Religion

CFR President Richard Haass, author of the New York Times best seller The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, discusses how to reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to thrive or even survive. His guide is particularly relevant for religion leaders, given its emphasis on civility, compromise, nonviolence, and promoting the common good. Thomas J. Reese, senior analyst at Religion News Service, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. This series convenes religion and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record, the video and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the Apple Podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Father Reese with us in conversation with CFR President Richard Haass. Dr. Haass founded CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program in 2006, and throughout his tenure, has been a dedicated proponent of CFR serving as a resource for the religion community and deepening the understanding of global issues. Father Reese is a Jesuit priest, and senior analyst at Religion News Service. Previously, he was a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter and editor in chief at America Magazine. Father Reese is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, where he authored three books. And He currently serves on CFR’s Religion Advisory Committee. So I’m now going to turn it over to Father Reese to take the conversation away. Thank you. REESE: Thank you, Irina. I’m delighted to be here with and with Dr. Haass. Everybody—I think, almost everybody on this webinar knows Richard Haass. He has been the president of the Council on Foreign Relations for twenty years now. In fact, he has been a prominent and authoritative spokesperson on foreign policy issues. He’s worked in the State Department, in the Defense Department, in the White House, under four presidents, both Democrat and Republican. Even as a younger man, he worked on Capitol Hill. He has a wide experience of foreign policy issues, and the way in which foreign policy is made. I mentioned that he’s been at the Council now for twenty years. And we are honored that this is actually his last official event for the Council. And I think this shows how seriously he takes the whole question of religion and foreign policy. Because this program was one that he himself started. So maybe I could just begin by asking you, Richard, why did you start this program on religion and foreign policy? Why did you think that that this was important? And what is the role of religion in foreign policy? HAASS: Well, thank you, Tom. Listening to the introduction, I learned something we had in common which is maybe not obvious. But you’re at, is it, the Woodstock Theological Seminary? REESE: Yes, uh-huh. HAASS: And in 1969, I was at Woodstock. (Laughter.) It’s amazing our paths have not crossed. So why did I do this? A couple of reasons. Look, I’ve always been interested in religion both personally but also academically. When I went to college, I went to Oberlin, which used to have a great theological seminary, by the way. And when I got there, I asked people: Who’s the best professor on campus? And people said, “oh, it’s Professor Tom Frank.” And I said, “OK, what does Professor Frank teach?” And they said, “New Testament.” And I said, “well, that’s interesting. We never got around to reading that one in my house, but I’m game.” So I took it. And, as is always the case, a great teacher can make a subject come alive. Professor Frank did that. One thing led to another. I was a religion major. Ultimately, it morphed into Middle Eastern studies. That’s when I first studied, though, Christianity, Islam, I had a background in Judaism. So I’ve been interested in religion. And then when I became something of a Middle East expert, you can’t work in the Middle East and not understand the impact of religion on politics. And actually, I thought so many people coming out of a narrow political science background didn’t often have a feel. One of the rules I made in one of my books, I think it was Intervention—or, maybe it was War of Necessity, War of Choice, that before the United States invades another county, it ought to understand it. And one of the elements of understanding, is to understand the role of religion and its impact on the culture, the society, the politics. So one reason I wanted to do this is I think knowledge of religion is so central if you want to be in the foreign policy or the diplomacy business. But also, you all—the people on this call—have enormous influence and reach. After getting to CFR a few years afterwards, I remember reading somewhere the statistic as to how many Americans once a week went to either a mosque, a church, a synagogue, a temple, what have you. And the number was extraordinary. It was well over 100 million people. Now the poll, I should be honest, did not say how many of them stayed awake for the entire sermon, but they did get exposed to sermons. And I said, wow, these individuals, these men and women, are a powerful force in American society. One of the things we’ve tried to do here is be a resource for groups of individual who, what I call, are “multipliers.” That these individuals reach many. Teachers, obviously, check that box. Journalists check that box. Business leaders do. And congregational and religious leaders do. So I thought it was a major opportunity for us to learn from them about the impact of religion on politics in this country and other societies, and at the same time for us to be a resource for you all. And hopefully some of that would influence what it was people talked about. So that’s how it all came about. REESE: That’s fascinating. It reminds me of Madeline Albright once saying that when she was a young student of foreign policy, they ignored economics. Economics was not something that foreign policy people were worried about. And then she said, today religion was something that foreign policy people didn’t worry about. And— HAASS: You’re right. One of my favorite—Tom, one of—sorry to interrupt. One of my favorite sayings is, “universities have departments, the world doesn’t.” So much of the intellectual preparation is siloed—economics, politics, whatever, religion. There’s very little cross-fertilization or interdisciplinary work. And as soon as you do work at the White House, or the State Department, whatever, just you want to write history or anything, you’ve got to work across silos, across disciplines. So I just think it’s essential. REESE: Let’s talk a little bit about your book, which I think is absolutely fascinating. I just read it this week and was very impressed by it. Your new book is entitled The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. And it’s already become a bestseller. So why did you decide to write this book? You’re a foreign policy expert. You could have written about Ukraine, you could have written about refugees, you could have written about global warming, a hundred different topics. Why did you pick this one for your book? HAASS: Well, I mean, I have written about all the subjects you mentioned, and I continue to. They’re obviously important. It’s not either/or. But what led me to write this book is that, funnily enough, it’s almost a version of our conversation now. Where I give a talk about Ukraine, or Russia, or terrorism, or climate change, or China, or what have you. And then hands would go up at the end of the talk and people would say: What’s your biggest concern? What keeps you up at night? Is it any one of those things? And I’d say, look, those all worry me, obviously. But what worries me most is us. So I decided to write a book about us. And the intellectual connection was I was worried that if we were at odds with ourselves, or worse at war with ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to set an example that anybody else in the world would want to emulate. We wouldn’t be a partner that anybody wanted to depend on, such as our allies. We wouldn’t have the bandwidth, or the unity, or the resources to be a force for good in the world. And the lesson of history is that good things just don’t happen in the world. Over the last seventy-five years, I’m prepared to argue, a lot of good things happen. And in no small part because of the significant role of the United States. So what led me to write this book is a genuine concern that the foundation, almost the prerequisite of a successful American role in the world of foreign policy, which is a functioning American democracy, was increasingly at risk. My motive, in a sense, was to say: We’ve got to think about ourselves on democracy as a national security issue. And that we’ve got to take it seriously, and we’ve got to understand that it’s in some vulnerability. The good news is things can be addressed, the ship can be righted. The bad news is, good things don’t just happen by themselves. So I wanted to start a national conversation about how to rethink, almost to reimagine citizenship in a contemporary democracy. And that’s what led to this book. REESE: Yeah. You play off the Bill of Rights, the first “ten amendments” of the U.S. Constitution. And you point out how at least since the civil rights movement the question of rights has been an important motivating and just an important intellectual driver in the United States, in our politics. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement. All of these founded on a concern about rights. And yet, you’re now telling us we ought to be worried about obligations. What’s going on here? HAASS: Funny you should ask. Just so there’s no misconception, I’m not against rights. Rights are obviously at the core of the American democratic experiment. The Constitution, which was, if you will, the second Constitution. The Articles of Confederation proved to be really feckless. The Constitution, which did create a strong central government with a strong executive, that was only ratified by the states with guarantees or assurances about rights. And that’s the first ten amendments. That was the requirement if you were going to get ratification. Several states made that clear. One prism through which to view American history then is the struggle for rights. The Civil War is obviously the most intense moment. The right to be free, not to be a slave. But other rights as well. Again discrimination, whether based on gender, race, religion, sexual preference or identity, what have you. And that is, to use Mr. Lincoln’s phrase, that was or is our “unfinished work.” There’s still a gap between what we proclaim in the Declaration of Independence and the reality. It’s a permanent struggle, I would argue, to make sure that rights are respected. My point in writing the book is that even if somehow you, or I, or anyone on this call had a magic wand and could eliminate the gap between our principles and our practices, essentially to finish Abraham Lincoln’s work, my view is that American democracy would still be in danger. And that’s because rights inevitably collide. Take an issue that, shall we say, is central to the politics and religion of your faith, which is abortion. The rights of the unborn versus the rights of the mother. How does a democracy navigate that debate? Or on guns, the rights of individuals pursuant to an interpretation of the Second Amendment, versus the rights of others to public safety? Or we went through lots of struggles during the pandemic. This person’s right not to wear a mask or not to get vaccinated, versus someone else’s right of public health. And, as Justice Breyer said when he was on the court, Steve Breyer, that the most difficult cases are not right versus wrong but right versus right. And when we have this situation they collide. And collisions could lead to gridlock, because we can’t agree. Nothing can get done. Or, worse yet, it spills over into violence. And my view is that somewhere along the way we lost sight of the fact of our obligations, the other side of the citizenship coin, the obligations the two of us have to one another and the obligations all of us have this country of ours, to government and to the country. So this is not a book that’s in any way against rights. Let me make that clear. But it’s a book that says, that’s not enough. As we always used to say in academia, rights are a necessary but not sufficient condition for a democracy to thrive or even survive. So what I wanted to do was start a conversation about what are those obligations, why they’re necessary, what it takes, and why it’s in our collective self-interests. And that’s what I’ve been—it’s been five months or so since the book came out. I’ve been traveling around the country talking about it in front of all sorts of groups and audiences, from college campuses, to high schools, to religious groups, to just town halls of citizens. REESE: Obligations is something that churches are very familiar with. We preach obligation all the time. (Laughter.) We don’t tend to preach rights. We tend to preach obligations. Because of your interest in religion and this very program, I was a little bit surprised that religion is not mentioned very much in the book. If I could talk you into writing an addendum to the book, what would you tell religious leaders about their role here in American politics? I mean, religion can be very divisive also. So I was wondering you could preach to the preachers. (Laughs.) HAASS: Oh, I love this. Turnabout is fair play. It’s what every member of a congregation is desperate to do, is to preach to the preacher. Well, look, I do actually write a little—I mean I draw from my own religious experience in the book. The first idea in the book, and originally I was going to begin it there and then I moved it later in the book, was from the Jewish holiday of Passover. And for much of their history, Jews were denied access to their holy places, to their synagogues or temples, or often persecuted. And what’s so interesting about Passover, it’s the story where Jews tell the story of—it’s a holiday where we tell the story of the exodus of Egypt. It’s central to Jewish identity. And it’s so interesting, because the story is told not in synagogues but in homes. It’s a decentralized holiday. It’s a mobile holiday. It’s Judaism dispersed, often out of necessity. And you have a generational obligation to tell the story, to teach. It’s a teaching holiday. And literally you have this traditional meal. Every food is symbolic. It’s done in a certain order. Indeed, the word for the meal is Seder, which is the Hebrew word for “order.” And the book that informs the meal is called the Haggadah, which is Hebrew for “the telling.” It’s the telling of the story. And that’s what you do. And for me, that’s very similar. We in America have—we fail to tell our story. Which is why I’m so insistent on civics being a staple of education in middle schools, and high schools, and colleges. This is a country founded on ideas. We should not take for granted that these ideas are understood, much less transmitted. So I think we do a terrible job at that. But getting to your question, now that I’ve digressed, I think religious authorities have a big role in at least four of the obligations. And you also have the opportunity to do something about it. Most basically is probably the opposition to violence. I don’t care what your political views are, none of them justifies violence against others. And indeed, let me just make a larger point, none of the obligations involves a political point of view. I’m not taking policy positions on guns, or abortion, or mass, or Ukraine, or anything else. This is—in that sense, I don’t know if it transcends politics or what, but one is to preach the importance of nonviolence. Second of all, the importance of civility—to treat people, in a sense, the way you’d want to be treated. Which, by the way, is just practical. One tends not to be more persuasive if one acts badly. Thirdly, to be open to compromise. Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, but at least consider it. And, fourthly, to look out for one another, to be one’s brother or sister’s keeper. Those seem to me, those four obligations in this secular book, are totally consistent, I would think, with what you and everybody on this call, one way or another, tries to impart to one’s congregants. And so I would argue that people who are in a position to preach have, if you will, an obligation to preach. And so that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this call, in speaking with Irina, is you’re all in such a position of potential influence that I wanted to give this message. And, by the way, I’ve talked to business leaders about their special obligations. I’ve talked to journalists about theirs. I’ve talked to educators about theirs. I’ve talked to parents about theirs. So I think different groups in American society have special obligations based upon their positions and their roles. But I would think that in at least four of the ten obligations, people who have congregations have an enormous opportunity—though, again, I would prefer to use the word “obligation” as well—to make a difference. REESE: As a former civics teacher, I was really happy to see your second to the last obligation, about supporting the teaching of civics. But what we teach in school has become a battlefield in and of itself. There doesn’t seem to be much consensus there. I mean, all fight over what we teach about race, et cetera. How do we deal with these kinds of conflicts that, before we can even fulfill your obligation of supporting civics, we’ve got to get some agreement about what we’re going to teach. HAASS: You’re right, 100 percent. Because people could agree in principle but may not be able to agree in practice. And, as you said, education’s gotten politicized, or even weaponized. So I get it. I’m not naïve. I spent time as the U.S. envoy in Northern Ireland. Three years as the U.S. envoy. Then I went back for a second tour, for my sins. And I was brought in by the local parties to try to broker a common understanding of the past—which in Northern Ireland, as you know better than anybody, was rather painful and divided. And I tried to get them to support what I called the Museum of the History of the Troubles. For those on the call who are not familiar with the Troubles, these were three decades from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, in which there was an enormous amount of friction that often spilled over into violence between and among various paramilitary groups, some of the Catholic tradition, some of the Protestant, as well as between either of the groups and British police and military. Somewhere in the order of, what, between three (thousand) and four thousand individuals lost their lives. Because I think history can, to some extent, repeat itself, if not exactly, I wanted there to be a museum that was built that would teach people about the Troubles. And in part I figured that it would make them more wary of descending into—or, adopting certain positions, because violence could happen again. I did not succeed, but I learned a lot in the process about how to structure an education that takes into account exactly what you’re getting at. My view is that when it comes to American civics, we can’t impose a single interpretation of history. That would be a nonstarter. But I think we can suggest certain documents be read. The Declaration of Independence, for one. The Constitution, for another. I would love people to have some access to the great literature—The Federalist Papers, de Tocqueville, what have you—to major presidential speeches, to major Supreme Court decisions and dissents, and understanding of the basic history. And then you could expose people to various interpretations of this. You say, this is what happened. Here’s the two or three contending schools of thought. And then you could have debates and classroom conversations about it. I think there are ways you can do it. And, look, I’m not naïve. There’d be massive, intense debates over what to include and what to exclude. This ain’t beanball. This ain’t easy. OK. But I’ll give you another Jewish reference. On Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, there’s a prayer where everyone asks for—goes for forgiveness about the various acts of commission. And there’s a long list because we all sin a lot, as you know on your side. And then the last of the sins is you beg forgiveness for when you should have done something and you didn’t. It’s the act of omission, when you should have acted in the face of something that required action. And that’s how I feel about this. We can persuade ourselves it’s impossible, but in that case then what we have now stands. Either not teaching it, or teaching it terribly. So my view is take a run at it. And, again, look, I’m stepping down from here. I’m not retiring. Despite the rumors, I’m not going to go to Saudi Arabia and joining the LIV golf tour. What I am going to do, among other things, is stay active in this conversation and debate. I’ve already spoken to several governors, several university presidents. And I’m going to devote a chunk of my time to working at this. And I’ll be speaking about it and writing about it. And there are various individuals and groups out there. So I have no illusions, but I’m going to take a run at it. REESE: Terrific. I’m having a lot of fun asking you questions, but I also want to open it up to all the other people. So let me just ask you one last question before we open it up. And anybody who wants to ask a question, use that little hand thing on the Zoom call. In the title of our webinar, we use the term “common good.” And that is also used in your book, where you say “we should promote the common good.” What is the common good? And how do we promote it? And, of course, my particular interest, how can religion promote the common good? HAASS: I’ve thought about it a lot. Not as much as you have, but I’ve thought about it a lot. And there’s different ideas about—and the fact that you had ask the question is revealing, because there is not a single or consensus definition of, quote/unquote, “the common good,” or what is the promotion of it. One is behaviors that avoid harm to others. And that’s where you get at things like—and there’s Supreme Court decisions about it—about the need to be vaccinated if you’re carrying certain types of disease that you could transmit to others. So that’s the way you look out for others. Obviously, controversial in the age of COVID, I understand. But with smallpox and others, that was a decision that was reached by an earlier generation of Americans. And we require all sorts of vaccinations with kids when they go to school, both for their own good, but also for the good of others. We have all sorts of rules in moral society. Some things are for our own good, a seatbelt rule. But other things are for the common good. We have speed limits, traffic lights, and stop signs. Those are for the common good. In all sorts of areas, we have debates about where to draw the lines between, again, individual rights and common goods. And we can do that. So that’s one sort of thing. That’s the rights, if you would. Individual rights versus collective rights, is one way to think about it. Another thing about common good, some would say, common good needs a social floor or safety net. And there’s a lot of conversation about that. Guaranteed incomes. And we have that to some extent in our society. We have unemployment insurance; we have Medicaid, Social Security for elderly things, different food programs, and so forth. The whole idea is we have social floor, economic floor. And that’s a form of common—debates about where it should be pegged, how conditional it should be, work requirements. Again, but there is a sense that no American should live a life—no citizen in this society—below a certain level. I’m big also on the idea of common good means making equal opportunity a reality, that that’s something we owe one another. That means everything from there should be no discrimination. And I’m radical on this. There should be no negative discrimination, traditional use of the word, but I’m also against certain types of positive discrimination. I’m against legacy admissions. That’s a form of positive, if you will, discrimination in favor of some. I think that perpetuates certain types of unequal opportunities. It means certain people can be born, if you will, on third base. I think that’s unfair for those who aren’t. It also, by the way, lights under me a real fire to make things like public education better than it is. Because that’s one of the ways to make equal opportunity real, rather than simply a slogan. So there’s not a common, if you will, or universal definition of common good. Again, I don’t pretend to have a universal answer. But I want that to be into people’s consciousness, because it gets, some way a little bit—I think this country is, at times, too taken with this notion of rugged individualism, that we only have to worry about ourselves. And the answer is, we may be all born equal in principle under the law, but we’re not born equal in practice in terms of health, or in terms of wealth, or in terms of opportunity. And I just think we need to have an honest conversation about that in this society. REESE: That’s terrific. Thank you. And now I’ll pass it onto get questions from the other people on the webinar. OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question will come from Charles Strohmer from the Wisdom Project. STROHMER: Thank you both for being here. I really appreciate it a lot. I’ve followed you for a long time, Dr. Haass. My question is simply: Do you or Father Reese see any ways in which principles in the Sermon on the Mount can help us be better at fulfilling what I call our duties, or what you’re calling our obligations, that we have toward one another, both as human beings who are also American citizens? Thank you. HAASS: Tom, I’m going to defer to you on that one. That’s your text more than mine. And so I’m going to defer to you. REESE: (Laughs.) Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear to anybody who reads the gospels that Jesus has an emphasis on the fact that we are all brothers and sisters, with the same god as father. And of course, we as Christians inherit that from our Jewish brothers and sisters. And I think Jesus really emphasized that. He emphasized it in the Sermon on the Mount, and the parable about the Good Samaritan. Jesus was always concerned about the sick, about the poor, about the hungry—all of these kinds of things, and these people, and it was very personal. And yet, he was also very nonviolent. He was not leading a revolution. In fact, people were upset with him because he wasn’t leading an armed revolution. And so I think there’s a lot of things we can learn from the gospels about our obligation as citizens to be supportive of the common good, as Richard said, and to treat one another as brothers and sisters. And, frankly, not just our neighbors here in the United States, but seeing everyone in the world as our brothers and sisters, whether they’re migrants that are drowning in the Mediterranean, people at our borders. It doesn’t tell us what policy we should enact, but it does tell us that this has got to be a concern. We’re not going to get a plan of action out of the scriptures, but we are going to get an orientation, as Richard said, of our obligations, of our values. And I think those need to guide us as we try and figure out where we go in terms of domestic and foreign policy. HAASS: Can I just add to that? Agree with that totally. Part of what I remember studying that, there’s a lot of norms in there. A lot of the teachings in that are not things you have to do, but they’re things you ought to do, that you should do. And that’s really what a norm is. And religion is filled with laws, but religion is also filled with norms. Not everything can be specifically and narrowly proscribed. So I think a lot of the teachings in any of the faiths are such things. And Sermon on the Mount’s a perfect example of it. Our doing things and asking that others do them as well, because they’re right. I think that’s a powerful thing. And then, again, I think people who were preaching, it’s not a big step from there to talking about the norms in the political space, about how you treat a political opponent or something like that. That there’s something larger in this than your own narrow political ambitions. And I think, again, people who have standing in churches, or synagogues, or mosques have tremendous authority to address these subjects without—again, without getting into you’ve got to support this or that policy. That there’s no—indeed, I think it would be a mistake to politicize these issues. I want to have them be one step removed from policy. REESE: A great example of that was when Pope John Paul II came to New York and preached at Yankee Stadium. He was using the Jesus story about the rich man and Lazarus. And of course, the rich man had walked—just stepped over Lazarus, who was at his front door, poor, hungry, starving, and just ignored him. He didn’t kick him. He just ignored him. And John Paul looked out over the audience, at the congregation at Yankee Stadium and said: You are the rich man, and the third world is Lazarus. Whew! I mean, talk about hitting you right between the eyes. Now, he didn’t say what to do. But he said, you’ve got to do something. Anyway, next question. OPERATOR: We have a written question from Noel Rubinton, who writes: First, kudos to Richard for all he has done for this Religion and Foreign Policy program. My question: In your book, you raise many ideas, more than ten, about citizenship. But if you could get people to take just one action to increase their citizenship, what would it be? HAASS: Well, thank you, Noel. I appreciate it. It’s always a hard question to answer. It’s sort of like asking which one of my children do I love most. (Laughs.) It’s a tough one. Look, at a minimum, I’d say get informed and vote, the first two obligations. It’s no coincidence that the first obligation is to get informed, and the second one is to be involved. Democracy can’t be a spectator sport. It requires informed, involved citizens. So that’s the basic. Probably the one, though, that’s nearest and dearest to my heart is what we’ve talked about a little bit, is civics. It’s where I began this journey that led to this book. And I just think there’s something very wrong that we, quote/unquote, “educate” young Americans, and the great preponderance of our schools, whether they’re high schools or universities, allow students to leave the campus or the building without any exposure to civics. And we’re about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in three years. I want to make sure we can celebrate the 350th and the 450th. We’d better start teaching civics in a serious way, though I respect Tom’s point before. But we just can’t assume this democracy is somehow permanent. History suggests not. History suggests that just the opposite. So if I could just do one thing, I’d like to kick off something of a civics movement in the United States. That would be my own personal preference. REESE: Great. Next question. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Ani Zonneveld from Muslims for Progressive Values. ZONNFEVELD: Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you, Richard, for all that you’ve done for CFR and religion. Ani Zonneveld from Muslims for Progressive Values. You had a quote there that I’d like for you to repeat that is just fantastic about the world not having departments. That’s number one. And then, number two, you spoke about the Jewish prayer seeking forgiveness for not acting against injustice. And I was just wondering, once you step away from CFR, if you will be using this particular faith/moral compass to poke the politicians and policymakers—(laughs)—towards a more just policy? Thank you. HAASS: First of all, thank you. Yeah, the first quote was just that “universities have departments. The world doesn’t.” That’s actually original. Just something I noticed along the way. But feel free to use it. You can claim it as your own. (Laughs.) I don’t get royalties for it. Look, I’ll be honest, I’m not afraid of poking. I’m a serial poker. And I’m more than comfortable challenging the conventional wisdom, or the powers that be, or the status quo. And whether it’s questions—whether it’s injustice or just things that I think are unwise. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, most of my focus on foreign policy over the decades has been on issues that I think are unwise. That I think are when we do things that are just against what’s in the national interest. I was a very sharp critic of the Iraq War, for example, not so much on the basis—it wasn’t based on injustice. I just thought it was a terrible idea based on my own analysis. And I argued against it from the inside. I continued to argue against it after I left government. I’m a little bit more hesitant to fight against, quote/unquote, “injustice” in other countries because I’m sensitive to several things. One is, we often have a range of interests at stake. We don’t have often the luxury of just focusing on injustice. Second of all, we’ve got to be mindful of our—it’s not enough to posture yourself to say the right things. You have to be confident that by doing so you’ll have the desired effect. And that’s not always the case. So I’m just careful about that sort of involvement in other societies. I’m more comfortable about speaking out on these issues here at home. One, I understand them somewhat better, and you have a certain standing as an American to speak out about American society that you don’t have if you’re not a member of another society. Your words may not be welcome, but they’re seen somehow as a little bit more legitimate, I guess is the word I use. So, yeah, I’ll continue to speak out particularly here at home. And you got a sense of some of the things I feel strongest about. If I had to choose one, again, it’s that we do not have equal access to equal quality education in this country. And that is dangerous for American democracy because education—public education is the ladder—L-A-D-D-E-R—of American mobility. It’s how over these decades and longer people have been able to improve their lives. And what worries me, if that ladder is lifted up then what becomes of us? It’s a very, very different society if the American dream, if the idea of improvement is just a dream and is no longer an achievable reality for a meaningful number of Americans. I worry about that. So, yeah, I’ll continue to speak out on that, trust me. REESE: Next question. OPERATOR: We have a written question from Erik Owens, a professor of theology at Boston College. Who writes: Your list of obligations is excellent and well-advised. But they all seem to require a baseline of social trust that is in short supply these days in American society. People mistrust their government, scientific experts, academic experts, lawyers, politicians, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think we must first rebuild social trust in order to enhance the commitment to these obligations? Or are social trust and a sense of civic obligation really the same thing? HAASS: It’s an interesting question. You’re right, we have a social trust deficit in this country. I think it’s a fair, and good, and important insight. One of the ways we build social trust, in my experience, is by people doing things together. When Tom Brokaw and others would write about the Greatest Generation, the fact that so many Americans from wildly different backgrounds, geographies, you name it, went into the military and fought in World War II, that became a great generator of social trust. I think one of the problems now is we have fewer and fewer experiences which Americans have in common. And indeed, because of modern technologies, we’re going the other way. Increasingly, we’re getting separated so we tune into our own social media site, or this or that, cable channel, or radio station. People stare at their devices all day long, and so forth. It’s one of the reasons I’m such a supporter of a public service, is I want to bring some people together to do things that are inherently good things and valuable things for the community, but also gets people to work together who normally would never have the experience. One of the reasons I’m working with lots of universities on what’s called “freshman year experience.” When people come to campus, I want to start building some social trust. Have them talk about some of the issues we’re talking here today. They don’t have to always agree, but I want them to hear what other people have to say, and so forth. One of the reasons I like debates, it exposes you to different points of view and it has certain norms and rules associated with it. But I don’t have any magic wand for building social trust. But, again, I think people on this call can help also. There’s things that happen within your congregations, various activities you can—the kind of conversations you have. And that when somebody shouts somebody down, or acts really uncivilly, or whatever, I think there’s ways in which you can structure a conversation. Just bringing people together can build social trust. So I’m not sure what’s the sequencing, but I think it goes hand-in-hand with a lot of what we’re talking about here. REESE: Great. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question is from Galen Carey from the National Association of Evangelicals. CAREY: Thank you, Richard. You talk about civics education. Our civic system doesn’t seem to be very good at encouraging long-term thinking, whether it’s thinking about our budget deficit and the debt we’re passing on, or our stewardship in the environment. What could we do, what could faith leaders in particular do, to help foster more courage, political courage, for thinking about long-term issues when we have short-term elections? HAASS: I wish I could disagree with your premise, but I cannot. We’re short termers in how we think. And part of looking out for your fellow citizen, being your brother and your sister’s keeper, is one has an intergenerational responsibility. It’s not just for people of your own generation. We have a responsibility to one another. And I think older people have a responsibility and obligation to—and I’m leaving this institution after running it for twenty years—or, leading it for twenty years. One of the things I saw my obligation was to leave the institution considerably better off than I found it. Not a criticism of my predecessor, and I hope my successor can say the same thing. I think we’re stewards. I think you all have a particular potential on environmental issues, on climate change. Last I checked, one of the things God did in the beginning was to create the heavens and the Earth. OK. Well, He created them. We’re the stewards. We’re not doing such a hot job. So I’m surprised actually there has not been more involvement of religious leadership in this country on behalf of protecting, if you will, the commons here. I think that’s—I’m surprised that people who would say we agree in the gospel, we read about this in the Bible, the creation and so forth. OK. Well, creation is the beginning. Then we want to see the continuity. We want to see the protection, the stewardship, the custodianship. So I believe that religious leaders should take a larger role in that. I think it could make a real difference. I’ve spoken to Evangelicals leaders about doing it. I think they could have a real impact. Budget deficit is more complicated because everybody can agree the deficit is bad, or the debt. We now have a $34 trillion debt. That is a bad, bad thing. And we can agree in principle that it’s a very bad thing. We cannot, however, agree on what to do about it and whether the answer is this on discretionary spending, this on defense, this on taxes, this on entitlements. So very quickly you get into fundamental policy debates indeed at the heart of some of the divides within and between the major political parties. So even if one preaches, if you will, responsibility on the debt, I’m not sure that takes you very far because very quickly you get into policy prescription. And I’m not sure that’s the comparative advantage of the people on this call. I’m not sure whose comparative advantage it is, because nobody seems successful at moving us on that. We’re on a terrible trajectory. The consequences of a larger debt, particularly with high interest rates, it just crowds out all sorts of other forms of useful spending. So we’re on a terrible trajectory. We’re not investing in our own future. But I’m not sure, again, how you translate agreement in principle to agreement on policy. REESE: Yeah. I’m really glad you brought this up, Galen. I mean, frankly, one of the things that gives me pride as a Catholic is Pope Francis’s leadership on the global warming issue, with his encyclical Laudato Si’. The sad thing is I don’t see a lot of bishops in the United States making this a priority in their preaching or in their work in their diocese. For me, it’s the issue of the twenty-first century. It’s going to determine what kind of Earth we leave to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, and whether we have a civilization to leave to them. So I’m glad you brought that up, the importance of the long-term vision. Next question. OPERATOR: Our next question is from Hays Rockwell, a retired Episcopal bishop of Missouri. HAASS: You probably want to unmute yourself. ROCKWELL: Hi. I just want to say about thirty-five years ago, at a weekend meeting in the summer, to which I attended a number over the years after we left the city, stimulating always. But this particular one I stood up at the end and said: It’s wonderful to have these brilliant discussions, but one factor of human experience has been left out. And I mentioned religion—no mention of religion and its effect and importance to foreign policy in a variety of ways, both for good and ill. Well, I don’t think that Richard was there to hear that observation of mine, but very shortly thereafter he took hold of it and it became a significant part of the life of the Council on Foreign Relations. And I just want to thank him for that with all my heart. HAASS: Well that’s very generous. Thank you. I feel very fortunate that early on I was a religion major in college. I actually think it did infinitely more for me as I went through my life, either as a practitioner in government or as an academic, in my foreign policy-centered life, than any amount of theory would have done. I actually see the theory that we teach our international relations studies, and I think it’s mostly a colossal waste of time. And, by the way, I would say that if this were a call of international relations professors. I’d lose them all, but I can live with that. I actually think religion turns out to be not just a useful, but an essential component, I think, in preparing people for public life, be it in this country or in my field of foreign policy. And I always thought it gave me a great advantage when we were sitting around the State Department or the White House talking about this or that effort to transform this society in the Middle East, or some other part of the world, or going to war in this or that society. I just thought I had a massive leg-up, because I actually not only had studied it and had some appreciation of the culture. And, by the way, what it usually did was make me—it kind of added—it’s not my most natural default position, but it made me a little bit more humble, a little bit more careful about what I thought we could do. It turns out religion is so intimately connected to culture that it becomes a really powerful force. And for those of us who want to transform other societies, and we preach universalism on certain things, I just think we also have to be mindful of local realities and differences. REESE: Yeah. Thank you, Bishop. Next question. OPERATOR: We will take our final question from Father Rafael Capó from the St. Thomas School of Theology and Ministry in Florida. CAPÓ: Well, good afternoon and thank you for your leadership, Dr. Haass. It’s been amazing what you have done throughout the years in supporting our contributions from the religious academia and pastoral ministries with our collaboration with the Council on Foreign Relations. So thank you. My question is, how do you see peacebuilding efforts on the part of the religious community—specifically, the role of religious diplomacy to contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts in regions marked by war? HAASS: First of all, thank you for what you said. There’s this old line that war is too important to be left to the generals. I think there’s an argument that peacemaking or peacebuilding is too important to be left just to the diplomats. I think religious authorities can have tremendous impact, because they have tremendous influence on people and on civil society, just society across the board. I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland. I spent a lot of time with religious leaders in Northern Ireland. I knew that they had to be partners in what I did. If we were going to get rid of violence, get rid of guns, if we were going to have some possibility of normalization between the principal religious traditions of Northern Ireland, it would only happen if it were supported by religious leaders. Northern Ireland is a perfect example of, if you will, a post-conflict society. It’s been twenty-five years now since the Good Friday Agreement. And where it still has a long way to go, in part because certain religious leaders haven’t done as much as they could or should. So it turns out religious leaders have an enormous role to play. Where it is played, it makes a positive difference. Where we’ve seen it not play, then we see the potential for backsliding much, much, much greater. I see religious leaders as essentially partners in the peace enterprise, whether it’s in the pre-negotiating phase, the negotiating phase, or the post-negotiating phase. Religious leaders just have tremendous actual and potential voice and influence. REESE: Well, I want to thank all of our participants, especially those that gave questions. Really contributed to the discussion, and excellent questions. And especially, I want to thank Richard. I mean, your work here for the Council and especially for this Religion and Foreign Policy program is really, really—we are all very, very grateful to you for all the wonderful work you have done. Thank you. I really appreciate being able to moderate this last event that you are doing for the Council. I’ll now hand it over to Irina. FASKIANOS: Thank you both again. Richard is going to continue to be very prolific. You can follow him on Twitter at @richardhaass and subscribe to his weekly newsletter, Home and Away. It’s published on Substack. You can get it at richardhaass.substack.com. You can follow Father Tom at @thomasreesesj. Thank you all for your questions. We also encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. You can write to us at [email protected] with suggestions or questions. We appreciate your joining us. Richard, do you want to say one last word? HAASS: Yeah, I just want to thank you all for your participation. You’re all busy. I appreciate your time. And may you all be well and go in peace. FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Heidi A. Campbell, professor of communication at Texas A&M University, and Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, discuss the meeting of religion and digital culture, and its effect on religious communities. Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program.   FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. This series convenes religion and faith-based leaders in a cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record, the audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Carla Anne Robbins with us to moderate today’s discussion on Religion and Technology. Carla Anne Robbins is a senior fellow at CFR. She is also Marxe faculty director of the master of international affairs program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Robbins is an award-winning journalist and foreign policy analyst. She was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times, and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. So, Carla, thank you very much for moderating this conversation. I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce our distinguished speakers. ROBBINS: Thank you so much, Irina. And thank you so much for inviting me. I don’t know an enormous amount about this topic. I know a reasonable amount about the internet. My mother would say, she hopes I know a reasonable amount about religion as well, but not from an academic point of view. So, as Irina said, we’re going to have a conversation here for about twenty-five minutes, and then we’re going to turn it over to you all for questions and conversation. Dr. Heidi A. Campbell is professor of communication, affiliate faculty in religious studies, and a presidential impact fellow at Texas A&M University. She’s also director of the Network for New Media, Religion, and Digital Culture Studies, and a founder of digital religion studies at the university. Dr. Campbell’s research focuses on technology, religion, and digital culture, with emphasis on Jewish, Muslim, and Christian media negotiations. The Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. He’s an ordained Baptist minister, and a long-time leader in the interfaith movement, working to protect an inclusive vision of religious freedom for people of all faiths, and none—I love that, people of all faiths and none—in both online and offline spaces. Throughout his twenty-five years of ministry, he has maintained a presence in both IRL and URL spaces, including digital journalist at Beliefnet and HuffPost Religion. He has also served as senior advisor for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith America, and as associate dean of religious life in the chapel at Princeton University. So, Heidi, I’d like to start with you. As a now-academic, I know the scramble we went through taking classes online overnight at the start of the pandemic. And there’s been debate ever since in my shop about whether online education is worse, whether it’s better, or whether it’s just different from in-person classes. Can we start talking about that pivot point for religious communities and organizations? How hard was it to adapt? And is there a similar debate going on in your community? CAMPBELL: So, back in 2020, it was interesting to watch from my perspective of someone who studied religion and technology, especially the internet, for the last three years, that almost like an overnight change from, one week there was about a dozen people in my Facebook feed that were streaming their services, and the next week it was fifty. And then the next week it was one hundred. Religious communities experimenting with different ways to use digital technology in their ministries, and in their communities and communication, isn’t new. We have examples going back as far as the 1990s. But it being a widespread phenomenon rather than the exception to the rule, it’s been very new.  There was a lot of initial resistance in some groups because it was not just requiring them to learn a new thing on top of a very uncertain situation, but it was also asking them to rethink what it means to kind of create a worship environment, what it means to have religious gatherings. And so I think a lot of the debates have been over not just the instrumental use of the technology but now, a couple years on, what has it meant to how we change our ways of interacting to one another? I talk to pastors and rabbis all the time. And it’s been a strong learning curve, I think. And kind of three camps right now. There’s the people that are thinking, wow, this has been the best thing for us. It’s forced us to think outside the box and it’s been a positive innovation. There’s people that are now saying, well, we spent all this money and time getting up online. And people in our congregation, have a demand for this, so we feel like we have to keep going. And then there’s groups that are still what I would call technologically reluctant, or hesitant, in that they actually have access to the technologies, but for them religious experience and actions will always be embodied. And so they just can’t wait to get back to more of that traditional kind of space. So there’s still a wide range, but digital technology in the church and in ministry is here to stay. And our future is definitely hybrid. ROBBINS: Thanks. So, Paul, you were a very early adopter of this world. And then suddenly the world was where you were. Do you find that most people are just basically transferring what they did before online? Or do you see more and more people actually doing creative things? I would say among my colleagues, and I say this with love, that far too many of them still on Zoom look like they’re reading hostage videos. I mean, if you’d had a newspaper in front of them, you’d know they were in a basement somewhere. Are you seeing more creativity as time has gone by, or are people still more hesitant, the way Heidi was saying? RAUSCHENBUSH: Well, as Professor Campbell has said, this has really made plain some of the questions that were already present before the pandemic happened. It’s made us examine some important questions, like what does it mean to be embodied? The question of when ten Jews are online is that a minyan, is a question that no one has really quite answered. When two or three are gathered in Christ’s name online, is Christ there? And what does that mean about an embodied faith? They seem kind of glib, but they’re actually really important for how we view the body, what we mean by community. So I think there has been incredible innovation on many parts, but it does bring into question what does it mean to be a community. So when you have a community that is not geographically focused, what is that religious community’s responsibility to geography? Meaning, if the majority or even all of your congregation is online around the country or around the world, what does it mean for the local neighborhood that really needs a food pantry, or needs a place for AA to meet? The local responsibility. So these are big questions that are coming up for religious communities around the internet. I would say, I have seen incredible innovation. You can really tell, though. It’s kind of like the difference between when radio happened, or when TV happened, there’s all of a sudden TV evangelists who are, like, OK, I see what the possibility is here. I see what this allows me to do. My community, which is a more mainline Protestant liberal community, has not been that great at it, though there have been many people who have been good. You also see these new influencers, like TikTok pastors, and TikTok rabbis, who are really there. They have constituencies. Whether they’re communities, that’s another question. ROBBINS: So, Heidi, can we talk a little bit more? You’ve written about three common approaches, and you were talking about this. Can we talk a little bit more about the transformational ones? Are they using particular digital platforms? Have they come up with particularly cool ways of using, leveraging the technology so that it is a new experience, a truly religious experience, rather than just preaching at people? But using technology to have them truly experience the religion? CAMPBELL: Yeah, so during the pandemic, there were two innovative strategies. One was kind of a translation strategy. And that was people realized putting a smartphone up and trying to get the whole sanctuary or church wasn’t the best strategy. That just not transferring online. And so a lot of congregations decided, how we do actually restructure the front of our building? We saw a lot of churches and congregations actually go out of the church or synagogue building and go into maybe a fellowship hall, even into pastors’ homes, and making the sermon into more of a talk show format, or a fireside chat kind of format. And realizing in a time when people were feeling disconnected, maybe the service and liturgy needs to be changed to adapt to that sense of more need for community, more need for connection, more ability to address loneliness. Now, some of those experiments, especially the talk-show kind of format, have kind of transferred back to just streaming their services online. But there’s still a lot of churches that have now kind of added Sunday Bible study groups or discussion forums, or synagogues and mosques will have these community chat groups. And using some of those alternate paths. And the transformational, I would say that that was—when people were not just kind of looking at how do we get our services online, but really looking at, OK, what does the internet do well, and allow us to do internet well? And how do we actually leverage that for our community? And so here’s where you kind of see more creative forms of, whether it’s religious study or outreach. I’m doing a big study of churches in Indiana and how they were affected over a three-year period from the pandemic. And we heard lots of interesting stories about little rural churches becoming the internet hub for the community, setting up picnic tables outside. And now they run a kind of web hub kind of community center for people because that became a real need. And it became a gathering point just to decompress during the pandemic. So I think that there’s a lot of innovation. But most, the majority, I’d say, is going back to this kind of translate strategy. And we have to remember that the average religious congregation in the U.S. is sixty-seven people. So those churches, it’s usually the pastor and maybe one other person who had to work to get them online. And so if they didn’t have any technological training or technological resources, just the acting of getting their service online was a huge change. And it’s really only now that they’re starting to be able to think through what it would mean to experiment at a greater level, especially if our church is now going to be online and offline, this hybrid reality. ROBBINS: Thanks for that. So, Paul, I actually have two questions for you. My first question is, are ten Jews on Zoom a minyan? And I’m serious. And where is that debate taking place, for all of the questions that you raised? RAUSCHENBUSH: Personally, I think that there is no escaping it now, but I think understanding the depth of what we mean when we say that, and not doing it glibly. Not saying, oh, it’s just the technology. But rather understanding that our world has been radically transformed by the internet—radically transformed. At its root, we are different than we were thirty years ago. I don’t think we’ve begun to have that conversation in religious communities. There’s been no innovation or invention that is similar to the internet. We have not begun to delve into what it will mean for us. Eric Schmidt, one of the executives of Google said, “This is the first invention that humanity has made that humanity does not understand.” We don’t understand what is happening. And there has been very little theological reflection on that. And this is an unfortunate, unfortunate thing. I often introduce lectures about this saying, how many times have you heard a sermon about the internet, or a rabbi talk about the internet, aside from saying, well, you need a sabbatical. That’s not going to do it. We have deep questions. Today on the front of the New York Times, “it’s time to talk to your kids about the chatbots.” Well, we haven’t begun to talk to the kids about the internet. There are people, and religious communities could be doing this, could be offering a conversation about what the internet will mean, what it is doing already to us. Meaning, what does our body mean? What does it mean to be online? We don’t have those conversations, and it’s a real problem for religious communities that I’m shouting—Professor Campbell is one of the few people that’s been shouting it longer than I have. (Laughter.) But I’ve been shouting it since my beginning too, that this is really, really important. So, questions like, is ten Jews—I think rabbis are going to disagree strongly about that. The question that that begs is, what is the internet doing to us? And that’s the question I really want us to dive into. ROBBINS: So one of the things, and it’s always the conventional wisdom, is that too much of what has happened in our digital world has separated us rather than brought us together. What is the most creative use you’ve seen of online platforms that are bringing people together more? I would say from a teaching point of view, I love breakout rooms. (Laughs.) They have made me a better teacher. I am much less on transmit and much more on receive. That’s the one thing that Zoom has made me better as a teacher. So are there things that you’re already seeing that are going on, I’m going to ask both of you that, that you think that is easily leverageable, that makes the experience better? CAMPBELL: Well, I would say that, as someone who for thirty years has been following some of these trends, I actually see less innovation happening right now than I did ten years ago. Because the people who were doing it were doing it because they wanted to. And right now, we’re in this space of we have to do this and have to figure it out. But I think there still are some interesting ways that people are leveraging together. In these congregations that I study, one group has this weekly Bible study. And it’s for anyone who’s ever been part of the church. And some weeks there’s ten people, and some weeks there’s fifty people. And it’s become this kind of common thing. I’ve even had friends say, “oh, hey, I have to get off the phone because Zoom Bible study is starting.” And really seeing how can you actually just integrate it into the fabric of people’s everyday lives. Oftentimes I’ve found that religious organizations will say, OK, we need to use TikTok, or we need to use Instagram. And so they build some kind of tool and then it’s, like, if we build it, they will come. But the strategies that work the best is seeing how are you people in your congregation actually using the technology? And what kind of things do they need? Do they need community? Do they need support? Do they need teaching, or spaces for prayer? And matching what they need with what they’re already doing online is the best way to get these different innovations up and running quickly, I think. ROBBINS: Paul, anything to add on that? Something that you’ve seen that’s given you excitement about this, about the use of it? RAUSCHENBUSH: Oh, I mean, so many things. It’s amazing how people are reaching out. I mean, this is an incredible opportunity to be able to dive into areas of the world that you had no idea about, and that you’re no longer restricted because of geography or because of who you know. You’re allowed to expand. So the opportunities for learning about people of your own faith, different faiths. The experience of people in other communities. I for a while have done a little bit in the Metaverse. And the opportunity in the Metaverse to dive into experiences where you are kind of oddly embodied, but not really embodied, to but be able to meet people from around the globe who are in the Metaverse, who may actually say, hey, we set up a news broadcast of news from our country, and we’re inviting anyone to come by and let us translate it for you. The opportunity is to meet people and share in experiences. And, like anything, if you go in there ready to fight, and ready to judge, and ready to hate, then you’re going to have an experience. And you’re going to have other people experience you that way. If you go in there with curiosity, with real interest and love, the internet is an incredible—I mean, it’s amazing—there’s nothing like it. For what I do, which is largely interfaith work, you can build bonds. You can learn. You can grow. You can follow people from diverse traditions and learn so much about what they’re doing, in a way that was just not available to use before. So all of that is present. And then all of the opposite is present, too, because it’s people. And ultimately, we have to figure out how to navigate the internet in positive ways. And also almost thwart the internet’s effort to make us the product for commerce or for other kinds of purposes. We have to know what we’re up against, and then use it for ways that can be positive. ROBBINS: So, Heidi, and this is a perfect transition to this question—and then I want to turn it over to the group—can we talk a little bit about the downsides, and how much are the communities that you talk to aware of and coming up with strategies to deal with the rise of disinformation and the amount of hatred and alienation that is out there? I mean, the internet is very good for bringing people together but, as Paul alluded to, it’s also really good at spreading hatred and a huge amount of just bad information. CAMPBELL: Well, I think one of the challenges of the internet, and one of the things that’s always praised, is that it’s a space that we can all go to, and we can meet one another and have this global conversation. But internet is still an exclusionary space. It’s exclusive by the kind of technologies that you have and have access to. There are some places even still in this country where there isn’t WiFi access. And so depending where you are, you may think it’s an egalitarian and equal space, but it’s still a (inaudible) space in that perspective. And the other thing, and this is something that scholars found early on, that the internet is a place to build community. But because it’s so vast, in order to tame the space, as it were, people usually gravitate toward like minds. Interfaith work online is actually—like Paul’s—is really hard, because there’s, oh, I want to find all the people who think like me, so that we can have this shared conversation. And so it creates a kind of online tribalism. It doesn’t inherently create diversity. You have to actually design your space and kind of design how you’re going to run your events or your environment to create that. And so obviously, whenever you put people in the same mind, it’s easy to form an echo chamber of just, yeah, yeah, we all believe this. And there’s no external voice of accountability. And so that’s why we’ve seen, especially, whether it be the dark web, or these spaces where antisemitic voices or religious extremists emerge, it’s because, again, they find their tribe. But their tribe may be problematic. And again, while the internet gives us access to a lot of information it’s not like a peer-reviewed journal article where it’s been vetted by four or five people. And I’m always having to teach my students, how do you discern and how do you evaluate the resources that go to it? I can go to a website that looks like a full-on academic journal, but it’s just two or three people’s opinion. And so I think this is the challenge. There’s some innate things the technologies do really well. Like Twitter is really good for spreading information. Facebook is really good for building communities. Instagram is really good for collecting digital stories. But knowing what the technologies do well, as well as what kind of tendencies they can encourage away from communal accountability to an individual preference, is important. ROBBINS: So, Paul, final question by me before I turn it over. Heidi said that the internet was hard for interfaith work. Do you find it harder for interfaith work? Or are you leveraging it particularly well? RAUSCHENBUSH: Sure. I don’t want to put—I would never put words in Heidi’s mouth. I think she said that you have to work against some currents of the internet, which algorithmically encourage you to stay with people who are likeminded. And so I do think it takes intention. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. I do think that what we also are up against as far as interfaith is intentional spread of disinformation about different religious communities, as well as the spread of hate. Intentional targeted spread of hate—37 percent of Jews say they feel harassed online. We’ve got close to that of Muslims, other traditions as well. These are things that are happening now, and they’re happening intentionally. And we have white extremists, largely Christian extremists, who are spreading manifestos. They’re finding the internet. They can share manifestos. They are broadcasting mass murders or either actually live or telling their community right before they do it. And they’re being supported in that effort. So this is the real downside of it. And so part of my role now at Interfaith Alliance, we put out a report on big tech hate and religious freedom, saying that actually the fact that big tech has not found a way to counteract hate in a productive way that safeguards freedom of speech actually curtails religious freedom, because religious freedom is both an online and an offline experience. And right now we are, again, experiencing something where there’s a case in front of the Supreme Court. And five justices said, I don’t understand the facts of this case. It’s so complicated. We’re in a moment, again, where the internet is such a very difficult thing that our Supreme Court justices are confused about the basic facts around the case. So we are in a very—one thing to remember, and Kevin Kelly has said this, the founder of Wired, that we’re in the beginning of this technology. This isn’t going to end. We’re in the very beginning of it. We’re in the throes of this technology. So if we haven’t figured it out yet, it’s OK. Now is the time to really lean in and say, what do we want this to be? And things are happening very fast. And so I encourage us to take it really seriously, especially in the interfaith community where you can do all the offline work you want, but one bad Facebook post because someone hasn’t thought about it can blow up six months of work. And so I just encourage anyone who does interfaith work to take the internet very seriously and train people up on how to be good interfaith citizens online as well as how we train people to be engaged in person. ROBBINS: Thank you for that. So we want to remind everybody about how to ask a question. And while we’re doing that also, we do have one question already in the Q&A. So I will turn it over to our operator host to remind people how to ask a question. OPERATOR: Great. Thank you, Carla. (Gives queuing instructions.) And we have some raised hands, so our first question will come from Don Frew from Covenant of the Goddess. ROBBINS: Thanks, Riki. FREW: Lower hand. There we go. Hi, hi. I’m Don Frew at the Covenant of the Goddess. And my own path, Wicca, was very much an early adopter of technology. A lot of the early religious webpages were Pagan. And then, conversely, with the pandemic, that really hit us a lot harder than a lot of other religious traditions, because when you’re casting a circle it’s not the same thing as going to a church. You can’t really do that online. Working magic online is not something that works very well. Both of you have focused very much on the internet and Abrahamic faiths, but what about the online experience of other religions, especially indigenous traditions? For many years, I served on the board of the United Religions Initiative. And we would go out of our way to try to connect board members, especially who were indigenous practitioners often in South America, to the board. And that meant getting them technology, laptops, and internet connection. And once that connection was over, we found that that then became a platform for various indigenous spirituality practitioners around the world to be able to connect using the technology that the URI had provided. So there’s been a real growth in indigenous networking using that kind of technology. Although, that hasn’t really been practicing the faith traditions online. That’s just been networking. So I’m wondering, can you say something about technology and non-Abrahamic faiths? CAMPBELL: Yeah. I mean, I remember back in the 1990s, I spent a lot a good deal of time in a techno-Pagan community. And this was in the 1996 to 1999 time period. And here these were people that kind of—where you had affiliations to Paganism in different kind of forms. And they wanted to see how could the internet, first of all, give them a community space because Abrahamic traditions, it’s easy to find an offline space to gather. It’s not so easy, especially if you live maybe in a more remote area of the world or community. So the internet became this great gathering space for Zoroastrianism, with all kinds of religious traditions. But also there was kind of a tension within some of those communities of like, OK, do we—again, do we just transfer our traditional practices to the extent we can or we feel we can online and try to go by a certain kind of tradition or dogma? Or do we try to innovate? In this techno-Paganism community I was studying, they were interested in saying, OK, how can we leverage what technology allows us to do and maybe create new ways to do spells and see if they work or not. And so I think that a lot of the early adopters were, again, smaller religious communities that didn’t have these offline spaces and allowed people to connect with them, but also there was just a sense of, do they follow the tradition or do they innovate. And we see both kind of digitally born religions as well as kind of reimagined forms of religious traditions as much as we’ve seen alternative or smaller minority religious communities emerging online. RAUSHENBUSH: I’ll just add, I think it’s really important for indigenous communities because of the importance of place and the land, and to make their own decisions around this as well as Pagan communities. And those that the question of whether or not ten Jews online is a minyan is very analogous to whether you can create a circle or these are questions that have to be developed by the communities themselves and they will be answered one way or the other. But the question of land and religion that indigenous communities often bring into the—is a really, really challenging one for the internet. ROBBINS: Riki, can we have Daniel Joranko next? Because he had his question in the Q&A. Daniel, do you want to ask your question? JORANKO: Yeah. Can you hear? ROBBINS: Yes. JORANKO: I’m putting out kind of a difficult question. But I worry very much about the internet. I mean, as Paul said, it’s this vast new thing and there’s a difference between technology as a tool, and a tool can very much work, and as a system, and I worry about the system and the amount of screen time that people are spending, the amount of emotional distress young people feel. As a person who works in interface staffing, just the busyness that is cause for people that are working in this field. People just seem more and more busy because you can get online and schedule thousands of meetings and there’s not a lot of reflectivity as much anymore. And so I almost worry that it’s making us collectively ill in a certain respect, and just your thoughts on that. I mean, again, I’m not proclaiming that. It’s more of a worry. So— CAMPBELL: Well, I like to think of the internet not just as a one village but actually this whole kind of new country, because the internet, we use it as this monolithic term. But I, as a researcher, think about it as internets. Everybody’s experience with the internet is different because it’s a network of networks and we choose which platforms that we spend time in and we choose which spaces that we have our interactions. So I could go to one space and just because of the—how I choose to—who I choose to interact with and the choices I make it can be a very positive experience and I can go to other places and it can be damaging and hurtful and dangerous. So I think the key thing is for religious communities to get a better sense about what are these spaces of the internet, and what spaces can be really, well, what I call cultured or cultivated to religious communities because it allows them to do those values of you building religious identity, giving accountability, providing community and care. And then also being aware of these are the spaces that you could happen into that may not be positive spaces. And I don’t mean to say let’s create ghettos on the internet, but it’s just a sense of awareness that it’s not just the internet that is problematic or system. It’s the people and I think sometimes we can see it just as a tool and it’s a neutral thing. But the technology is cultured by the people who live there and for the purposes that they use it for, and so we need to see that it’s the users that are actually bringing the negativity and the problematic, not the technology itself. They do encourage, again, more individualistic behaviors rather than communal, which is one of the challenges. But having this level of discernment and understanding about what these spaces are and how to use them is, I think, important. ROBBINS: Doesn’t it seem to be that religious communities can play a role if they are educated enough and not—don’t sound too nannying and actually educating kids on how to use the best and not fall into the worst? CAMPBELL: Yeah. I think that it’s important for religious communities to have a digital literacy kind of thing. We tell them how behave and what it means to live out our faith values in different spaces. Well, how do you live that out online, to treat the other as a friend rather than an enemy, and to show care and concern, and to call—speak truth to power as well. So I think, yeah, these are the things that—maybe education isn’t something that’s being seen as part of religious communities, but it’s the world they swim in, and especially for young people. And I think more seminaries, more religious institutions, need to have this digital literacy and digital understanding, not just the technical side but the cultural impacts in their training of future religious leaders. RAUSHENBUSH: Strongly agree. I’ll just say we assume that people understand the internet, especially digital natives, but the internet is hard to understand and it’s always changing. And so it is really important that we don’t assume that people understand the waters they’re swimming in but also recognize that water can be life giving but it can also overwhelm you. And so you need to really be thinking about how you’re interacting with the internet. But, it’s becoming less and less of an option. I mean, it might be a forced option for people who do not have access. But for those of us who are in urban areas it’s not an option and so it means that we—exactly as Heidi just said. We need to be very intentional about the way we show up. We need to tell our young people about disinhibition where you are more likely to do things online that you wouldn’t do offline and that’s because the technology affects us in a certain way, and, again, we’re at the beginning and there’s a lot of stuff that will be coming at us very quickly. One thing—I’ll just take the liberty to mention right now—the one thing that I’m very concerned about is AI and religious leadership. And someone is going to create—we asked—when I—this was ten years ago when I was at Huffington Post. We asked Siri about God, and at that point Siri said: I don’t talk about God; you should ask a human. Pretty soon we will probably have AI pastors. We’ll have AI rabbis. These will be invented. Someone will decide to invent it, and then AI pastors and AI rabbis will learn from the questions. They’ll have this vast library at their background. And so it’ll—this all will happen. How do we educate our young people about what that means and when they’re—my kids ask our Alexa, which we finally got this year, they ask them everything. They ask them everything. And so, people are going to ask about religious questions and we’re not ready for it. We’re not ready for it at all. ROBBINS: AI gods. Yes. So I suppose Lawrence Whitney is next. I’m taking Riki’s prerogative here. WHITNEY: Hi. Yeah. Thanks. Larry Whitney, research associate at the National Museum of American History and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Mind and Culture here in Boston. Thinking about, historically, the invention of the printing press was a technology that had a profound impact on the future of religion, particularly in Europe and then globally, and transformed religion profoundly and provoked a lot of the same theological question—or analogous theological questions, I should say, to what the internet does, in terms of in that case it was about the meaning of text, and who was responsible and authoritative in interpreting texts and that sort of thing. And the answers to those questions as they emerged in history were, largely, independent of the individual answers that religious leaders and theologians gave to those questions at the time. So I’m interested in how you’re seeing religious leaders now responding to these theological questions, such as are ten Jews on the internet a minyan, or are baptism and Eucharist valid when performed over Zoom, right. Wrestling with those questions not just theologically but as having a profound implication for the future of their traditions. What decisions they make in answer to those questions now will have an influence on how their traditions—the viability of their traditions and how they evolve but also that that future is somewhat beyond their control and how that impacts their decision making about engaging with technology. Thanks. CAMPBELL: Yeah. I think in many respects with the internet we forget that that we’ve been here before. There is really nothing new under the sun because you can map the debates about positive and negatively about the internet from the 1990s directly on to the debates that were happening around the printing press. And it’s interesting, if you look actually back, the Catholic Church was not against the printing press when it first came out. They actually were very supportive, brainstorming about how they were going to be able to standardize priest education and sharing their teachings. And it wasn’t until basically people began to use it to critique the church that they went ah, oh, this—actually technology undermines our authority. And that’s really the base kind of thing for religious communities. They realize that with this smartphone I can do what you could do in a television studio fifty years ago. So individuals have become as powerful as religious institutions. So we see the internet is both challenging religious authorities because individuals have this ability to present themselves, but as religious authorities and groups become more literate there’s been a huge trend in the last decade to bring on not just communication directors but digital media directors, social media curators for religious groups, that then they say how they can actually use the internet to solidify their position and also be more of a kind of accountability or a critique of some of the narratives that are coming out. So I think religious communities, they don’t have to feel disempowered but they do need to say about having that digital expertise and bringing in digital create—what I call digital creatives and think of them as a partner and a collaborator rather than as a competition. And I think as groups begin to do that that we’re going to see a lot more creativity and fruitfulness come out of religious groups’ uses of technology. RAUSHENBUSH: The only thing I’ll add is I think that it is analogous but it is times a million or maybe infinity. The questions are the same. The pace is radically different. The scope is radically different. How quickly everyone has the ability to publish and be an authority, how communities were ruptured. These are all things that are happening much, much quicker and with much less time for traditional religious authorities to react. And the other thing that just was not a part of this is the AI factor, which is, the advent of artificial intelligence and what it means for religion, and how there’s just a different level of ability for truth to be chopped up in so many different ways and digested by machines that are not thinking with trained theological hearts or anything but aside from technology. So I do think the questions are similar and the pace is greatly—I mean, I can do something—while we’re talking here I could write something absolutely inflammatory or outrageous. I could threaten to—which I would never do but, people threaten to burn a Quran and all of a sudden immediately, within a minute, the world knows. The scope of that happens so fast. It flies around the world, and then things get initiated that are very hard to pull back in. And so we’re dealing with a question of factors of time and space that are greatly exaggerated and we have to keep that in mind as we imagine what religious communities can and should do, all of which are what Heidi mentioned. CAMPBELL: I would just jump in here to say I would totally agree that we have seen a total amplification in the time/space area, that while these things are not new it is a lot quicker and it can have much more of a global impact. And one individual can have a huge impact, which can give a disproportionate sense of how people think on a certain topic. So and I think it’s important. And there were chatbots back in the 1990s. I remember talking with them on MIRC before there was chat forums. But they were programmed and they had much more limitations. This new level of technology is a learning technology so it is actually growing. So no longer do the creators have control. So while the first generation was a competition between the individuals versus the community, now it’s the whole community in competition with the technology. So we’ve lost control to some extent of our own creations and that can have— RAUSHENBUSH: That’s what will be so interesting when that gets mixed in with religion and what will be the impact of that when that technology begins to intersect with religious morality and religious truth? ROBBINS: Interesting and terrifying. Jane Redmont? Whatever question you’d like to ask. REDMONT: One of the things I wanted to bring up is the issue of spiritual formation. Not spiritual formation on the internet, although some of us are doing that, but spiritual formation just like higher education or lower education, taking into account the new technologies and forming us spiritually as bodies, as minds, as users of the web in different ways. I think spiritual formation can take a whole different dimension. We need to learn inward disciplines as well as outward ones, both in the flesh and on the internet, that are, if you will, spiritual exercises the way Ignatius of Loyola had spiritual exercises, but the new version, a kind of hybrid version. Am I making sense to you? I’ve started doing that and working on that a little bit. But I don’t think we’re talking about that enough or doing it enough in our organizations. Never mind religious literacy, which I found we had too little of when I was a college professor. Any thoughts on that, Paul and Heidi and Carla, about this formation idea? And if you have a better word than spiritual formation please use it because it’s a narrow word. CAMPBELL: Well, since you referenced the Episcopal tradition, there’s a huge movement within the Episcopal Church coming out of Virginia Theological Seminary. They have e-Formations, and the one thing I really appreciate about that is a lot of what we’ve seen that’s come out of the pandemic is how do we leverage these tools for doing spiritual direction. I’m a spiritual director myself and I’ve been actually doing online direction since the very beginning. It wasn’t common till about three years ago. But we also need to think about not just how to leverage these technologies to create these sacred spaces or holy spaces but how is the shape of this culture that we’re in, what kind of traits and values is it cultivating in us, and how is that shaping our formation just by being in a digital space. And I think the realization, even for churches that say, hey, we don’t want to do digital worship, we don’t want to have digital tools, but they’re still being impacted by this culture that we live in, which is so enmeshed with the digital. And I think that level of values, education, mixed with digital literacy is so important to be what kind of spiritual beings are we becoming and is that the direction that we really want to cultivate in our communities. ROBBINS: That’s great. Thank you. I am not an expert on this but it seems to me that no one can wall themselves off from it and I think, Heidi, that’s sort of a fundamental point that is shaping our entire society. And if religion isn’t going to help and we in education aren’t going to help people wrestle with it, we are failing in our duties. Steve—is an Ohnsman? OHNSMAN: Yes, it is. Thank you. I’m a pastor at Calvary United Church of Christ in Reading, Pennsylvania, and we embraced a digital ministry immediately. We had already been doing some of it. So we did everything online for a while. But one of the big questions was: How do we do good works as a community of faith? And so I came up with this—I think it’s worked out really well because we have people all over the country who will tune in and be involved. And every two weeks I throw out a mission challenge and I ask everyone to do this wherever they are and then send me what they’ve done and then we post it anonymously. So and so, a person did this, this, this, this, and then what we’re basically doing—I’ll say, feed a family in the next two weeks and then everybody feeds somebody where they are, whether it’s through a food bank or a church program, and we’re doing the ministry together even though we’re really far apart and that’s been very cool. RAUSHENBUSH: Yeah. I’ll just respond to that because  I raised the question of commitment to locality and I think that that’s really interesting for those communities that are disparate to recognize that there’s still a need for immediate service. One other way to add to that would be how have you extended love on the internet. How have you shown someone love, or lack of judgment, or uplifted someone? When you come across a stranger how have you loved this stranger? I mean, using some of the Christian language. That could be translated to other communities, what are ways that the mandates of our traditions—ethical mandates—can be translated into life online? I mean, on average each of us spend eight hours a day online in various ways, three or four on social media. For young people, it’s much more than that. That’s the average of all Americans. So we’re spending all this time in online spaces. How are we exercising the mandates of our traditions. ROBBINS: I had wondered about how you bridge this, the online and the real world community—I’m still thinking of virtual communities as not as real—and what Steve Ohnsman was talking about is one fabulous way of doing that. Are there other examples of ways to—because you both began talking about the danger of losing contact with the community around you. Have you guys heard of other ways that the churches and other religious groups are finding ways of making sure that their communities remain intact or even grow even as they, perhaps, have services or Bible study solely online? CAMPBELL: I’ve seen a lot of interesting examples over the pandemic. I know that some congregations, I’ve heard them encouraging their people to get onto the Nextdoor app, which is about being in your local community and then to volunteer. Say, hey, I will pick up medicine for you or food or I can do this or that. And so really especially trying to help people who were homebound, elderly people during the pandemic, and using the digital tools to provide those connections. I also saw a lot of people, in  the Pinterest and Instagram community, people making a lot of very personal kind of encouragement posts and then sending them to specific people that either that they knew or had met online. But really trying to say how can we spread kindness and care, and so that’s what religion is truly about and not just some of the kind of more negative press that it’s often given. ROBBINS: Thanks. Riki, we have, I think, one more. OPERATOR: We do. Our last question will come from Albert Celoza from Phoenix College. CELOZA: This is Alberto Celoza from Arizona Interfaith Movement and Phoenix College. Is it the internet or is it the pandemic that has caused a decline in terms of religious participation or participation in religious services? Also, has the internet caused the increase in the number of nones, N-O-N-E-S? Any thoughts? CAMPBELL: I would say no, that it hasn’t—again, it’s kind of like the technology. It hasn’t started it. It’s just made it more visible and maybe made it more easy for people to leave their congregations. The rise of the nones was starting to be documented post World War II. After the big world wars, a lot of people were disillusioned with all kinds of institutions, and so we see that. But I think in an era of the internet where it allows you to express your opinion in the safety of behind the screen, I think a lot more people are feeling, hey, there are a lot of us that are nones out there or that we’re wanting to leave the church and so we’re done. And so it’s easy to—easier to self-proclaim that. It gives them more confidence to do that on surveys. And so, obviously, we have seen an increase but it wasn’t the internet that started it. It’s just facilitated something that’s already started in culture. That’s my opinion. RAUSHENBUSH: No, I think that’s right. I think that these were trends that were already in play before the internet and it has allowed, just as Heidi said. I think that there’s also ways that there are new communities forming that could be viewed as quasi-religious communities and many of the folks who have left traditional religion would not be themselves—do not call themselves atheists or other things. They find community in social justice movements. They find community in other—in arts movements. They find—so there is ways that—are ways that the internet has actually found—allowed people to find one another. Black Lives Matter could be an example of a movement that attracted a lot of people who might have not been involved in traditional religious worship. I think there’s a—there is a transformation and it’s—I really appreciate where that question is coming from and what we might imagine is what’s coming next and what are ways to—especially for someone like yourself who’s involved in interfaith work, how do we invite those people into questions of interfaith, questions that interfaith communities deal with, around meaning, around working together across lines of difference for social change and things like that. So I think all of those things are very, very interesting. I’ll just take a moment just to say one thing because we’re at CFR. I do think that there’s a massive implication for the internet and for religion vis-à-vis trans-global politics. These are—this is a way that religious communities are connected, so many different manifestations of religious communities across national boundaries immediately and in very intimate ways. Diaspora goes all different ways and religious communities are being mobilized across the globe. What happens, for instance, in India is not separated from the Indian community in America, or the Hindu community in America and other Indian religious communities in America. Likewise with Israel, Palestine, likewise with the war in Russia and the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. So I offer that just as a closing word that this is very relevant for CFR’s work, and so I’m hoping that there are also opportunities in the future to talk about specifically how it impacts foreign relations and international relations. ROBBINS: And also gives a voice to the voiceless and the—(inaudible)—if you look at what’s happening in Iran right now, the way it has— RAUSHENBUSH: Absolutely. ROBBINS: —given voice to women and to young people and, certainly, for unrepresented and suppressed communities—minority communities, religious communities. So not all is bad on the internet. There are other possibilities there. I want to thank you. We’re going to turn it back to Irina. I want to thank you, Dr. Heidi Campbell. Thank you, Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush. We will share—Paul, you mentioned a report that you have just developed. We want to share that with everyone who’s attended today. Heidi, if there’s anything you think we should be reading and sharing we will share it with the group as well. And, Irina, back to you and thank you, everybody, for fabulous questions. FASKIANOS: I echo those thanks. It was a very smart and insightful conversation. So thank you. We will send the link to the video and transcript and Paul’s report. Heidi, anything you want to share. You can follow Heidi Campbell on Twitter at @heidiacampbell, Paul at @raushenbush, and you can follow Carla at @robbinscarla, and Carla is also newly co-hosting a CFR podcast The World Next Week. So you should tune into that. You can also follow us, CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program, on Twitter at @CFR_religion. And, again, please do email us, [email protected], with feedback, suggestions for topics or speakers, and any questions you might have. Again, thank you all for doing this, for the amazing questions and comments, and we hope you all have a great rest of the day wherever you are.

Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe at CFR, discusses U.S.-EU relations and diplomacy in conversation with Mark D.W. Edington, bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. This series convenes religion and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Mark Edington with us today to moderate today’s discussion on “The Dynamics of the European Union.” Bishop Edington is charge of the Convocation of the Episcopal Churches in Europe. He has worked as an ordained Episcopal Priest, a higher education executive, social entrepreneur, writer, and editor. As a member of the founding board of three NGOs, Bishop Edington has a deep commitment to civic engagement with foreign policy and interfaith engagement in both dialogue and service. He writes frequently on issues at the intersection of public policy and religion, and has studied European integration and post-Cold War European security, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. So I’m going to turn the conversation now over to Bishop Edington to introduce our speaker and stimulate the conversation before we go to all of you for your questions and comments. So, Bishop Edington, over to you. EDINGTON: Thank you so much, Irina. And welcome, everybody. Whatever time zone it is where you are, you are in the right place at the right time for a conversation about the future of the European Union. And I am delighted and a little bit intimidated to welcome as our speaker Professor Matthias Matthijs from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. That is a thing to admire, and I say that as a proud graduate of the Fletcher School, Matthias. So I’m delighted that you’re here with us. We have a lot to cover, Matthias. We’ve been given a very expansive, not to say vividly vague, title to cover today, which is “The Dynamics of the European Union.” I know that you teach courses on comparative political economy and an advanced seminar on topics in international political economy, and you’re doing work all the time on the subject of the European Union. For those of us who are joining us online, if you’re looking for an advanced seminar on the current and future of the European Union, you couldn’t do much better than to simply read Matthias’s recent essays in Foreign Affairs, because they have really covered a lot of the essential questions that I think we’re going to raise today. So, Matthias, I’ve got three specific questions I want to ask you, but before I get to them I want to ask you to set the table for us. There are a lot of forces shaping the dynamics of the European Union today. We know about the war in Ukraine, but it really points to a larger question about the future of territorial integrity in Europe. We’ve learned about energy dependence in Europe, and we’re thinking about what that means for the future of Europe’s economies. We now have this new topic of the Windsor Framework, which seems to maybe be the end of the end of the Brexit story. And I know something that you care a lot about is the elite consensus, or lack of consensus, about what direction European integration should head in in the future. So with all that on the table, tell us what you think are the principal forces shaping the dynamics of the European Union for the foreseeable future. MATTHIJS: Thank you, Mark. And thank you, Irina. It’s a pleasure to join this CFR series on Religion and Foreign Policy, and international relations. So thanks for this opening question. You’re always at a risk by starting out by saying that we kind of live at a watershed moment in European integration, because I feel like there’s been so many of those perceived moments in just my own lifetime. And history does seem to be moving very fast occasionally. And I think the last year or two, that’s definitely been the case. That said, I think to understand the dynamics of the European Union, as our brief for today, I mean, you kind of start with where it started. So I think it started very much as this political peace project, with American support, that was hoping to make war between France and Germany, these two mortal enemies, historical enemies on the European continent, who had three wars over the period of seventy years, between 1870 and 1945, and of course two had then led to world wars, and were always at the heart of this conflict. And so you have to start by kind of looking back and seeing what an extraordinary achievement that was, right? I mean, it is very hard to imagine today war between those two breaking out again, even though, of course, they have very bitter differences occasionally on matters of policy. So why is this invasion of Ukraine so important for today and for the European Union? Because it does go against this whole idea of the EU as a peace project, right? One of the first NATO secretary-generals was Lord Ismay, a UK diplomat. And he was asked, famously, what NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was for. And he said, it’s to keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out. So sort of the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. I think the German down was the last one. And so in many ways, what it didn’t succeed in was all of this. I mean, in the end, the Americans have been trying to leave first the Middle East then, of course, Europe. I’m old enough to remember any kind of pivots to Asia as the defining agenda for American administrations. It started actually with the first Clinton administration in the early 1990s already, right, where they wanted to focus much more on Asia, and then, of course, were dragged back into Europe because of the Balkan wars. Then the Bush administration, who wanted to focus much more on China, and then 9/11 happened. A brief reset under Obama, but he wanted to do and he started doing the pivot to Asia. And then, of course, Trump tried to do the same thing. So we’re now in the midst of this conflict where, for better or worse, American policymakers find themselves drawn back into the European theater, very much against their will, in a way, even though this administration, the Biden administration, in many ways, has a team that can rise to the occasion, right? So we can talk about that part. So going back to the European Union, I think what people have rightly been worried about is that it was seen as a project adrift, right? And so if you look at the last fifteen years, roughly starting exactly fifteen years ago. I mean, the spring of 2008, after the failed attempt to have a constitution for Europe, which was rejected first by French voters and then by Dutch voters, that seemed to be the biggest crisis at the time—which, in hindsight, seemed like a storm in a—a tempest in a teapot, as our British colleagues would put it. We’ve had one crisis after another. The Eurozone crisis, the debt crisis of 2010-2012. Migration crisis. Crises over—of course, the first crisis over Ukraine in 2014, over Crimea and over the Donbas, with a very, in hindsight, tame response, even though there were sanctions then as well. Struggles with democracy and populism, just like here, with Hungary, with Poland, with countries that were kind of on an illiberal track. And then, of course, the pandemic, right? And so it has been kind of extraordinary, I think, that in the last few years slowly a new elite consensus—and, of course, I forgot Brexit, right? The vote to leave the European Union by the UK, which was completed by 2020-2021. So what I think has been extraordinary in the last few years is that there is a new emerging consensus around more EU sovereignty, more EU strategic autonomy that’s emerging. The problem with the concept is that it’s vague. It’s ill-defined. And it means different things to different elites in different countries in the EU. It means different things to the Poles, to the Spaniards in Madrid, to the French in Paris, to the Germans in Berlin. And elites interpret these things differently. That said, it could be a glue that brings the EU elites closer together around this. So the idea from the pandemic that there needs to be more EU solidarity. And they set up a kind of massive fund, which is basically richer countries supporting poorer countries in their recovery from the pandemic. There’s been a lot of solidarity with Ukraine when it comes to military support, when it comes to sanctions. And even there, despite Orbán’s sometimes huffing and puffing, they’ve moved forward with American support. And I think American leadership has been key here. And in a way, the fact that the United Kingdom has left, for better or worse, probably for worse definitely on the UK side but also from the EU side because it makes the EU less influential. That’s undoubtedly the case. But it does make finding consensus easier within the European Union context. And so it’s held together. You could say it’s stronger. The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, was seen to have lost out to the European Council, which represents the heads of state or government from the EU. That was ten years ago. Now it’s very clear that the Commission can act. They can do a lot of things. They can finance weapons to be send to war zones. They can issue debt. They can do sanctions, right? They can use the EU market as a strategic tool in promoting human rights and its own democratic values. And also, it’s clearly still a haven for refugees and migrants because a lot of people want to come to Europe and want to reach these shores. But it’s also raising issues on how they govern this space together. So a lot to cover there, Mark. Happy to go in the direction you want to take me. Despite all the crises of the last ten years, where it did sometimes seem that the fabric of the EU was unraveling, whether it was over the euro, over migrants, or over Brexit, it’s kept together. And arguably, it’s emerged a lot stronger and a more unitary actor as a result. EDINGTON: That’s a great start. So thank you for that. We’ve got eight minutes remaining before we open for questions. And both you and I have seen the list of participants, so we know there are going to be questions. What I’m going to do is collapse two of my three questions into one, and then I’ll have one question for you at the end. The two questions that I’m collapsing into one: You talked about how the European economic area, as it first was under the Treaty of Rome, was a project to assure peace between France and Germany. So let’s talk about France and Germany. Let’s talk about Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende, which you’ve written about. And you’ve been pretty sanguine about how Chancellor Scholz has managed that transition in Germany’s thinking about its role in Europe and the world. Maybe a little more sanguine than, let’s say, the Economist, which has sort of seen him as speaking a lot but not delivering greatly on especially spending in Germany about defense, and providing materiel to Ukraine. So address that, if you would. And also, address President Macron’s dreams of sort of independent and autonomous Europe on matters of security and defense, which kind of ended, most hilariously, with Macron at the end of an extremely long table kind of alone and facing down President Putin. Not even in France, where I live, would you have many commentators who feel Macron’s been successful in his objective, but I think it’s still very real for him. I think he still has that view. So give us your sense right now of Germany, and France, and their ways of playing into the future that’s emerging in Europe. MATTHIJS: Yeah. These are excellent questions. They’re hard questions. So let’s start with Germany, right? For somebody who’s been a student of Germany and German politics for over twenty years, I judge what Germany and Scholz, and the Scholz administration, has done by what the realistic alternatives were, not by what some idealized version of a German response would have looked like, right? Which, the idealized version is they cut themselves off completely from Russian energy on day one of the war, they spend massive amounts in defense and build up their own military at record speed, and then at the same time, every single potential weapon that they have lying around they send to Ukraine. I mean, here is a country that has a deeply pacifist tradition. The two leading parties in this government, the Greens and the SPD, have long traditions of pacifism for the Greens, and of probably a romanticized version of Ostpolitik, the opening to the east, to the Soviet Union, that Willy Brandt started in the late 1960s—early 1970s. And honestly, even in 2017 they were still very much talking about the 2 percent defense ratio that NATO is imposing is ridiculous. These were some of the language that they were using. I have been very critical of Germany in previous pieces, especially during the Merkel era where they were too dependent on Russian energy. Somewhat naïve, right? Always putting economic interests before their own values, and so on. So by any of those standards, I think they’ve moved remarkably fast. Was some of it forced their hand by Putin cutting off gas? Absolutely. And oil. But nobody asked them to spend an extra 100 billion euros on defense. Where it actually is going to go and in reality that remains to be seen. I think when it comes to defense don’t be surprised that decades to hoping to keep Germany down—(laughs)—are now going to take a while to make Germany a kind of real actor in defense policy, right? That said, I think if they’re in the corner—and Germans are slow to do this, but once they do, the ship has turned. I think Zeitenwende is real, even though Scholz absolutely has a communications problem. When it comes to Macron, I agree with you. In the end it’s been very ham-fisted, the French approach to Eastern Europeans, especially Poland and the Baltics. They almost can’t help themselves. But it reminds me of Chirac’s famous line during the Iraq War, where he said over the Polish and Eastern European support for George Bush at the time that they missed a very good opportunity to shut up because they weren’t members of the EU yet and they should know their place, and so on. And Eastern Europeans have always felt this, sort of an almost second-class citizenship, the way the French treated them. And I think that was a mistake then. And I think many of us, and I include myself in this, in Western Europe, never took the obsession that Poland and the Baltics had with Russia seriously enough, right, because it clearly wasn’t something emotional. It was something very, very real. And so that said, is there an alternative for European strategic autonomy? I don’t think so. I mean, in the end we will be in a world where the Americans want the EU to be a more reliable actor. The Europeans should want to be a more reliable actor because they may not always be able to rely on the United States. And in the end, when it comes to dealing with China, when it comes to dealing with Russia and other things, there are so many things that since the EU is shrinking as a percentage of global GDP, of the global world population, they’re going to have to act in concert on. EDINGTON: OK. The last question I’m going to ask you, just before we open it up to questions, has to do with refugees, which you spoke about in your initial remarks. And I was really glad to hear you speak about them. So a little bit about what I do in Europe. I’m responsible for twenty-one different communities that are spread throughout Europe that right now are twenty-one refugee service communities. It’s what they’re doing. A little more than a year ago, there were 7.7 million refugees in the European space. And that was an issue of itself, with lots of people writing about it. The world of Angela Merkel and opening the doors of Germany to serve refugees and welcome them. And there was this sort of pushback politically about that. And we can say that one of the consequences of that has been a rise of anti-Islamic sentiment, Christian nationalism, various other things that are distasteful, at least. Now there are almost 15.8 million refugees in the European space, largely driven by this miserable war in Ukraine. They are very different refugees from the 2014-2015 wave of refugees that came into Europe. They are largely Christian. They are largely women. They are easily trafficked, which is an issue. And they, unlike the first wave of refugees, have a fairly easy ability of moving back and forth from the places where they’ve been received as refugees, back to where they’ve come from. And realizing that economies have been destroyed and cities have been destroyed. And so there’s this movement back and forth that we see in the work that we do. One of the weird failures, to me, of European integration is the lack of a European-wide capacity for charitable work. There is no European way of forming a charitable entity. That is still a nationalized problem. So my question for you is, how do you see the refugee moment that we’re living in, with this large number of refugees in Europe, shaping the political economy of the European Union in the future? How do you see it driving local politics, especially around the rise of the right? And what do you think are the options available to European states seeking to manage this problem? MATTHIJS: Yeah, you’ve saved the best for last, if you will, because any question of refugees, migration, by definition there’s no easy answers, right? This is a problem that any rich—and especially Western countries—will struggle with. It’s a massive problem for any administration in the United States. Part of the reason I think many of us have seen these kind of global surveys that were done by how the U.S., China, and Russia are perceived in the rest of the world since the beginning of the Ukraine war. I think what’s kind of to be expected was that when it came to the developed world, to developed countries, mostly Western countries, the image of the U.S. had improved, and the images of China and Russia had deteriorated, and Russia quite dramatically. I think that’s fairly normal, to be expected. What is, I think, more surprising is that the exact opposite had happened in the rest of the world In the developing world, in the Global South, for lack of a better term, first of all, they don’t see this as a conflict that’s theirs. They see it as white people fighting white people in Europe. Nothing new there, especially if you look at recent history. By recent history, I mean the last 200 years. And they also see the immense solidarity with Ukrainian refugees. And they immediately contrast this with non-Western, non-white, non-Christian refugees back in 2015. With the exception, of course, of Germany, that kind of under Merkel took this extraordinary gamble to integrate well over a million Syrian refugees, who were mostly male, mostly young, and, of course, mostly Muslim. And many of them kind of low-skilled, or with not a ton of education. And that’s been a great success story, which I think has been underreported. The German story of integrating Syrian and other young Middle Eastern refugees has been amazing. There’s been a lack of violence. That’s kind of the dog that never barked, in many ways. And I think people who are in favor of this policy are even surprised by this, who downplayed these threats. EDINGTON: That’s true. MATTHIJS: When it comes to refugees from Ukraine, you’re absolutely right. The EU doesn’t have a way to set up an EU-wide charity and to organize this. This remains a national issue, which is hard because given geography there are states that are on the receiving end of a lot of immigrants, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. And then most of these people, many of these people, want to travel on to Western Europe where standards of living are even higher. And that’s where often there’s pressure to bring back internal borders. There’s a reason why the EU hasn’t been able to solve this, because I think many leaders just don’t want to be part of the solution, because it would mean taking in more refugees, which would be hugely unpopular in their own countries. And that’s especially true in Western Europe. And they have in mind this threat of right-wing populists. And this is the last thing I’ll say on this—where Vladimir Putin interestingly plays up this. So that’s where this weird connection between Putin’s rhetoric, nationalist rhetoric, Christian nationalism. I am the last thing that stands between you and us being overrun as a civilization by the Global South, by Muslims, by—and so on. And so you see this in the language of Orbán. Weirdly enough, the Polish leadership talks this stuff. Of course, they vehemently disagree with Russia on the Ukraine issue. But it’s something where many right-wing leaders always found some inspiration, right? Is this kind of protecting of European values—and by which they mean Christian values. EDINGTON: Yeah. Thank you for that. I’m going to apologize to our participants for trespassing on the time they have to ask their questions. And I’m going to ask our colleague Rivka Gross at the Council to moderate the questions for us. Rivka. OPERATOR: Thank you, Bishop Edington. (Gives queuing instructions.) We will take our first question from John Pawlikowski from the Catholic Theological Union. PAWLIKOWSKI: Can you hear me? EDINGTON: Yes. MATTHIJS: Yes. PAWLIKOWSKI: OK. My question is, given the growing secularization of many European countries, do you see any constructive role that religious institutions can play in the further integration and development of the European Union? We tend to concentrate on the negative, with Orbán and others, and Christian nationalism. But is there another side to the religious institutions in Europe at present? MATTHIJS: Mark, can you answer that first, and then I’ll give some thoughts? EDINGTON: Sure. I can make an effort of an answer. So, John, I think it’s a really good question. And what I’d say, living in Europe as I do, and doing the work of a church in Europe, is for lots of reasons of history the place of the church as a source of providing social welfare, let’s say, has been fairly constrained by governments, especially in Western Europe over the past decades. That has to do with a history of, I’d say, frankly, injury on the part of the church to civil society. And also a sort of crisis of confidence of the role of the church in culture in Europe. Having said that, religious communities still play a significant role in providing assistance to refugees and especially to recent arrivals in Europe. And that is certainly true among Islamic communities in Europe, and especially in France, which has the largest Islamic community of any country outside the Islamic world. It’s also true in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, places where my communities were. There are ways in which communities at the local level provide assistance in terms of language training, job skills training, helping people navigate local refugee systems. So, yeah, there is a positive role. I don’t think, and this is a personal view, that there’s a prospective role for most religious communities in terms of public advocacy or a voice in the public square. That tends to be a source of some suspicion. And remember that I live in France, and I see that from the perspective of somebody who lives in France, where there’s just an allergy to voices that come from a religiously informed perspective. But I think in terms of providing assistance to those in need, yes, there’s very certainly a role for religious communities in the future. MATTHIJS: Yeah, I would agree with everything Mark said. Also, don’t forget that certain parts of Europe, I think especially Southern Europe, that tend to be more traditional, more Catholic or more Orthodox, in the case of Greece, that went through a period of austerity and structural reform where, for better or worse, this is moments when civil society, in this case including church organizations, religious organizations, step in and have provided some of these social services to people. But it’s not just social services, right? There is a great need for spirituality, I think, in some of these countries. The more, I hate to say “traditional,” because it seems like traditional is backward and secular is somehow progressive. And I don’t mean it this way. But in both Eastern and Southern Europe, the role of religious institutions is still stronger because church attendance and things like this are higher, especially in more rural communities and so on. It's harder for me to think of a role for religious institutions in West and Northern Europe, because, again, if I think back of my own childhood in Belgium, when we did our holy communion, in a small town of twenty thousand people, there was about 150 who did their communion. The whole town came out to watch them. The last time I was back there were three, and this was mostly because grandma and grandpa insisted on it. This was not something these kids actually wanted. So it’s changed quite dramatically. That said, there is still a kind of moral authority that comes with this. And clearly, if the EU pushes too much into a secular direction—meaning where there’s no role for spirituality, for religion, the backlash tends to come from more traditional communities and religious communities. Something that then the Euro-skeptic parties tend to play into, because they tend to be the ones that have a bigger role, or at least are more open for a bigger role, for religion the way it was traditionally practiced in these structures in these countries. OPERATOR: Our next question is a written submission from Michael Strmiska from Orange County Community College, who goes back to the issue in Poland. He writes: One of the justifications for the illiberal tendencies in Hungary and Poland is Christian nationalism. Can you say anything about how the EU is responding to this factor? MATTHIJS: Yeah. This is one of the toughest issues that the EU has had to deal with, is the kind of illiberal backsliding—and it’s not just anti-secular, pro-religious, right? I mean, it’s more anti-democratic, anti-rule of law tendencies that, of course, started with Orbán in 2010, but you also saw in Poland with the Law and Justice Party, PiS Party, coming to power in 2015 under the tutelage of Jarosław Kaczyński. So one thing to say that’s, I think, important to understand the strength of both Orbán and Kaczyński and their parties, is that they are social welfare parties, right? They do provide in many ways a lot of services for people who are in need. So it always reminds me of the shock and horror many Westerners, Americans, Western Europeans had when Hamas won the first free elections in the Gaza Strip and did very well in the West Bank back 2006. It's because they were, de facto, the welfare state for many of these people. And were delivering social services. So people were able to set aside illiberal tendencies, violent tendencies, in many ways. So I think that can also be applied to the conflict of Northern Ireland, for example. But so in the case of Hungary and in the case of Poland, the voting public that is attracted by Orbán’s message very much buys into this we want to keep Hungary for the Hungarians. And that means a certain white Christian identity that they want to protect from supposedly what they call the real, anti-Hungarian tendencies coming for the EU. That said, what’s changed in the last few years, and I think where both Orbán and Kaczyński are more on the defensive now, is that the economic climate has worsened. So you have higher inflation, which is true everywhere. True in the U.S. True in the UK, true in the EU. But it's even higher in places like Hungary and Poland. And why? And that’s, in many ways, the ironies of recent history, because they’re not Eurozone members. And so, what was a great strength for Poland and Hungary ten years ago, meaning they weren’t members of the Eurozone. They could devalue vis-à-vis the euro. They were growing faster. They were attracting investment because international investors were worried about Eurozone countries. It’s now the opposite. They’re not protected by the umbrella of the Eurozone and the European Central Bank, which makes them, funnily enough, more reliant on EU funds. So there is this contradiction at the heart of Orbán’s regime and Kaczyński’s regime in Poland, is that they facing higher inflation than the rest of the Eurozone, which means they have to raise their interest rate faster. Which also means that they face pressures, capital outflows, which means they have to protect their currencies, which also means they have to raise interest rates even faster. Which makes it very expensive for them to issue new debt to finance these programs, these welfare programs, that keeps their voting public afloat. So they switch to being reliant on EU funds, which have come in quite significant increases since the pandemic because of next-generation EU, 800-billion-euro fund that was set up to help these economies recover from the pandemic. But these funds come with strings attached. Are you following the rule of law? Are you respecting religious freedom? Are you respecting the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary, and things like this? So interestingly enough, I think we may have seen the peak of what some of these illiberal regimes are able to achieve within the European Union, now that they have to kind of go along with what Brussels is demanding when it comes to reforms. That said, another side of your question, of course, addresses this discomfort that some people have with the European construction. This was not just an issue for Hungarians under Orbán. This is something Silvio Berlusconi raised when he was prime minister of Italy. Many of his party felt strongly that the EU should stress its Judeo-Christian heritage. Other conservatives in other parts of Europe have always been deeply comfortable with this kind of technocratic progressive discourse of the European Union, and say that it’s just basically creating what was often known as this democratic deficit in the EU, right, is that the EU becomes this regulatory state that manages things very far from people removed, but has real consequences for the day-to-day lives of people. And then the idea is, well, can countries still decide for themselves? That’s where I think the states’ rights discourse in the United States is relevant. I mean, it’s gotten a bad name, a bad rap, if you want, the idea of states’ rights, because it’s often used by very unsavory characters to promote very unpalatable agendas—be it getting rid of science education or things like this, limiting the rights of people, whether it’s Ohio, Alabama, and Texas, or something like this. But that said, the original idea of states’ rights is that even within the United States, with fifty states, there are different preferences of voters. There are different tradeoffs that people are willing to make whether it’s on economic policy, whether it’s on social policy, whether it’s on ethical issues. And a lot of people in EU member states feel the same way. I mean, Poland and Hungary may be more conservative on certain issues, while the Netherlands, Sweden, and Ireland may be much more progressive. These sorts of things should then be decided at a more local or at a more national level. But if the EU is going too far is imposing certain values, this may be a step too far. EDINGTON: I just want to add really quickly a couple of ideas about Christian nationalism, because I think it’s such a powerful question. One is, churches, religious communities, are a lot like political societies, in that they cover a broad spectrum of ideas. And so in the same way that there are some conservative elements of churches, especially in Poland and less so in Hungary, that are happy and supportive of this Christian nationalism thing, there are many voices within churches and religious communities that oppose the idea of Christian nationalism, my own church strongly among them. So don’t fall into the easy trap of thinking that all churches, especially all religious communities, sort of fall into that sort of thoughtless track. Because it is certainly the case that some of the most important voices against those ideas come from within communities of faith. The other thing, you mentioned, Matthias, in your earlier comments about Putin’s use of rhetoric around spirituality. And I think that’s actually really important when you think about popular views of what’s going on in Western Europe, as far as Ukraine goes. I’ve had this strange experience of I would just wade out into protests that I see in the streets of Germany and France. And I talk to people about what do you feel is at stake for you? And one of the things I think Putin has got right, actually, that we struggle to get right, is a language around the idea that what’s happening in Ukraine is about more than just economic arrangements, or political structures, or sort of abstract theory. It’s actually about how we make meaning as citizens in a society. And that is an inherently spiritual conversation, whether we like that word or not. That’s what meaning making is, ultimately. And it is a little worrying to me that in this moment of—Europe is professedly secular. I know. I live there. I have my life there. It is what it is. But we’ve lost our ability to speak in those terms or to articulate that language. And this is ultimately a struggle about how we are to make meaning as citizens in a society. So I hope—I’m a reader of Charles Taylor—I hope that we will find ways of articulating that without feeling that we are caving into—or, sliding back into a kind of confessionally identified politics. So that’s all I’ll say about that. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Dr. Heather Laird from the Center for Muslim Health and Islamic Psychology. She writes: Students in the U.S. are not regularly exposed to thinkers like Hamann and other conservative scholars, leaving them only exposed to liberal secular thinkers, which sounds like what you are describing is similar in Europe. However, in terms of interfaith experiences in America, we have been able to create bridges to work together. It sounds like you are indicating that this is different or not the case in Europe. Is this correct? What is needed to change this? MATTHIJS: It’s a difficult question. It’s definitely different in Europe in the sense that I see very little interfaith dialogue. I mean, I have lived in the United States myself for twenty years. And in general, I think this is especially true amongst the most educated parts of society, the elites, for lack of a better term, where it’s almost looked down upon if you are too religious. It’s almost an admission of something you need—it’s become very kind of materialistic and so on, right? That said, it’s different for younger generations, right? I feel like younger generations, students especially, are definitely more open to this, right? To interfaith exchanges, to learning honestly about different faiths, whether that’s Islam or that’s Buddhism, Hinduism, broader Christianity, the strands within Christianity, and so on, right? It’s more like the Baby Boom generation that was still very much raised within Christian faith, where this was the pillar of their society—I mean, even when I was growing up, everything was happening around these pillars, right? You either were part of—in Belgium, you were part of a kind of Christian pillar, a socialist pillar, or a liberal pillar. And they had different vacations. They went on different camps together. The whole society, the kind of day-to-day life, was organized around it. Most of that is gone, but it has made younger people much more open to learning about completely different experiences, especially from the immigrant communities. So it seems to me youth culture is much more open to dialogue than I think sometimes we take from older generations. And that’s something that shows up in voting patterns all over Europe, right? I mean, it really is overwhelmingly an older population that votes for these kind of very conservative parties. But when there is a younger population that’s more conservative, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re conservative on the point of view of what religion means for them. But Mark may have more ideas of this. EDINGTON: Matthias, I certainly—I agree with everything you said. In fact, I think at least in France, where I live, there’s a kind of generational shift happening right now in terms of the openness to conversation about the role of faith in individual life, in societal life, in community life. Young people are actually interested in and eager to have those conversations and questions. And I’m sure you know, there’s been some friction within the schools, within educational systems in France, about the legitimacy of those questions in the context of public education. Of course, it used to be the case that in a very secularized France, that the schools could essentially control kinds of information the students were receiving on these matters. And now, in the age of social media, that is completely gone. And so there’s a feeling as though there’s a need to, in some way, respond to this. At the same time, France has had these extremely tragic instances of violence and assassination against public school teachers on matters that were essentially religiously defined. So that tends to stiffen, let’s say, the ability for this discourse to take place. I would agree that I think the interfaith conversation in a European context is less thickened, let’s say, than it is in the United States. At the same time, the ecumenical conversations, or the conversation among churches of the Christian tradition in Europe, is much thicker in Europe than it is in the United States. Most religious traditions in the United States—and here I’m quoting a scholar in my own tradition—are essentially Euro-tribal denominations, right? We brought them with us from Europe. Those have real significance historically, culturally in the context of Europe. And so since the Second World War, especially the formation of the World Council of Churches, the habit of ecumenical conversation has been much deepened, and especially conversations between the Vatican and Protestant traditions matches that description as well. Interfaith relationships are more difficult. And they’re essentially aligned with the issues that we talked about earlier about refugees and the growing population of Islamic folk in Europe. And how that conversation now takes place is, churches like mine are trying to take a leading role in that. But it is difficult to get started, often. OPERATOR: We have no participant questions at this time. Bishop Edington, do you have any further questions? EDINGTON: I do. So I have a question. Matthias, if I can, I’m going to return to an earlier question I had that I wanted to leave aside for our participants to take part in. So I know that you’re interested in what has been described in your bio as the collapse of—or, maybe we might want to say, the erosion of the elite consensus around integration of Europe. Can you say more about that? And do you distinguish between the view of elites and the broader public? Are publics following that trend? Or are they not? A simple thing that I would identify, having first come to Europe many years ago as an undergraduate student and now living there, is the euro. You know, I don’t have to change my money every time I cross a national border right now. And I cannot imagine European publics easily going back to a previous world now that they’ve become used to a single shared currency across national borders. So can you say a little bit about what you’re working on in the case of this consensus? MATTHIJS: Yeah. Yeah, so with collapse of elite consensus, I see the great ten years of consensus on European integration from 1985 to 1995, right? Which also, I think, is often forgotten, was a unique period in history where the Soviet Union was about to end, Germany was about to reunify, the whole world seemed to be moving—and this was the kind of peak of the third wave of democratization. The whole world was moving into a direction of market liberalization, deregulation, and, of course, democratization. China was moving in that direction. Russia was moving in that direction. And so it’s in that moment that Europe agreed on and put in treaties the single market, Single European Act, the euro with Maastricht, and, of course, enlargement, right? So not only was it decided that markets and making markets, creating this kind of more perfect single market—which in the United States we’re nowhere near close to because every state has its own licenses for services. Every state has different standards sometimes, and there’s all kind of protectionist barriers when it comes to public procurement for states, and that you can give priority to your own citizens, and so on. So Europe actually took this way further than the United States ever dreamed on. And this was within a union of sovereign states, not within a federal state like the United States. So that’s for the single market. The single currency, and I agree with you. Most people don’t want to go back to it. But it did take away much of kind of national discretion when it came to monetary policy, exchange rate policy, and financial policy. Where they could give priority to their own banks, and so all these things from a market perspective were great. But from a political perspective, were second-best, because in general, national elites want to control these things because they want to funnel it into certain projects, and so on. And enlargement then meant that this consensus was pushed on to a much more heterogeneous union. So the beauty is, this consensus worked. Late 1990s, early 2000s, all the way into 2008, this seemed to deliver the goods in faster growth. There was convergence in living standards between north and south, between east and west. Until it starts to unravel. And so I see the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, all as kind of symptoms of that previous consensus that was so hard to change, because it was according to treaties that you could only change by unanimity. So the collapse of elite consensus, if you look at the big four, the four G7 countries, I summarize as exit, voice, and loyalty, the way Albert Hirschman described it ages ago in a different context. The UK chose exit. They didn’t want to have anything to do with that project anymore, for better or worse. And we can get into that another time. (Laughs.) The Germans stayed loyal because the status quo was working for them, and they were doing very well by the early 2010s. And then different kinds of voice from Italy and France. France wanted more voice at the EU level. Italy wanted more discretion at the national level. So that, I see as the last crisis. The last ten years of crisis, where basically the four key capitals of European integration, the four G7 countries, all looked in different directions. There wasn’t this national consensus, the way there was, uniquely, in the late 1980s, early 1990s. So I see now, in the last two or three years, a crystallization of a new consensus around resilience, around sustainability, around fighting global warming together. About building up joint defenses together, building more fiscal capacity. And I think it’s easier, because of the exit of the UK. It’s easier because of German loyalty to the previous system, and thanks to the Zeitenwende, is changing rapidly. And in the end, by default, you end with a sort of Franco-Italian compromise, where there is going to be some more discretion on certain things that are important, because different countries want to make different decisions at the national level, and more European solidarity. So we see the kind of the germ, the embryo, if you want, the beginnings of this new consensus around more EU sovereignty that gives more voice to the EU and to the national level at the same time, that kind of in a way responds flexibly to some of these legitimate demands of its—of its people. And so there is hope that makes me partially optimistic about the next decade, because elites seem to be pointing in the same direction. It doesn’t mean they agree on everything. But so that’s how I would see the last decade of crisis, as kind of the limits in this kind of market first, politics second, right? In Foreign Affairs, I’ve called this economics—in the end, put politics before economics. And I think they’re starting to do that again, as the previous consensus has kind of run out of steam. OPERATOR: We have a written question from Sana Tayyen from the University of Redlands. She writes: Do the Europeans expect more of an active role from the United States in the European refugee crisis? How involved is America in the refugee crisis in Europe? MATTHIJS: That’s a good question, Sana, because this was very difficult during the Trump years, right, where they limited to a kind of ridiculously low number on how many refugees the United States would take in, to the point where Canada was taking in more. And it’s not clear to me—and I think Mark has addressed this when it comes to Ukrainian refugees—that Ukrainian refugees don’t want to leave Europe. They don’t want to go to the United States. I mean, I’m sure some do, and they could well find their way, but many of them want to stay in Poland, in Romania, in Moldova, because it’s easy for them to drive back and forth to check on their house, to check on family members, to check on loved ones who stayed behind. And because they still very much hope that they’re going to go back. It’s very different from Syrian refugees who are younger, who are planning to start a new life in Germany. They learned the language. They got educated. They get jobs, and things like that. I think it’s frustrating for European elites the way the migrant and refugee conversation has taken a kind of very negative turn in the United States, which is after all a much more Christian country, or a much more religious country, in broader terms, than Europe is. EDINGTON: Thank you for that distinction. (Laughter.) MATTHIJS: And so it is striking, how the United States talks a great deal about how Europe should be doing more, but on that front, the EU is really bearing the brunt of this. So the U.S. has sent a lot of weaponry, a lot of aid, a lot of advice, and a lot of military skills and know-how to Ukraine directly. The lion’s share, by any means. But also, let’s not forget, and I think it’s something European leaders are very quick to point out, not a single American consumer is really suffering from this war in a way that in Europe they are when it comes to rationing heating, when it comes to much higher oil prices. In the end, did gas prices go up in the U.S. last year? They did. But they came down very rapidly, right? And it was nowhere near to some of the gas price we’ve seen in the last twenty, thirty years—some of the spikes that we’ve seen there. EDINGTON: I totally agree. I think the role of the United States in the European migrant and refugee crisis has really been through private charity and through 501(c)(3)s, it’s been through charitable foundations that have European partners that are working with them to provide for the needs of refugees in the European space. It hasn’t been a direct government-to-government kind of assistance. I think largely U.S. officials have, in those conversations, simply pointed to the issues in Latin and South America to say, look, we have our own proximal refugee issue that we need to deal with. So what I observe is a lot of the assistance that has come, has come through private and charitable channels. OPERATOR: Our final question is a follow-up from Michael Strmiska. He writes: Returning to the refugee situation, how are European leaders, political parties, and public responding to the accusation that their open door to Ukrainians reveals a racist, Christian bias? MATTHIJS: Yeah. I mean, and a sexist bias, let’s not forget. I mean, women and children seem to be a lot easier thing to do than young, unmarried men from the Middle East. They don’t really have a good answer to it, right? They start by saying, look this is right next door. This is immense solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Of course, Poland has taken the lion’s share, as has Hungary and Romania. Places that were very hesitant to take in Muslim migrants. And so, yeah, I think people kind of shrug their shoulders and say, it is what it is. It’s easier because they’re more “likeminded,” whatever that means, even though they are very much aware of the double standard that they’re applying. I think the justification they find is that they hope this will be temporary, that this will be temporary relief for maybe a year, maybe two years. But that said, also don’t think that there’s not slowly fatigue sinking in with that as well. EDINGTON: Absolutely right. MATTHIJS: In certain schools in Warsaw, for example, where half the kids are Ukrainian, where they don’t speak Polish and things like this, I mean, this is a huge adjustment. This is all fine for a few weeks, maybe a few months. But once you get into the next school year and things like that, especially for certain local communities, this becomes more of a burden. So we have not great numbers on this, because it was 4.5 million, at some point it was 2.5 million. And there is some back and forth. But I’m going to let Mark have the last say on this. EDINGTON: (Laughs.) Well, thanks. Michael, I think I would say it is certainly the case that publics and governments are aware of that dichotomy. I think there’s no doubt that there’s an awareness of that, to more or less—to greater of lesser degrees. Certainly, Germany was remarkably charitable in receiving as many refugees as it did, and under incredibly generous conditions. Finding places for people to live, helping them get sorted out with job skills, and enter the workforce. So I think it’s not a simple dichotomy here. But I would also add just this, in conclusion. When I speak to people in Europe about this, what I hear, in so many words, is not that their experience with Ukrainian refugees is, oh, well, they look more like me. It’s rather that their country looks more like mine. I can imagine if what’s happening now in Ukraine can happen there in Europe, it could happen to my country too. And that is especially true in the Baltics. It’s true in Poland. It’s true in Slovakia and Moldova. So it’s a much more immediate sense of the threat of instability, of the threat of territorial integrity being violated, because of the nature of the conflict that’s creating these refugees. FASKIANOS: Well, we are at the end of our time. That is a great way to close this very rich conversation. Thank you both, Matthias Matthijs and Bishop Edington. We appreciate it. If you would like to follow Matthias on Twitter his account is @m2matthias. And Bishop Edington is @markedington. We also encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. And also please do write us at [email protected] with any suggestions or questions. We hope you will join us for our next Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar on religion and technology on Thursday, March 23, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Again, thank you both. We really appreciate it. And thank you all for your questions and participation in today’s discussion. EDINGTON: Thanks, everybody.

