Social Issues

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.

Several regions across the world are experiencing their worst droughts in decades, if not centuries. Crops are failing, exacerbating the global food crisis, and rivers that serve as vital shipping arteries are becoming dangerously low, threatening the global trade system. Panelists discuss the scope of the challenge and what companies and governments can do to adapt.   GOODMAN: Welcome today’s—to today’s Council on Foreign Relations session on “Deadly Droughts: Adapting to a Drier World.” I’m Sherri Goodman. I’m a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, a longtime member of the Council, and also secretary general of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. We have a great set of panelists today and we’re going to get right to it. Let me just set the scene for a moment by observing that, you know, we’re having this session here in the midst of the Africa Leaders Summit that’s occurring this week in Washington, and that many of the African nations that are here this week, especially in the case of the Horn of Africa, have experienced successive failed rain seasons, causing massive drought leaving almost forty million people insecure, and that that food crisis is multidimensional. But it’s not, as we say, unmanageable. And climate change and conflict are exacerbating this challenge, and we’re going to explore that today. Also, Africa bears the brunt of climate change. Sixteen of the most climate-vulnerable countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. And when we try to climate-proof, we need to look at water infrastructure and water insecurity on the frontlines. I’d also note that earlier this year the White House released its Action Plan on Water Security, declaring water security to be an essential component of U.S. national security. But we’ll get further into that, as well, and we know that stressors—water stressors worldwide from poor management to accelerating climate change, and that almost half the world’s population will be under severe water stress by 2030 according to the U.N. And we’ve got an important U.N. Water Conference coming up next year. With that, I want to go right to our speakers. We really have a fantastic group of panelists today, and—two of whom I have the pleasure of knowing and the third I’m excited that he’s joined us today. Lauren Alexander Augustine is at the National Academies of Science. You should—can read her bio. She’s got a very distinguished career working at all aspects of water, natural disasters, and resilience across many domains and a really fantastic background. Matthias Berninger. I love that he started out in the Green Party from Germany, went to Mars where he also led the global chocolate program, and now is at Bayer. And he’s going to talk to us about his—both his private-sector experience and his current role leading up to the U.N. Water Conference next year. And Aaron Salzberg served for many years as the lead State Department coordinator for water. He led development and implementation of the—of U.S. foreign policy on drinking water and water security. And now he is at the University of North Carolina, where he leads the Water Institute there. So the way we’re going to do this, I’m going to start with a question to each of our panelists, and then we’re going to go into an interactive discussion for the first half-hour, and then we will open it to questions from all of our members. And thank you for joining us today. This session, by the way, is on the record. And that’s thanks to Richard Haass, our president, who said this subject is too important; we need to have this session on the record. So thank you. OK. Lauren, your work—your lifetime work, much of it now at the National Academies but more broadly, has been at the nexus of water, natural disasters, and resilience. Why are you concerned about water security, both in the U.S.—and I note you run the Gulf of Mexico research program—and abroad? AUGUSTINE: Thank you so much, Sherri and CFR, for asking me to be here today. So the reason that water security has me the most concerned is because we all depend on water. We depend on it for food, agriculture, economy, fish, every—you know, municipal purposes. And I think that it’s the most vexing of the—of the natural disasters because it’s kind of a slow on set. You don’t exactly know you’re in a drought until you’re well into a drought, so the slow on set sets up a number of challenges. And they rarely happen alone, right? So you have a water quantity issue, too much or too little, and it starts to trigger other things. Water scarcity gets into famine, it gets into an economic decline, and transportation issues. Too much water gets into life, you know, problems as well. So I think that it’s one of the most vexing because the solutions that we might want to kind of pull off the shelf are not always available during a water-scarcity event. We cannot make it rain. We cannot create water. Now, we can move water. As the engineer in me, we can move water, but water, it’s kind of a sum zero. If you move it from one place, you’ve taken it from one place to another. And when you transfer water, you can get unintended consequences. And I think that the final part of this answer is that it is—it is vexing and it also—it’s connected to everything. And so you start to make changes in where we get water, when we get it, how much, who pays, and you start to change this event down the system. And I work in the Gulf of Mexico, and everyone kind of thinks, oh, the Gulf of Mexico has too much water; it’s a flooding place. Except for when it’s not, and then it creates other problems. So it’s kind of a place where all of these issues really come together