that you study how to care for the animal, how to care for the earth. We decide which families need the animals, we monitor, and we evaluate so if they’re not taking care of it we can take it away and give it to another family. We’re just there to support, share with them what we’ve learned. It’s really important that we have a conversation at the beginning about their core values that tie into their own cultures. We have our core values and cornerstones, but those may not be the same ones that their culture has, so they may add their own.

HPR: Heifer allows its aid recipients more autonomy, it seems, than another NGO might. What are the effects of that added freedom?

JL: What I love about it is they have the dignity. They’re doing it, they’re successful, and the passing on ceremony is one of the most awesome things you would ever experience in your life, that’s what everyone says. Especially in, say, Rwanda, with the genocide: A woman handing an offspring of her animal to maybe a man of another ethnic group. That sort of reconciliation is really a prerequisite to peace. And then they start to thinking about their goals. They build schools. When I interview women they all say that educating their children is their number one priority. And when these women know they’re going to have the resources to educate their children, they don’t have as many children. It has quite an impact on what I call population issues.

HPR: Accountability has been the critique of several NGOs, that perhaps there aren’t strong enough mechanisms in place to ensure that money that is given to organizations like Heifer is actually translated into development. What kind of accountability mechanisms does your organization have?

JL: I think accountability is critical. When we were looking at this about ten years ago, I said maybe we should consolidate our books from all our different regions. That sounds crazy and wildly challenging but if we don’t have the same procedures it’s so difficult, it’s like we have different standards. So we start going through each section, starting with Asia South Pacific looking at what their challenges are financially, then you know maybe the Americas, then I said a couple of years ago, it still isn’t right. We don’t want to make them do everything the west does things, but we want them to know general accounting principles. So we’re consolidating our books and we’re in the third year. Some people would call it a nightmare, because they’re all different, legally separate entities. Some don’t even have an accountant in the office. We’re doing it and we’re learning from the lessons and pretty soon our regional offices are going to be stronger financially. They’ll learn how to write grants, they’ll know how to handle their money, we’re trying to allow each country’s organization to become self-reliant just like we are with the families and communities. We’re doing it but it’s tough. And they’re coming in with a long laundry list, but what do you expect from these countries that are just coming out of communism, or some are struggling, the ones that you see on the news. But we’re working on it.

Sophie Angelis ‘13 is a Contributing Writer