Chris Howard, the Harriman professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary, and Arohi Pathak, director of policy for inclusive economy at the Center for American Progress, discuss policies regarding social safety nets, the extent to which they are alleviating poverty, and their accessibility to Native communities and communities of color in the United States. Donna Markham, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar Series. This series explores social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record. The audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Sister Donna Markham with us today to moderate today’s discussion on social safety nets. Sister Donna Markham is the president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, and the first woman to serve in this role. Throughout her forty-year career, she’s led efforts to reduce poverty and provide for people at risk. At Catholic Charities USA, Sister Donna has focused on advocacy efforts, on affordable housing, integrated health, food and nutrition, immigration, and refugee services, disaster services, and workforce development. She is an Adrian Dominican Sister and board-certified clinical psychologist. Donna, thank you very much for doing this. I’m going to turn it now over to you for the conversation. MARKHAM: Thanks, Irina. And it’s my joy to introduce our two principal presenters this afternoon. First, Chris Howard. Chris Howard has worked at the college of William & Mary since 1993 and is currently the Harriman professor of government and public policy. He specializes in history, politics, and U.S. social policy. Dr. Howard is the author and coeditor of five books, most recently Who Cares? The Social Safety Net in America. He’s also written numerous journal articles and book chapters. He’s a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Scholars Strategy Network, and has won a campus-wide teaching award and an outstanding faculty award from the State of Virginia. Dr. Howard earned his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thanks for being here, Chris. It’s great to have you. HOWARD: Thank you. MARKHAM: And Arohi Pathak. Arohi is the director of policy for the poverty to prosperity program at the Center for American Progress. She has twenty years of policy experience in social and economic justice on a variety of issues related to family economic security, workforce policy, the social safety net, early care and education, and asset building. Before joining the Center for American Progress, Arohi worked at Prosperity Now, mobilizing community-based organizations to address economic mobility and low income in communities of color, while helping to scale up innovative practices that build long-term and enduring financial security. Her work stretches across all communities of color, including native ones, bringing a lens of racial wealth equity to policy and programmatic solutions. She has worked on federal and state advocacy, focusing on family economic security and workforce issues at the Service Employees International Union, Voices for America’s Children, and People for the American Way Foundation. So welcome, Arohi, it’s great to have you with us too. PATHAK: Thank you. MARKHAM: Such impressive presenters. So I’ll just offer a few opening remarks, and then we’ll hear from our presenters. We’re all profoundly aware of the importance of the social determinants of health and wellbeing as foundational for poverty alleviation. Things such as a safe place to live, a job that provides a living wage, a social network, access to health care, et cetera. And for many of us who work in the social service sector, we recognize the import shift from primarily providing emergency services—such as food, clothing, shelter—to now emphasizing the development of social enterprises, providing for workforce development opportunities, and moving from emergency shelters to permanent supportive housing, to just name an example. We will always need to be providers of the emergency services, but I think the shift is really important in addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. And that balancing is really critical to poverty alleviation strategies. So just to offer that from my perch at Catholic Charities USA, and what we’re involved in every day. But, Chris, maybe start with you, and just ask you if you could share with us a little bit about what constitutes the social safety net in the United States, and how we compare with other parts of the world in similar ways, OK? HOWARD: Sure. MARKHAM: Thanks. HOWARD: The usual way among policy experts and academics when they talk about the safety net is they usually equate that with government programs that are targeted at people with low incomes. So Medicaid and public housing would be classic examples. I think the safety net is broader in a couple of ways. One, among the sort of government programs, there are also a number of inclusive government programs/social insurance programs that have substantial effects on people with low incomes. Social Security is the best example. Social Security does more to lift millions of Americans out of poverty than almost any other social program out there. Medicare, and Disability Insurance, and Unemployment Insurance also help a broad range of people, but including people with low incomes. So when I think of the safety net I think of both these targeted programs and the inclusive programs. Now, that’s sort of what I think of as the public safety net, what government is in charge of. I think of the social safety net more broadly, as including that public safety net—which in many ways is the biggest part of the overall social safety net. But there’s a second part of a charitable safety net that is prominent in a variety of areas, particularly food, medical care, sometimes homelessness as well. And then a third component, what is sometimes called the family safety net, extended relatives and sometimes close friends who can be important, particularly in areas of long-term care, which is often provided uncompensated by family members, and sometimes in housing as well, as people double up because they can’t afford to rent or they can’t afford to buy their homes. So I think of the safety net as being these sort of three pieces—the public, the charitable, and the family—all of which sort of united about trying to collectively provide for people who are dealing with material hardship. In terms of boundaries, because I’ve certainly got a broad notion here, in my notion of the safety net, I really do think of this as a place to catch people after they’ve fallen on hard times. The kinds of educational and training programs that Sister Donna mentioned I think of as being crucial, but is perhaps, if we continue with metaphors, as either sort of ladders or springboards out of poverty. And that both safety nets and these sort of ladders or springboards are crucial. In terms of sort of comparing us, just sort of broad brush, to other countries, other affluent democracies, probably three things stand out about the social safety net in this country. One is that we tend to rely more on charities than you will find in a lot of European countries, or Canada, Australia, Japan. A second is within the public safety net we tend to rely more on those programs targeted at people with low incomes. Other countries are more likely to have a national health insurance rather than separate Medicare and Medicaid programs. And, third, just in terms of the impact, our safety net tends to let more people through the cracks, through the holes. That we tend to have higher rates of poverty and need in this country than in other places. And we have, more or less, decided that it’s acceptable to have more hardship than you would find in a number of other affluent democracies. MARKHAM: Thanks. Arohi, I’d like to ask you if you can pick up a little bit on that, given the communities that you focus on in your own work. Could you share with us how you see these social safety net programs assisting in poverty alleviation, especially for communities of color and the native communities? PATHAK: Yes, absolutely. Let me actually put a little bit of context around what I am going to say. So, as Chris mentioned, there’s kind of multiple different ways of looking at safety net programs. I’m very specifically going to focus on the public safety net. So I’m going to be looking at the public programs that catch people when they are struggling with economic precarity, such as if they lose a job or if they have unexpected medical debt or other kind of crisis situations come up. The one really important thing that I think we need to start off by acknowledging is that poverty is a policy decision. In this country, we’ve made a decision that we’re going to be OK with poverty. And so we have poverty. But that’s not to say that we have not been working on declining poverty. So if you actually look at the last thirty years you’ll see that poverty has declined quite considerably—by something like 59 percent over the last thirty years. And this is because we’ve made some really profound changes through the safety net programs. On one hand, there are policies like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). I think you’ll all remember in 1996 this was reformed under the Clinton administration. And the reformation of TANF really kind of reduced cash assistance to parents without jobs, and really kind of pushed families to kind of get into the labor force and really start to be more self-sufficient. And on the other hand, while we were reducing cash assistance, we were also putting considerable federal investment into spending that really impacted poverty, such as education, and childcare, and food assistance. The Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Unemployment Insurance, health care, these are just some ways in which the federal government over the last thirty years has really focused on alleviating poverty. Now, back to your question, Donna, about communities of color. What we find in this country is that communities of color generally do not have the same levels of access to resources that most other communities do. And, as a result, we see higher levels of poverty, higher levels of racial wealth inequity, higher levels of the lack of economic opportunity in those communities. And oftentimes these communities are rural communities where at one point there used to be a manufacturing base, but that has gone away, and there isn’t a big employer or a big jobs program to help people build this economic security. And so they’re kind of just stuck there. Or, in other instances, it’s the policies that put people on tribal reservations in this country, for example, on lands that have no natural resources, are disconnected from infrastructure like roads and cars, and disconnected from economic opportunities. And so we really do still struggle with poverty. Even though we’ve made enormous strides over the last thirty years, I want to be very clear when I say it is still an issue that impacts us. The social safety net in the country, I think, has done a lot to make sure that the worst of poverty has abated. But we still have a ways to go. There’s still things that we could do to really invest in our people, in our communities, and in the social safety net to ensure that no person in the country goes to bed hungry, or no person goes to bed without having a safe house over their heads, or a safe community to live in. So I’ll pause there, Donna. MARKHAM: Thanks. I think one of the questions that comes to me is, you talked about the poverty level, that it’s going down. And I know that we often measure it through the official poverty line as the benchmark. And I’m wondering, Chris, whether you think that’s really an effective way for us to be looking at this. HOWARD: Yeah. So the decline that Arohi mentioned is hard to see if you use the official poverty line. It’s easier if you use what’s called the supplemental poverty measure, which technically is a more accurate measure and has been reported by the Census Bureau for about the last decade or so. So if you look the official poverty measure, that’ll show you a big drop in elderly poverty in the 1960s and 1970s. If you use the supplemental poverty measure, you’ll see, for instance, a big drop in child poverty over the last thirty-or-so years. So of those two measures, the supplemental measure is the better one, partly because it takes into account the taxes that people pay, partly it takes into account better the sort of geographic cost of living differences. But there are reasons to think that even it may be somewhat understating the amount of distressed out there. A number of people on this session may be familiar with the ALICE measure from the United Way that tries to capture sort of Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, particularly the working poor. The thresholds they have for what do you need to have a decent life around the country are often a good bit higher than in the supplemental poverty measure, and indicate that even that measure might be understating what you really need to get by around the country. There are also other measures, like food insecurity, and housing cost burden, and uninsurance, where you’ll find many of those people who are below the official poverty line, but a substantial number of them who are somewhat above the poverty line, 150, 200 percent as well. And so if you look at these other measures of need, they don’t always correlate easily or directly with poverty. Many of those people will be below the poverty line, but many of them will be somewhat above that poverty line as well. MARKHAM: Thanks. That’s helpful. One of the issues that I think we struggle with on the front lines is that the public safety net is so sensitive to whoever’s in the administration and the government. And so then the charitable sector, with the charitable safety net, we’re either really helped by what’s going on or the administration changes and all of our agencies crash under the burden of trying to pick up where the government pulled out. So in this country, it seems like we’re really—without anything that’s really been structured on a permanent basis—we’re really at the whim of what’s happening in the government, which places vulnerable communities and the charitable sector in really difficult situations. Because we can’t make up for what the government does. So I’d be interested in either of your reflections on that dynamic, especially maybe Arohi from the front lines. PATHAK: Yeah. You are so absolutely correct. It’s almost like we don’t have an intentional strategy. Well, we don’t. Our poverty alleviation strategy is really kind of patchwork of different programs that kind of target specific and unique needs. But the one thing that I want to talk about that I think might put some nuance around this is if you look at the pandemic, right? You look at a time that created enormous amounts of economic uncertainty in this country. People lost their jobs. They lost their life savings. Daycares and childcare facilities were closed. Schools were closed. Parents were really struggling to be able to balance work, and childcare, and even having a job. And the one thing that the Biden administration did that was huge was it put a huge amount of government aid to help Americans weather the effects of the pandemic. It put a lot of money into these same safety net programs that we’re talking about, to expand those programs. Now, the expansions were just temporary but money went into Unemployment Insurance, into SNAP, which is the food stamp program, into health care. There was money that went to—that went out as cash assistance through programs like the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, but also the three economic stimulus payments that everyone got. All of these collectively really helped people make sure that they had enough money to pay for their utility bills, their rent, their food. If they lost their jobs they didn’t have to use all of their savings. Now, I’m not saying that the Biden investments necessarily impacted everyone the same way. As we all know, there were some people during that pandemic that literally lost their shirts, and are still struggling to recover. And there’s others that were able to weather this a little bit more securely because of the money that the Biden administration put in. But what I am trying to say is these programs exist for a reason. And the pandemic offers just a perfect example of how when the world literally is on fire the federal government can step in, increase funding to these programs, and really provide a safety net to all of the most vulnerable people. And it did that. And it did that very effectively. And I just want to use one program as an example. It’s the Child Tax Credit. Under the American Rescue Plan, which was one of the first pieces of legislation that the Biden administration passed, the Child Tax Credit was made permanent and it was—I’m sorry—it was expanded and it was made refundable. And what that did is it made sure that the lowest-income Americans, for the first time, were getting a monthly check that they could use for whatever they needed. And it also made sure that the amount of credit the parents were receiving was actually expanded. So they were getting a little bit more money than they ordinarily would get. And what this did is it alleviated poverty for 2.1 million children, just within the span of one year. It stabilized the finances of more than thirty-six million families. And that includes nearly sixty-two million kids. And the reason I bring this example up is because the impacts of that are just staggering. When we do it correctly, when we invest in our safety nets correctly, we can see the impact and we can see how they really provide the economic boost not only that families need, but our economy needs to survive, or even be thriving. The one additional thing I want to say here, and then I will pass it on to Chris, is a lot of the expansion that I just spoke about, a lot of the funding expansions for safety net programs under the American Rescue Plan, these were temporary. They have all expired or are expiring. And, as a result, what we’re going to see now is the people that are still struggling with economic security, that are still struggling to make ends meet, to pay their rent, put food on their table, et cetera will still be struggling with poverty as they have even less government support to help provide some support to them. MARKHAM: Chris. HOWARD: Yeah. Just to sort of circle back, Donna, to your point about sort of the safety net varying from administration to administration, I mean, in my line of work I tend to think of social policy and the safety net as its sort of own little realm, but of course it’s not in the real world. So one illustration would be when Trump was president he spent a lot of time criticizing immigrants and immigration policy was something that he focused on very heavily. One of the consequences of that for the safety net is that a lot of immigrants, a lot of recent legal immigrants, hesitated to go apply for food stamps or other kinds of social benefits because they worried that somehow doing that would get them on the government’s radar screen and make them more likely to get hassled as immigrants. And so immigration policy did have effects on social policy, because it discouraged people from getting help that they otherwise would have been eligible for. MARKHAM: Absolutely. And with the rolling back of some of these programs, it’s overwhelming to the people on the ground trying to still care for the people, whether those are children who need food, and we take—and the Child Tax Credit goes away, or the migrant issue and the border failures that we have in place. And then, again, the charitable sector is trying to make up for it. And it’s just not a good model. But I wonder if either of you sees any advocacy efforts that we might engage in that would help to challenge that a bit, to stabilize and maybe make permanent some of these programs? PATHAK: I think for the organizations that are on this call, those are our priorities, right? We want to make sure that the programs that really support the lowest-income and working Americans every single day, these are the programs that we continue to invest in. Making sure that people have the supports they need in order to take care of their families’ life, in order to go out and look for a job, to keep the job, et cetera. Donna you started saying this earlier—we’ve seen over the last couple presidencies, administrations come and go, priorities change. And what we really saw within the Trump administration is a large-scale rolling back of the priorities that the Obama administration had put in. This is—in some regard, it’s very dangerous, because it doesn’t allow us to build out a sustainable system. It allows us to build a system maybe that lasts for four years or less, and then someone comes in and changes it out. And in the long term, this is not going to be helpful to our economy. This is not going to help us grow. And it certainly is not going to support our residents in the way that people need to be supported. But I think it is important to acknowledge that we are in a very polarized political era right now. And unfortunately, polls after polls show that Republicans want less government spending. They want more local controls and more rules that require people to jump through hoops and obstacles in order to get basic supports. And we have a divided Congress. We have Republicans in the House that are already saying that for programs like SNAP—there’s a reauthorization of SNAP under the farm bill that will happen this year. The House Republicans are already saying they’re interested in cutting funding for those programs, that have provided this really critical safety net. And what happens in those kinds of instances then, Donna, is if a government is not able to provide a strong enough public safety net, then it falls to the charitable organizations to pick up that slack. And I think already you are probably seeing a lot of communities that are coming to you for resources. And this will just only continue to increase. I’m not sure if even the charitable organizations have the bandwidth to be able to sustain that over the long term. So I think we need to have some conversations about how do we sustain some of these changes and how do we do so in an era where the very conservative Republicans are just not interested in doing anything but rallying behind their caucus and their caucus’s priorities. MARKHAM: Chris, do you want to have a magic bullet for this one? (Laughs.) HOWARD: No, is the short answer. (Laughter.) When I was doing this research on the safety net, one of the things that I heard a number of times from charitable leaders, secular and religious, that they saw their efforts as being the safety net to the safety net. And that they realized that the public safety net had far more resources than they ever would have, but that it had holes in it. And that the charitable sector would come in where the public safety net fell short. So if you think of the public safety net as the first line of defense, I think one thing that we have seen is that programs that are targeted narrowly at the poor and that have no third-party constituency tend to be political orphans. So the example I’d give would be like public housing. So one strategy that people have adopted, and you can see this in both Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit, is to try to stretch the eligibility to people somewhat above the poverty line, to build a constituency that’s broader, that has more voters, that has more people that are going to matter to folks in Congress. And a second and related strategy is to work on programs where you have some sort of third-party constituency—whether that’s the doctors and hospitals who are providing Medicaid, whether it’s small businesses who appreciate the Earned Income Tax Credit because it takes some of the pressure off them to pay higher wages, or some of the pressure off communities to raise minimum wages. Those seem to be sort of strategies. But it’s sort of saying that the technically most efficient approach, which might be, we’ll just set all of the money for people who are below poverty, politically that’s hard to sustain. MARKHAM: Right. Good. Good insight. Before we move it over to our participants that are online with us, I did want to just ask a little bit about where, Arohi, maybe you start with this, about scaling up innovative practices that build financial security for low-income people. Because I think that is so critical to this conversation. The safety net is part of it, a big part of it, for sure. But then you’re also focusing in on help people as part of the springboard, I guess. But where do you see real innovative practices that are helping people get on their feet financially? PATHAK: Sure. That is such a good question. I think where innovative practices are concerned, it’s probably at the state and the local level. Let me give you one example. The federal minimum wage is still stuck at $7.25 an hour. It’s been at that level for over a decade. But if you look at states, and I think probably some cities have changed this at the city level as well, but if you look at some, there’s a fairly large number of states across the country that have realized that $7.25 is going to do absolutely nothing for their labor force, and have higher minimum wage rates in their states and in their cities. And it’s because they need to attract workers. It’s because they need to pay workers self-sufficient wages. It’s because they need to provide benefits, et cetera. And so, while the safety nets are really important, I think one of the things that we need to remember is there are other mechanisms that we need to use in order to build financial security and in order to build an economy that works for everyone. So I’m talking about good jobs that pay well. I’m talking about jobs that have benefits, like health care, like paid time off. And so if you have a sick kid you don’t lose your job because you need to take a day off. I’m also talking about workforce training and employment and education opportunities that allow people to upskill their skills, I guess, so that they can get that better-paying job, so that they can be on a career ladder that actually allows for economic mobility and progression. I think when we think about financial security, we have to think broadly. We can’t be just looking at one program. We need to be looking at infrastructure to see how infrastructure allows people to connect their communities where they live to jobs. Are there free buses? Or is there cheap transportation that gets them to their jobs? If not, then they’re not able to get to their jobs. They’re not able to build that financial security. So what I’m trying to say, rather inarticulately, is we need to be much more holistic and comprehensive in thinking of the solutions that we pull together that help underpin not only our economic growth and progress, but also underpin kind of the building financial security for individuals and families in our country. And for too long, I think we’ve relied on service sector jobs. As manufacturing jobs moved overseas as globalization happened, we saw a lot of jobs kind of moving. Good, middle-class, union jobs moving from the United States to foreign countries, where labor is cheaper. And so we kind of focused more on the service economy. We focused more on gig economies and people cobbling together minimum wage jobs that really didn’t allow them to build financial security. But one of the things that we’ve seen over the last couple years, which has been really, I think, hopeful, are a couple of big pieces of legislation that the Biden administration passed, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, and then the CHIPS and Science Act. And all three of these are intended to spur job creation, to spur manufacturing, and to bring competitiveness back to American soil. And so when we think about our economy and the potential that we have to grow our economy, I think we also really need to really think about what are all the supports that people need in order to make these good jobs, and make these jobs and industries family-sustaining, so that we can build wide-scale financial security for everyone that lives here? MARKHAM: Great. Chris, is there anything that you’d like to add to that before we open it up to our audience? HOWARD: Not much. I agree with much of what Arohi said. I think the main thing I’d say is that there is a genuine debate among policy experts as to just how much effort you ought to be putting at the state and local level. There are definitely examples, like minimum wage, where you can get the states moving ahead of the national government. But we’ve also seen with Medicaid expansion and the ACA that there are times when if you give states a lot of latitude, even given them substantial incentives to change, many of them won’t. And so it's not clear to me exactly when’s the right time to look to the states to take the lead. I know that it’s sometimes, but I don’t have a good sort of rule of thumb for when you should be looking to the states and when you ought to be looking to the national government and doing things like expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit or things of that nature. MARKHAM: Thanks. Thank you both very much. And now, let’s see what we’re going to hear from our participants. We’re going to shift over to the chat and the Q&A. OPERATOR: Thank you, Sister Donna. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first written question comes from Whitney Bodman. Who writes: The inevitable question is how do you pay for all of this? Simply raising taxes on the rich won’t even cover the future of Social Security and Medicare, as a recent New York Times editorial argued. MARKHAM: All right, Chris, you want to start? (Laughs.) HOWARD: Yeah. I mean, back to the question of sort of Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on the rich won’t take care of the entire problem. It would make a substantial dent in the problem. And we have seen, in the case of Medicare, that there is no salary cap on the payroll taxes for Medicare. And health care didn’t end, and the rich didn’t revolt, and life sort of moved on. And so treating Social Security the same way would be a sensible thing to do, in my view. But the larger question is about sort of resources here. And I think that a lot of folks, including in my sort of policy area, tend to focus more on the benefits side of things and less on the tax side of things. When you ask Americans about their appetite for paying for various programs, you will find an appetite particularly for the broader, more inclusive programs. So I think there are a lot of people out there who are feeling the pinch on childcare, and long-term care, and housing. Those are the areas, big budget items, where people are really having trouble. And the idea about sort of, I think, shared sacrifice for problems that affect millions and millions of people, I think we’ve struck those sort of bargains at other times in other sort of social policy areas. And I think that’s got some potential. That sort of circles back to my point about how it’s hard to build constituencies for programs that are targeted narrowly at the poor, because for a lot of folks they’re, like, well, that’s my tax money going to somebody else. It seems really overtly redistributive. I’m not sure how much goodwill and public spiritedness I have in order to fund that. And the funding questions often lead people to start advocating for more inclusive programs, to recognize that lots of people are affected by these needs. PATHAK: I think, just to build on what Chris said, I agree with everything there. I think another issue is it’s how we prioritize in the United States. So our defense funding, for example, is a huge pot of money. And in fact, the defense spending for this fiscal year I believe Congress authorized more money than the defense community even asked for. Now, I’m not suggesting that we—(laughs)—particularly as we’re entering a possible cold war with China and have some other very big concerns looming on the horizon with Russia—I’m not suggesting that we nix defense funding. But defense funding is a giant piece of the pie. And there might be ways in which we rethink how we allocate resources, in addition to taxing the rich. Taxing the rich is certainly not going to solve all the problems, it will make a dent, as Chris said. And I think, again, it’s a matter of prioritizing what we care about as a country and as a community versus kind of prioritizing corporate profits over everything else. MARKHAM: How about another question? Because we want to get—OK, Chris, go ahead. HOWARD: Just one other thing I’ll just add is that the top income tax rates on the rich right now are lower than they were under Ronald Reagan. So we’ve had times in this country when tax rates were higher and the economy did not go to hell. And there are a number of other countries that operate with higher levels of tax rates where economies are humming along just fine. So I don’t buy that the current sort of levels that we’re at now are somehow natural or inevitable. MARKHAM: Thanks. OPERATOR: Our next written question comes from Forrest Clingerman from Ohio Northern University. He writes: You have raised the challenges that the U.S. has recently faced due to an increased political polarization. I would be interested to hear you reflect on whether the U.S. is a bellwether or an anomaly for future global questions around the safety net? PATHAK: I think we have to confront modern challenges. I think increasingly we’re seeing the impacts of climate change, we’re seeing weather-related disasters every year decimating communities, decimating jobs. We are seeing things like the war on Ukraine by Russia, issues with China, et cetera. All of this does impact how we operate. It impacts the cost of things that we sell and are available in our country. It impacts our bottom line. It impacts our ability to be competitive globally. And so we do need to be responsive to that. And I think one of the things that perhaps we need to be better about is really thinking through our programs like food stamps, for example, a big food safety net program that is currently being reauthorized through the farm bill. So as we have these opportunities to really rethink whether or not these programs are doing what they’re intended to do, are serving the people they’re intended to serve, and helping the people that they’re intended to serve, I think we also need to be very mindful of are we addressing the emerging challenges that we’re seeing? And are we creating the system that will be sustainable and equitable in the long run? And I think that that’s something that everyone is grappling with. I think the pandemic really kind of opened up a set of issues that maybe we hadn’t thought about as connected before, but now we’re kind of seeing them all together. Just to give you an example of that, the high cost of food. The high cost of food is connected to the supply chain issues, it’s connected to the high cost of gas, it’s connected to climate change that is resulting in droughts across Asia and across Africa. All of these things impact the cost of food. When we’re thinking about our systems, when we’re thinking about our social safety net programs, we really need to think about kind of the bigger, the global context in which these issues are emerging, and think about how we address them in a sustainable way so that we don’t bump up against this in a couple of years. MARKHAM: Thank you. HOWARD: Yeah, back to the bellwether question. So I made a promise to myself years ago not to get into the crystal ball business. So I really don’t do predictions generally. And I figure, if meteorologists have trouble telling me the weather a week from now, I have trouble telling the safety net ten years from now. I do think that many of the challenges that we’re facing in this country are also being faced by countries all over the world, and that there is the potential for some learning. And you’d have to sort of drop the pretense of American exceptionalism, that we are so different and unique we have nothing to learn from other countries. But I think other countries are dealing with industries that disappear, and workers that need to be retrained into some other area. They’re dealing with an aging population and pressures for better answers on long-term care. So I have no clue if what we’re doing is somehow a bellwether, but I think that there are many countries that are going through stresses similarly, and potentially have ways from learning from each other. MARKHAM: Thank you. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Robin Mohr from the Friends World Committee for Consultation. Who writes: Do you see subsidized childcare as both a form of a safety net for young children and enabling labor force participation for low-income parents? Why does it not appear more prominently in the wider discussion of social safety nets? PATHAK: Absolutely. Childcare is critical for working families. It is critical for parents to find a job, to keep a job, to go to their job every single day, to be able to have financial security, to be able to save for the future. In terms of why childcare has not gotten more traction, I think that that is a huge problem. I’m not the expert on childcare, but what I will say is that over the last two years, last three years actually now, I’m forgetting how long this pandemic has lasted, the one thing that we saw was the enormous need for a high-quality, safe, and affordable childcare system. And there has been a lot of movement, a lot of advocacy to push for increased childcare funding, for childcare to become a bigger, more structured, more professional program, et cetera. As we saw in the Build Back Better bill, which was a set of priorities that the Biden administration was considering moving forward but ultimately did not have enough votes to be able to pass, childcare was a very big piece of that. And in the six, or seven, or twenty-five iterations of the Build Back Better bill, the childcare piece stayed in that bill every single time, which just underscores the need for it. In DC, I will say that childcare is part of every conversation when it comes to family economic security. It’s always in the orbit. And childcare, to be fair, has actually received increased investments not only during the pandemic, through the Biden administration, but even before. I think it got a big boost under the CCDBG dollars maybe a year or two before the pandemic. So this is not to say that we’re not investing in childcare, but not to the extent that we need to be. That said, we just need to keep screaming it from the rooftops until someone in Congress, or lots of people in Congress, make a change, and really do something substantial and worthwhile around childcare. Because, absolutely, it’s one of the most important pieces for working parents and young kids in this country that we have just not cracked. HOWARD: Two quick additions. I think in terms of sort of the politics, being a parent isn’t really a political identity in this country, right? We’ve got an American Association of Retired Persons. We don’t really have an American Association of Parents. So it’s not like parents are an active constituency that are present and organized in Washington to lobby for things like childcare. The other thing I’ll mention is that the connection between work and childcare was something that was embedded into the 1996 welfare reforms. So the TANF provisions give communities the ability to sort of move money around. And in fact, most of that money now goes to services rather than cash assistance. So we have—we do understand the link there at some point. But I think that that sort of may have stopped there because we think that those very poor, single-parent families don’t really have any other resources. But when we get to other families, we assume—perhaps sometimes correctly—there’s a family safety net to sort of take care. There’s grandma and granddad will sort of take care of the kids afterwards until mom and dad get home from work. Or there’s an aunt that might be able to pick up some slack on the weekend, or something like that. And what they don’t sort of realize is that family safety net is also highly stressed right now. And it’s difficult to make that work. And when kids get sort of left in between with either unstable, or unreliable, or unqualified childcare, that’s not only sort of hurting their performance in schools and their general wellbeing now, it’s probably not setting them up for success as much into the future once they get to be working age. MARKHAM: Thank you. We’re getting close to the end of our time. So maybe this will be our last question, and then we’ll be turning it over to Irina. OPERATOR: Our final question comes from Mufti Nayeem Ahmed from New York University. Who writes: Given that various bills have been proposed in the U.S. Congress and the current administration with artificial intelligence taking mainstream, with ChatGPT, which is an AI tool, what are innovative ways to upgrade the skills and capabilities for all Americans across the country, given the changing nature and characteristic of domestic economics? MARKHAM: Hmm. (Laughs.) I’m not sure I fully understand it, yeah. (Laughs.) HOWARD: I’m going to answer this kind of, sort of, but not really. (Laughter.) I think that there’s often sort of a promise that, well, if you could take poor people and retrain them into high tech jobs you’d sort of figure and solve the problem. But I just don’t think there are enough of those jobs out there. And there’s still going to be a need for somebody to be working at 7-11, somebody to be working at nursing homes helping people get in and out of bed. There’s still going to be a lot of essential jobs that don’t require college training or even specialized technical training that you could get in six months. And we’re going to have to decide whether we want to pay those people a decent wage or not. Those are sort of service jobs that are really hard to automate. They require a personal touch. And so we’ve got to decide what’s going to become of those workers who may, in fact, be underemployed, given their skill set, but these are the jobs that are available. MARKHAM: You want to add anything to that, Arohi? PATHAK: No. This is outside of my area of expertise. (Laughs.) MARKHAM: I think Chris says it well. There’s such a need for some of the positions to be filled that are at lower levels, but people are not being paid sufficiently. And it’s when we, sometimes as employers, make that decision to say we’re going to figure out how to pay a livable wage rather than a minimum wage, and bring them—so those jobs are attractive to people, and really accord them the dignity that’s their due. I know that’s one of the big struggles we’re having at Catholic Charities, both with our own employees and with the employees that are working on some of the social enterprise initiatives. So very critical conversation to continue. I’m going to bounce it over to Irina, if there are some final comments you’d like to make on this, Irina. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you all for doing this. We really appreciate it. And to all of you for your questions and comments. We encourage you to follow Chris Howard’s work at wm.edu. You can follow Arohi Pathak at americanprogress.org. And Sister Donna’s work at catholiccharitiesusa.org. So go there for more information. And you can also follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. And also, do write to us. Send us an email at [email protected] with ideas, suggestions for future topics and speakers, and any other thoughts that you would like to share with us. So, again, thank you all for your participation in today’s really informative discussion. We appreciate it. HOWARD: Thank you. PATHAK: Thank you. MARKHAM: Thanks, everybody.  

Nick Zimmerman, senior advisor at WestExec Advisors and global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute, and Amy Erica Smith, liberal arts and sciences dean’s professor and associate professor of political science at Iowa State University, discuss Brazil’s recent presidential election and the ensuing protests, U.S.-Latin America relations, and how Lula’s presidency will affect religious pluralism and democracy in Brazil. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. This series convenes religious and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Amy Erica Smith and Nick Zimmerman with us to discuss Lula’s Presidency and the Future of Brazil. You have their bios in full, but I will give you a few highlights. Amy Erica Smith is an associate professor of political science, as well as a liberal arts and sciences dean’s professor at Iowa State University. Her research examines how citizens understand and engage in politics in democratic and authoritarian regimes, with an emphasis on Latin America and, specifically, Brazil. Dr. Smith has published numerous articles in top peer-reviewed outlets in political science, and authored or coauthored three books, including Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God. Nick Zimmerman is a senior advisor at WestExec Advisors, and a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Brazil Institute. He previously served in the Obama administration in a variety of national security capacities, including as a senior policy advisor to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the White House National Security Council director for Brazil and Southern Cone affairs. He’s been cited, interviewed, and published in an array of media outlets in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. So thank you both for being with us for today’s conversation. Amy Erica, I thought we could begin with you. We just saw the election in October in Brazil. Lula became president. Can you talk about that election and the implications of the protests that we then saw in January, and where we are now? SMITH: OK. And you’re specifically interested in the religious angle on this, right, Irina? FASKIANOS: And the religious angle, but we could set the stage and then we can come back and focus in too on religion questions as well. SMITH: OK. So Brazil’s current president, President Lula, as I think probably most of our viewers know, is maybe the oldest political figure in terms of longevity on the Brazilian scene today. He was a part of the resistance to the military regime, and then has been running for president almost continuously since the return to democracy. Or, one of his proxies has been running for president in a few elections. So he is a longstanding, classic figure in Brazilian politics who Obama once referred to as “the most popular politician on the planet.” He’s highly charismatic, was extraordinarily popular during much of his presidency. So popular that he was able pretty much singlehandedly to get his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, elected to office in 2010. And then Dilma Rousseff was reelected in 2014, and subsequently impeached, and major scandals and political meltdown. In any case, so Lula was in office from January 1, 2003 through the end of 2010. So eight years. He has, of course, been out of office since then and is now back in the presidency, an older, wiser man, one might think. He was, historically, a member of what at one point was something close to a radical left. I don’t know if radical would be maybe an overstatement. But he was pretty far left at some point. And substantially moderated over time. As president, he had a relatively center-left government. And, speaking of religion, he had good, amicable relations with religious groups on the right, center, and the left. Subsequently, towards the end of his administration, and really under Dilma Rousseff, his successor, we had a rise in culture war politics in Brazil, which was really focused on issues of sexuality. To some extent abortion, but Brazilian public opinion is pretty conservative on abortion, relative to the United States, and there was never a lot of movement on abortion. Though, what little movement there was in terms of policy debate Lula was perceived as being more to the left than other politicians. But most of the culture war politics that arose kind of at the tail end of the Lula presidency and then afterwards was about—it was really focused on gender and sexuality—LGBTQ issues, in broad terms. The rise of sexuality politics in Brazil was associated with a religious backlash against the left. So while Lula had been really quite successful in marshalling support from religious actors all across the political spectrum, subsequently we started to see religious groups moving away from the left under Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, particularly upset about things like anti-LGBTQ bullying initiatives, and things like that. So the center and right were responsible for coalescing to impeach Dilma Rousseff in 2016. And all of this is associated with the rise of now-former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected to office in 2018. Jair Bolsonaro was long known as highly conservative, to the point of being, I think, by many people’s standards, reactionary. He was a supporter of the military regime—he had been a supporter of the military regime during the military regime. And he continued to defend the military regime in ways that were outside the political mainstream during his long career in public office, before he was elected president. So it was rather shocking to the political system to see someone who was an open proponent of the military regime be elected to office in 2018. Bolsonaro was elected in part with support of Evangelical groups. So the best analysis suggest that he would probably have narrowly lost the election in 2018 if it hadn’t been for the support of Evangelical groups. Of course, it’s hard to assess these kinds of counterfactuals, but it’s clear that Evangelicals were much more strongly supportive of Jair Bolsonaro than were members of any other religious group. A number of studies, including my own work, suggest that the support for Jair Bolsonaro is, I would say in some sense, spontaneous and sincere among Evangelicals, in that there were Evangelical leaders who came on in support of Jair Bolsonaro, but really the base of his support among religious groups, among religious conservatives, was driven by Evangelical masses, by Evangelicals themselves—lay Evangelicals, that is to say. So we had this Evangelical support for Bolsonaro that appeared to be really strongly related to Jair Bolsonaro’s conservatism on sexuality politics issues. These were the major issues that seemed to drive Evangelical support for him. So he was elected with strong Evangelical support in 2018. He was less popular among Evangelicals once he had taken office than he had been running in the election. He had a number of performance-related issues as president, including poor management of the COVID pandemic, economic malaise that was exacerbated, of course, by the pandemic. So he was not incredibly popular—he continued to be more popular with Evangelicals than he was with other religious groups, while not being a terribly popular president among Evangelicals either. He was, of course, defeated with little over 48 percent of the vote—close to 49 percent of the vote; more like 49 percent of the vote—in the second-round election of 2022. In that election, again, he was able to count on strong support from Evangelicals, though somewhat less than in other times. So what we found was that Evangelicals continued to be more attracted to Bolsonaro than were members of other religious groups. And at the same time, Evangelicals were less supportive of Bolsonaro in 2022 than they were in 2018. And a large part of this, again, is concern about performance-related issues. We, once again, in 2022 saw Evangelical leaders also climb onto the Evangelical bandwagon that was supportive of Bolsonaro. One of the major differences though, between 2018 and 2022, is that once Bolsonaro had lost and Lula had won, we saw religious leaders generally trying to build a truce with the Lula administration. So it doesn’t appear that religious groups are going to be a strong oppositional force against a Lula presidency, for the most part. Does that give an overview? Or is there something more that you’d like from me, Irina? FASKIANOS: That’s great. Why don’t we go to Nick and then we can come back to you. So, Nick, we see next week will be the first meeting between Presidents Biden and Lula. Or, actually, it’s happening this week. Is it happening this week? Next week, OK. So next week. So what do you expect the relationship to be? You worked in the Obama administration when Lula was president for part of that time, and I’m sure have studied it during the Trump years. And now what can you say—talk about a little bit about what we should expect the relationship between the U.S. and Brazil to—how will it evolve from where it's been? ZIMMERMAN: Sure and absolutely. Well, thanks, again, Irina, for having us, and putting on this event. It’s quite an opportunity. And I’m always happy when people are Brazil interested which, admittedly, has been happening more often as of late, given that it’s been having a prominent role in the headlines, it seems. Lula’s visit to the White House is happening upon a broader political backdrop that, in many ways, is quite eerie in how, within their own contexts, of course, and certain idiosyncrasies, these two countries’ political bodies have mirrored each other over their respective last several political cycles. This is a story of profound polarization, disillusionment with democracy as a form of government, a suspicion that the system is rigged, rife with corruption that range from the normal type of money laundering public corruption that might come to mind, to election fraud. And so if you take a step back, I think we need to look at this visit and the elections that just happened—both in the United States and in Brazil at the end of 2022—in the broader context of a moment in which global democracy is really being pushed, challenged, and stressed in ways that had not been the case in recent decades. And I think that both leaders are going to try to sit down and discuss that very topic. And it’s hard to get one’s arms around, frankly, in terms of government bureaucracy, how exactly can two countries that have been suffering from similar political dynamics in terms of their negative, in my view, impacts on their democratic fiber—what can they do together both in their respective countries, and then in other democracies around the world, to learn certain lessons? And so in many ways, I think this is going to be Lula and Biden trying to figure that very thing out, create a framework for cooperation. It’s very early on for Lula, obviously. It’s been literally one month. So I think that they’re going to try to touch on some really central topics, like the state of democracy in the world, like climate change and how they can lead together on that existential challenge, a number of human rights. Sort of more traditional foreign policy issues, like what’s going on in terms of the political crisis in Haiti, the ongoing political migration, refugee crisis in Venezuela, the complete disillusion of democracy in Nicaragua. And Lula has started to be very public about the fact that he envisions a role for Brazil as a mediator of some sorts, as a representative of the global south, perhaps, as a member of the G20, what have you. To try to engage also with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So there’s going to be a really rich agenda. I think it’s going to be more frame setting than a laundry list of deliverables and initiatives. But these are two veteran leaders. And Professor Smith spoke about Lula’s long history and trajectory in Brazil. Obviously, President Biden has a similarly long trajectory in U.S. politics. They knew each other. Their teams knew each other. There’s a lot of overlap, obviously, in the Biden-Harris administration and the overlap between the Obama-Biden administration, and the last two years of the Lula one, as well as the overlap that occurred after Lula departed and Dilma Rousseff took office. So we’ve got a lot of wily negotiators on both sides, to include the new Brazilian foreign minister who’s formerly the Brazilian ambassador to the United States, actually, when I worked at the White House. So I think they’re going to start to try to put a frame, so to speak, on the house, and try to fill it up as time goes by. I did just want to mention—as just a brief tangent—that I do see the trajectory bit of how we got here in Brazil, specifically, in terms of the polarization to not be as singularly driven by sexuality politics and gender ideology as perhaps Dr. Smith does. I agree, it was a driving factor, particularly I think in his second election—Bolsonaro’s reelection campaign, Bolsonaro’s reelection campaign. But we just can’t tell the full story also if we don’t talk about the legacy of corruption, and the fact that tens of millions of Brazilians across any slew of socioeconomic factors that you want to look at—from education and literacy rates to food insecurity rates. We’ve seen tremendous backsliding, after decades of success. And this was a corruption scandal, of course, that gets at the very core and root of the other part of Lula’s governing legacy, which were successive corruption scandals involving really all levels of the government apparatus, which actually netted him himself in prison. I mean, you can’t tell the full story of Lula if you don’t talk about the rise, the depth of the fall, and now where we are again here today. And the judicial overreaches and biases that led to his release do not also erase that legacy of corruption that led to, I think, a broader disillusionment that allowed someone like Jair Bolsonaro, who had been considered outside of the Brazilian mainstream previously, to not only rise in prominence but rise all the way to the presidency. And despite having a very, very bumpy tenure as president, as Dr. Smith outlined quite well, almost won again. Not unlike what we saw here in the United States in 2020. I’ll stop there for now. FASKIANOS: Maybe we can talk a little bit about the insurrection that we saw there and the links to what happened here on January 6, and just that interplay. SMITH: Sure. Are you asking Nick or are you asking me? FASKIANOS: I’d love to hear both of your perspectives. So, Amy Erica, why don’t you go first? SMITH: OK. Well, first of all, thanks to Nick for the really very good explanation. And I absolutely agree. And thanks for the correction. (Laughs.) You can’t really talk about the history of the past twelve years or the past twenty years in Brazil without talking about corruption scandals, and Lula’s strong association with corruption scandals. As far as where this insurrection came from, they were among the most telegraphed, feared outcomes. On the one hand, nobody expected them on the day they happened. And on the other hand, there had long been concern that this kind of thing would happen. Jair Bolsonaro had effectively announced that he was going to try to have this kind of thing happen. (Laughs.) And at the same time, the system wasn’t ready for it at the moment that it actually happened—which is how it happened, really. So as I said, Jair Bolsonaro had long been known as something of—somewhat ambivalent towards democracy in certain ways. He had been an apologist for the military regime, defender of the military regime’s use of torture. And this was all outside the military—or, outside the political mainstream, I would say, during the time that he was running for office. As he was running for office in 2018—that is, when he was running for office the first time. As he was running for office in 2018, he ran a nontraditional campaign in many different ways. But among the nontraditional components of it was that his skepticism of electoral procedure. So Brazil has a highly professionalized electoral administration service—or, a tribunal, court—which runs an electronic voting system that runs across the country and is consistently shown to be quite secure, and really quite free and fair. Elections are run efficiently smoothly, highly professionally in Brazil, and are widely recognized across the political spectrum in Brazil and across international circles as being really highly competent, and highly democratic in the sense of counting everybody’s vote. In any case, he raised skepticism of the election in 2018, of the electoral procedures in 2018. Claimed, without evidence, that he would have won in the first round if it hadn’t been for fraud in the first round. He ended up winning the second round of 2018. And then continued to beat that drum, off and on, throughout his presidency. And as in the lead-up to the 2022 election, started to make lots of claims about fraud, potential corruption, all kinds of issues that he said they were going to face in the 2022 election. Again, without what most independent parties thought was much evidence at all, and with a strong opposition of the Brazilian Supreme Court, which runs the Superior Electoral Tribunal. The Superior Electoral Tribunal is effectively an offshoot, a branch of the Supreme Court. So he went head to head over and over again with Supreme Court justices over whether elections in Brazil could be trusted. He ended up getting some members of the military to, I would say, not exactly endorse, but help to support his story about the potential of corruption. There were members of the military—high-ranking members of the military who, for instance, put forth a memo asking for a whole bunch of changes to electoral procedure, which were widely perceived as being irrelevant, or distracting, or harmful to election procedures in Brazil. In any case, so there was lots of electoral skepticism and attempt to foment the perception in the public that elections were rigged. There was also, along with this, skepticism of polls. Skepticism of polls fed on itself, where it appears that certain members of—some Bolsonaristas, some of the people who were most strongly attached to Bolsonaro, were less likely to answer polls because of skepticism of polls, which then led to polls to underrepresent support for Bolsonaro, in some cases. So we have all of this skepticism, perception of fraud going on. Following the election, there had been concern that Bolsonaro was going to try to stage a coup, or—most observers—most people who were observing most closely didn’t think he would actually try to stage a coup. But there were attempts that something along the lines was going to happen. That there might be a potential attempt at coup. That there might be some other kind of major unrest immediately following the election. Immediately following the election none of that materialized. He never acknowledged—he never conceded the election, and at the same time allowed his administration to proceed to work with Lula to plan the transition. So there was a grudging, if not true acceptance of the result, at least willingness to go along with Bolsonaro stepping down. At the same time, protests were proceeding across the country that were not directly spearheaded by Bolsonaro, though certainly Bolsonaro allies were involved, and Bolsonaro was maybe tacitly supporting some of these protests. One of the things that was different between 2022 Brazil and 2020 U.S. is that in the Brazilian case the allegiances of the armed forces were more in question. While the armed forces were clearly not going to support an overt coup—or, I think most people believed that they were clearly not going to support a coup, and in the end they did not support a coup—there were definitely members of the military who strongly supported Bolsonaro and were really highly sympathetic to the claims of election fraud, and the general disgruntlement among Bolsonaristas. And so a lot of these protests were happening outside military bases with effectively the tacit support of many of the people inside the military bases. Tacit, or non-tacit—or, overt. So all this heads into January 8. And in this run-up we also have an attempted bombing of a petroleum refinery. We have truckers who are blocking roads. And in some cases, we have members of the military themselves who are blocking roads, though that’s not supposed to be happening. So we have all this sort of social unrest heading into January 8. I think after Lula had taken office there was a perception that things were going to calm down, that the protests were going to calm down. The system appeared not to be ready for what happened on January 8. There were groups on Telegram and other social media sites that were organizing the protests of January 8. It was clear that this was going to happen, people knew it was going to happen, and yet the system was not ready to stop the protestors on January 8. There are real concerns about certain members of the military possibly having subverted the reaction—members of the military and other officials, having possibly subverted part of the response to January 8, which was what allowed it to get so out of control. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Nick, do you want to share your perspective? I mean, you did talk about this, the democracy piece in your opening, and what Lula and Biden will talk about vis-à-vis the protests—insurrection, I should say. ZIMMERMAN: Indeed. In many ways, for many of the reasons that Professor Smith cited, January, in retrospect anyway, seems like an inevitable—the inevitable, hopefully, culmination of really a multi-year, extremely sophisticated disinformation apparatus that has also played a huge role, I think, in polarizing the country. So Jair Bolsonaro really begins his national rise at a time when the way that one conducts politics in Brazil completely changes. Since Brazil returned to democracy, the way that you won elections was essentially by growing through a party system. There are many parties in Brazil. Many of them have fused, many have died, many have evolved. But nevertheless, you come up through them because you get access to public resources in a way that doesn’t exist in the United States, that enables you to grow a state-wide, or city-wide, or nation-wide profile. Because Brazil has always allowed for, during political campaign seasons, a certain amount of free advertising time, both on television and radio, on the basis of party’s representations in the legislature. And this was really the means by which Brazilian politicians introduced themselves to the populace. And for most of that period of time, there were really only two or three television channels and radio stations that dominated those mediums. And that’s all gone now, with social media. Jair Bolsonaro had very little public airwave time in the election that got him all the way to the presidency. But he has developed an incredibly sophisticated social media political messaging apparatus—YouTube, WhatsApp, Telegram. In 2018, it was these mass messages being sent around, and then being forwarded around by family members via WhatsApp. Sort of the second evolution of using social media for the express means of political disinformation, after the 2016 U.S. campaign where Facebook was the primary mechanism for it. And part of that was talking about how the system was rigged. Part of that was talking about all of this corruption that we just discussed in the governments prior. And part of that, yes, was that we can’t even trust the election results. And so this fraud narrative, as Dr. Smith said, it started before the last presidential cycle. And it was maintained as a narrative even though Bolsonaro became president, against all the odds. And increasingly the rhetoric ramped up, as he looked to be in trouble from COVID, from a decimated economy, from polarization that he can’t fully control and that had a counter reaction that also helped explain, in part, Lula’s restoration after he had really sunk to new lows in terms of his own political negativity ratings within the country. So much so that someone like Bolsonaro was able to win for exactly that reason. And so as part of the final stage of the campaigning, it became: You cannot trust the elections. And we are citing very obscure and, admittedly, sort of poorly worded language in the Brazilian constitution, ushered in after the dictatorship—some of which is a relic, frankly, of when there was a king from the Portuguese empire. It talks about, in Article 142 of the Brazilian constitution, a “moderating power.” This used to be the aristocrat, poder moderador, but which has been interpreted as a potential mechanism by which the military, of called upon by the president, or the judiciary, or congress to step in to reestablish order, could lead to some sort of new constitutional process, annulling Lula’s victory, potentially restoring Bolsonaro, or something else. But at least something else that wouldn’t be as left or anathema to what these groups want to see in the executive branch. And so all the conjecture about some sort of uprising, in some way or form, it was very clear to many of us what it was going to look like and what it was hoping to accomplish. But in broad strokes, there was a sense that if we can create enough of a ruckus, if we can create enough disorder we can create a public rationale to bring certain elements—it was never monolithic—of the intelligence establishment, security establishment, perhaps the military, other sub-regional leaders along with in saying: “Hey, something’s really awry here. We need to create a different type of constitutional order, election process, rethink how we check these things.” And that was sort of the vague rationale for doing something. Everyone thought that would, of course, happen while Bolsonaro was still president. No one still, as far as I know—it’s an unfolding investigation, so many chapters still to be written—no one fully knows why it happened after the transition had happened. I’ve heard everything from that was always the plan to it was literally that security was too tight on the day of, and that January 8 was the first day that they could penetrate the public buildings. I think that’s a story still to be told. And at some level, yeah, this was an attempt to create enough chaos to see if enough elements of Brazilian society would consider some sort of never fully defined plan B. And it was their version, although their process and the timing was totally different, of going after the electoral certification process at Congress and Vice President Pence at that time, in the U.S. context. Those were the objectives, at the end of the day. FASKIANOS: This is fantastic. I’ve got more questions, but let’s go to our group. You can either raise your hand and I’ll call on you, or else you can write your question in the Q&A. There are a couple in the chat. So if you want to write a question or make a comment, put it in the Q&A box. But I will read those. So I’m going to first go to John Chane, who has raised his hand. If you can unmute yourself. You still need to unmute yourself, John. OK. Let’s see. I’m going to give him one more—that is not working. If you want to type your question. There is in the chat a note from, let’s see, Rita Hipolito. And she says: It’s important to mention the growth of religious hatred that members of African-based religions suffered during the Bolsonaro government. So much so that the first law that Lula signed established a day of religions of African origin in January 6. Is this something, Amy Erica, you can talk about? SMITH: Yeah, briefly. So this animosity between religious conservatives, especially Evangelical groups—especially within and among Evangelical groups, especially neo-Pentecostal groups, and members of African-based religions is longstanding in Brazil. It predates Bolsonaro. There has been intense skepticism between these groups—well, with the skepticism more strongly on the side of Evangelicals being skeptical of Afro-Brazilian groups. And effectively, Evangelicals and Pentecostals framing Afro-Brazilian religious groups as “devil worship.” The animosity has intensified in the past five or six years, as the sort of culture war has built up. One has to at least briefly mention the longstanding racial discrimination and racial prejudice in Brazil, which is certainly part of this. But it goes beyond racial discrimination and racial prejudice, to sort of, I’d say, a very religious kind of debate over revealed truth and those kinds of things. So this hostility has reached the point where—well, actually, twenty years ago—a major Evangelical leader, Edir Macedo, the bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, destroyed some African icons on TV. This is the first major incidence of interreligious, I guess, violence—a form of interreligious violence in Brazilian public media. But the incident, in which Edir Macedo destroyed Afro-Brazilian religious icons on TV was only sort of echoed and continued. That kind of interreligious conflict continued to be a part of Brazilian political culture. And it has intensified. We now have periodic violence against not just attacking religious icons and religious symbols, but actually temples for Afro-Brazilian terreiros, they’re called. So effectively, religious facilities for Afro-Brazilian groups, sometimes attacking actual religious services of Afro-Brazilian religious groups. So, yeah, there’s been a fair amount of religious violence. And it has been gradually increasing in Brazil, substantially increasing now over the past few years. The establishment of a day of religions of African origin, an official day to recognize religions of African origin is, of course, important. And it’s also not by itself going to stop violence against these groups, in part because the violence is lawless. More needs to happen in order to stop that violence. FASKIANOS: Nick. ZIMMERMAN: Sure. And I’ll try to add to that one, and also I see we have questions about Bolsa Familia and the environment as well. So I’ll try to take all in one. I agree with really most of what Professor Smith just said. I would argue—or, not argue—I would just add that it goes even beyond, of course, notwithstanding the focus of the question, it goes even far beyond Afro-Brazilian communities and beliefs. We are talking about one of the most religiously pluralistic and diverse [places], and ethnically too. I mean, I think we’re all increasingly horrified by the reports coming out of the Amazon right now, which leads to the climate question, and the opening, burgeoning investigation by the Brazilian judiciary into the Bolsonaro administration, now past, possibly on suspicion of genocide for the way that they treated and provided public assistance to the Yanomani tribe. So, a number of other minority communities in Brazil have traditionally historically had a pretty rough run of it. And as Dr. Smith just alluded to, that’s an entirely separate conversation and area of rich academic research and focus. But it permeates, I think, throughout today. And so much of what’s involved in the polarization of public discourse is, of course, pitting groups against each other—us versus them—in sort of increasingly demonizing ways. And I think we’ve seen in many different political, cultural, religious contexts around the world that, unfortunately, there’s a very real correlation to that and violence, societal violence. Brazil, I think, is no exception. So that ties, I think, a bit to climate and Bolsa Familia. Bolsa Familia is no longer called Bolsa Familia. We’ll see if Bolsa Familia gets named back. Bolsonaro changed it as part of his marketing campaign to try to own and improve his standing politically, support levels with lower-income Brazilians. It’s been—it was expanded during the pandemic through emergency spending measures. Bolsonaro had indicated if reelected that he would bring it down a bit, and that that temporary expansion would not be permanent. Lula was able to secure, as really his first negotiation with Congress, an additional year of that expanded funding. To be clear, it will never go away. We’re talking about what level does it get funded at. And this is a major, major piece of his political platform. Undoing the backsliding that Brazil has seen in terms of anti-poverty, I think, as you write, is probably his single highest domestic priority. Eliminating food insecurity, upping education levels, investing in education, public health care. These are all things that have traditionally really animated and motivated (inaudible) as well as his broader political movement and party, the Workers’ Party. If that’s a preferential option for the poor, I’m not sure I would use exactly that language, but I think that using the levers of the government to ameliorate socioeconomic disparity has always been Lula’s top domestic priority throughout his entire trajectory as a politician, dating back to his time as a union leader, which Dr. Smith alluded to at the beginning of our conversation. So, preferential or not, it’s what he considers his base, socioeconomically. There is an objective need by most any macroeconomic indicator that you want to look at over the last couple years. And I would expect that space to be very busy in terms of his domestic focus in these initial years. In terms of climate, I’m somewhat optimistic, though Lula’s track record on climate is mixed, historically. This is, I think, a politician and a president who believes in climate change, doesn’t deny its devastating impacts. That’s, at least, a good place to start. When he was president [previously], he enacted a number of policies that were really effective. We saw sustained declined in rates of deforestation under his presidency, almost for a decade straight. But that stalled, and then started to reverse. And that was before Bolsonaro, although then it got far, far worse under him. Again, it just shows that it’s a constant fight. It need a lot of attention. A lot of the government agencies that work on that, which are some of the most specialized in the world, were hollowed out in terms of staff and budgeting. And not unlike some of the reports we heard about what happened in federal agencies in the United States, like the EPA, for example, in years past. So this is going to take a while. He’s putting in a lot of people who have a good track record, who believe in this. And I think he realizes that it is also a gateway to him reestablishing Brazil’s global leadership. And that is something that he very much wants. He wants Brazil back amongst that first tier of countries dealing with the world’s issues. And I think that he saw how much Bolsonaro’s track record, or lack thereof, on climate, made Brazil a pariah, along with a lot of the other issues that we’ve been talking about. But climate was also first and foremost, right? And so I expect to see a bit of a change. Though he will never do anything that could be construed as compromising Brazilian sovereignty, which is always the international debate over the Amazon. And in the past, this motivated decisions from him that were controversial, that led to deforestation, like the creation of the mega Belo Monte Dam, which occurred under his and Dilma Rousseff’s government. And which he saw as vital to sort of the socioeconomic development of a region which is the poorest sub region in Brazil. I think it’s a new day. I think that we have reason to believe that we will again start to see falling rates of deforestation in the Amazon. But it’s a Herculean effort, and one that, appropriate within a Brazilian context, does require, I think, international support and intention, and for many years to come. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. SMITH: Can I just briefly answer? FASKIANOS: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. SMITH: Can I briefly answer Ralston Deffenbaugh’s question as well? FASKIANOS: Yes. SMITH: Because I think the core of the question is, what is the role of the Catholic left in the policies of Lula’s early administration. So to answer Mr. Deffenbaugh’s question, I looked at his bio. I think you’re at the Lutheran World Service. To answer Mr. Deffenbaugh’s question, there were historically strong ties between the Catholic left and the early days of Lula’s political activism and of the Workers’ Party, and his early presidency. Would we say that the Catholic left is directly responsible for Bolsa Familia? I would not say that. But I would say that notions such as a preferential option for the poor were part and parcel of the milieu. They were inherent in the milieu of the early days of the Workers’ Party. And Lula has long had strong ties to a number of liberation theologian thinkers. And so, yeah, I would say that—can be considered a preferential option for the poor—that I’m not sure that I would say that this is specifically a policy of the Catholic left. But I would say that it is something that grows out of an administration that was strongly tied in its early days and in its development to the Catholic left. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Reginaldo Braga, if you could unmute yourself. BRAGA: Yes. Thank you so much. FASKIANOS: And identify yourself, please. BRAGA: Absolutely. Reginaldo Braga. Native of Brazil. U.S. citizen after almost thirty years. Faculty of religion and education at an African American institution here in the South. I’m very curious. Our take on the political and social processes of Brazil started, I would say, rather recently. I’m very curious on the comments also, as we would bring together our domestic policies, as you, Nick, suggested, and our foreign policies and our, United States—or force of the United States—interested on what has been going on in Brazil. Take, for instance, if you look at the upcoming relations of Brazil-U.S., I would be very curious. Many of us would still remember the NSA case that pried on Dilma Rousseff. Many of us would remember the case that was made to Lula in the times of Bill Clinton, even, to disarticulate arguments of Brazilian further international policies. And the questions of the deep-sea reserves. Which ended up bringing to us, all of us, a sense that effective regime change ended up happening in Brazil with Dilma Rousseff. And a very curious aspect of the effective invalidation of the popular vote, which since the time of Citi Group, Citi Corp reports on plutocracies, has posed the question of are we really going into this reengineering of democracy and enabling the ability of individuals as such. So I’m very curious of these forces. If you think about religion, for years then monies and articulations, there is a big back and forth from right-wing, or more on the religious side—on the right-wing religious side of the United States, going also to the United States. I’m curious to see that conversation of our own forces’ participation and where we are with our domestic policy and foreign policy intersecting. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Who wants to take that, start? Nick? You’re unmuting first. ZIMMERMAN: Yeah. I mean, I’d be happy to. I mean, Reginaldo raised a number of issues in the bilateral relationship. I confess, I’m not sure I heard much of a question in there. I’m not sure—you’re just curious about how the leaders will talk about issues of democracies, given that there have been tensions in the relationship in the past? Do I understand you correctly? Is that right? BRAGA: I think that we can go with that. I’m concerned with the engineering and the perceptions of our own senses of defense of democracy. Because it’s not just a matter on the Brazilian case. The Brazilian case, as Roberto DaMatta would probably say—you probably have encountered him already—there is an underside, or there is a distorted mirror to the U.S. democracy too. I mean, you can raise the question. To me, it’s very concerning to see that an entire election, and following the demise of Dilma Rousseff, the very invalidation of the social mandate that the elections were given were systematically disassembled. And that’s— FASKIANOS: Thank you. OK, thank you. ZIMMERMAN: OK, I think I have a little bit of a better sense. So first of all, I would agree with Reginaldo that a lot of inflection and reflection needs to occur in the United States with respect to the state of its democracy. I actually think that’s where I started my comments, when I talked about how much the political bodies of the two countries have increasingly reflected each other, at least dating back, I would argue, four or five presidential cycles. And so in no way was I suggesting that—and I never said this—that the conversation about democracy between President Biden and President Lula should only be about Brazilian democracy. And in fact, based on the comments that I’ve seen from both leaders, that is the intent of neither for the conversation. It’s actually to kind of come together, and commiserate, and talk about what can be done about these issues. The U.S. Congress, Democratic congressional leaders, have talked about, for example, sharing their lessons learned now that it’s concluded into how they conducted their investigation into January 6, if that would be of some sort of interest to their counterparts in Brazilian Congress. That’s one possibility. Perhaps Brazil and the United States can work together to start strengthening, through resourcing and technical capacity training, right, beef up election monitoring and observing organizations to make sure that we’ve got more of an infrastructure, both on the ground but also in terms of communications to debunk some of the myths about election fraud. All of these are examples. I have several others. But they’re based in real conversations that are being thought through and discussed at various different levels in the capitals of both countries. So just want to clarify there. I think Reginaldo perhaps interpreted my commented in a different way, because actually in many ways I think we agree. And the fragility that we’ve seen in the last several years about U.S. democracy in part is why I think the Biden administration has come out repeatedly in public, unlike many of Brazil’s other closest parties, to defend its electoral process, quickly recognize Lula’s victory, and make it such a priority to have him come up in the very first weeks of his presidency. I think the traumas that the two countries’ democracies have experienced in years past is why there might be an opportunity for a new kind of relationship, which has always been marked by great tension, as Reginaldo and others have noted, and also profound areas of collaboration. That’s the nature of the beast. Democracy and geopolitics is complicated. And when you’re talking about two of the five or six, depending on how you classify it, democracies in the world, their interests are never going to fully align. That’s the case with the U.S. and India, China, the EU. That has been, it will continue to be the case, with Brazil. That’s all the more reason for why it’s important that this visit’s happening now. And I hope there are many more to come. I’ll stop there. I know we’re running out of time. I’m sure Dr. Smith will want to jump in too. FASKIANOS: Yes, well, I’d like to get in one more question, if we can. And Katie Burns, who’s at the U.S. State Department. Based on your analysis, how might the Lula administration engage, or not, on questions of indigenous spirituality as an arm of how it engages on freedom of religion or belief policies, or otherwise? Climate, environment, protection of sacred land, for instance? Especially considering the establishment of Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and burgeoning investigation into abuses against the Yanomami community. There’s a lot there. We don’t have very much time, but. Amy Erica, do you want to go first? And maybe sum up— SMITH: Oh, that’s a huge question. And it’s a fantastic one. How might the Lula administration engage? I anticipate that the Lula administration will be highly sympathetic, certainly in terms of sort of the level of policy rhetoric will be highly sympathetic to support for indigenous spirituality. This is part of the historical tendency of the Brazilian left and center-left, is support for non-Christian religious groups and spiritualities. I also see that the support for indigenous spirituality will go along with support for indigenous rights and indigenous lands, more broadly. One of the things that’s happened in Brazil is that there’s a very strong association—I think this is underlying Katie’s question—is that there’s a very strong association between support for the indigenous and support for the environment. There are studies that show conclusively that protection of indigenous lands and territories is really, really good for the Brazilian environment. The more demarcation you have, and the more empowered indigenous groups are to protect that land, the better things are for the Brazilian Amazon, and the rainforests in general, beyond the Amazon. So, yes. I anticipate that the Lula administration will, at the level of rhetoric, strongly support indigenous spirituality, and also support demarcation that’s related to indigenous understandings of—when I say “demarcation,” I mean demarcation of territory. Demarcation of indigenous reservations. So support for demarcation of indigenous reservations, that’s driven, in part, by indigenous understandings of spirituality. I would say there is a tension here that just occurred to me. That there’s also going to be a tension with Evangelical groups, because Evangelicals perceive their mission as being—or, one of their missions—as being evangelization within indigenous territories, and possibly that there are potential conflicts that will emerge from this. I suspect that Lula’s going to try to thread the needle and work with Evangelical groups, while also ultimately siding with indigenous groups, for the most part. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And, Nick, do you want to add to that? ZIMMERMAN: I just—yeah, thank you. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: Fantastic. And we are at the end of our hour. So, unfortunately, we can’t get to the final question there. So my apologies. But thank you both for this really terrific conversation, to everybody who joined with their written questions and verbal questions. We appreciate it. You can follow Amy Erica Smith’s work on her website at amyericasmith.org, and Nick Zimmerman’s work at wilsoncenter.org. So go there to see what they’re writing about and saying. And you can follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy Program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. And please do reach out to us. Write to [email protected] with any suggestions or questions. Thank you, again. We hope you will join us at our next Social Justice Webinar on social safety nets. It will take place on Thursday, February 23, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You will get that invitation under separate cover. So, again, thank you to Nick, and Amy Erica, and to all of you. Have a great day. SMITH: Thank you, everybody. Bye.

Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, and Ernesto Castañeda, director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and associate professor of sociology at American University, discuss policies and laws pertaining to immigration, integration, and repatriation in the United States. Edward Alden, CFR’s Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar Series. This series explores social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and the transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, cfr.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. I am pleased to have Ted Alden with us to moderate today’s discussion. Ted Alden is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at CFR, specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness, trade, and immigration policy. He is also the Ross distinguished visiting professor at Western Washington University. He is the coauthor of the forthcoming book, When the World Closed its Doors: The COVID Pandemic and the Future of Border Control. And he has served as a project director for several CFR-sponsored independent task force reports, including one on U.S. immigration policy. So, Ted, thank you very much for doing this. I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce our distinguished panelists. ALDEN: Thank you very much, Irina. It’s great to be here with you. It’s great to be with all of you here on the call. I’m Zooming in from the West Coast, so I apologize if I take an occasional sip of coffee. It’s still reasonably early here. So I am really pleased and privileged to have two superb guests with us today to talk about the many complexities surrounding current immigration issues in the United States. And particularly questions of asylum and access for people fleeing violence and persecution. First, we have with us Heidi Altman. Welcome, Heidi. Heidi is the director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center. Previously, she was the legal director for the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. She has worked extensively on providing services to those in immigration detention dealing with deportation and removal cases, and a whole other range of rights issues with respect to immigrants here in the country. So welcome, Heidi. It’s great to have you here. I am also pleased to introduce Ernesto Castañeda. Ernesto is the director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. He’s the founding director of the Immigration Lab, and a graduate program director of the MA program in sociology, research, and practice at American University. He has written extensively—I tried to review some of the literature. I didn’t even get close. But he’s written books and papers on a wide array of immigration issues, including immigrant integration, ethnic political mobilization, urban issues, health disparities, and marginalized populations. Their full bios are in your material, and I encourage you to have a look at the many things they have done in this area. Ernesto, I’d like to start with you to frame this set of issues a bit. We have all been reading the paper, heard a lot about the record number of what they today call encounters at the southern border, with people arriving across the border from Mexico. You’ve written an excellent piece on some of the challenges in counting these numbers accurately. We hear numbers like two million and three million. I worked on this about a decade ago at CFR, to try to come up with a system for measuring entry between the legal ports of entry, but it was a different time back then. It was mostly Mexican citizens crossing. We have a very different situation today. So frame this a little bit. What’s going on at the southern border? How does it compare/differ from what was happening in the late 1990s and early 2000s? So over to you, Ernesto, to get us started here. CASTAÑEDA: Excellent. Thank you very much, Ted. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today and talking about this important topic. And kind of answering this great question, we have an immigration situation happening in the U.S., like it has always happened. Since the first people arrived with the Mayflower, there’s been always people coming to the U.S. So I’d like to start with that historical context, that there is not a particular crisis that we’re facing in a security or national security sense, as the United States. There is indeed a humanitarian crisis. And religious groups, churches, nonprofits, government offices have been helping a lot of immigrants that are new arrivals. And there’s an issue of asylum seekers, refugees. So that’s a pressing issue that we see in the streets in many of our cities. And that’s the pressure. And that’s why it’s great to have so many people in the audience that know people in this situation. So it’s a human phenomenon. It’s a people phenomenon. And it’s something we can do a lot to help through nonprofits, through churches, through universities, organizations. And it’s also that governments can improve or make worse. So it’s good to have this conversation today. In terms of numbers, that’s a great way to start because in the media there’s a lot of emphasis on these record numbers. And whenever somebody says that about immigration, let’s—you always have to remember that for the most part of history, the human population has kept growing. That may change in the near future, and that’s not the case necessarily for the U.S. and other countries. But there’s always more people in the world. So by definition, there will always be more people on the move. What is interesting is that since World War II it’s only around 3.5 percent, 3 to 4 percent of the global population who actually live in a country different from the one that they are born. And that is constant. So, again, there’s no crisis in terms of numbers. We see such high number of people counted because the state said now—very recently, starting with the pandemic and the beginning of Title 42—rather than measuring apprehensions and then deportations, so putting people in prison with their numbers and their names and all that. And the government, because of the pandemic, was allowed for public health reasons to send people back to Mexico. And often they are not keeping track of who they even were. So all the numbers that we have been reported since the pandemic, so with Trump and with Biden, are for apprehensions, which are very different. So we know for a fact that it’s the same individuals encountered over and over and over again. How many times this person? Nobody knows. So we cannot say, OK, the real number is this or that, because that is almost impossible to do. But we know for a fact—and that’s the reason I brought it in the conversation—is that the official figures of two million or two million and a half since Biden became president, it’s an over count because it includes people coming legally from Afghanistan, from Ukraine, and we can talk about later, but it’s also including a lot of people from Central America and Mexico that are repeatedly trying to turn themselves into us for asylum, and they are saying: “No, thank you. Go back and wait until we reopen the door.” So those numbers are not true. Probably we are at numbers similar to what we saw at the beginning of the Trump administration and what we saw with Obama, and even Bush. So that’s a fact. The numbers are not out of control. But it is true that the immigration system doesn’t work. That’s a bipartisan agreement, that the immigration system that we have in the U.S. is broken. So a couple more things about that, and I’ll wrap it up. So it’s an issue that we don’t have a lot of legal pathways to welcome people. And that’s something that the Biden administration is working on, and we’ll talk about later. But to conclude this opening answer, this is an issue pretty much of international relations. So I’m glad the Council on Foreign Relations is hosting this, because a lot of the movement that we’ve seen lastly has to do with the return to the Taliban from Afghanistan and people coming that were our allies and helping us. The situation in Ukraine, the invasion by Russia of Ukraine, has moved a lot of people that are escaping for their lives. So that’s a new phenomenon, and Europe and America are helping in that effort. But also, we have situations that are not that different, because of internal political issues and economic pressures, that are pulling a lot of people from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Cuba on the move. And they are arriving to the border. And those are the numbers that we are seeing. The people coming for economic reasons from Mexico actually are lower. They are not zero, but they are much lower than historically. So, again, it’s good that we’re going to have today the conversation. It’s all about other issues happening around the world and how the U.S. can engage constructively to help the people and address the situations in those countries, and how this becomes part of geopolitics and international relations of the U.S. Thank you. ALDEN: Fabulous. Thank you very much, Ernesto. That was a superb framing of some of the dynamics at the southern border. Heidi, I want to turn to you. I mean, most of these people who are arriving at the southern border are requesting asylum, protection in the United States. Very clear obligation for the United States under international law, clear obligation under our domestic laws to have a due process that’s carried out for people who arrive to determine their eligibility for asylum. But what we’re seeing today, the way you’ve described it, is a real erosion of the norms around asylum. You were on a press conference listening to Democrats this morning. The Republicans in the House have introduced a bill that would effectively block all asylum claims at the border. Ernesto mentioned Title 42 during COVID, which was put in place during the Trump administration but continued under Biden, which blocks many, many of the claims that would otherwise have been sought by those arriving. So what’s going on here? Why have we seen this erosion in what are really quite longstanding laws and norms surrounding those seeking asylum here in the country? ALTMAN: Thanks, Ted. And it’s such a pleasure to be here with you, and with you, Ernesto. And thanks to everyone who joined. It is a moment that I think the word “inflection point” seems to be one that is tossed around a lot, and I think is correct. I think having to get here is such an interesting question. My career started in practice. I was in deportation defense. And I can say that since the first day I set foot in immigration court, it’s always been clear that the United States immigration policy is oriented around enforcement. That’s the center. And that’s a problem that we should talk about today. But there were certain norms that were sort of still respected at the heart of that. And certainly, the right to ask for asylum when arriving at a border was one of them. How did we sort of move astray from that? I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the power of dehumanization. During the Trump administration we saw for the first time language that was explicitly and emphatically dehumanizing about immigrants coming from not just the mouths of elected officials, but the mouth of the president of the United States. And so there’s so much social science out there about what happens when groups of people are referred to in nonhuman ways. And so that’s an invasion of migrants at the border, a flood of migrants at the border, or referring, as the former president did, to migrants as criminals, as rapists. What happens is that people start to feel that they cannot have empathy for that group of people, and it becomes easier to commit violence or to support policies that are inherently violent. When the Biden administration came in, we really felt that there were two paths available to them. I think there still are. (Laughs.) The first path would have been to really sort of carry forth the commitments that were made in those first few weeks and on the campaign trail, and to just get out there and to really embrace the United States history and values as a place that welcomes asylum seekers, a commitment to due process, and to a true sort of revamp, rehaul of this immigration system that for too long has been punitive. The other path was to take a look at these policies that the Trump administration instituted and allow them to become normalized. And I think, in short, the answer to your question is that we are at real risk of anti-asylum, inherently violent policies on the border and in the interior of the United States towards migrants becoming normalized in U.S. policy. ALDEN: I’m going to ask you both, actually, to expand on that a little bit. Maybe I’ll go to Ernesto and then back to Heidi. I mean, the approach I think predates Trump, honestly. I’ve been paying pretty close attention to this stuff since 9/11, and even before. I think can take it all the way back at least to the 1990s in California and Texas. I mean, the approach has been, do you call it, Heidi, prevention through deterrence. I’ll start with you, Ernesto, and then the same question for Heidi. Do we have any evidence that deterrence is at all effective when we’re dealing with the sort of people who are arriving at the border? And there’s a sort of secondary question, is deterrence appropriate when you’re talking about asylum seekers, right? Because they are pursuing a right that’s actually protected under our laws. I hate two-part questions, but that’s a two-part question. (Laughs.) So let’s start with effectiveness and then, since this is a Social Justice Webinar, the rights question of it. Go ahead. CASTAÑEDA: Yes. On the moral aspect, it is their right. It violates international law and it goes against a lot of religious principles of helping people in need, helping the other. But also, in terms of practice, and in terms of policy, in terms of budgeting, in terms of governing, research time and time again in different countries and places shows that this forced deterrence doesn’t work. If people need to migrate to live again with their mother or with their children, they’ll find a way. If people have to escape genocide or war to save their lives, they will find a way to get out of the dangerous place. And, again, we see examples throughout history and throughout places. And the data for the U.S. is just very clear. Building the wall, all the policies that Bush did, Obama, you name it—this has been going on for decades—they cannot stop immigration, undocumented immigration. It’s just a fool’s errand. You just put people at risk. They’re going to come anyway, and you make it harder for them to get settled, to get established. They have to pay $10,000 to a coyote to get from Central America, a smuggler, to get to the U.S. It’s a lot of money that they spend instead of on housing and all that. So if they get deported, they have nothing back home. So if, instead, they could come with a visa and they could use their first $10,000 to rent an apartment for a few months, to get them settled while they get a job, it would be better for America. It would be better for them. It would be better for small businesses. It would be better for renters. So many resources are wasted and so many people’s lives are at risk, so many people die attempting to cross the border or in the ocean coming to Cuba. And, again, the same issue with Africa coming to Europe. Many people die every year in the Mediterranean. And that’s almost a policy by design. That’s one of the internal goals by some people who design these policies to say that an immigrant who realize that by leaving their countries and going to the global north they could die, that they wouldn’t do it. But that is not true. The people that are leaving are not leaving for fun. They are not leaving—most people are not leaving. Most people cannot leave. But the people that have the resources and the networks and the bravery to leave, they’re going to leave anyway. So deterrence doesn’t work. So we’re wasting time and we’re violating the right of asylum, which was already very restricted. It was very hard to prove that you have probable cause, that you were escaping political persecution. It existed, and it was useful for Cubans, for people from Eastern Europe and other cases. But some—coming from Mexico, for example, unless you had a recorded history in the media of being a journalist persecuted for your political views, it was very hard to get asylum. But it was possible. Now even that right to apply for asylum is being denied in the border, when otherwise we act like the pandemic is over but we still pretend that it’s happening at the border. So it is a big issue. I mean, that is the new what is getting worse, as Heidi was saying. ALDEN: Heidi, same question for you. And I have a quick follow up as well. So, the whole prevention through deterrence approach. What is your take on it? Go ahead. ALTMAN: Ernesto, you said it all so beautifully. I’ll try to maybe zero in on a few specifics. One thing that I was reading recently about looking back at some of the early papers, when prevention through deterrence, as they call it, sort of first became formalized, which was in ’94. What you find is that the government and CBP, Customs and Border Protection, and its predecessor Border Control, at that time was very aware of the fact that prevention through deterrence meant that people would die on their way to the United States. And that’s actually written and recorded, this was not something that people discovered later. Government officials didn’t sort of come to realize that if they put these really cruel, harsh border policies in place it would mean that people would be harmed and killed. It’s sort of baked in. And so it is, as Ernesto has said to both of your questions, it’s wrong and it doesn’t work towards its stated purpose. So first, it doesn’t work towards its stated purpose, I just wanted to note specifically under the Biden administration one of the central prevention through deterrence policies is migrant prosecutions. And sometimes you’ll hear the secretary refer to that as a consequence delivery, which is sort of another version of prevention through deterrence. So migrant prosecutions is when someone arrives at the border, and they attempt to enter without permission—usually because they’re going to seek asylum—in addition to going through the civil immigration detention and deportation process, they also face a prosecution under federal law, and can face sometimes months or years in criminal custody before then they just go back to the immigration system. We did a survey at our organization, my colleague Jesse Franzblau went down to the border and talked to about 150 people who were facing prosecution. Most of them didn’t know if they were in criminal or immigration custody. They just knew that they were sort of in this system, and that it was miserable and depriving them of their rights, and their liberty, and their ability to see their family. But they were sticking it out because they needed to be here because they had fled. So I think it’s this idea that people who were forced to flee violence have this very specific idea of what the policies are on the border is just wrong. The other thing I’m just going to say is that it shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter if it decreases the numbers. And this is a question of metrics. How do we measure success? And so yesterday you may have seen the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement sort of lauding the success of some of the new limited pathway programs that we’ll talk about that they have put out. And the basis for this celebration is that in a short period, some of the numbers on the border, the government claims, have decreased. Another way that you could frame that same announcement is that these policies have resulted in more people who are in need of refuge and asylum in the United States being turned away at the border, without any ability to express that here, and sent back to harm, right? And so why does our government look at it from that first lens rather than the latter? And that’s the fundamental disconnect and where we’re sort of fundamentally at risk of back to the sort of erosion of norms question that we began with. ALDEN: Why don’t we turn—and, Heidi, I’m going to stick with you for a minute. You raised the Biden administration’s limited pathways initiative. We’ve been talking here—this is a short conversation, so we’ll go back in some more detail, I’m sure, when we get questions from the audience. But talk a little bit first about what the Biden administration is doing, and your assessment of what sort of legal pathways might be necessary to actually deal with this problem in a more thorough and human way than we have been able to do as a country. ALTMAN: Sure. And for those who have been following the incredibly complicated web of policies that are now in place at the border, the limited pathways we’re talking about are a series of parole programs—parole, being a method for people to enter the United States with, essentially, permission to remain for a limited period of time—one or two years, usually. It’s not asylum. It does not offer a pathway to citizenship. It doesn’t offer stability, in that sense. So, I mean, to answer your question, I think these programs are limited in numbers. They’re limited in the permanence that they provide. They leave people in the United States in a very vulnerable spot. And then the eligibility requirements that the administration has put in place for these programs are further restricting and sort of make the programs inaccessible for those who need it most. You must be able to get a passport. You must be able to seek—to apply for the program from the country you need to flee. So to answer your question, the biggest overall answer to your question is that asylum access needs to be restored at ports of entry. When someone arrives at the southern border having fled, making the decision that Ernesto says, any of us can think about. What would it take you actually get you to leave, right? To pack up real fast and leave your loved ones, your school, your job, your community? It’s not a win. So when people arrive, there needs to be the ability to go to a port of entry and say, I’m here because I need to seek asylum, and be processed through. Right now it’s a crapshoot whether you’re going to actually get access. And so that’s what forces people into these very dangerous pathways. And that’s why last year had the highest number of reported deaths of migrants at the border. So obviously access to asylum. There are other executive actions that the administration can and should have already taken. Temporary Protected Status, for example, is a way to provide more meaningful and lasting status for people from countries where it’s not safe to return, for any of a number of reasons. There are other parole programs that would lead to more permanent stability. And there’s a number of other sort of executive actions that could be taken that would allow some protection short of what Congress should be providing, of course, which is a pathway to citizenship. ALDEN: OK. Excellent. Ernesto, I’m going to ask you the same question, but maybe with a slight twist before we go to questions. Which is, are there things going on, either at the governmental level or the community level, that you find hopeful with respect to this issue? I’ll throw out one on my own. I was very heartened to see the Biden administration’s announcement of the creation of this Welcome Corps. Now, that’s a somewhat different population. You’re talking more about traditional refugees. I grew up in Canada. I’ve paid close attention for many years to the Canadian private refugee sponsorship program. My sister’s church has sponsored five Syrian families, I think. I was very encouraged to see the administration embrace that model, if initially on a fairly small scale. But do you see things out there that you find hopeful in dealing with this set of challenges? CASTAÑEDA: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the American people want to help. Churches are helping the people that manage to get here, across the border. For example, in Washington, DC, where many of us are at, it was very heartwarming to see how people were, largely through churches, organizing to get furniture, clothing and stuff for the Afghan families coming from Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal. Same thing, a lot of mobilization in schools and everything to help students from Ukraine, and things like that. And then, yes, the welcoming program, where citizens, families, groups, churches can sponsor newcomers from Venezuela, from Cuba now, from Afghanistan, from Ukraine, following the successful model from Canada with Syrians. It’s a good way for civil society, that has always been very strong in America—or very well-organized, very well-funded, which you don’t have in France, for example—to actively participate in immigration, integration, and welcoming. Unfortunately, these groups don’t set policy. And it’s still—for somebody to get to the border, it depends on the council of people, on the people at the border, people doing the interview on the access to legal services, et cetera, for people to be successful in their arrival to then be welcomed. So it’s a good move in the right direction. People want to help. Also, we have the need for employers. And Laura mentions that in the question, or I peeked at it. The American population is getting older. We have deaths with COVID. We are growing fast in the recovery. As you see over and over, construction, restaurants, et cetera, agricultural workers, there’s not enough people. We need people. And we’re not talking about millions. We’re talking about half a million every year. That would be great for the economy. So employers are ready to welcome them, neighbors are ready to help, churches are ready to help. So some conservatives would say we just need the government to get out of the way and let people take care of business. ALDEN: Yeah, I mean, just to mention Canada, this is the overall immigration stream. This is not just refugees and asylum seekers. But they’re planning to take half a million a year in Canada, which has about one-tenth of our population, about the size of California. But they’re looking at demographics and they say, look, we have no growth in our labor force from births here in the country. And we need a large immigrant stream. But that’s a broader debate. Irina, Rivka, I want to turn it over to you and see what sorts of questions, comments we have from our audience. OPERATOR: Thank you, Ted. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question is from John Chane. CHANE: Thank you, very, very much. My name is John Chane. I’m the retired Episcopal bishop of Washington, DC. So I know some of the stories, Ernesto and Heidi, about life there. I also come from an immigrant family. I live in Southern California now, retired, and it’s a wonderful experience because you can speak Spanish here and we have a wonderful culture, which is very, very ethnic-centered and much, I think, embraced. The issue for me is, how do we change the political narrative? I mean, churches, temples, mosques, even, are very much engaged in this process. But how do you change the rhetoric? I can talk about immigration and embrace it, even though we’re going to build a thirty-foot high wall here at Friendship Park, right here along the ocean and along the Mexican border. When I go to other parts of this country to speak and I talk about immigration, literally I get hammered about all those people that are coming into this country and taking jobs from Americans. It’s crazy. It’s a lousy narrative. How do you move the political needle to make a difference? Because the politicians are the ones who are being—using it as a way of moving forward in their own careers? ALDEN: Heidi, it’s not an easy one. But why don’t you start us off on that one? ALTMAN: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, John, for being with us. Right, this is the question. (Laughs.) It really requires political courage. And I think I just this morning was at the press conference that Ted referenced. And I tweeted it. I tweeted out the different beautiful statements that we heard from Senator Booker’s soaring rhetoric about welcoming and the faith-based commitment to asylum in the United States. And I just before we started speaking looked at my Twitter thread and saw that I had a mention where someone had written back: “Asylum? Obscenity, this is an invasion.” And people are hearing that from governors. They’re hearing it from elected officials. And the thing is that there’s not a strong enough counter narrative coming from the party that is in power right now. So there may be small policies that are being announced so that we can embrace—I think that the sponsorship policy is really exciting, I agree. The private sponsorship policy. But we need the president—we need Democratic leadership in the Senate and the House getting behind the microphone and talking about the values—the values of asylum, the values of welcome, how this is—has a tradition in so many faiths. And that’s not what we have, right? So when we have the president—when Secretary Mayorkas goes out on the Sunday talk shows, they’re using the language of deterrence. They don’t use the word “invasion,” but they’re, again, looking to these metrics of decreasing numbers as the outcomes that they want. And we really need that counter narrative at a leadership level. And from where we sit, we need to be demanding that of our leadership. We need to be demanding the positive policies and the change in rhetoric urgently. Because we don’t know who’s going to be in office in two years. We try not to make this too political, so maybe Ernesto will help. (Laughs.) ALDEN: Ernesto, do you want to add anything to that, quickly? CASTAÑEDA: It’s an important question. Yeah. I mean, this is a disinformation campaign that has been going on for decades. We had historical precedents, but since the last immigration reform of Reagan in 1986, there was this, “OK, we’re going to recognize these people, but we don’t want more people to come, and we’re going to penalize, we’re going to have punishment for the people that employ them or the people that come.” And that hasn’t worked. But we had that rhetoric that has been used time and time again, first in California by a candidate for governor and then nationwide. Because people like Trump think, and it does work on the short term to get elected, to get attention, to get there. But also want we have to remind politicians that want to be opportunists, is that in the long term, people catch up and it doesn’t work forever. So even for the congressional elections, when Trump was president, it wasn’t as successful for the candidates to use that as a main platform. And even Trump—(inaudible)—to Black Lives Matter and other topics in the reelection campaign because immigration wasn’t as successful to get him beyond the base. Most Americans, whether they’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents, are in favor of DREAMers, in favor of immigration reform. So it’s something that politicians have used for their own purposes on the right. And it’s something that, as Heidi was saying, a lot of centrists and even Democrats are afraid that they cannot touch immigration, they cannot be seen openly as pro-immigrant because they are going to be destroyed and they’re going to lose. But that is not true. Most of the American population have a more nuanced and more moderate view on immigration. So this is just a culture that immigrants have been terrified by very loud voices that are anti-immigrant, that have demonstrated, and are very vocal and very loud. So it’s important for the Council on Foreign Relations and all of your churches and places that we change the rhetoric. That’s a big homework that we can do. And I think we can do it little by little, change the way we think about these issues. Because all these facts that we hear often about immigrants are just not true. ALDEN: Thanks very much. I’m going to use the moderator’s prerogative to add one small thing. I was in the—I was a reporter for a long time, in the media thinking a lot about public opinion. And I’ve been outside of DC for four years now. And I think some of this has got to come from a grassroots level. And that’s partly why I’m excited by these private refugee sponsorship programs. They’re very small at this moment, but I think part of what needs to happen is when people know immigrants, when they know asylum seekers, when they know refugees, when they’re in their communities a lot of the dehumanization that Heidi talks about, that stuff goes away. And I think there are ways in which we need to make the reality of an immigrant society here much more accessible to people. And so it’s not just coming from the top down; it’s coming from the bottom up. And it has to happen at both directions. Riki, let’s go to the next question here. OPERATOR: Our next question is a written submission from Laura Alexander from the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She writes: Groups in my home state of Nebraska have recently been holding conversations about the possibility of a more robust welcome for immigrants at the statewide level. This initiative includes business and agricultural leaders, as well as religious and community leaders, because we’re in such dire need of workers in our state. There’s a limit to what this coalition can do, since immigration policy is largely a federal matter. But have you see individual U.S. states crafting policies or advocating with the federal government in a way that could lead to a more humane, a more effective, and more sane immigration policy? ALDEN: Great question. Thank you. And shout out to Nebraska. I was just there a couple of months ago for a wonderful conference at the university in Lincoln. Ernesto, do you want to start us off there? I know you’ve done some work at the urban level, at the state level. Are there things that can happen at the state level that can make a real difference here? Or things that maybe are already happening already? CASTAÑEDA: They should, and they can. But I think my short answer to that question will be, no. States are not doing enough to welcome. I think Utah has sometimes some good ideas about this, but in New York, for example, it’s always been an immigrant, a very diverse city. I would characterize their policies as laissez-faire. They let immigrants figure it out, but they provide very little support in reality. So I think we can do—the states and the cities, the governors could do more to welcome immigrants and try to push for better policies. Like what they are doing right now. It’s a shame that even the Mayor of New York and democratic governors are complaining about the new arrivals of people coming in buses, and that they cannot offer them any help or resources. And because governors and mayors are used to letting immigrants take care of themselves—which they do. They are coming here to work and their families are going to support them. Or civil society, churches to support and provide that welfare in the beginning. There’s very little support compared to Canada or Europe. So to ask for them to do that, it’s a big stretch, but we should keep pushing that. ALDEN: Heidi, do you want to add anything on that one? ALTMAN: I think what I’ll just add is that there’s this whole—there’s a whole roster of welcome policies as Ernesto is referencing. Access to benefits, shelter, services. But there’s a flipside too that I think we have to not lose sight of. Chicago, where my organization, National Immigrant Justice Center, is headquartered, has a really robust sanctuary policy at the city level. And I think that you just have to remember that once immigrants are in our communities, and a robust part of our communities. And that it is equally as important for cities and localities to say that they will not work in collaboration or cooperation with the federal government on enforcement issues. Because when that entanglement happens what it does is it erodes trust at a very general level among immigrant communities who then become afraid to—who lose trust in all public institutions, not just the police, and become afraid to send their kids to school, become afraid to go to the DMV. So I think that having that real clear red line, or wall, whatever you want to call it, between federal enforcement and the work of state and local law enforcement agencies is equally critical. ALDEN: Excellent. Thanks very much. Riki, next question, please. OPERATOR: I’m going to combine two questions. The first is from Christina Kilby from James Madison University. She writes: What risks or fragilities do you see with the new Welcome Corps, or private sponsorship program for refugees? For example, will religious groups only sponsor refugees who share their religion? Or will refugees feel pressure to convert in order to be attractive to private sponsors? How can we welcome more refugees while mitigating potential downsides of this new program? Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty asks a question: Are there examples of religious support for immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in other countries that have made a difference in public opinion and policy that those of us in the U.S. could learn from? ALDEN: Which of you wants to start off with that one? ALTMAN: (Laughs.) Go ahead, Ernesto. CASTAÑEDA: OK. (Laughs.) So I think Christina raises important issues. And that will be for the audience to help the stranger, whatever religion they have and whatever tradition, which we saw with Afghans. It wasn’t only mosques helping them, or it wasn’t only helping Christians or other religions, Afghans. It was helping across the board. And that was important. And I think it will be important for people here to not see this as a direct opportunity to proselytize or to evangelize, and more of an opportunity for the congregation or the church to do a service to other human beings. Because, talking about other countries, I’ve also have done work in Spain and in France. And in France, the churches are not allowed to do all this work. And they don’t, or a large part. There are exemptions, but it’s not as active as in the U.S. But in Spain, I saw many examples of nonprofits and churches that had a Christian or Catholic brand. And a lot of Moroccan immigrants that were Muslim felt that tension and that pressure to convert to apply for asylum or to receive services. It wasn’t a direct thing. But, for example, something as basic as giving thanks or having a prayer before having a meal in a soup kitchen, that was a tough issue for some of the immigrants and the refugees. So I would invite all of you that are helping to try to create that wall between the religious and the service sector, so that people choose to become part of the church later once they are settled in your city, rather than making that as a mechanism to attract them. And unfortunately, the welcome package it has to be—I mean, civil society have to keep alert so that small churches don’t take this as an opportunity to increase their numbers. It’s good that you raised that up, thank you. ALDEN: Thank you. That’s a very thoughtful answer. Heidi, did you want to add anything, or should we  move on? The only thing I would just add quickly on the Welcome Corps initiative, which I’ve been looking at, the potential for community sponsorship is much broader than the churches. The churches, obviously, have historically played a key role here, but any group of five people, and they’re encouraging workplaces, and universities, and schools, and civic organizations. So the potential here I think is to go well beyond the churches, even though the churches, of course, have historically played a really big role in this area. Riki, back to you. OPERATOR: Our next written question is from Holly Atkinson from CUNY School of Medicine. She writes: Physicians, psychologists, social workers, and other health care workers are involved in conducting forensic exams for asylees and submitting affidavits to immigration officials, which we know statistically increases the odds of asylum being granted. But besides doing these exams, how can the medical profession specifically partner with the legal community to advocate for more human immigration policies? ALDEN: Heidi was this something you—oh, go ahead, Ernesto. I was thinking Heidi might have encountered this directly in some of the work she’s done in DC. But either of you, go ahead. CASTAÑEDA: Heidi, please, yeah. ALTMAN: No, no, go ahead. Get started, I’ll follow you. CASTAÑEDA: No, no, I was going to say that I’m going to let you answer that. (Laughter.) ALDEN: Well, I think you’ve worked on the ground at that level maybe more than Ernesto, so I was going to throw it to you, yeah. ALTMAN: I just have to say that it is—the gratitude, as legal practitioners, that we feel to the doctors and the therapists who are willing to give of their time to do these forensic evaluations. And this goes to the point that you made earlier, Ernesto, we’re talking about access to asylum, but then actually getting asylum is a whole other story. It’s incredibly difficult. The law is so complex. And we are still living in a system where if you’re seeking asylum on the basis of torture, you have to prove that you have scars from that torture. And that’s re-traumatizing, and it often involves a medical examination that can be re-traumatizing. And so working with doctors who come to that work from a place of having been trained on how to deal with people who are experiencing trauma, who come from a place of compassion, it just makes all the difference in the world. One thing I’ll say is that if you’re looking for a place to contribute, it is often very difficult for people to find practitioners who are willing to do those examinations in detention, for people who are in ICE detention. And that’s where the need is even greater. And so it’s an experience, getting to go to immigration detention. I would just say, if that’s something you’re interested in doing and you want to be connected with an organization in your area, reach out to me. I’m happy to make that connection. But then the other thing I would say is that there are such rich partnerships and advocacy at the federal level. Physicians for Human Rights I think is a great example of an organization that is looking at what is happening on the border with Title 42, with—they looked a return to Mexico, all these policies, and talking about it as a public health issue. That when you have the equivalent of essentially refugee camps on the Mexico side of the border because of these policies, that’s a public health issue. There’s no access to health care. There’s no access to certainly mental health care. So there’s just a lot of work that can be done there. And at least I can say from the immigrant advocacy community we’re always looking to partner with associations and organizations that are looking at this issue from that lens. ALDEN: Thank you. That was a very rich answer, with a lot of good, actionable items there. I actually just want to spin this out into a slightly broader question, you talked about this in this answer and I think we talked about it in other places. The categories under our asylum law, the sort of persecution or violence that you need to be fleeing and that you need to prove in order to be eligible for asylum, these categories essentially came out in the wake of World War II. Are they at all appropriate anymore? Even the sort of stark division we have between asylum seekers and economic migrants, which I think is often not clear cut at all. I realize this is not on the political agenda at the moment, but do we need to be thinking more broadly about whether these categories that we’ve been locked into for a long time are really an appropriate way of understanding and responding to this set of migration challenges? Ernesto, maybe I’ll throw that to you first, because Heidi was just on the spot, but. CASTAÑEDA: Exactly. So part of the challenge, and the solution, is to get away from these very strict categories that are legal. Meaning, they’re created by bureaucrats. They’re created by the state for their own purposes, and they don’t often reflect the reality on the ground. So to continue answering that question, I see also that Don asks, why do asylum-seekers often cross several countries to get to the U.S. rather than stopping in another country along the way? And that’s why we have to keep—both things at the same time. So people escaping Venezuela, let’s say right now, or Cuba, they may dislike the government. They may disagree with the policies of the government. They may have gone to a protest to show discontent. And because of that, they may be having threats from local police or local authorities as dissidents. And then they may have a political reason to leave. But also because of the dire economic situation, partly because of economic sanctions of the U.S. that are affecting the population and, again, on the foreign relations aspect we can also do a lot to help or make the situation in Latin American or other countries worse. But if the situation is really bad and there’s political discontent and the family is suffering economically, they have to move for security reasons and for economic reasons. So this is already a mixed thing. And then once somebody leaves their country, they have to look for safety. That can be in the country next door, but the reality is also they have to really have safety, which is not the case if you’re in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala. And if you are Haitian, for example, and you are Black, or if you don’t speak Spanish because you are from the Middle East, you will have people extorting you, trying to kidnap you, police trying to bribe you every five minutes. It’s not safe, unfortunately. It’s a reality. It should be different, but it is the case. And they also need to get a job. And it’s very hard for an economic—for Nicaragua, also with a lot of issues, a Venezuelan, it’s going to be very hard for them to go to Nicaragua along the way to the U.S. and say: “I’m going to stop here because I got a job and I’m safe.” The people that do, do. And that happens. But many of them are trying to meet somebody already that they have—a brother, a sibling, a family member—somebody they know that is going to offer them a job as soon as they come here. So they not only are going to be safe, but they also have to be economically safe. They have to have a source of income so they can feed themselves and they don’t have to depend on charity forever, and also a lot of the times they cannot bring everybody back. So they have to make enough money to send remittances, to send money to support the grandma who’s too sick to travel but needs to buy medicines. So they need to have a job. And the U.S., Canada, Europe, they are the economies that have this need for labor, and paying hard currency that goes a long way in Cuba and El Salvador. So it’s always an economic and a political issue, and an issue of safety. And for example, Mexico has a very small percentage of immigrants. It would do better as a country if it had more immigrants, but it’s very bad at providing asylum papers and refugee status to as many people as they should, and to provide jobs. There’s a community, but it could be bigger. But arriving to Mexico is not enough for somebody from many of these countries to say I’m safe, and I have a job, and I don’t need to go to the U.S. They need to keep traveling further to accomplish their goals of being no longer persecuted by any state actor and to have access to their family and to economic resources. ALDEN: Thank you, Ernesto. Heidi, do you want to add a little bit to that? ALTMAN: Yeah. I’m so glad you asked this question, because the grounds for asylum and then the evidentiary standards that have to be met. I wish that when we encounter clients at NIJC we could say: “You have a strong claim. We feel confident.” Often there is very little correlation between the strength of your asylum claim and whether you’ll actually win in court. And so you have to meet the definition of a refugee to win asylum. In order to do so, you have to show you’ll be persecuted on the basis of your race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or being a member of a particular social group. That’s where we fit things like a woman who fled domestic violence and her husband is a member of the security forces, right? She’s going to have to show that she’s a member of a particular social group, because the police won’t protect her from domestic violence.  I sometimes wish I had a picture of the hundreds of pages of evidence that our attorneys file for one asylum case. Literally hundreds of papers. And remember that more than half of people seeking asylum in immigration court don’t have a lawyer. So how are they doing that, in their second, third language? Very quick anecdote. I remember right before the pandemic, I was visiting an immigration detention facility in New Mexico. It’s a private prison, as many of them are—huge, private prison. And I was volunteering basically helping out with the local organization that provides a know your rights orientation to people detained there. And I ended up sitting with a group of men who were all from western Africa. One of them in particular spoke an indigenous language. So I was trying to communicate with him sort of through French, and he was looking—he was trying to understand the actual asylum application. And he pointed to a particular social group. And he said what is this? And I’ve done a lot of KYRs, know your rights presentations in my time. And just in that moment it really struck me that I’m trying to explain in French to a man who doesn’t speak French, or English, what is a particular social group. How can I communicate this clearly enough that he can then go to the immigration judge, this young, sweet, twenty-year-old guy, and say: “My tribe is a particular social group, and because of my membership in that particular social group, I’m going to be persecuted if I go back, and it’s connected to my political opinion?” It’s impossible. We are really setting people up to fail. And so we really hoped to see a lot of regulatory change under this administration to simplify and also clarify the ways that categories can be fit more cleanly into those groups. And we haven’t seen that yet. ALDEN: Excellent. Thank you both very much. Riki, back to you. Are there additional questions? OPERATOR: Yes. We have a question from Thomas Walsh from the Universal Peace Federation. Who writes: Are there nations you can point to that have managed immigration more effectively and compassionately with better policies and best practices than the USA? ALDEN: Who wants to start off with that one? CASTAÑEDA: Unfortunately, in many ways in practice on the ground, in terms of acceptance of religious diversity or freedom of religion and all that, the U.S. is a leader. And we have a proved history of making Americans out of people from around the world. Our policies leave a lot to be desired, though. I like a lot the practical and the policies on the ground of Barcelona, for example. They are more likely to approve somebody for asylum in Spain overall. They have a tradition of human rights. They’ve been growing a lot in the economy because of people coming from other parts of Spain and internationally, so they know that their economy requires that. They have been very successful in making sure that all the children of immigrants that are in their schools learn Catalan. And soon enough, they become Catalan, because they have also this issue between Spain and Catalonia, that immigrants could be a tricky issue. I interviewed hundreds of immigrants living in Barcelona from different parts of the world, and they feel that they belong to the city, to Catalonia, and therefore to Spain and Europe. So it’s very, very successful in people getting access to jobs, to rights, and to this sense of belonging I think that is key. And the way that they do that is that they, first and foremost, protect the rights of the people. Welcome them actively. For example, there was this program where they have staffing and funds for that. For example, there will be kids doing family reunification. So the mother from Peru has been living in Spain, working legally for a while. Now she’s asking for her kid to come from Peru legally. The kid, a teenager fourteen years old, is going to now live in Barcelona. So the kid will be invited with other youth to the opera. They mayor will welcome them, give them a speech, give them a little letter that say now you’re a citizen of Barcelona. So it’s a small thing that costs very little, but then the reunified youth feels literally welcomed by the mayor to their new city. So that goes a long, long way. And, again, it’s not tons of resources. But it does a lot. So we can do a lot of things like that at the local level. And the other thing that Barcelona does really right is that they start by respecting the language, the religion, and the culture of that person coming. They say, “OK, you identify as Bolivian. OK, you want to organize the group as Bolivian immigrants in Barcelona? Here’s some funds to do cultural activities. OK, you’re a Muslim? Here’s money so that you can do stuff around religion openly with no persecution,” et cetera. So that’s a very good way to do what America does, but with intention, with government support, and with resources, and with the staffing, and less fear of being stopped by the police and deported than we have in some places here. ALDEN: Excellent. Thanks very much, Ernesto. Heidi, do you have other countries or jurisdictions that you look at and say maybe they understand some things that we don’t, and do this better? ALTMAN: Yeah. One place I would look specifically, where the United States is sort of egregiously out of step with international norms, is the reliance on incarceration and immigration detention for processing. So we use private prisons and county jails to manage immigration, asylum seekers. The way they are greeted in the United States is often through detention. So I think that there are a lot of examples around the world of countries that have developed, in partnership with civil society, case management programs that are really community based that allow for a phase out entirely of the use of detention. And these programs have really high efficacy rates. They’re obviously much less expensive than detention. Colombia is a country that recently has been held up as actually doing this quite well. And they are, of course, receiving significant numbers of refugees from Venezuela. They are not using detention for that population. They are instead using a case management-type approach, combined—and this is probably the key—paired with regularization. They are providing status for these refugees when they arrive. And that assists with integration which Ernesto has spoken to beautifully. There are many other examples. But it’s an important place to look for models. ALDEN: Yeah. I think that’s a really important one. I mean, two areas where I find it quite depressing that the evidence seems very clear that there are better, of course, alternatives to detention is one. There’s been a lot of good research on that in the United States. Much more effective than keeping people incarcerated. And the second, which you hinted at, Heidi, providing legal counsel to asylum seekers, which we don’t do. Again, I think the evidence is pretty clear, would make the process much more effective and efficient and controlled than it is. I think one of the reasons you get the public reaction that you do in this country is just the sense that the system is not in control. So those were both excellent examples. We just have a couple of minutes left before I turn it back to Irina. Any last words? You’ve got a one-minute quick closer for each of you. Ernesto, any last thoughts you want to leave us with? CASTAÑEDA: Yes. I’m so glad that Heidi brought up Colombia. They’ve been doing a terrific job with a neighbor going through a lot of turmoil, accepting large numbers of people, and regularizing them. Giving them papers so they can work there legally has gone a long way. And because of that, those people are not coming here. They are staying in Colombia. They will become Colombians, and their children will too. We can support through foreign policy that more consciously, and we can start policies like that, and make it reality on the ground. And just to close, along that to remember the promise of immigration reform, which will be that to provide amnesty to people in the U.S., DREAMers and others, that have been living here often for more than ten years. And they live with us, they go to our churches, they pay taxes, they have a job, they feel at home. But they don’t have papers to travel and visit family members, and all that. We’re always fighting Title 42 and the parole and all these issues that are at hand and are emergencies. So I think it will be important for advocates, like many of you here, to keep the pressure to take care of the people that are already here, to go the Colombia way. If we make them citizens, everybody benefits. And I stay away from this how can we stop people from coming, how can we push people away. That’s not going to work. And if it worked, it would be bad news for the U.S. ALDEN: Thank you very much, Ernesto. Heidi, I’m afraid you’ve got thirty seconds. So go, last thought here. ALTMAN: We just have to keep doing what we’re doing here today. We have to talk about this issue even around the dinner table, Thanksgiving table, and in a nuanced way, and in a way that acknowledges humanity. And check our friends and our colleagues when they use terms like “flood,” or “wave,” or “invasion,” and remember that we’re talking about moms, dads, kids, loved ones, people who have left communities behind and are seeking safety. And I am so glad that we were able to really do that, I think, in a nuanced way today. So thanks, Ted. ALDEN: Wonderful. Thanks to both of you for an incredibly rich conversation. Back over to you, Irina, for a closing note here. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. This was a wonderful conversation. And we will be sharing with you all a link to the video and the transcript. I hope that you will share it widely with your community, because there was a lot of important information discussed today. You can follow Heidi Altman on Twitter at @heidiraltman, Ernesto Castañeda at @drernestocast, and Ted Alden at @edwardalden. And of course, you can continue to follow us on Twitter at @CFR_religion. Please do share any feedback with us on topics or speakers for further Social Justice Webinar sessions and for the Religion and Foreign Policy Program more broadly at [email protected]. Our next webinar will be on Lula’s presidency and the future of Brazil on Thursday, February 2, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. So you should be receiving that invitation momentarily if you haven’t already. So, again, thank you all for today’s conversation and we hope you have a wonderful day.

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, CEO of the Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy, and Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, associate professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, discuss women’s role in the Iran protests, the political and religious aspects of the movement, and what it means for the future of political Islam and Iranian women. Ray Takeyh, CFR’s Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. This series convenes religion and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. The webinar is on the record, and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on our iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Ray Takeyh with us to moderate today’s discussion on the protests in Iran. Ray Takeyh is the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at CFR. His areas of specialization are Iran, U.S. foreign policy, and the modern Middle East. He served as a senior advisor on Iran at the U.S. State Department, a fellow at Yale University, and has held other positions. He’s the author or coauthor of six books. Most recently, his last one was The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty. So, Ray, thank you very much for doing this. I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce our speakers and to moderate the conversation. TAKEYH: Yes. Thank you very much, everybody, for joining. Today we have two terrific speakers. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, besides having a very timely last name, was a former parliamentarian in Iran, of the reformist variety. And today she’s the CEO of the Nonviolent Initiative for Democracy. Professor Tabaar is a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School. His specializations are international security and Middle East politics. He’s the author of many timely and important books. I want to delve right into this discussion. And I want to begin with Parliamentarian Haghighatjoo. In forty-two years since its inception, the Islamic Republic has faced many different kind of protests from many different kind of factions. And the question that usually comes up is why are the current protest that began in September, with the death of Ms. Amini different—or, are they different in any way? Please. HAGHIGHATJOO: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me. And thank you, Ray, for introducing me. I believe this movement is different from the previous movement for several reasons. First of all, as many may know, that Iran’s constitution is a discriminatory constitution. It discriminates against minority groups, including women, ethnic groups, and religious groups. So women have faced difficulty for the past forty years. And I think in, recent events before September 2022, the morality police violated women, brutally cracked down on them on enforcing the hijab law. And I think women reached the point, after the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police, that enough is enough. So one important aspect has been women’s issues. Women have been the face of the movement. Also, the majority of people in the country are dissatisfied with how the regime runs everyday life, has been deteriorated. And I think everyone, to some extent, felt the anger. And different groups came together. There is very limited space on social, economic, political area in the country. So youths also joined with women and the movement [women] have created. I think another point is that the current movement, I believe, calls for fundamental change, which we can read as a call for a regime change. Even though different people joined the movement for different reasons, and some may want improvement of rights they would like, I think a great number of people really want fundamental change. TAKEYH: Thank you. Professor Tabaar, do you see this movement this same way? And do you believe that it can be durable? What is your perspective on the nature and the resilience of the movement? TABAAR: OK. Thank you. First of all, thank you, Irina and Ray, for the invitation and for the introduction. It’s great to be here on this panel with Fatemeh. I agree with Fatemeh that this is a very radical and widespread movement. It’s multiclass. It has affected different segments of the society, different strata in the society, different parts of the country we see being involved in this movement. Also, she’s absolutely right that this is probably one of the most radical movements that the Islamic Republic has been facing since 1979. There’s no call for reform, for gradual change. If anything, the protesters are calling for a completely different political system. So in that sense, it’s quite different. Another element that is very different in this movement, which is kind of related to this section of CFR, Religion and Foreign Policy, is the role of religion in this movement. There doesn’t seem to be any role for religion in this movement, which is quite astonishing for a country in which religion always played a major role. This time around, we don’t see any reference to religion, or very few, in the slogans, in the protesters’ platform. Not much. We don’t see clerics to be an influential part of this movement. So that’s another element. In fact, many social scientists in Iran have been writing commentaries and organizing events discussing this phenomenon, that why is it that suddenly the society has become so secular? And in some ways, some of them even argue that this could be potentially a far more significant development than even the ’79 revolution. So in that sense, this is quite remarkable, what you see. To what extent this is temporary or not, this role of religion, we have to see. But in that sense, it is different. But the question that is this going to lead to any major change? In the short term, if by change we mean political change, a change in the regime, probably not. We have already witnessed that the street have—that protests have kind of declined in the past couple of weeks. So in that sense, maybe not. But this is a long-term challenge. This is a long-term challenge between the state and the society. And even the strategies of the regime understand and they’re quite outspoken that this is going to be a long-term issue that they have to deal with. What they’re going to do to amend or to reduce this tension with the society, we’ll have to see. But, as I said, this is long-term. But let me just say one final point. And that is, the challenge that the protesters have faced is that they were not—or, they haven’t been able to bring the silent majority out. This hasn’t happened. This is the majority that sympathizes with the protesters but, for a variety of reasons, has decided not to come out yet. That’s why we haven’t seen the political changes that many people were expecting. TAKEYH: It is often suggested when you’re looking at this movement, and I’ll start with Ms. Haghighatjoo, it is suggested that it lacks organization, it lacks structure, and it lacks leadership. I’m going to ask you two questions. I think that’s true. Is that necessary for the movement at this stage? And second of all, is—does it need to have that at some point? And how will it have that in an internally repressive society? HAGHIGHATJOO: Yes. I think the main shortcoming of the movement is lack of leadership. Clear, united leadership. That doesn’t mean that at the street level there is no leadership. There are several reasons for that. The one main issue is the regime cracked down heavily. Over thirty thousand people got arrested. Many of them are those who have a potential [for] leadership. So if I look at any prison in Iran, we could see those who have leaders. So basically one scenario can be seen as leaders are forming from within prison. Just to name a few, I can say Narges Mohammedi can be one of those really who has a great potential vision, aspiration to be leader. Outside of the country, as we’ve seen—and it’s unique for the past seventy years—diaspora has played an important role in supporting the movement. But as we know, eighty thousand people attended the Berlin rally. Over fifty thousand people rallied in Toronto in October. But basically, still we don’t see a unified leadership because of different issues. One is historical fear, which goes back to 1979 leadership that Khomeini and its allies that have a long-lasting network throughout the country, could take over and purge these ideological differences, personality differences, and sometimes lack of a great leadership, and also the Iranian security forces manipulation. A combination of these several factors do not allow the opposition outside of Iran to come together and get united. Even if there have been some efforts, I don’t see it. So for now, because the regime for the past two decades has invested on security forces literally to crack down on political parties, organizations, civil society, journalists, press. So they have been trying to monitor everything, to question them, make them silent. So I think because of the level of repression, as you mentioned, it is difficult to form a leadership corps inside the country. So there are dots. People are working around the country. But they are not able to connect together because of that. So for now, maybe that is OK. Also, I don’t see it is necessary that in a daily or weekly pace people come to this different way of non-cooperative behaviors, actions, can also help the movement to grow in next couple of years. But I think if we want—if we want to see this movement to continue, it has to have leadership. And I think it is important, those who are in diaspora get together for leadership, but I feel the main leadership has to come from within Iran. I don’t want to separate between Iran—inside Iran, outside Iran. This is a way that the security forces in Iran like to do. But connection inside Iran is very important because they know daily things. Outside, they can create a strategy for this—a shared strategy that people inside Iran can understand as well. So, I believe at some point in the near future really we need to have a leadership for the movement to succeed. TAKEYH: Thank you. Professor Tabaar, I want to ask you about the performance of the regime for the past three months. Because there is a record of its performance. And it seems to me that the regime has—in some way, has lost its footing, has lost its narrative. It’s for the hijab, it’s for a loose hijab, it’s for restriction of hijab. Different people are saying different things. The prosecutor’s saying one thing, the head of judiciary another thing. If you can assess the performance of the regime, particularly focus on the security services? Because at this point, the Islamic Republic has only security services as a means of its prolongation in power. But this is also, in many ways, a conscript force. How do you assess the performance of the regime and the reliability of the security services as it continues to face domestic dissent? TABAAR: First of all, you’re absolutely right. They have lost the narrative. They know this. And that’s why they are trying to come up with a long-term solution to fix this problem. And that is, instead of relying on religion they’re using other forms of narratives—national security, nationalism, patriotism, and other things. And they keep saying this is not about veiling. This is not about hijab. And by losing narrative, it’s not just within the opposition. Losing narrative, as you said, even among their supporters. But the security forces, there have been some signs of tensions within the security forces, but overall we do not see any crack within the security forces, which is the key for any revolutionary movement to succeed. We don’t see that. And they’re not conscript. They are actually well-paid members of the regime. So, so far, yes, there are some supports that security elements have been tried and they have been criticized even by their own family members. But so far, they have managed to crack down on protesters. But again, this may not be a long-term issue. But here is what the regime is doing to reduce the tensions and the reliance on security forces in the short term. And that’s exactly what you were saying about how they are framing this—the tension about veiling and hijab. That’s why we’re seeing different signals from the regime because they want to reduce the state-society confrontation. They don’t want to have the morality police in the street having tensions, physical conflicts, with the citizens that sparked the very movement a few months ago. They want to reduce this. So in order to do that, they’re trying to redefine the veiling issue. And a few days ago—so, a few weeks ago, you were right—I think it was the Justice Department announced something—made a statement that basically they put an end to the morality police. It was not clear exactly what they meant. And I think it was ambiguous by design. And then a few days ago, the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei said that the compulsory veiling is very much part of the core part of Islamic law, and the state has to enforce it. Yet, he actually lowered the bar by saying that those who are not properly veiled, partially veiled, or he used the word—he said a hijab is ayefa and they have—they’re veiled weakly, or whatever, however you can translate this. And they are—they should not be seen as subversive or anti-regime elements. Which is interesting because up until recently the morality police were after anyone who was not following this strict dress code. But now Khamenei is reducing that and saying—basically signaling that only those who are defiantly unveiled, those who come out and are not veiling, they should be targeted. Which is—again, it’s a new development. We’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, past few months, when the movement started, more and more women are coming out completely unveiled, which is very new. And so the regime is now trying to target these citizens, those who are completely unveiled coming out. But even in targeting its citizens, it’s trying not to do it directly through the morality police, but using different enforcement mechanisms, including forcing businesses not to provide service to women who are not veiled. So they are coming up with different ways. So going back to your main question, they are making some tactical adjustments. You can see this as concessions, but they’re not really concessions. The regime is very careful to make concessions without being seen as making concessions, because they don’t want to do what the shah did, that basically giving an inch that would embolden the population. And yet, they are trying to be flexible, come up with different ways to divide the protesters and reduce potential tensions in the short term, until they can figure out that war of narratives that you mentioned earlier. TAKEYH: I’d just one more quick question to Parliamentarian Haghighatjoo. The opposition may not need the clergy, but the regime does. And they keep going to Qom looking for it. Have the general Ghalibaf, the head of parliament, was there talking to Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, Jeralzi, Hamdani, and they’re not getting it. What they’re coming back is criticism. At the end of the day, their security forces, if they’re loyal to regime, they’re loyal to the religious ideology of the regime. Can the regime afford not to have a clerical community that is very critical? And one of the parliamentarians, I think it was Abbasi or whoever, says, look, you got to stop criticizing us and offer a solution. You mentioned the resilience of the movement. How is the resilience of the security forces if clerical approbation outside the national government is not offered? HAGHIGHATJOO: This is really important point, as you mentioned. Clergy— TAKEYH: All my points are important. This is a particular important one. HAGHIGHATJOO: Yes. (Laughter.) Absolutely. I mean, clergy has been a key element and key supporter of the regime, basically the foundation of the regime. And Khamenei himself, other people around him, have tried directly, indirectly, to engage them, to bring them to the core of supporting the regime. But they did not lead the support to them. And this is very important. Unfortunately, for several reasons. First of all, they don’t listen to people. For instance, even Ayatollah Sistani, who is a great marja al-taqlid for Shia community. So I felt indirectly that he has been trying to provide some advice, but he says, unfortunately, nobody listens. Or other people, other clergy, so they have been requesting reform. Not only clergy. Even within the system, within the security forces, [there is a] call for the reform. But unfortunately, the supreme leader, as a key decision maker, doesn’t basically accept those—doesn’t accept calls for reform. Which is this call for reform is—ranges from simple reform to wider reform. And I think that is—clergy now [are now in a] very hard position. In one point clergy have been targeted by the movement. And young—especially young people see them as an ally of the regime itself. So they are targeted by the activists, protesters. On the other hand, they have been targeted by the security forces, by the leaders. So they originally have been placed in a very hard position. So maybe this is one reason also they are absolutely silent. They try to be—not support the regime, not support the—basically the protesters, because of the different position they have. I think gradually the regime try to move from the clergy to the security forces. For instance, if we see the combination of the government—and when I say government, as a general, the parliament, the executive office, even the judiciary—we see more and more military people compromise those institution. So they also—the regime will rely less. But definitely the regime needs clergy. And this is a hard position for the regime and for the clergy themselves as well. TAKEYH: Thank you. I’ll open it up for questions. If you have questions, Irina can direct you to how to go ahead and pose questions to our two speakers. OPERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Takeyh. (Gives queuing instructions.) We will take our first question from Azza Karam from Religions for Peace International. KARAM: Thank you very much, indeed, to the distinguished speakers—Dr. Tabaar, Dr. Haghighatjoo, and Dr. Takeyh. A very, very interesting and stimulating presentation. I request, if I may, for two specific clarifications. The first is, I heard a very clear point made by Dr. Mohammad Tabaar that religion has no role to play in this space and is not what has been motivating. At the same time, I thought that the whole point was about the veil, and imperative behind it, and therefore that created that whole setup. And then I heard very compelling conversations about the role of the clergy. So what is it? Is there no relationship? Is there some relationship? If there is, what is it? And sometimes being against the religion current in and of itself is a critical aspect of the religion engagement, or lack thereof. But the other question that I had is really more nuanced if you could please, Dr. Fatemeh, highlight the point about the potential for leadership, alternative leadership, not only within the country. Because one of the questions I heard some of our Iranian colleagues and friends say as well, they’re arguing for regime change. They want the downfall of the regime. But who would it be then? If this regime falls, well, who’s going to take—what would it be? So that is a question I’m curious about your own read on. But the other is, if we lack potential leaders from within or without, or ones who are obviously within and aligned with those diaspora, is that not a situation very similar to other contexts? I think of my own context in Egypt, with the conflict, and therefore how easy it was for the military to step in because of this so-called gap in leadership. Would anything like that—what would that actually imply for what’s going to happen now? Thank you. TAKEYH: What does the day after look like? Dr. Haghighatjoo. HAGHIGHATJOO: Yes. Thank you so much. First on veiling, unfortunately, unlike many other Muslim-majority countries, this regime tied hijab to its own existence, which is very bad idea in general. And even though other people, even within religious community, clergy community, wanted to ease—there is tension on that really. Some call that as an important point. Some, they say it should not enforce hijab. So there is tension on being needed to have hijab or not. But the final vote is for Khamenei. So Khamenei clearly stated hijab is mandatory and has to be enforced. Yesterday, the judiciary issued a statement. Even though their statement was absolutely illegal, they pointed out to several articles—legal articles, which are highly studied and those are really fake, not relevant to hijab. But anyhow, this is not the first time they do illegal action, right? So because the leader said the hijab is mandatory and has to be enforced, judiciary jumped in, even though there is no—there is only one law about seventy lashes, up to twenty—up to two months imprisonment. But the judiciary has created something new, which is needed a parliamentary legislation. Without parliamentary legislation, they issued something which is, as I said, all of their action has been illegal for the past hundred days or so. So this is on religious side, which it’s not easy to really analyze that section. On the leadership, yes, I think one reason that maybe not the majority of people joined to this current movement is fear of tomorrow, what tomorrow would look like, who is going to take over. Still the generation, this generation, has a memory of Pahlavi’s dynasty, that they thought, yes, by the revolution they are going to have freedom. And then from secular dictatorship country become a theocracy, another way even the worst form of dictatorship. But not now, knowing that what is going to happen in the future, I think this fear, plus the fear of crackdown on the people, prevent everybody to join. So I see—I believe Iranians are so talented. I believe Iranians have a leadership capacity inside the country and outside of the country. But still, everybody has its own narrative, its own ideology. Some people want return of dynasty. Some others want republicanism. But the reason is, basically, I think we have experience of religious dictatorial system and authoritarian regime. And this will be one great lesson that allows the next state to become a secular estate. I think this is the minimum agreement. Everybody has failed, even those who are inside the country. There is now a great call for not having supreme leadership out of the constitution or next regime. But I think there have been efforts to create that leadership and create a clear future for post-transition Iran, which I believe and I’m hopeful that that will be shaped. But it may take at least a year to reach to that point that we have a clear leadership and united leadership. TAKEYH: Professor Tabaar, do you want to take a crack at what comes next, and what does the day after look like? TABAAR: Sure, but let me quickly respond to the first question on the issue of religion, that how can this not be about religion? This is about religion, but what I was trying to say is that for the protesters, religion is not being used to mobilize the masses, as it was the practice for a long time in Iran, going back to the tobacco movement in the nineteenth century, and later the constitutional movement, and the Iranian revolution in ’79. All until recently, every time there was a movement, you saw either the clerics played a leading role or religion in general was very much part of the language and discourse of the protesters. But this time around, what we see is that this generation, this new generation of the protesters who came out in the past few months—this doesn’t not necessarily reflect the view of the silent majority that I said. But for those who came out, based on their slogans, what we saw was that they did not formulate their political actions and demands in religious terms. And again, this is a remarkable shift, at least according to many observers inside Iran. And you look at even the reform movement that Fatemeh was part of, you look at the Green Movement in 2009, religion and religious discourse was very much part of that. Trying to use this to mobilize the masses and also to undermine the cohesion of religion, for the very reason that Ray said a few minutes ago, that you need that in order to undermine the cohesion of the security forces. So, and again, there was this belief that only a diamond can cut a diamond. You need to have this kind of a discourse. But for this generation of protesters, they seem to have just gone way beyond this. They don’t even bother to engage with this, not to mention the anti-clericalism that we see rising. A lot of clerics have been attacked. And that is why many pro-regime clerics this time decided to remain silent, because they don’t want to increase the resentment and the anti-clericalism that they see in the society. So that’s what I meant. I didn’t mean this is not about religion. It is about religion. But it is no longer being used, at least for the time being, by the protesters, the way it was in the past. And then in terms of what is after. So, very quickly, this is the issue, that no one has been able to articulate a viable alternative so far. And that is why a lot of people—that is partly why a lot of people did not come out to join the protesters. There is a diaspora movement. As Fatemeh said, it was widely—it was divided for a long time. But they seem to have shown some form of unity in the past few months and weeks, some of them, some activists, and journalists, and athletes, and artists have gotten together, forming a coalition. But the question is, if we don’t know if they can translate that into a bigger political organization that is seen as legitimate inside Iran, that is credible, that can create—basically call for political action inside Iran. So we haven’t seen this. If that happens, then yes. So far, it seems that this coalition has been more influential outside Iran, trying to change policies of European and Canadian and American governments, than affecting inside Iran, because it just started. So we’ll see. We have yet to see to what extent it will be successful. But again, the lack of an alternative, a viable alternative, is what keeps a lot of people at home. TAKEYH: Thank you. Next question, please. OPERATOR: Our next question is a written submission from Chloe Breyer from The Interfaith Center of New York. Who asks: If you could speak about the connection between or the influence on Afghanistan and Iran right now. TAKEYH: Professor Tabaar, you want to start with that? TABAAR: I’m not an Afghanistan expert but, quickly, yes. So it is—I think is one of the most important and understudied developments as far as it’s connected to Iran. The rise of the Taliban, a group that went almost into war with Iran in 1998, coming back to power now is going to be an important development in the long term. So based on the commentaries we saw when the Taliban came to power two years ago coming out of Iran, it seemed Iran had a completely—at least, the conservative establishment had a very different view of the Taliban this time around. They did not see them as the enemy that the group was twenty years earlier. This time they saw the Taliban as a potentially—as a potential anti-American ally. So they kept emphasizing that the Taliban was an anti-American group. They defeated the Americans. And therefore, they could be a potential partner. Which is very interesting, because ideologically and ethnically the Taliban could not have been farther from Iran. At the time when Iran could have—and there was a cause, especially from the more moderate elements within the regime—that Iran could try to back the Persian-speaking ethnic groups, or the Hazaras, the Shia Hazaras. The regime decided not to, because they didn’t want to antagonize the Taliban and, more importantly, because it did see the Taliban as a potential partner. At some point, I even heard some regime strategy saying the Taliban could be a potential member of the axis of resistance. That’s how they see the Taliban. But so far, it hasn’t materialized. And there have been some tensions between Iran and the Taliban because of what is happening—border issues, and the Taliban crack down on their own population, and other things. But it is an important development. And it can go both ways. Taliban could be a very serious threat to Iran in the long term. It’s a potent force. But at the same time, as I said, Iran—the current regime, the current ruling faction, is trying to cultivate a partnership based on anti-Americanism. So we’ll see if that will materialize. TAKEYH: Thank you. I’ll go to the next question. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Charles Randall Paul from the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy. PAUL: Hello. Wonderful conversation. I have two quick questions. One, has there in the last few years ever been a public opinion poll that could be considered legitimate for the citizens of Iran? And, number two, has anyone worked on a coalition of, shall we say, traditional, very strongly religious believers in Iran, and what we might call the liberal agnostic group, who merely want religious freedom? If you sense an American tilt on that question, you’ll see that the original Bill of Rights came about mainly because of a compromise between the adamant Baptists, who wanted to pitch their religion strongly in America and wanted to be allowed to do that, and the agnostics who did not want religion to control the government. And so they came up with the great compromise of “you can practice whatever you want, but you can’t be involved in government.” I’m wondering if there’s any thought at all going on in Iran of saying yes to religion with great enthusiasm, but also yes to freedom to not be religious. TAKEYH: Let me piggyback on that, Dr. Haghighatjoo. It is also said that the regime enjoys 20 percent of support among the population. I have no idea where that figure comes from. How would you—and I realize it’s dynamic. It changes. How would you assess the core supporters of the regime? I mean, I see opinion—Etana does opinion polls all the time. I have no idea if they’re reliable. But how do you assess what—if at all possible—what level of support the regime continues to enjoy? And from which segment of the population? HAGHIGHATJOO: Thank you. So on public opinion, yes, there have been some reliable public opinion [polls] many have done inside Iran and also outside Iran. General understanding from that public opinion showed a trend that Iranians have become less and less religious. And we’ve seen footage of videos. We hear stories that compare that polling. And some of these polls have been done by the regime itself. And regarding yes to religion and yes to freedom of religion, I think we see that very interestingly. Mr. Abdul Hamid, leader of Sunni in Sistan and Baluchistan, has played a great role in the past hundred days. Which is this very unique role. I haven’t seen any other religious leader play the role he has played. And every week they come out after Friday prayer. In his speech many times he supported Iran is for all citizens, regardless of if they are religious or not. And even he mentioned name of Baha’is, that Baha’i has a right to practice, and that right has to be preserved. Which, in some religious communities, Baha’is don’t have the right. And even if we look at today the Iranian constitution, Shia has absolute right. And to some extent, Abrahamic religion has some right. But some religions, such as Baha’ism, has no right at all. Even if they confess they are Baha’i, they will be barred from going to school, as simple as that. Or have a profession, or so on or so forth. It’s a very basic thing. They are denied—they seek a right. I think in general in society, we see people are more tolerant toward different type of religious spectrum. On core supporters of the regime, I think analyzing elections in the past twenty years shows almost what is the core element of the regime. Which is if we analyze election results, which we have done before a couple of times, that number comes to 10 to 15 percent. But this 10 to 15 percent, some are traditional religious people. They feel support of the regime is part of their religious duty, basically. They buy what—they buy regime’s narrative on use of religion. Some supporters of the regime who have benefitted financially, also I think that is another part. And as we see one reason that security forces especially—(inaudible)—have been a great core for the regime is because of these financial and political gain that they have gained throughout these twenty-plus years. This is the core, from my point of view. TAKEYH: Professor Tabaar, do you agree that it’s 10 to15 percent? And is it situated in a socioeconomic class, or it’s more diffused, as Dr. Haghighatjoo suggested? TABAAR: So there have been some public polls, and some government-sponsored polls. And there were some reports that, based on some government-sponsored news agencies such as Fars, that were classified but they were kind of hacked. A few weeks ago they came out. And they showed that—we see different figures, but something about 15 percent, the regime has the core supporters. Again, it kind of fluctuates. Sometimes it’s less. Sometimes it’s more based on what kind of threats they feel, religious or political. But I don’t think this has necessarily any specific, let’s say, social base. I think it’s widespread, fragmented. Different parts of the society, different parts of the country. But I do think a significant portion of it is among the core, basically, those who get the financial support from the regime—the families of the Revolutionary Guards, the security apparatus, and those who have specific, vested interests. So this is more about the just political and economic interests that they have connected directly to the regime. I don’t think it’s necessarily ideological, unless they fear that the day after could be an anti-regime government. At that point, yes, we do see, as Fatemeh said, some traditional religious segments of the people, they show some reluctant support for the regime because they fear an alternative. But relatedly, let me just say that this was a—this was—the second question was really, really important. And that is, if we see the alliance between more religious people and the liberal/agnostic people. We do see the rise in resentment among many religious people who are kind of apolitical. And they see that they go out to the streets and they see that a lot of people hate them, because they see them as being part of the regime. They’re not part of the regime, but they’re being part of the regime. So there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that shows more and more religious people are actually advocating for a secular government, precisely because they want to be left alone. They don’t want to be seen as part of the regime when they are not. And also, they are tired of the state control of their religiosity. It’s widely said that when the revolution happened one of the famous figures, clerics, at the beginning—right after the revolution said: The first casualty of this—in this revolution is Islam itself. And this is true, because a lot of clerics, a lot of religious institutions, they lost their independence. Because suddenly you have an Islamic government that wants to control the official narrative. So, I mean, in that sense, we see a rise. But recent—one of the figures who came out during this movement a few months ago was Fatemeh Sepehri, a religious figure. And she was very critical of Ayatollah Khamenei. And she’s now in prison. She’s fully covered with shutters. So there are a lot of religious people who are part of this movement, precisely because they want to be left alone in their religiosity. So they’re advocating for a secular government and for freedom, so. TAKEYH: Thank you. I’ll take the next question, as we’re wrapping up. So, next question, please. OPERATOR: Our next question is an anonymous submission. They ask: There is a critique in some quarters that the protests inside Iran have lacked the necessary intellectual and ideological rigor to persuade and invite the more learned layers of Iranian society to itself. There has been violence, vulgar language, lack of informed intellectual figures. Reliance has been on celebrities, stars, sportsmen, et cetera. Outside Iran, the discourse has similarly been divisive and pretty violent, plagued with personal attacks, defamations, et cetera. What is the way out of this? TAKEYH: Thank you. Please, Dr. Haghighatjoo, if you— HAGHIGHATJOO: Yes. I think there was also another question that what we can do—what NGO outside of Iran can do to support. I think to answer these questions together is, advocating for nonviolent action, strategy, and tactic. Exactly once people advocate for violence, that is basically super problematic. First of all, that creates fear of future, like some of these who have been engaged even in cracking down on the people. They may continue to crack down because they think what will happen to them after the regime. So they would try to fight to the last person. This one point. The second point also encouraging violence, as Erica Chenoweth research shows, that 55 percent of nonviolent—first of all, 55 percent of movement in general got succeed to change a regime. And nonviolent movement succeeded twice than violent. So encouraging peaceful transition to democracy is very important. And I think opposition outside of the country has to advocate for peaceful transition. Absolutely I disagree with those who advocate for eye for eye understanding and usage of violence. At the end of the day, the Iranian government has the upper hand on use of violence. And basically they try to find a way and excuses to crack down more on people. And that really is in favor of the regime itself. And it’s not provided any support for the protesters. TAKEYH: As we wrap up, let me ask Professor Tabaar and also Dr. Haghighatjoo, tell me how this ends? HAGHIGHATJOO: I could not understand the question. TAKEYH: I’ll start with Professor Tabaar. Tell me how this ends? TABAAR: Let me just start by saying that the last point that was raised is very critical, very unfortunate. And that is how this movement—part of this movement gradually became vulgar and has no intellectual—I would even go further, and say part of it is very anti-intellectual. And many of—some of the leaders outside or some of those activists inside, they even kind of brag that this is an anti-academic, anti-intellectual movement or approach that they have adopted. And the kind of language, as I said— TAKEYH: By the way, there was plenty of vulgarity in the 1979 revolution. TABAAR: But not—maybe it’s because of the social media, I don’t know. But this level— TAKEYH: I saw a lot of things about Pahlavi and others during the 1979 revolution. But go ahead. TABAAR: But I don’t know if people attacked each other the way they are doing now. I mean, as soon as somebody’s coming out and saying something that the other side sees as a little bit too moderate, or people are being accused of being different things. So this is—this is pretty vicious. And actually, I think that this has partly affected those silent majority, again, not to come out. And again, even in the media, people are just broadcasting this, which is surprising. So what is the way out? So—(laughs)— TAKEYH: No, how does this end? TABAAR: How does it— TAKEYH: What happens? TABAAR: From who’s perspective? I’m not super optimistic, as this is becoming more violent, I think the regime has an upper hand in the short term. But in the long term— TAKEYH: So in your perspective, it ends with the regime restoring its authority in some respects? TABAAR: In the short term. But, no, in the long term, no. There is no easy out for the regime this time around. So how’s this going to end? Let me just very quickly say, my fear is this could—there could be a diversionary war in the region that is caused by either the regime or neighboring countries miscalculating, like 1980 Saddam Hussein, and that could help the regime to restore order. That is my fear. TAKEYH: Dr. Haghighatjoo, very quickly, how does this end? HAGHIGHATJOO: Well, I think the current situation will continue unless the opposition is able to form a core leadership to convert it to post transition. I don’t see any chance for reform from within the system because Khamenei and—Khamenei blocked it. So I think this cat and mouse fight will continue for a while. This is a long-term trouble. I think at least will take two years to go. TAKEYH: Just a brief follow-up, Ms. Haghighatjoo. Do you see a role for your former reformist colleagues—Abdul Nouri, Tajzadeh—do you see a role for them in this movement and in the future of Iran? HAGHIGHATJOO: (Laughs.) I don’t know for future of Iran. As you know, that right now the regime itself and the opposition try to tack to the middle, which is the reformist. And that places them in a hard situation. For instance, as you say, Abdul Nouri a couple of weeks ago issued a letter criticizing the leader. And he was called to the security forces for interrogation, even though he has defended. I think—I doubt Khamenei will basically compromise. If Khamenei would compromise, I would see a role for the reformists. But I think as many activists, politicians, journalists, including former Speaker of the Parliament Mehdi Karroubi stated, maybe the best opening for change occurs in the days and months after Khamenei dies. TAKEYH: Thank you. I’ll turn it over to Irina to wrap us up. FASKIANOS: Thank you all very much for doing this. We really appreciate it. It was an excellent conversation. And I’m sorry we couldn’t get to all of your questions. We will just have to reconvene. Just a reminder, you can follow Ray Takeyh at @raytakeyh, and also on the CFR.org website. We also encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter @CFR_religion. And do email us at [email protected] with any suggestions or questions for future webinars. And just a quick announcement, we will have our next webinar, our Social Justice Webinar, on U.S. immigration and repatriation on Thursday, January 26, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time (EST). So keep a look out for that invitation. Thank you all, again, for being with us and thank you to our distinguished speakers. HAGHIGHATJOO: Thank you, Ray. Thank you, everyone, for inviting me. TAKEYH: Thank you. FASKIANOS: It was a pleasure.

William Hsiao, K.T. Li professor of economics emeritus in the department of health policy and management and department of global health and population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and  Ellen L. Idler, director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative and Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of sociology at Emory University, discuss the equity and accessibility of the U.S. healthcare system and other healthcare systems around the world, and the intersection of religion and global health. Holly G. Atkinson, affiliate medical clinical professor at the CUNY School of Medicine, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today’s webinar series explores social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. This webinar is on the record, and the audio, video, and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Holly Atkinson with us to moderate the discussion on “Healthcare Equity and Accessibility Around the World.” I will just give you highlights from Dr. Atkinson’s bio. She is an affiliate clinical professor at the CUNY School of Medicine. Previously, she was director of the human rights program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Atkinson is currently an associate editor of the Annals of Global Health, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. We’ve dropped a link to her bio and the speakers’ bios in the chat, so you can look there. But I’m going to turn it over now to Dr. Atkinson to introduce our distinguished panelists, and then start the conversation. So, Holly, over to you. ATKINSON: Thank you, Irina. And good afternoon, everyone. I’m really delighted to be moderating this very distinguished panel. Let me introduce you to them. William Hsiao is K.T. Li professor of economics emeritus in the department of health policy and management and the department of global health and population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. Dr. Hsiao is a leading global expert in universal health insurance, which he has studied for more than forty years. He has been actively engaged in designing health system reforms and universal health insurance programs for many countries around the world. Dr. Hsiao developed the “control knobs” framework for diagnosing the causes for the successes or failures of national health systems, and he has shaped how we conceptualize national health systems. He’s published several papers and books and served on editorial boards of professional journals. Dr. Hsiao served as an advisor to three U.S. presidents, the U.S. Congress, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, and International Labor Organization. Ellen Idler is the director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative and Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of sociology at Emory University. Previously, she taught at Rutgers University. Dr. Idler received her PhD and MPhil from Yale University, her B.A. from the College of Wooster, and attended Union Theological Seminary on a Rockefeller Brothers Fellowship. At Emory, she holds appointments at the Rollins School of Public Health, the Center for Ethics, and the Graduate Division of Religion. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. Dr. Idler studies the intersection of religion with public health at the individual, population, and organizational levels. She is the editor of the Oxford University Press book, Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health, and author of numerous studies on religion’s role in health. She is also an associate editor for PLOS One. Welcome to you both. Bill, let’s get started with you. We have a gathering of individuals today, many of whom are from the faith-based organizations and institutions. And I’d like for you to describe what the control knobs approach is to formulating health policy. And of course, particularly in the context of what we’re talking about today, which is equity and accessibility to health care. HSIAO: Control knobs is a new analytical approach for health policymakers and analysts, as well as for the public, to understand health policy. Let me give a brief history. Traditionally when we look at health care, we look at the inputs—how many doctors, nurses we have, and how many hospital beds, and community centers we have. That’s the input. This new control knobs framework is saying, no, let’s look at the output, the outcomes, that’s what we care about. And such as equity in health outcomes, equity in reducing the poverty caused by health expenses. And to look at how these outcomes are produced, we identified major so-called “control knobs” that determines the outcomes. That’s including financing how you organize health care—for example, do you rely on the market, or do you rely on the government—and the payment system, how do we incentivize the providers, and the regulation. And here, my last point, to determine the outcomes there you want to look at the equity of the health outcomes and the reduction of impoverishment due to health expenses. ATKINSON: Well, let me stop you right there, Bill, for a moment. And can you give us a working definition of what you mean by equity? And how do measure that? It’s obviously an ideal that we have as an outcome, but how do you actually measure equity across a national health plan? HSIAO: Well, not being a philosopher, like Ellen, because I work more on the practice side, that equity is a principle made very well known by John Rawls, the theory of justice. That under a veil of ignorance, we want to give more resources and health services to the most disadvantaged people. It can be the poor people, the handicapped, the ill people. But these people could be disadvantaged for genetic reasons, social reasons, and environmental reasons. So it’s very hard to classify them, to say really what is due to their circumstance versus their free will, let’s say, to control their weight. Therefore, in the health policy world, we actually change that word “equity” in practice to “equality.” We want to give everyone equality regardless of income, gender, race, region, education, and so forth, to see whether they have equal outcome in health—like, their health status, as well as how many of them get impoverished because of health expenditures. So with that, we can actually measure it, because you can measure the health status of people regardless their circumstances. So in practice, we actually practice equity translated into equality. And Ellen may disagree with that. ATKINSON: Well, you’ve really raised the issue of what we call the social determinants of health. And Ellen, of course, in the introduction, I mentioned this marvelous book that you’ve edited, which is Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health. Before you talk about religion as an SDH, as we call them, tell us what a social determinant of health is. IDLER: Sure. Thank you. I’d be happy to. (Laughs.) It is really the paradigm for public health and epidemiological research these days that you think about the most upstream factors that determine the health status of individuals. It’s not the close-in kind of health care or health behaviors that are the most important. It is those social determinants of health that have everything to do with income, and wealth, and education. And the World Health Organization had a commission on the social determinants of health in 2007. The concept was around for a while there, but it really got a very official designation with that WHO commission that was led by Michael Marmot. And the definition from their report is social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age. And I love that definition because it captures the life course aspect of health. But it does begin at birth. I think about these social determinants’ circumstances of birth and I always think about the parable of the sower in the Gospel of Matthew. The sower sows the seeds. And some of the seeds are scattered onto rocks. And some of them are scattered to very dry ground and they can’t grow. But other seeds fall on fertile ground, and they have sunshine, and they have enough rain to grow and thrive. And the point about that parable and the point about the definition here is that people don’t choose the circumstances of their birth. We are born, some of us, into very advantaged situations, and others of us into very disadvantaged ones. And we didn’t choose those. We were given them. And for some of those people, religion is present in the social world that they’re born into, and for other people it isn’t. So our purpose in that book was to take a look at religion among the social circumstances of birth. I will mention that the World Health Organization did not include anything about religion in their report, which struck me as a notable absence, being how important it is as a circumstance. ATKINSON: It is an interesting oversight, isn’t it? Well, tell us how you conceptualize this. In the introduction I also spoke about the fact that you published and thought about this on an individual, population, and organizational level. Tell us about how you conceptualize religion as a social determinant of health. IDLER: Sure. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I was really helped out by a group of researchers at Harvard, who published in July in the Journal of the AMA a big, systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on religion and health. There were two panels. One of them studied religion and spirituality in serious illness. So those were mostly patient studies. And the other study, the other panel, was for, they called it, health outcomes. So those were more epidemiological population-based studies with representative samples, so that the estimates could apply to a larger group. And that second group found a really, really strong evidence of association between how often people attended religious services and their rates of survival. So the higher the frequency of attendance at—the attendance part is critical. It’s the social part—(laughs)—of joining with a group of people on a regular basis. And people who had that social tie were much more likely than people who did not have that social tie. And there’s what epidemiologists call a dose response relationship. So the higher the frequency, the greater the survival. And at various steps along the way, survival declined. But that was one of the findings. There were many findings. But that was certainly one of them. And it was the one for which the researchers said there was the strongest evidence. So I would call that the evidence at the microlevel. It’s a way to think about the way religion plays out in the health arena. And in the lives of individuals, the presence of a religious community and attachment to it is definitely protective of health. That was really strong evidence with respect to mortality and many other health outcomes that they look at. But there are other levels. We can think about it at the institutional and also at the state level. But I don’t know if you want me to stop there and—(laughs)—or talk a little bit about those two. You let me know. ATKINSON: Yes, we’ll get to that. Bill, I want to get you in the conversation here about how do you see that religious faith fits into this control knob framework? You’ve worked in numerous countries, over twenty countries, working on revision of their healthcare systems. And what’s been your experience of how religious faith fits into the control knob framework? HSIAO: It fits very closely and tightly because we have to—we asked the countries to define their goals for health care. And where equity is the principal, equity or equality of health outcomes and a reduce of impoverishment. So what determines the equity part? Well, in the books I’ve coauthored with three others, we emphasized the ethics, ethical values, of a nation. We show you how important this is. For a country, when my team and I go in, the first thing I ask them to do is, one, to form a steering committee to define their equity principles based on ethical principles, values. But of course, ethical principles are influenced strongly by religious faith. And now also we ask them to allow us to have focus groups with the public, or even large public meetings. Again, common people’s values of equity is influenced by religion. So in my work under the control knob is that actually religion has a very close tie and strong influence on the goals a country sets for itself. But it’s different between countries, though, because their values and their religion can differ greatly. ATKINSON: Well, I think this is an area here in the United States that we certainly could pay more attention to in terms of the ethics of equity in health care. And, Ellen, I want to return to—you and I had a conversation the other day, and I wanted to return to something we were talking about. We were talking about what faith-based organizations bring to partnerships. And I wonder if you can expand upon that for us, about what do you see as the real skillsets and advantages that FBOs bring to movements of social justice, particularly in the context of equity in health care? IDLER: That’s a great way to put the question. Faith-based organizations in the United States and around the world play an incredibly important role in health. And I’ve just been reading for a chapter that I’ve been working on about the amount of aid that goes to more and more faith-based organizations around the world, and accounts for a good amount of global health spending, especially by philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation. And in the United States, there have been many examples of real, I think, sort of organized efforts in crises, especially, to respond to them. And in April 2019, we did a special section of the American Journal of Public Health featuring the work of faith-based organizations as partners with public health in meeting public health goals. And one of the chapters, just to lift up one example, was by my colleague at Emory, Mimi Kiser, who was one of the principals in the interfaith health program that began at the Carter Center in the 1990s, and then moved to Emory around 2000. And the interfaith health program in 2009 worked together with federal government agencies to organize faith-based organizations’ vaccine drives for the H1N1 influenza response. And from that, they developed ten sites around the country where vaccinations were given to especially hard-to-read populations. That was the title of the article was, “Faith-Based Organizations Role in Accessing Hard-to-Reach Populations.” One of the sites provided over four thousand vaccinations and more than 40 percent of the people who were getting them did not have health insurance. And this is after the Affordable Care Act. So they were getting flu vaccines, for free, into communities. And, for example, one story was about how well one particular group could go out to vaccinate migrant farm workers by being there at the crack of dawn before they went out into the fields to work, and then also being there in the evening when they returned. So reaching hard-to-reach populations is important, and is possible, from faith-based organizations because they play a trusted role in their community. And this particular drive that they might want to be working on is only one piece of the overall mission of that faith-based organization. So it has the context of being a known quantity that has social capital in its community and can really play on the assets of that community. ATKINSON: Bill, can you give some concrete examples of how religious faith has shaped health policy? And in particular, what population groups were affected? HSIAO: Well, I can give a couple concrete examples around the world. Well, one—let’s say, in another country. And the obvious way is gender inequality. And some faiths actually do not treat women as co-equal. And when they invite us in to design their health policy, to formulate policy, they reveal that preference towards males, and for sons, and so forth. And we had to struggle with that and try to persuade them that’s not what WHO or UN Declaration of Human Rights, and so forth. That’s one example of it. But in United States, the obvious example is on abortion. And abortion is so closely tied with religious faith of different groups, and I don’t need to explain how that shapes the politics of it and even court rulings, and then—so. But putting in a more positive light, faith, usually I find—regardless if it’s Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or—(inaudible)—because I work in all of these countries—they really all embrace certain fundamental beliefs about human beings. And they expect a basic principle that every human being may have some part which is given by God. So there’s a divine part. Usually it’s defined as goodness part of ourselves. And so in using the control knob that we’re trying to say, OK, you want to create equity or equality in the health outcomes of your people? Then which group has been mostly neglected, OK? And Ellen just pointed out, you have interfaith groups. Yes, I observe many interfaith groups doing very good work globally. However, I will just say they don’t cover that many people, I’m sorry to say. You really need government to take a major role to deliver basic health care and basic education to people. You cannot just rely on charity and the faith-based dedicated people. They can make a difference, but it doesn’t make it universal. ATKINSON: Before we turn to you now, how do we move forward in terms of partnerships to improve equity to health care, Bill, I just want to check in with you. So how many nations that you’ve worked with have used this control knob framework to redesign their healthcare systems? And how successful have they been? HSIAO: Actually, I personally got involved with nearly twenty countries around the world. But including the two largest ones, China and India. Together, they have 40 percent of the population of the world. I’m also working in Africa, the Middle East. So among the twenty, the program we actually designed for them, I’m sorry to say, did not take into account the social determinants. So there, let me explain. All the WHO, and the world now, is talking about social determinants of health, which is important. But government structure is not built that way. The minister of health doesn’t control housing, food. There you have to talk to the prime minister or president. They usually pay attention to creating jobs for people. Even President Biden. It’s, how do I control inflation? How do I reduce war? The top person doesn’t get into these issues about social determinants, where he or she has to bring all the ministers together. (Inaudible)—in human rights. It’s a determinant of health. Education is definitely. Environment, income, general equality. And I don’t need to bore you with how many ministers, as far as consensus, you have to bring. So I applaud people who really push for social determinants. And I know—(inaudible). However, the practical world, I discover you really have limitations because the governance structure of the government make it very difficult to make that a reality. And WHO, which I serve on the advisory council, knows that. So I call it a noble vision, but I will argue, let’s pay attention and make a real difference rather than just put out noble vision. ATKINSON: So before we open it to the floor to receive questions, Ellen, how do you see us going forward from here in terms of partnerships that could be established to really help move forward equity and accessibility in health care? IDLER: Well, my long-range plan on that—(laughs)—is to educate students to understand the structures and missions of other organizations so that they can work together. At Emory, we have a dual degree program between the Candler School of Theology and the Rollins School of Public Health. And we have a certificate program. And so we have a structure that allows students studying for a master’s in public health, for example, to sit in a classroom for a semester with students who are studying at the Candler’s School of Theology to work in some faith-based organizations or in local congregations. And because they can influence each other’s thinking about this and make the presence of that other structure real. And I feel like while they’re students now, they will be leaders of their organizations. And ten years from now, fifteen years from now, they could be in a position to see a situation where the possibility of partnership is made much more real because of the fact that they had this educational experience that’s going to carry with them. So that’s my long-term plan. (Laughs.) ATKINSON: And, Bill, from your vantage point as an economist working on healthcare reform for forty years, how do you see that the faith-based organizations could help move the agenda forward? HSIAO: I really think the faith-based organizations actually have a tremendous amount of influence. But you have to go through the intermediate step, apply to your faith, your religious faith, translate that into a set of ethical standards, which I call values, which then can be used in policy. Because policy, including the United States believing we should provide health care through the market, OK? That’s a policy decision. And if you understand through the teaching of the faith that you want to have greater equality, markets cannot achieve that for you. You’ve got the exact opposite. The poor people cannot afford it. And insurance companies will not insure the elderly people and disabled people. So I would urge faith organizations to really understand what criteria that are the control knobs. Which is used, by the way, now close to 36,000 policymakers around the world. The ministry of finance, ministry of planning, the ministry of health. This is through an executive program financed by World Bank that’s done by WHO. So you want to do that translation, that would be what I hope. ATKINSON: Well, thank you, both. I just want to invite our participants now to ask a question. You can either put it in the chat or you can click on the raised hand icon. And we will call upon you. FASKIANOS: Yes. That is correct, Holly. (Gives queuing instructions.) And I’m looking now for raised hands, to see if anybody—oh! We have our first raised hand from Galen. GUENGERICH: Thank you, Irina. And thank you to the panel for a fascinating discussion. I have one very quick question and then one that perhaps a little bit more discussion. FASKIANOS: And, Galen, introduce yourself, please. GUENGERICH: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Galen Guengerich, senior minister of All Souls in New York, and a member of the Council. A question for Ellen. Do you have a percentage of the decrease in all-causes mortality between the most active participants and the nonparticipants in religious communities? So that’s a simple question. The other question is probably for Bill. You’ve talked a lot about the importance of policy, and the importance of getting government at various levels to do what they need to do policy-wise, so that the inequities are reduced. When it comes to the role of individual religious communities, where is the greatest point of leverage? In other words, it's pretty simple for me to open our buildings and get volunteers to do something like have a vaccine clinic. Where do I point people to effect policy most effectively? Thank you. ATKINSON: So, Ellen, percent decrease in all-cause mortality? IDLER: I can take the first one. It’s easy. So there was a systematic analysis that, if I could just quote a study of my own that was in PLOS One in 2017, we analyzed data from the health and retirement study. And so people who attended weekly or more often were 40 percent less likely to have died by a twelve-year follow-up period—ten, sorry—ten years—compared with people who never attended. And then it was—so it was a 40 percent reduction and then, like, 30 and 20 percent reductions for people who had some ties to faith communities, but yeah. And that’s from fully adjusted models. That’s after taking account of the health status of people at the beginning of the study, and other kinds of health behaviors. And so it’s—and income, and education, and all of those things. So that’s the final most adjusted model, 40 percent difference. HSIAO: My answer to you is that I believe there are two vehicles where the individual religious organization can make the most difference. One is actually, particularly here in the United States, is to get people to discuss the ethical value for health care. And then they can influence other social determinants, as well as the direct health care itself. The second part is to actually engage in some political organizations, like Boston has the Great Boston Interfaith Council, which then they promote political action. They’re very effective because religious organizations have a moral standing. And the people really listen to religious organizations and groups organized by religious groups. Those are my quick comments. ATKINSON: Hmm. Ellen, that reminds me of an opinion piece that I believe you wrote in the American Journal of Public Health about best practices for faith-based organizations and religious institutions to engage in these kinds of partnerships. Can you review some of those for us, that you’ve really been able to identify as those top best practices for an institution to engage in? IDLER: Uh-oh. This is a test. I don’t have that piece of paper on my desk right here, but I will call up some things from memory. I think that mutual respect is one of the most important lessons that come from partnerships. There is some history of distrust by religious groups of public health. And some of the Tuskegee studies and other things that I’m sure we could all mention of very, very bad public health processes that have resulted in even more injustice. So the role of public health as a social justice warrior in our culture—(laughs)—we might think of that as fairly recent. And in the past, it wasn’t always so. And so there are—there is mistrust. And I think that in public health, a lot of times we talk about getting religious groups to do this for us. And there’s an instrumentality to the idea of using faith communities to accomplish some public health goals that doesn’t recognize the importance, fullness, and much broader mission of those public health—of those faith-based organizations or religious congregations. So I would say mutual respect and care in working out and finding where the common ground is is really a big message. Because faith-based organizations or congregations and public health have—they both have missions. And their missions may overlap at times, but most of the time their missions don’t overlap very much. And so finding where there can be common ground is a lot like what we talk about as bipartisanship in politics. Find where you both want to work together on something to accomplish it, and leave the other parts aside. And so it really requires strategy, and being willing, I think, to find where that area of common ground is, even if it’s not obvious at first. ATKINSON: Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. And the next question is, right, from Lawrence Whitney. WHITNEY: Hi. Lawrence Whitney. I’m a research associate at the National Museum of American History and a fellow at the Center for Mind and Culture in Boston. Question about the ways you see different religions interacting in public health situations around the world. And I’m thinking particularly when COVID started there were a number of folks claiming that Confucian societies were better able to handle the pandemic. And then a group of policy experts in Global Policy Journal noted that arguing that Confucianism explained East Asia’s success would be as implausible that Europe and the United States’ failures stem from their Christian roots. No serious study has yet offered evidence for such claims. Of course, two months later Andrew Whitehead and Sam Perry came out with a study pointing out that Christian nationalism actually has been a key factor in limiting our ability to handle the pandemic here in the U.S. So I’m wondering if you could comment on the ways different religions interact differently in these spaces and can be helpful, but also detrimental, to the goals of public health. HSIAO: So you’re asking me or Ellen? (Laughs.) WHITNEY: Yes. ATKINSON: Either. IDLER: Well— HSIAO: Well—go ahead, please, Ellen. IDLER: OK. I’ll jump in. I will say that I was very attuned to the headlines about religion during the COVID epidemic, especially at the start of it. And there were a lot of negatives here in the United States, but around the world too. And some of the outbreaks occurred in religious settings initially. People sing—(laughs)—very often when they are in worship services. And singing is a really bad way to project a lot of aerosols. So I did, with a couple of grad students, a text analysis of articles on religion and COVID in the New York Times, from January 2020 through July 2020. And we also looked at the text for the guidelines for faith communities from the World Health Organization and the CDC. And finally, went to the websites of every religious group around the world I could find that had a COVID statement on it, and analyzed all this text together. It definitely was different from the headlines. The New York Times—we did two things. We did a sentiment analysis, which is based on emotion kind of words, and saw a very strong trend from the quite negative to the reasonably positive sentiment in the New York Times for articles on COVID and religion. And we also did a topic analysis, which showed a considerable overlap between the topics of—that were present in the CDC and World Health Organization documents and the COVID statements that were on the websites of religious groups. And that was fascinating. It wasn’t like they posted the text from the WHO guidelines at all. These were very much faith-based organization statements about their own group’s response. So the message from the actors themselves was a lot more positive than what might have appeared in the headlines. However, I certainly would not want to ignore the fact that religious liberty arguments were being made about the freedom from wearing masks, and not wearing—not getting vaccines. And so, yeah, there was the Christian nationalism, and Perry and Whitehead are great. That was a really, really good contribution from them. So certainly, that was there. But on balance, there was a much more positive response of the organizations on their own websites, but also big webinars that the National Council of Churches ran repeatedly. And so it was a mixed, but on the whole positive, kind of analysis that we got from our analyzing all that text. ATKINSON: Bill, do you want to add to that at all? HSIAO: Yes, because the question is about Confucianism. And I came to the United States at age twelve, but I take a deep interest in Chinese philosophy. So I read some Confucianist writings. I think that Confucianism—Confucianists do not emphasize God or a supreme being. It’s really more a philosophy. And the one major point of philosophy influence this COVID or public health is for the—people who rule, they must actually preserve their position. That means they are looking after the welfare of the people. So in the COVID pandemic, you see the East Asian countries that embrace Confucianism—that’s including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore—these countries’ leaders took action very quickly, unlike the democracy, democratic form of government, like the United States. And then, of course, there are tradeoffs. China has autocratic government. Originally, policy was very good, but then they make the wrong policy with the—as the COVID, the virus, mutated. And so there are tradeoffs under that Confucianist teaching. However, I just want to emphasize, if they were really practicing what Confucius taught, it’s to be a political leader you have to be observant. You show to people you actually can bring them benefit. And I would say you can say there is some compatibility with democracy here. FASKIANOS: Thank you. We have several questions in the chat. So I’m going to take the first one, read the first one from Lai Sze Tso from Gustavus Adolphus College. The translation process for FBOs sounds fascinating. Would there be feedback from local, national, non-FBO health and government administrators? Or are we targeting international charities/USAID? I don’t know who wants to take that. HSIAO: I think that’s for you, Ellen. (Laughs.) IDLER: I’m not sure I understand the question’s point. So I’m—is it about the leverage points, or? I’m not sure I— FASKIANOS: Lai, are you in a position to unmute and clarify for us? If not, we can go to the next question. IDLER: I’m sorry. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: No, that’s OK. That’s OK. Sometimes with the written questions it’s a little bit more challenging. SZE TSO: Hello? FASKIANOS: Oh, hi, yes. SZE TSO: Hi. So the translation process was referring to when Bill said that for faith-based organizations instead of directly doing work that is charitable with limited effect in a community, that it would be even more effective to translate ideals and goals and ethics into a set of standards. And I was hoping for additional clarification on if that was just at the local and national level, or are we also engaging more widely with international charities, as well as strong influences from organizations like USAID? HSIAO: Oh, I’m sorry. I misunderstood the question. And sorry I throw that hot potato to you, Ellen. (Laughter.) Let me offer my quick comment. I think actually you want to influence health policy decided by the domestic government. And I would consider that the main avenue. So you want influence in a country, the local churches or even mosques can actually influence how people think and express their views about health, about equity, and access to health care. That’s domestic. Internationally, well, actually, the United States under President Bush did this, which I experienced. Any country to even mention, use the word “Planned Parenthood” cannot receive U.S. foreign aid. And during this administration, actually, the population, the birth control and so forth, really took a major hit. So we can look through the government channels. But through the NGOs, with interfaith organizations, they continue to do very good work. However, let me just say this. Historically, the Christian missionaries went overseas offer free education or free health clinic and drugs. (Inaudible)—I’m trying to draw you into my faith. That history is still there. It makes the local people very suspicious when they hear it’s an interfaith organization doing something. They wonder what’s the other motive behind it. And so some interfaith organizations were able to overcome that very successfully, but others may not. Because there’s a variety of interfaith organizations working in the world. Literally tens of thousands of them. That’s all. SZE TSO: Thank you. FASKIANOS: Great. So we have several questions. The next question I’ll take is from Heather Laird. I appreciate the discussion on ethics. I found in the work of mental health, ethical humility is needed. Oftentimes, collective values are missed completely in many charters and ethical codes. Do you find this to be the case across health care in general? This is a question for both of you. As you are looking at social determinants, how do you account for diverse views of equity? And how do you ensure voices are represented? And Dr. Heather Laird is at the Center for Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology. HSIAO: Do you want to go first, or do you want me to? (Laughs.) IDLER: I think we can both try to answer this question. Great question. So the social determinants of health framework originated with researchers in the UK. And that’s somewhat ironic, isn’t it, because of the National Health Service and the provision of universal health care to people that is free at the point of service and has been since 1948. And so I think that was somewhat of a surprise to people, to find out that income and education and the other social determinants play such an important role in health status of the U.K. population, given that they already had a very robust system of health care in place that was equitable and accessible to everyone. In the United States, we understand that people do not all have health care. And still, 10 percent of our population remains without insurance, and many people are underinsured. And we also know that medical bills are a big cause of bankruptcy. So it’s—health care is actually driving poverty, driving inequality in a really bad way. So I guess we sort of know that. And the social determinants of health framework makes sense all around us here in the U.S. But even in other countries, where there is equitable access to health care, quality health-care services, there is still inequality with health. HSIAO: If I understand your question correctly, you want to know about mental health. Is that correct? Let me comment about what I observed around the world. Around the world, the awareness of mental health is not at such a high level as the United States or European countries. And usually, it’s out of ignorance. And because their education level is very low. As Ellen pointed out, that’s a social determinant of health too. And so therefore mental health is neglected. But meanwhile, physical illness is so visible—the pain, or the fever, or disability is so—mental health has lagged behind. Partly, though, I would say religion also has something to do with it, if I may just say. The question is, in your religious faith do you believe psychology is an important part of the human makeup? Let’s say Russia’s system, Russia and the materialism doesn’t believe psychology has any role. That’s not part of our human makeup. And so I work in China trying to overcome that. And they are now trying psychiatry. And they do not—and the social stigma for the mental health is so severe that you have to overcome all these barriers to be able to bring in really medical health. And the educational part actually becomes the first—as far as really educating the public as well as the policymakers—to say how important mental health is. And that that would draw on the literature, really studies, evidence from the United States and from European countries. ATKINSON: Well, thank you, both. Unfortunately, we are out of time. It has gone very quickly. And I am going to turn it now back to Irina. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m sorry that we couldn’t get to the additional questions but, as Holly said, we are out of time. Thank you all for today’s hour discussion. It was very insightful. We encourage you to follow Bill’s work at hsps.harvard.edu and Ellen’s work at sociology.emory,edu. And you can also follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. Please do email us with suggestions for future topics and speakers. You can send us an email to [email protected]. Wishing you all very happy holidays. Our next Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar will be in the new year on protests in Iran, on Wednesday, January 11, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. So we will reconvene in 2023. And again, wishing you all happy holidays. Stay safe and well.