in terms of energy production, food, and transportation. So, to me, Sherri, this issue, it’s kind of this hidden one. Kind of creeps up on you and then, boom, you got a problem. So I see it as a massive issue in the United States and of course, as you’re talking about, globally. GOODMAN: Thank you very much, Lauren. Matthias, you were a member of parliament from the Green Party prior to joining first Mars—I love than you ran the global chocolate program—and now you’re at Bayer, you said. So you’ve gone from chocolate to aspirin. I guess you need both. But so why—you know, first, why did you pursue this career path? And why is water and water security so central to you? BERNINGER: Well, I believe that detours sometimes understand—or increase the understanding of the surroundings. And for me to—having been both in parliament, in the government, but also in business helps me in these days of quite complex times to help companies, but also in a broader sense the political spectrum to move from admiring the problem to action. And the challenge with water is that water is this topic, as Lauren said, as long as you don’t think about it, it kind of—almost kind of gets ignored. There is a certain underlying water blankness. But a bit of a warning for the audience today: Once you start a focus on water, it just doesn’t, like, allow you to pivot from it, yeah? So if you’re not interested in doing that, then you should actually leave this meeting right now. Water is the way through which we experience climate change. None of us wakes up and says, oh, there was a lot of carbon in the air, yeah? We experience through water. We talk about droughts today, but let’s not forget the other three—highly polluted water, flooding, and, of course, also extreme heat, which is very high temperature with very high humidity. Those are the four ways we experience the climate crisis. And we talk about drought today. And for a company like Bayer, that is leading in the area of crop science, we have a $2.5 billion budget in R&D to innovative in this space. We can innovate for a lot of things, but without water there is no food. And agriculture today consumes almost 20 percent of all fresh water. And to scare you even more, almost half of all fresh water in Asia at one point passes through only one crop, and that is rice. So here you see how this topic is really connected to security, to the climate debate, and, dare I say, also to the biodiversity debate. And it’s kind of telling that we are talking about biodiversity in Montreal without even mentioning water. That’s one of those challenges I spoke with a lot of delegates in recent days related to biodiversity. Without water, we will not be able to achieve any of the biodiversity targets, any of the targets to reduce hunger or, I also think, climate action will be very difficult. Because without water plants cannot absorb carbon dioxide. GOODMAN: So thank you, Matthias. Let me just pull on that thread with you for a moment. So what do you want our members to know about the innovations or sort of solution set that, for example, Bayer is undertaking today? What one story captures the innovation to improve water security in Bayer, that is so dedicated to agricultural science and innovation? BERNINGER: What we are working on at the moment is irrigated rice. For me, it’s the number-one challenge we have to address. If you think about security in Asia, it’s absolutely vital. We just this week and last week saw these disturbing pictures of the border dispute in India—you know, between India and China, because, you know, India and Pakistan live at a very challenging border. So water is this very big topic. And rice, for me, is the number-one crop we need to focus on. The good news is if we change the way we produce rice, if we innovate also on the rice crop, we can reduce the demand—the water demand of rice in significant ways. And that’s the kind of stuff we need to look at, stopping admiring the problem and focusing on big, bold solutions in this space. GOODMAN: Great. Thank you. That’s a perfect—let me bring Aaron into this discussion. Aaron, you know, we’ve known each other for a long time. You have been the U.S. government’s leader on water security. You developed the first global water strategy. You’ve represented the U.S. in many multilateral processes. You know, tell us a little bit about your journey in this space. And also I just—we’re going to very candid her today, you know, where you think we are in terms of, we’ve got a water strategy out there, and something called an action plan, but the question is, what kind of—as we sometimes say in certain government circles, strategy without resources is hallucination. So why don’t you—(laughs)—respond to where we think we’re going on water strategy in the U.S. SALZBERG: Well, thanks, Sherri. You kind of set me up. And thanks to Lauren and Matthias for making that original point. I mean, because they’re both right, right? You know, I didn’t find water. I wasn’t trained as a hydrologist. I didn’t come in thinking I was going to spend my entire career working on water issues. Water found me. And in large part because it is a wickedly hard problem. And it’s a wickedly hard problem that matters—perhaps more than almost anything else that we’re going to have to work on. And, you know, we have this misnomer when we often think about water. You know, we lump it in with the SDGs. And we get this impression that water is a problem that you can solve. And one of the things we have to come to terms with is that water is a problem that we’re going to be managing every single day forever and ever. Providing basic hydrogeological services to all the people that we need to—clean drinking water, sanitation services, water for food, water for energy—these are things that we’re going to struggle with every single day, day after day, for ever and ever. And that means we have to change our mindset from, oh, let’s come up with solutions that’ll solve a problem to how do we build the institutions, how do we build the capacity, how do we make sure we have the right governance structures in place that enable us communities of people, and partnerships, technologies provider sand service providers and others, to work collectively together to solve this problem in a routine way, so that it becomes a way—just a way of working. You know, people always add this discussion about integrated water resources management, where people think it’s a noun. It’s actually a verb, right? So it’s a way of working. It’s just something you’ve got to embrace, and we’ve got to move forward. You know, we’ve seen a lot of progress recently by the United States on the strategic front. We saw the White House Action Plan, as you mentioned, and we saw the new revised version of the U.S. Global Water Strategy. And kudos to both, right. It’s nice to see that we’re maintaining some political pressure on the United States to actually do some of this work. And also, the recognition of water security. And in both those documents, water security played a central role. And I think that acknowledgement that it’s important for us to ensure that countries are water secure is a really nice shift in direction and something that we should all be lauded for. I think my concern is it’s a lot of nice words. And it’s really backed up by very little action. I think, you know, both the White House Action Plan and the Global Water Strategy were kind of launched in a vacuum, which is a little bit of a shame, right/ Because you really want to use the opportunities of launching initiatives like this to solidify partnerships and to bring together the different entities from the private sector, from other governments, that will work together with you to implement these types of things. And I think that was a very big missed opportunity on both sides, that we didn’t really use the launch of these documents to advance the implementation. The other is, you know, how do we implement these? What are the resources? What’s the—you know, for any major initiative, you know, you need the mandate, you need the money, and you need the institutional home. You need someone who’s going to be responsible and accountable for delivering on that mandate. And it’s really not clear to me who’s responsible and accountable for delivering on this mandate. And whether or not they’re properly resourced both in terms of access to expertise, knowledge and funding to be able to carry out that mandate. So I have some concerns around that. GOODMAN: OK, let’s talk for a minute here about water diplomacy. I’ll bring also Matthias and Lauren into this. You know, as an example, you’ve got a project like under EcoPeace Middle East, to do a water sharing for solar agreement between Israel and Jordan, under the rubric of the Abraham Accord. You know, Israel uniquely, unlike many other countries, does treat water as an element of its national power, but now that we’ve seen its—you know, its rivers dry up, the Jordan River, and now there’s the prospect of a deal between—you know, Jordan has abundant solar, Israel has, you know, grew the desert—you know, greened the desert, and manages its water very adeptly. So is that the type of example that we should see more of to improve water sharing and water security in a cross-border setting? SALZBERG: To some degree. You know, those things get a lot of attention. And transboundary solutions can be an important part of ensuring water security for many countries. And that’s something we need to think about. But, look, at the end of the day, individual countries need to focus on long-term plans and strategies that make them water secure. And that’s focusing on, you know, how do you reduce consumption? As Matthias mentioned, how do you improve the productivity of water, for food production in particular? Rice he mentioned, absolutely. Cotton is another one. There are many foodstuffs where we can improve the productivity of water in those uses, and we should be doing that, and that will help move countries to be more water secure. Augmenting supplies through water reuse or through desalination, those are all important. Improving water storage, because climate’s going to increase that variability problem. And so how do we store water so that we’ve got it for later use, in groundwater, in large-scale dams and infrastructure? And there’s where transboundary solutions can really begin to help. You know, I once—you know, I remember I was in—several years ago I was having this discussion with some folks from the NSC. And I said, look, if you gave me control of the WTO, I can solve the world’s water problems. And while I was being a little flippant, there is some truth to the idea that transborder trade and enabling access to—and improving the access of—the flow of water through other goods could be very important in achieving water security for many individual countries. And so improving the accessibility that countries might have to beef products or to other high water intensive products, if they’re importing it from places where it should be grown rather than trying to grow it inside their own country, where they actually don’t have the resources to do that or conditions aren’t favorable to do that, that’s an important part of this process. And that’s where I think some of these transboundary agreements where we can think about exchanging energy for water or food products and virtual water, and shipping that across borders, can play a really important role in the water security of individual