Peter Mandaville, senior advisor for the religion and inclusive societies program at United States Institute of Peace, and Knox Thames, visiting expert at United States Institute of Peace, discuss their recent report, “Maintaining International Religious Freedom as a Central Tenet of US National Security.” Azza Karam, secretary general at Religions for Peace International, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. This webinar series convenes religious and faith-based leaders in cross-denominational dialogue on the intersection between religion and international relations. Today’s session is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Azza Karam with us to moderate today’s discussion on religious freedom and U.S. national security. Dr. Azza Karam is secretary general of Religions for Peace International, and professor of religion and development at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Previously, she served as a senior advisor on culture at the United Nations Population Fund, coordinator and chair of the United Nations Interagency Task Force on Religion and Development, and president of the Committee of Religious NGOs at the United Nations. And before I turn it over to Azza to moderate this conversation, I want to thank her and Peter Mandaville, who is one of our speakers, for serving on CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy Advisory Committee. We appreciate all of their guidance over the past several years to help us with our programming and activities. So with that, Azza, over to you to introduce Peter and Knox. KARAM: Thank you very much, indeed. It is a true privilege for me and a real pleasure to be able to moderate this session with two scholars and practitioners who have done a great deal not only in the space of religious freedom, but actually assessing and looking at the nexus of freedoms, democracy, human rights, and religions writ large—which, as we all know, is a very topical and temporal issue. But we also know that religious freedom is a very critical aspect of—increasingly a critical aspect not only for the United States’ foreign policy, but as it intersects with foreign policy and domestic policies of many countries around the world, and certainly with the engagement of religious organizations and interreligious actors in many places and spaces. So we’re in a good moment, so to speak, to discuss religious freedom. But we’re also in a very appropriate space at the Council on Foreign Relations to be able to assess and understand together from two leading experts in this space on precisely how and why international religious freedom should be a main tenet of U.S. foreign policy. And I am quoting their singular report, which was very recently issued after a great deal of debate and research, within and under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace. I have the privilege to introduce these two giants of this space. Peter Mandaville is a senior advisor for the Religion and Inclusive Societies team at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He has twenty-five years of academic think tank and government experience, focusing on the intersection of religion, international affairs, and the Muslim-majority world. At USIP, Dr. Mandaville leads an initiative focused on the security and peacebuilding implications of religion in the external relations of great powers. He’s also a professor of international affairs, and director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, and a fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Previously, Dr. Mandaville was a member of the United States State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, where he was involved in shaping the U.S. response to the Arab Spring, and a senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of State. He is the author of many publications, amongst which Islam and Politics and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma. Knox Thames is a visiting expert with the Middle East and Religion and Inclusive Societies team at the United States Institute of Peace. He joined USIP after twenty years of government service, including at the U.S. State Department, and two different U.S. government foreign policy commissions. Most recently, Mr. Thames served across two administrations as the special advisor for religious minorities in the Near East and South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State. In addition to his work at USIP, he is a senior fellow with the Institute for Global Engagement. Previously, Mr. Thames served on the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, AmeriCorps, and is an adjunct research professor at the U.S. Army War College. Welcome to both of you. And I would like, before any detailed questions come up, I’d like very much to give the floor to each of you, starting with Peter, to describe a little bit the background to this incredible report, and what prompted it. How did you go about such a report? We understand you, in other conversations, have mentioned the word “bipartisan effort” repeatedly. Tell us a little bit, Peter, about this—the process of this report, and what you actually, in an ideal context, want to see achieved with it and by it? MANDAVILLE: Yes, great. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Azza. And let me just greet everyone who is joining us today, and to thank Irina and CFR for hosting us, and particularly to you, Azza, for moderating and navigating us through this discussion today. We’re honored and privileged to have someone who, as many of our participants will know, is herself as a towering figure, and someone who’s really shaped the way that many of us do this work, think about it, both in scholarship and in practice. So thank you, Azza. The origins of this report date back to a conversation that Knox and I had several—almost four years ago now, I think. He and I have known and worked together for two decades now. And while we have always had certain differences in terms of how each of us thinks about the question of religious freedom and appropriate approaches to it in U.S. foreign policy, I think it’s also fair to say that we’ve always deeply respected each other and the way that we go about the work that we do respectively. And in that conversation, we both registered some concern about the ways in which intense political polarization in U.S. domestic politics appear to be leaking into the way that we think about and work on questions of international religious freedom around the world. And so we agreed that it would be helpful to try and create a process and a space in which we could have and convene conversations about ways of finding common ground in this work, regardless of where one sits on an ideological spectrum. Are there certain aspects of international religious freedom promotion in U.S. foreign policy that we can all agree on? In late 2020, we both found ourselves taking up new affiliations at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and courtesy of an invitation from the former director of the Religion and Inclusive Societies team at USIP, Susie Hayward, and someone who I’m sure is known to many in the audience today. Susie encouraged us to move forward to create an experts working group focused on these questions. And so we were able to bring together about twenty leading figures on questions of international religious freedom. They represented a variety of sectors and professional backgrounds—some former government officials, some civil society practitioners and activists, and with them thought leaders and scholars on international religious freedom. They represented a wide range of political and ideological orientations. And we sat together with them. This was during the height of COVID, so much of the group’s interaction and discussion was virtual. But we convened this working group in a series of small group consultations to talk through a number of sort of essential questions, looking into how people view the politicization and political polarization in international religious freedom, and their ideas about how we might minimize it and find that common ground. We were, I want to add, supported invaluably in this work by USIP Research Assistant Emily Scolaro, who’s currently in the PhD program at UNC Chapel Hill. Her contributions and helping to manage, move this work forward, were incredibly important. We were also able to benefit, I think very importantly, from the participation, the active participation and endorsement of the work, from the two most recent past ambassadors-at-large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback and David Saperstein. Obviously, individuals who served in two very different administrations, but who I think in their interaction with each other, in the way that they helped to shape the conversation space, modeled the very kind of bipartisanship and the sort of spirit that we were hoping would characterize their conversations, even when at times we began to talk very openly and frankly about partisan differences in terms of how people on different sides of the political aisle perceive the issue of religious freedom abroad, and how they perceive each other in their efforts and commitments to advance this work. The remarkable diversity that I just mentioned that characterized the group might suggest that we would have difficulty reaching consensus on a lot of issues, and certainly on any policy recommendations that we might want to put forward. And indeed, there were a couple of issues that came up where there were simply very respectfully articulated differences of opinion that meant that we were not able to come up with a recommendation that people were able to express comfort with. For example, one of the issues that came up, and one that will be familiar to many who work in this space, is the question of whether promoting religious freedom should be a function that stands on its own within the portfolio of U.S. foreign policy, or whether promoting religious freedom should be approached as a right that is nested within a broader approach to international human rights. And we just had a wide variety of opinions on that issue. That said, we were able to come up with eight or nine quite concrete recommendations that the vast majority of our working group members from—again, from a diverse range of ideological and political perspectives, felt comfortable with and were willing to endorse. And we’re looking forward to having the opportunity to talk through some of those with all of you today. Thanks. KARAM: Thank you very much, Peter. I think you’ve, indeed, painted the picture, and the aspiration, and the actors very, very nicely and succinctly. Knox, did you want to add anything to what Peter described in terms of the process of getting this, and putting this together as a report, and your own sort of aspiration there too? Go ahead. THAMES: I’d just add my thanks to you, Azza, and Irina, and CFR for hosting this. And also thank USIP for supporting the working group. These recommendations are recommendations from Peter and myself based on the input from the working group. They’re not working group recommendations, but they were certainly informed by the process and the vigorous debate that Peter referenced. When we were starting this, our—as any American knows, or any observer of U.S. politics knows, our domestic political space is really supercharged. It’s about how do you find the wedge issue that can rally the base. It’s about disagreement. And we were concerned that this issue of international religious freedom would be a partisan football in the way—or wedge issue—in the way that domestic religious liberty debates have become. We wanted to find, where are the areas that we agree, right left and center, drawing from experts from academia, former government appointees and civil servants, people of all faiths and none. I’m proud of what we were able to put together. And we’re hopeful that the recommendations we outlined will begin a new conversation and try to solidify a safe space where we can continue to think about ways to advance this fundamental human right that doesn’t jeopardize the work for future administrations and advocates. KARAM: One of the things that you’ve both spoken to is the extent to which there seems to be an understanding that is accepted on all sides, in spite of the polarization, that international religious freedom matters, it is important, and it should be an aspect of U.S. foreign policy. So it sounds as if there wasn’t much agreement necessarily on the what, but perhaps more of a different nuancing and perhaps open disagreement on the how this could or should be undertaken. Is that a correct understanding? And if so, what—in addition to the example that Peter raised, were there other issues where you felt there was not necessarily a common understanding on the how too? MANDAVILLE: I think we all went into this discussion with the awareness that promoting international religious freedom is something that the United States would continue to do. It is, after all, a matter of law. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 mandates that the U.S. Department of State undertake this work. So it’s not as if we could make recommendations to, say, a particular secretary of state, that they decide to stand down from advancing U.S. religious freedom abroad. It is a value that the United States Congress has committed the executive branch of the United States to carry forward. And so our question was more, what are the most effective ways of doing this? And how can we do this in ways that generates the broadest swath of support from the widest range of champions and advocates for this work? So certainly, that question of whether promoting religious freedom should be a stand-alone function, with its own specific structures, whether that’s the most effective approach in advancing this cause, or whether it’s most effectively approached as a broader—as one aspect of a broader U.S. commitment to human rights, which has tended to be the approach that many of our international partners, particularly in Europe, have taken. Although, there has been a notable trend in recent years of even our close European partners also creating their own dedicated special envoys and positions focused on freedom of religion or belief. And so that right there I think starts to point towards another area where there’s debate and discussion. Which is the distinctly American framing of religious freedom or religious liberty—something that I think is in part a function of the American story and American history—versus an international commitment, as enshrined in, for example, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to promoting freedom of religion or belief, FoRB as it’s commonly called. And these are terms that imply different kinds of framings and different understandings of the scope and breadth of what we’re talking about and what we’re championing. So I think that’s another concrete example of some of the terrain that we wandered across. THAMES: I would add, you’d also see in the recommendations we—the question of how does the United States accomplish this goal through foreign policy? And we have two different recommendations that talk about two different approach vectors. One is using the power of the United States to sanction, to penalize through the country of particular concern status, which the State Department and Secretary Blinken just released their designations on Friday. Versus a softer approach that’s looking to work at a community level to build capacity, to build space for, and appreciation for, diversity and tolerance. Sort of a step removed from the pure human rights advocacy approach. I think, unlike the “is it a holistic or an individual approach to the issue,” which the report couldn’t really—didn’t speak to, because we couldn’t really find a common approach to that question. There was a sense that we can do both, which due to the pure human rights advocacy to leverage the power the influence of the United States to be that force for good, to be the voice for the oppressed, while also using our resources to develop space for diversity of thought, appreciation for pluralism, which is a key building block to respect for human rights. KARAM: Just curious, because I’m not sure—I hope that everybody who’s listening in has managed to read the whole report. But for those who may not have had a chance to read it in full, what would you say are some of the key recommendations you want to make sure that everybody listening knows you made, that you feel are very important? What would you highlight or nuance? MANDAVILLE: Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking that, Azza. And I believe that there’s a link—or, will be a link to the report in the chat box, so that those who are joining us today who haven’t had the opportunity to download the report will be able to do so. There’s also a sort of tl;dr, too long; didn’t read, blog post version of it that is a very efficient 750 words, but kind of hits on our greatest hits in terms of the recommendations. So there are a couple that I would want to highlight briefly. One is a recommendation we have that is about expanding the range of partners and advocates within international religious freedom constituencies more broadly. There is certainly already, particularly in Washington, DC, a very well developed infrastructure for—within civil society, within political structures—for advocating for, funding, and supporting international religious freedom work. And I know that, for example, the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom—Knox, of course, has worked at both— relies enormously on this community to support their work. But this is a community that tends to be focused on the idea of religious freedom as a value, as a right, that should be advanced unto itself. And that makes sense. Religious freedom, freedom of religion and belief, is a key constituent element of international human rights commitments. But I think there are also opportunities—and we argue that there are opportunities for expanding the range of partners and champions for international religious freedom, by drawing attention to the ways in which discrimination against certain populations and communities on the basis of religion, the oppression and suppression of those communities, can at times in certain settings be immediate sources of instability and violence. In other words, there is a national security rationale. There’s a relationship between dynamics of stability and instability, and international religious freedom. And we can point to any number of conflicts around the world—in South and Southcentral Asia, in the Middle East, in sub-Saharan Africa, where those kinds of dynamics are at work. And so we are encouraging our colleagues who work in the broader national security community to understand that in addition to being a core human rights issue, advancing religious freedom, advancing and protecting the rights of religious minorities, for example, can be directly related to efforts to generate greater stability and to foster positive peacebuilding, and enduring peacebuilding outcomes, in a number of settings around the world. A second recommendation that we focus on—and I’ll register this as actually a bit of a surprise for me, in terms of where our discussion with the group came out. We at one point in the discussion took up the question of the relationship between promoting international religious freedom as a foreign policy function and engaging with religious actors more broadly as a foreign policy function. Those of you who are familiar with the bureaucratics, the ambient bureaucratics around this question in U.S. foreign policy, will know that in 2013 under former Secretary of State John Kerry, the State Department created a new office called the Office of Religion in Global Affairs, that understood itself to be working on the broader effort to raise awareness among American diplomats of the importance of religion as a force in societies around the world. And to increase the capacity of American diplomats to engage routinely with religious actors as they go about pursuing whatever their diplomatic objectives might be, and to make the point that that kind of work is separate and distinct from promoting religious freedom, which is tied to a particular normative commitment. It’s a values-based effort. And so we wanted to say that these are two complementary, and to some extent related, but also quite separate functions. The Trump administration made the decision to take that Office of Religion in Global Affairs and to put it under the existing Office of International Religious Freedom. And so it became what is today known as the Strategic Religious Engagement Unit within the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom. We found broad support—and this is a point that Knox and I also both agree on—on the idea that it would be better to take the strategic religious engagement function out of the Office of International Religious Freedom, in order to give it more space to forge its own unique working relationships with other relevant offices and bureaus at the State Department. And for these two functions to proceed in parallel, in cooperation, and working together in the many occasions when it would be appropriate to do that, but also to have their own space to pursue their own distinct roles. THAMES: And I would add that there are a few that resonate with me. One is sort of obvious but needs to be said. Organizations and individuals who work to promote international religious freedom should avoid the temptation to politicize it. That they need to just have a rock-solid commitment to advancing this issue, and leaving politics at home, here at home, and not trying to muddy the waters by throwing stones at advocates from a different political party. So just don’t do it. But two other ones I’ll speak a bit more about. One is just recognizing the difference between the debates here at home, which are important, and situations internationally, which are generally life and death. We know that the cases before the Supreme Court stir great passions. They’re very important. But they’re generally about the finer nuances of how to prefect the protection of religious liberty here at home. The issues confronting advocates and religious communities regarding international religious freedom are about violence, they’re about the lack of justice, they’re about persecution, death, even genocide, as we’re seeing in places like China and Myanmar. So we need to keep that perspective. So don’t politicize it. Don’t blur terminology with what we’re doing—what’s happening here at home, with the situation that’s drastically different overseas. And then, lastly, we talk about there is a community of suffering. Different belief groups that are being persecuted for trying to pursue as their conscience leads. They’re converts, members who are of the humanist community, atheists and agnostics. But then also, members of sexual and gender minorities, the LGBT community. They’re often facing many of the same social and legal challenges that can lead to severe persecution. But those communities aren’t in conversation with each other. So we talk about how to address this pandemic of persecution that we see confronting so many parts of the world, building new alliances between unusual or unconventional allies can start to elevate the issue in new ways, and hopefully bring about results. Because if we can improve the conditions for one community, it’ll often have positive reverberations for others. It’s not that we’re asking them to endorse issues that they would disagree with, but rather a common commitment, a common belief in just the dignity of the human person. And on that ground alone, we should be advocating for the fundamental human rights of every individual. And that’s a possibility that I think has yet to be fully explored. KARAM: I’m glad you said that, because not to preempt what I’m sure will be some very pertinent and important questions from the audience, but just to raise a couple of issues for your consideration that perhaps may also help you pull up other recommendations and nuances from your report. The first issue, to me, is you mentioned China. And I’m thinking, OK, working with civil societies, the U.S. to work with civil society, or impose sanctions. And I’m thinking, I don’t see that happening exactly in the context of a country like China, which is oppressing, or at least is on the record for having, oppressing, certain religious minorities. So in cases where it’s beyond arguing about politicizing, it is being politicized. It is a political issue. (Laughs.) It is very much politicized. So how then would you, speaking to your fellow colleagues in the State Department and others, what would your advice be, given that particular country dynamic, and the relationship that exists at the moment between the United States, China, and Russia? What then would your report actually say as a recommendation for promoting international religious freedom in that context? That’s one question. So please just let me know your thoughts. THAMES: We specifically elevate what’s happening in China as evidence of an opportunity to build a broader coalition around a very dire situation. Of course, from the religious freedom advocacy perspective, China is one of the worst countries of the world for the genocide against the Uighurs, the cultural genocide and physical repression of the Tibetan Buddhists, the limitations on Christianity, Falun Gong, the list goes on. But we know, as we’ve seen China start to flex its economic muscles internationally to promote a global system that I think is antithetical to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also other core strategic interests, it presents an opportunity to build that broader tent. To where it’s not just religious freedom advocates raising concerns about China, but it’s also folks who want a free and fair-trade relationship, organizations that are concerned about Taiwan and its independence. It’s an interesting opportunity to build that broader tent. But also, I would say, just having worked in the State Department advocating for human rights as an American diplomat is hard. You’re constantly confronted with all the different challenges a superpower faces. So of course, we carry our values into these conversations. I’m proud that our country does that. But it’s also we balance them with security, energy, trade, counterterrorism. So it’s hard work as well. And there’s always the risk of hypocrisy. So part of our—and this isn’t so much covered in the report. This would be more my own personal view is challenging our country to make sure that we’re a consistent advocate for our values, and that we’re consistently carrying those into every conversation, and they don’t get shifted down to the third or fourth talking point, and thus never raised. MANDAVILLE: And I’ll add to that, and I’ll also be going beyond the boundaries of our report here, but also touching on some work that I’m doing here at USIP as well as in my academic perches. I think that there is a broader kind of new geopolitics of religion that we are all confronting right now. It has very much to do with the ways in which we see in operation today transnational networks grounded, at least in part, in religion, in which some of the major strategic rivals of the United States—certainly Russia, China less so, but countries like India, certain domestic groups even here in the United States as well—are all looped into this. And a lot of it has to do with a struggle between inclusivists versus exclusivist understandings of religion and religious identities in ways that have fairly intense human rights implications. So it’s not just a set of individual cases and a matter of U.S. bilateral relations. I think there’s a broader transnational geopolitical construct of religion working behind a lot of today’s geopolitics. We’re finding it expressed through multilateral spaces, such as the G20. We’re finding it expressed through, for example, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, that the United States has had some level of, at times, direct representation through a special envoy. But there are countries—there are emerging powers in Asia, such as China, that have identified the OIC, usually a neglected multilateral space in the eyes of the United States, as a useful platform for advancing certain agendas. And so I think it’s important for us to be aware of these dynamics and to engaged with them. And I think that the kind of combined space of religious engagement and international religious freedom are part and parcel of how we do that. KARAM: Thank you. You both answered this very, very well. And in a way, it kind of begs the concern, the question which is also a concern, that it is already a politicized domain. I mean, geopolitics of religion is a reality that we are living in the midst of today. So trying to keep politics out of it may well be much easier said than done. And in that case, I think one of your recommendations that you make becomes particularly important to understand and appreciate, which is keep the international religious freedom space, office, and engagement—separate from engagement with broader religious issues. Because, in a way, you’re also trying to reduce the politicization dynamics that already exist. And you stand a better chance, perhaps, of pushing for international religious freedom if you’re trying to keep it outside of the—of the contentiousness of the political and geopolitical debates. And perhaps—I’m actually begging the questions that you raised, in addition to also, in a sense, asking us to be very understanding of the complexities that are already in action. And I think—I think one of the many advantages of your report is that you’ve looked at it from a myriad of different angles, and you’ve presented something that even though it is fundamentally about positioning international religious freedom as a main tenet of U.S. foreign policy, you’ve also made the case very critically for how the United States foreign policy can continue to support and protect human rights as a whole. And I want to make sure that that gets underlined and understood. Because you could have—it could have been exclusively about international religious freedom. But one of the many advantages, and I think very wise things, that your report does is you show that intersectionality with broad human rights issues. And you underline the commitment of the United States to the defense of human rights, which in and of itself is a strategic move that you have made with the report. So I want to commend you both on that. Very, very quickly, I just want us to—want your opinion, your read, on the aspect of civil society, the role of civil society in the promotion of this. Because we tend, all of us, to presume that civil society is sort of monolithic space. And you know better than anyone else how fraught civil society is, and how sometimes civil society mirrors the challenges within a government structure, or an administration itself. So what were your thoughts on that when you were putting forward one of the soft approaches of engaging civil society? But what if civil society itself is torn about this issue? What then? THAMES: We highlight some emerging networks of civil society activists that I think are very positive, as someone who’s been in this space for a couple of decades now. The movements of international religious freedom, the roundtables, the networks of parliamentarians, and now governments. But the roundtables, bringing together people of all faiths and none, you go to these events, and you see Baptists sitting next to atheists next to Muslims next to Buddhists. These are gatherings that just weren’t happening twenty years ago. And it, I think, adds strength to the issue, to show that it’s not just about one group advocating for their own. It’s about all groups recognizing this issue’s important for everyone. If one group doesn’t have religious freedom in a certain environment, does anyone really have it? So that’s a positive step. And we elevate them as an example of—to be emulated and to be expanded upon. But I think when you’re looking at communities in the broken countries, where there is persecution, there’s often a fracturing that makes it very difficult to know how to engage, how to advocate. You see this in numerable country contexts, that I’m sure we’re both familiar with. Many are coming to mind. And there’s no quick solution to that, unfortunately, because we know that the oppressor—the oppressive governments often play upon those divisions as well to lessen the impact of their voice. MANDAVILLE: And I’ll add just this briefly, if I may, Azza. You’re absolutely right, of course, that civil society organizations that work in this space, many of whom receive funding from governmental sources and therefore have baked into the DNA of their work some of the contradictions and tensions that are present in government policy approaches. Civil society is, of course, also reflective of broader society, which means that some of that polarization, some of those political biases and orientations are present in civil society as well. I think a recognition of that reality is precisely the pretext for this report. I have often joked with Knox when we looked at the recommendations at the end that, wow, this is really boring stuff. (Laughter.) Like there is nothing particularly interesting and intriguing and profound here. This is all pretty commonsensical stuff. But our idea was that we had just come out of a period of particularly intense political polarization as we started the process. I have no reason to believe that we are not likely to go through another round of that in another couple of years. These sorts of differences of opinion politically, and with respect to this work more specifically, have always been part of its story and always will be. So what we wanted to create was a reference point, a safe harbor, if you will, such that when those polarizing winds begin to blow, and blow strongly again, there’s a reference point that we can turn to remind ourselves of certain core things that we do all agree upon, no matter where we sit politically around these issues. KARAM: Beautifully put. And I just want to now make sure to give a chance to our audience, who I’m sure you’ve provoked and enthused enough for questions. But just one small point to that last point, to both of you, to take into consideration perhaps if you were to do a follow up or maybe the other 750 word postscript to this report. Which is to continue to harness the experiences of working multi-religiously to defend religious freedom as a community of diverse religious leaders. And some of those experiences go underground and are not necessarily noted, when in fact I think, Knox, you were also already mentioning you see varied people coming around the table. But when religious leaders from different religious currents are actually sitting together in defense of one another, not of their own respective community, there is a very potent strategic and almost spiritual strength in that, that I think even not having—this doesn’t have to serve as part of the U.S. foreign policy, but U.S. foreign policy needs to be respectful of that particular dynamic, and fully aware and conscious of it. And I think that is an important footnote to what you’re both trying very eloquently and powerfully to articulate. THAMES: That’s more than a footnote. That should be the headline. Yes, that’s an important point. KARAM: Great. So I’m not sure whether it’s—this is a good now time for me to inquire of our colleagues in the CFR, Irina and colleagues, to perhaps let us know what the Q&A situation is like? OPERATOR: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you, Azza. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question comes from Sarah Shabbir at the U.S. Department of State. Please accept the “unmute now” prompt. Looks as though we are having technical difficulties. So we will take our next written question from Guthrie Grave-Fitzsimmons from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, who says: Do you believe Christians face religious freedom threats in the United States? Because this is such a big issue in the news, do you think the idea of Christian persecution in the United States is possibly making progressives conditioned to be wary of international religious freedom, when they should be natural allies of human rights concerns? THAMES: That is a great question, and one that was a context in which all of the discussions took place. And we had an interesting conversation that didn’t make it into the final version of the report between sort of different sides of the issues about framing, about terminology, and how the superheated domestic debate can turn people off from the international work because there’s sort of a lot of assumptions that come along with it when there are people who are not following what’s happening overseas as closely as those of us on this call are. We notice a difference in terminology. A lot of times Republicans or conservatives are very interested in international religious freedom. Democrats or liberals are more interested in religious minorities. Those different approach vectors sort of end at the same point, but the framing matters to folks who are not initiated into the nitty gritty of this work. So, yeah, the domestic context is an issue, a challenge. And how we talk about it is something I’d be very careful with. Again, going back to my—the foundational point is don’t politicize international work. Let’s leave our domestic debates here, have those robust conversations, but remember what’s happening overseas is literally life and death. And it’s just incomparable to what we’re discussing here at home.  OPERATOR: Great. Our next question comes from Shaarik Zafar. ZAFAR: Hi, everybody. Azza, it’s amazing to see you. Knox, really amazing to see you. Peter, I guess it’s OK to see you as well. This is Shaarik Zafar, formerly Peter’s intern at the State Department and now at Meta, where I lead our foreign policy and national security engagement. Congratulations on this amazing report. I think it’s very timely and very important. What do you think the role of the private sector should be, broadly, in supporting religious freedom? Having spent a little bit of time in the private sector now, when we talk about business and human rights it’s often what we traditionally think of as human rights. And religious freedom doesn’t always rise to the same level of importance. Is there a particular role that you’d like to see businesses here in the United States and elsewhere? THAMES: Thanks, Shaarik. And thanks for tuning in today. I feel like a radio show. I think leveraging the power and influence of the private sector outside of the human rights space is a really unexplored and an area of vast potential. Just looking at the company that you’re working for now, and the whole Metaverse and Facebook and the ability to use social media to promote—to share beliefs, to worship collectively through a digital interface, but also social media is—the problematic aspects of it, to promote hate speech, promote violence. And we’ve seen that happen in a lot of contexts where social media is used to actually abet or instigate severe instances of persecution against religious minorities. So bringing the private sector alongside as partners, trying to find ways to encourage them to walk with advocates, not out of you better do it or we’re going to sue you, but more of a commonsense approach that freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, all the different components of religious freedom, if they are fully respected and protected, then that’s going to be a better environment for creative thought, for businesses, for academia, for all the different components of society. And that makes a better business environment. So there could be a sort of a long-term monetary incentive that could hopefully bring these companies and institutions alongside this work. MANDAVILLE: So let me also add, briefly, so, Shaarik, I guess it’s kind of nice to see you too. Shaarik, everyone, you should all know, was the former State Department special representative to Muslim communities. One of the principal political appointees in the Office of Religion and Global Affairs that I had the honor to serve in. And what I really appreciated about the way that Shaarik did his work is that even though his mandate naturally brought him to deal with issues related to Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment around the world, he always engaged that work in ways that really, I think, embodied the spirit of the recommendation that we make in our report, to make sure to do that work as part of a broader effort to champion those who are vulnerable, whether or not they happen to hold the particular religious identity that his position was focused on. And I know that the technology sector where he hangs his hat now professionally has benefitted enormously from his work. I think what I would add is just that I do think that the tech sector is particularly important here, just because social media and technology platforms, the broader phenomenon of digital hate, is really at the heart of how these dynamics play out today. And so obviously debates and questions we’re having today about the content moderation policies of social media platforms that raise enormous dilemmas that I’ve heard you, Shaarik, speak so eloquently about in public forums. But I think, again, it’s not just the naming and shaming in the sense of finding bad material and pulling it down. I know that social media platforms, of which Meta obviously holds quite a few, Twitter, have the capacity to proactively help to push forward messages of inclusivity. And so I think if there is an ethical commitment to those kinds of values on the part of these platforms, then the more of that we can get the better. We know that it’s just a matter of the business model sometimes, that the algorithm privileges messages that generate certain kinds of responses. And controversial messages tend to generate those kinds of responses. And so I think helping to counterbalance that by proactively making space at minimal cost for others kinds of messages, I think is a very valuable tool. KARAM: Can I just quickly interject that I think, to honor a little bit more Shaarik’s question, because I think he mentioned the private sector. And we honed—you zeroed in on the tech space. And the private sector is tech, plus, plus, plus. (Laughs.) So I do believe that it might be valuable to ask for a little bit more of a comparative reflection of how have the private sectors in their diversities in the United States, for instance, contributed to other human rights issues that are part of U.S. foreign policy? And maybe look at that a bit critically, and compare and contrast, before passing any particular judgement on the value-added for international religious freedom. I think it sort of behooves us to maybe want to study that a bit more, and listen to the experiences of people like Shaarik, but also other private sector actors in this space, before we sort of pass a judgement too quickly. OPERATOR: Great. Our next question comes from Razi Hashmi from the U.S. Department of State. HASHMI: Hey, Knox and Peter. It’s good to hear and see you. I am a former bag handler to Knox Thames and chai aficionado with Peter. So in terms of my question, so I work at the Department of State in the Office of International Religious Freedom, where this report is very pertinent. But I’m also a term member, so I care about these issues in multiple reasons. You had talked about—in your recommendations—about exploring common challenges for at-risk communities. And really, like, broadening the pool of people that are confronted with these issues. Now, one of the common threats in terms of things that we see is the rise of religious and ethnic nationalism. And I’d be curious to hear how you would envision approaching those kind of larger issues, that do connect with those other communities that are at risk. And then the second part of my question is engaging the youth and bringing young progressives that may not be as connected to their religious identity as maybe some other communities. So welcome your thoughts on both those. Thank you. THAMES: I would say on the first part, Razi, the work of strategic religious engagement becomes—I think, rises to the forefront when you’re dealing with these broader movements that have great relevance for religious minorities or belief minorities, whether minority communities, but not them alone. How do you understand the religious landscape of society? How do we prepare our diplomats to interpret what’s going on, not just between politicians or the leadership of a country, but the broader society that is also influencing how they make decisions, how they position themselves, the voices that are coming to the top of their inbox, so to speak. And that’s where increasing the religious IQ of our diplomats, our USAID colleagues, our service members, I think is really important. So that we can see the trend lines that are moving a country in a particular direction or not. This gets into religious and ethnic nationalism. Who are the key players? The people of great influence may not be in government. They could be spokespersons or religious leaders. How do we engage them? How do they impact U.S. foreign policy goals for human rights, but also a range of other issues? And this is where I think training becomes really important. How do we institute a training requirement for all our diplomats, aid workers, and service members so they understand this? They don’t have to get a PhD in comparative religion, but they are equipped with sort of the basic tools to understand these dynamics, and also feel comfortable doing it, that it’s not going to be a violation of the First Amendment, that this is actually a smart way to engage civil society holistically. That religious actors are part of civil society, like any other actor, and smart diplomacy would understand all the different drivers that are moving a country in a particular direction or not. MANDAVILLE: And I would just add to that—Razi, also, it’s great to have you with us today. It’s, I think, been a challenge in U.S. government engagement with religious actors to kind of move beyond an understandable focus on religious figures who tend to hold certain kinds of formal titles and roles within certain kinds of institutional hierarchies, just because the U.S. government is an institution. It’s used to dealing with entities like it, which means that we naturally gravitate towards those kinds of institutionalized spaces of religion. And they matter, but there are also—there’s a vast ecosystem of religious voices and experiences that are not captured by that institutionalized practice of religion, whether we’re talking about younger religious leaders, whether we’re talking about women as religious leaders, whether we’re talking about indigenous and traditional religions that sometimes disrupt our very concept of what constitutes religion in the first place. And I think the sort of heart of doing the kind of work that you’re asking about really relates to and exists in those kinds of spaces. And so I think finding the capacity to do that kind of work, it’s what we’ve sought to make the hallmark of the religious engagement paradigm that we’ve developed here at the United States Institute of Peace. What we call inclusive religious engagement is really the answer there, and not least of all because, harking back to that geopolitics of religion that I alluded to earlier, in so many settings those institutionalized manifestations of religions have incredibly complex relationships with state authorities and state structures themselves, which in various ways often make them an extension of that state. And, as we loop back to the point that you raised about religious nationalism, contemporary manifestations of religious nationalism are often not just about seeking to articulate a very specific relationship between a given national identify and a specific religion, but often a particular way of understanding and practicing the religion in question. It seeks to put certain kinds of parameters around what counts as an authentic expression of that specified religion. And for that reason alone, I think this immediately finds itself in the terrain of protecting freedom of religion or belief.  This is why I think these kinds of issues are an integral part of our efforts to address that very real challenge today. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Lawrence Whitney, who writes: How do you see the dramatically changing religious landscape, especially in Western liberal democracies, toward increasing religious unaffiliation impacting the dynamics around international religious freedom? MANDAVILLE: Yeah. There was the headline about the United Kingdom after some survey work was done or since this work being a Christian-minority country; that more people are identifying as nonreligious, agnostic, or atheist than identify as Christian. And in the context of the work of international religious freedom I thought it’s interesting to compare the situation for nonbelievers in the United Kingdom that survey work was sort of greeted with a general shrug and everyone moved on. No one’s life is impacted by not believing in the Church of England, not being a member of the Church of England. There’s no social or legal ramifications for walking away from faith. But that is not the case for nonbelievers, atheists, and agnostics in many, many other countries. And in some places, they’re even labeled as terrorists for the sin or the crime of walking away from faith. So for me, it just sort of placed in direct contrast where—the space that’s been developed for a diversity of beliefs in some countries and the incredibly constricted space in many others, and the severe penalties that can fall upon people if they decide to step outside of the very narrow permissible lanes of religious activity. If they challenge that, if they do a different direction, they can be in for a world of hurt. OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Adem Carroll from Justice for All, who writes: Though not every religious leader embraces a rights-based framework, how can a focus on justice be fully integrated into the religious freedom and faith community engagement conversations rather than seeing these in the service of social order or business as usual? MANDAVILLE: It’s a great question, and I think that is one that has endlessly plagued those of us who try to keep questions of social justice at the forefront of the work that we do, understanding that rights-based frameworks have a certain cultural provenance and a background and story of their own, which means that they sometimes don’t travel well. There are any number of challenges that this faces. For those who want to find ways of having conversations about the rights of LGBTQI people in settings where there are enormous and deeply-wrenching debates going on within society about those kinds of issues, this is something that one comes up to—one comes up against very quickly. And it’s one where simply walking into that context with a copy of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights that you then treat as a form of scripture unto itself and reading it at people and expecting, quote/unquote, “compliance” just doesn’t even allow you to start the conversation. You need to find other vocabularies. You need to find other framings. And I think that there are present and available to us in all religious traditions, including for lack of a better term the most conservative variants of those religions, there are basic concepts about the dignity and inviolability of the person that provides spaces to begin to have these conversations in ways that opens space. Contested space, difficult space to be sure, but allow you to at least begin a conversation. But we also happen to have with us in this session in the form of Azza literally, I think, one of the world’s foremost experts given her former work at the UN Population Fund, where these kinds of issues and struggles I know were front and center to things you had to deal with, Azza. So I really think you are by far the best-placed among us to answer this question. Please. KARAM: No, I—thank you. Thank you for that, Peter, but I think expertise is something that we all pool into and all benefit from. So thank you for that—for the wisdom that you’ve shared. I would say very, very quickly as an answer—before I hand over to Irina to bring us to summary and closure, I would say that some of the most critical agents of this work who—one of them—one constituency has already been named in an earlier question, which is young people—young people, some of whom are part of the far right of the religious spectrum but many of whom are actually in the counter movement. Especially when they’re willing and ready and able to work together across their different religious communities, they stand as awesome champions for one another’s religious freedom against the far right. But the other agency—actors or agents that we haven’t mentioned at all and that absolutely deserve a mention are women of faith. And we see in this work where so many of the most sensitive issues intersect into political issues—social issues in particular are intersecting this dimension of religious freedom—we see women of faith at the forefront of so much activism in this space, where they stand as champions of one another and of very specific vulnerable communities. It would, honestly, be very critical for us to honor that engagement. And I can tell you not from UNFP but from Religions for Peace’s five decades of engagement around many of these issues that it is women of faith and youth who are leading so much of this work to realize fundamental human rights and the intersectional human rights simultaneously. And ironically the COVID pandemic actually gave those kinds of movements a boost. So whereas we were complaining that we don’t see much multi-religious engagement in response to the COVID crisis, actually, when we looked at some of the incoming proposals to the multi-religious humanitarian fund at Religions for Peace, we found that it was women and faith and youth—interfaith youth groups who were doing the most remarkable work in that space. And so just to acknowledge that effort and to make sure that we don’t forget that activism. Thank you. Irina, back to you. Thank you so much. FASKIANOS: Azza, thank you very much. And Peter and Knox, this was a fantastic hour. We really appreciate you and all of the great questions and comments. I regret that we could not get to all of you, but there will be more opportunities. You know where to find our distinguished speakers and moderator, but you can follow Peter Mandaville’s work on Twitter at @PMandaville, Knox at @KnoxThames, and Azza at @Mansoura1968. We also encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program on Twitter at @CFR_religion. And write to us at [email protected] with any questions or suggestions. Again, we will send out the link to the transcript and the video of this discussion, as well as a link to the report that we were discussing. And I just want to say our next Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar on Health-Care Equity and Accessibility Around the World will be on Tuesday, December 20, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. We will send out an invitation for that. So, again, thank you all. Have a great rest of the day.