countries. GOODMAN: Thank you. Lauren, I want to bring you in on that question, and also through the very substantial Gulf Research Program that you’ve been leading, what research has come out of that that bears importantly on these questions? AUGUSTINE: Well, just following right on Aaron, these transboundary issues—I mean, you think of the United States, big country, and it has different levels of water security, right? There’s parts that are wet and parts that are dry. But at the borders, you know, we have, you know, the Colorado, which is dry right now. And we have an agreement with Mexico on delivering water to Mexico from the Colorado. That is not being met. And, you know, when we think about the transboundary issues, we often think of—like you set up the question—countries in conflict. We are very lucky that we are not in conflict with Canada in the north nor Mexico in the South. Because, you know, we share the Great Lakes with Mexico—or—with Canada. And there are talks when the Mississippi gets low, can we pull a little bit from the Great Lakes? Just a little bit? And it’s like, nah, we don’t want to do that. We want to keep our friends to the north under the terms around our water. We think about Alaska—and Aaron set it up really nicely—about food products. Well, this year in Alaska the salmon runs were very low, at the time when they were supposed to peak. And so Canada—we share that salmon with Canada, right? And so these transboundary issues will look different in the richer countries than they do in the poorer countries. When we talk about the Gulf of Mexico and we talk about the low water, we’re talking about low water on the Mississippi right now. We’re talking about such low water that we’re dredging more, to the tune of billions of dollars, to make sure that channel stays open. If we go back in time, we go back to the flood of 1927, and all the decisions that came after that to make sure that those ports in southern Louisiana, the Port of New Orleans in particular, has enough flow to convey that $60 billion every single year down the Mississippi and out through the Gulf of Mexico. But the water—I am a trained hydrologist, right? But the water really wants to go to the Atchafalaya, but we’ve moved it. We have put up structures at the old river to make sure that water gets to the big port in New Orleans. And we’re all grateful for it, right? We get the grain, we get the steel out. When we talk about low water flow in this region, we’re talking—in the Gulf of Mexico—it comes out kind in water quality, sediment levels and salinity levels, right? And so when you think about the Gulf of Mexico—now, we share this body with Cuba and Mexico. And we all have really big fisheries as an economy in this region. Gulf of Mexico feeds, like, 40 percent of the U.S. seafood. Sixty percent of commercial fishing comes out of Alaska. So these six states give most of the United States its seafood. You change the salinity, now you change the oyster production. You change other shellfish. And you change the production of the big one, the red snapper, right? So when we look at that and we’re talking about—the United States is a massive producer of national food, global food. And we’re starting to see the changes in the chemistry of the water, the turbidity of the water, sediment loads, salinity. And it’s changing the food economy. So these transboundary issues thankfully, here in North America, are not related to conflict. (Laughs.) We are very, very grateful for that. But they’re not unsolved. These are not problems that are unsolved. And so—and they present differently because these are three relatively rich countries. GOODMAN: Great. That was terrific. So let me ask—I’m going to ask each of you to weigh in on this question. Maybe, Matthias, we’ll start with you now. What—particularly since you’re heading up—have got a lead role in the U.N. Global Water Conference coming up next year—what global hot spots concern you most? And what would you like to see us doing about it? BERNINGER: So it’s the first, obviously, U.N. high-level conference on water—it’s the first U.N. conference on the topic of water since 1997. Without disclosing too much, I just start a primary school when folks met in Argentina to kind of discuss it. So most people have never experienced, actually, U.N. conference on water. So I see that as a huge opportunity for us to rally around a topic, and to create the effect that we really include the dimension of water in all of our decisions in ways that we have obviously not done before. The good and the bad of that conference, and it happens without a framework. So we all know UNFCCC, the climate conferences, as I said earlier, the Montreal Conference on Biodiversity, Chinese-led by hosted by Canada at this moment in time, they have frameworks. They have rules of the game. We have a water conference where the result will be the report about the conference. So that could get terribly wrong, or it could be very exciting. We have an opportunity next year to create a framework almost, since we have the holidays, the Christmas tree, and then all the things we do on board are the ornaments we can position nicely on that. That is—that is what’s in the cards at the moment. So that’s the first part of your question. Business community, multinational institutions, donor institutions on the financial side, and governments, as well as NGOs, can rally around something in ways that we haven’t done in a long time. What concerns me the most? I have to say it is the Horn of Africa, it is East Africa. We are now experiencing the third La Nina weather event or phenomenon in a row. That happened before, but it’s kind of more intense. We already see—and it’s been ironic—flooding in Australia, drought in Argentina, pointing towards quite a dramatic La Nina. And the consequence for East Africa will be another year of drought. Now, I hope that that highly probable prediction does not happen, but we already have a famine in many countries there. Somalia is often mentioned. And if you listen to David Beasley, he is starting to lose it. I mean, two years ago his organization received the Nobel Peace Prize as the World Food Program. Two years later, he has, like, record famine to deal with. And it is all related to water. GOODMAN: Right. So we can’t—and if we’re going to go there, then we have to bring in the consequences of the war in Ukraine for affecting global food supplies. That is intimately connected with water. So given all of that, let me ask you then, Aaron, what do you think is needed to better prioritize water in U.S. and international policy? I mean, you could say that over the last decade, we’ve seen much more attention, obviously, to climate change, as a global security threat. We’re probably at the high-water mark right now—water—(laughs)—pun intended—of addressing that as an international system. Biodiversity, even though it hasn’t gotten quite as much attention as climate—and I take your point, Matthias, it doesn’t include water—also growing—sort of ecological security growing in attention. You might say water is still sort of a lagging, although it is very much part of the climate discussion, but not the full dimension of it. And in some ways, it’s not as politicized, at least in the U.S., as climate. So where do want to go on the priorities there? What would you advise the administration now, Aaron? SALZBERG: Well, you know, in some respects, just to reinforce the point that you made, I think water’s still an orphan issue. And it is, in many, many different fora. And the COP is a good example of that, right? I mean, there really is—there are full sections—if you look at the outcome document for COP27—there are full sections dedicated to oceans, to forests, to agriculture. Water is essential to all of them. There’s no section on water. And then that’s traditional, right? The COP just doesn’t bring water in, in what I think is a full way, into the climate agenda. I mean, there are a couple of nuggets that optimists might cling to from the last COP related to water. You know, one was the focus on early warning and climate information services. I mean, this could be read as trying to strengthen hydrological monitoring, monitoring and forecasting networks which, in my view, are absolutely essential to ensuring water security going forward. And so that’s a plus. But the water wasn’t mentioned, hydrology wasn’t mentioned, within that context. The other, of course, is this conversation around losses and damages. And we can all admit most of that is going to be attributable to water-related types of phenomena. But, again, you know, you also have to read the language really carefully here, because, you know, countries didn’t agree to establish a mechanism to compensate countries for loss and damages. And that’s, of course, what everybody’s saying and what we’re hearing a lot about. that’s not what we agreed to do. What we agreed to do is to put in place funding arrangements to respond and address the losses and damages associated with climate change. And that’s fundamentally different, but that does open up the door for greater investments in water-related adaptation and in, you know, investing in early information, early warning systems, and ways of ensuring water security to prevent the losses and damages that might directly result from hydrological variability. In terms of the leadership, you know, at the U.S. level, you know, again, I think we’re giving a lot of nods to water, but we’re not taking the hard steps that we need to, to really prioritize water. Water is still not addressed in the National Security Strategy in a robust way. And that’s really the document that U.S. government agencies use to budget their resources and to set their strategic priorities. And that’s unfortunate. So there really isn’t a clear call by the administration to prioritize water highly in the documents. You know, I think that, you know, water security in particularly is lagging behind and doesn’t get the same budgetary support within the United States architecture as, let’s say, drinking water and sanitation do. And I don’t want to knock that, right? We do need to invest in providing basic services as part of our humanitarian efforts to ensure that people can move along the development continuum. But if we’re going to be serious about water security, we need to communicate that. Congress needs to communicate that. And it needs to be an integral part of our policy strategies and our budgeting to work with governments to increase their capacity to build the infrastructure, to build the institutions that allow us to manage water every single day. Not just provide humanitarian responses, but to put in place the tools that we need to do this daily work every single day. And this is where I think the U.N.—you know, I’m grateful for the meeting, and we do need this global attention. But at the end of the day, you know, we’re going to see a collection of these initiatives that different partners will put together. But, look, we need governments to lead on this. We need every single government to develop their own national security strategy around water, how they’re going to ensure their own water security. And they need to work through a process where they can mobilize the partners to be able to implement that long-term plan and strategy. And this isn’t something you do in a year or in five years. This is ten, twenty, thirty years. And this is theoretically what the HLPF was intended to do, right? The follow-up mechanisms to the SDGs. And we should really be using some of these other institutional mechanisms within the U.N. system to hold countries accountable to developing those long-term plans and strategies, and to hold other countries accountable, and partners accountable, to supporting them underneath national government leadership. And I fear that this U.N. conference is going to be an opportunity for people to check the box and say, oh, great. We had a great meeting, we did everything we’re supposed to do. But then, shy away from doing the hard work of developing those long-term plans and strategies and investment in strategy that needs to be done to get us to where we need to go. Sorry, that was too much. GOODMAN: OK, well, that was—that was great, Aaron. And that was very important commentary on kind of where we are, and what we could be doing more of both particularly in terms of the early warning systems and predictive capabilities that are on the front lines of saving people’s lives in an increasingly drought-inflicted world. So at this time I’d like to invite our participants, our CFR members, to join the conversation with their questions. A reminder that this meeting is on the record. And, Alexis, may we have the first question, please? OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.) We will take our first question from Marisol Maddox. Q: Hi. Thank you so much. My name is Marisol Maddox. I’m with the Wilson Center. Sherri, Aaron, really great to see you. So, I mean, these issues are more important than ever and, clearly, we have limited time to make decisions that can really have an impact. And, Aaron, I really appreciate your point about the importance of not just checking a box with, you know, the array of issues that we’re dealing with right now. So at the same time, there’s also a growing recognition of the threat that greenwashing poses, because it distorts our ability to find good solutions. And to that point, Congress just released a report on some of those threats around greenwashing. So I do feel like there’s kind of this level of cognitive dissonance with having Bayer on this panel, because they own Monsanto, which has been flooding our waterways and soils with Roundup, the main ingredient being glyphosate, right, which has been found to cause cancer, among other very deleterious health and environmental impacts. And Bayer is still pushing the use of Dicamba, which is a catastrophically destructive poison that contaminates water supplies, kills the crops of neighboring fields through pesticide drift, as well as wreaks havoc on biodiversity. So if we continue to allow these false solutions to be put forward, we’re really ensuring to not get this right. And, honestly, like, we have too much to lose at this point for that to be an option. So the business community is crucial to getting this right but, like I said, we have to navigate the threat of greenwashing. So I would be genuinely interested to hear the thoughts of other panelists on how we can mitigate that risk, to make sure that we’re choosing solutions that really address these issues and actually help to build resilience for the decades to come. GOODMAN: OK, Matthias, you’ve got to take that question. BERNINGER: In any given week I at least once get accused of greenwashing and once of being a woke company representative. So I’m quite used to that. And, Marisol, thank you for addressing the topics. And I really mean it. We have to reduce the overall amount of pesticides being used. One of the interesting facts is that the number-one place where biodiversity loss happens is actually not the oceans, it’s not land, it’s actually sweet water environments. So I’m fully with you on that. And we’ve got to reduce our overall pesticide use quite significantly. We innovate also in alternatives to some of the chemicals you talked about. Currently all the herbicides we use in agriculture, you named two of them, I can add 2,4-D, I can add Glufosinate, all of the herbicides we use have been developed before Pearl Harbor. So they are, like, really, really old. And the question is, can we get to a new generation of herbicides? Can we work more on biologicals? Can we find ways we are not producing fertilizers, but our value chain depends on it? To also reduce the amount of fertilizer being used in agriculture to address one of Lauren’s nightmares. And that is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of runoff of fertilizer. So I’m with you on that. We are working on that. We are investing heavily behind it. And our leadership gets rewarded for moving in that direction. I disagree that we should not participate in that conversation. The reason being that with a $2.5 billion R&D budget, we spend three times more on innovation than all other CGIR publicly-funded research institutions in agriculture. We need to work on that stuff together. And that’s why I’m engaged on the topic. And that’s also why I’ve been asked to work on it. So, no, I don’t smell like greenwashing detergent. But, yes, the problems you address are real problems and we need to take them. GOODMAN: Thank you. OK. Let’s go to the next question. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Laurie Garrett. Ms. Garrett, please accept the unmute prompt. Q: Yes, hi. Thank you for this important session. Real quick question: If you look across the landscape of available drinking water, what percentage is in the form of sold plastic-encased water? And how does that compare as a trend over time and as a per drop or milliliter, or however you want to put it, price point to the consumer compared to, say, gasoline prices? And how do you deal with the criticism that major soda companies, like Coca-Cola, and Pepsi, and Nestle, are buying up safe drinking water supplies all over the world, and then reselling them at tremendous profit? Is there a way to reconcile all these issues and still go forward with equitable global access to water? Thank you. GOODMAN: Laurie, as always, a great and incisive question. Who would like to answer that? SALZBERG: Well, this is a tough one, so we’re all kind of shying away a little bit. I don’t know the percent of water that’s being delivered in plastic that’s ending up in people’s homes for—to meet their basic needs. I’m not sure what that number is. And clearly in places like the United States, where we buy a lot of that stuff, it’s going to be different than in others. But what I will comment is on the privatization issue, because I think this is an important one and one that we need to be careful about how we talk about. You know, the private sector can play a critically important role in providing services, right? We have both public and private service providers that provide drinking water in many places around the world. And finding the right mix is important. And making sure that communities and stakeholders are involved in determining that relationship with private service providers is critically important. That said, the idea of private ownership of water rights is something that I do think we have to be particularly sensitive to. And in any place where those relationships are being set up, I think there’s got to be a great deal of oversight to make sure that the right checks and balances are in place, that the right ownership rights are attributed, and that we’re being very conscious of the long-term risks that our water supplies will be under, and whether or not we’re compromising our ability to respond to some of those risks by those private agreements. And so I think as we develop PPPs, public-private partnerships, we’re going to have to be very careful about the contractual arrangements that we put in place so that we don’t tie the hands of governments or communities to respond to risks that are going to emerge from climate change, a long-term drought, or something like that, to reprioritize those allocations of waters and to do some of the transfers that you were talking about, Sherri, either transboundary or that Lauren was talking about doing internally. You know, we need to be able to have that flexibility. And so I do think we have to look very carefully at these PPP arrangements going forward. GOODMAN: OK. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Adam Philipp of Cedar Brook Partners, who asks: This is a fascinating issue for me, living in Cleveland, a Great Lakes city. As water’s importance becomes more and more apparent, how do you see the Great Lakes region changing? I’ve seen books and numerous studies asserting that some of the best places to live amidst climate change are Great Lake states. Curious if you have particular thoughts on water and climate change-oriented trends that may shape the future of the Great Lakes region. GOODMAN: Lauren, over to you. AUGUSTINE: I would say that the Great Lakes will become even more important—recognized as—they will—they will increase in their recognition of being important sources of fresh water, not just in North America, but for the world, right? This is the biggest collection and source of fresh water we have. These Great Lakes move a lot of water from way up in Canada, all the way out through the St. Lawrence seaway. And as commerce, transportation, hypoxia, sediment, all these things, particularly in North America, start to take—start to elevate and become more acute on—for agriculture, all these things, I think there’ll be a lot of recognition on the importance of the Great Lakes. I also think that when we—engineers can do amazing things, right? And so we can move water. We do it all the time. And so there will be more pressure, I can foresee, on the Great Lakes to provide more water to other places. In terms of living there, I’m from Rochester, New York. So I’m a Great Lakes person too. I don’t know what the living experience will feel like or look like as that pressure kind of increases. We do see, under conditions of climate change, for my brethren in Buffalo a couple of weeks ago, getting six, seven feet of lake-effect snow. We will start to see how these lakes might become weather generators, particularly under these conditions of altered climate patterns. So I don’t know the answer to your question, but I feel your—I feel the interest in it. But I think, in terms of water scarcity and water supply, the calls for borrowing from the Great Lakes could possibly increase. And that is, in fact, not a decision the United States can make alone. We do have a pact with Canada for that. So that goes right back to Aaron’s transboundary issues there too. I don’t know. I mean, these are great questions and, wow, these are hard to answer. But those are some thoughts on what you’re asking. GOODMAN: It’s a great question. I will say that I had the privilege a few years ago of traveling to the Middle East with a delegation of water managers from the Great Lakes to share their experience, Canadian and U.S., in transboundary water management with water-parched countries in the Middle East, just for this purpose. And the level of cooperation—of course, we have an abundant resource in the Great Lakes. We’re so blessed. The level of cooperation detail is remarkable. And the problems are increasing. But the cooperation level is also quite extensive here. AUGUSTINE: Can I add one thing to that, Sherri? You know, the one thing I would also say is that at least in the United States, and most places I’ve worked around the world, water management is done at a hyperlocal level, right? I mean, we get our water locally. Most of us can’t afford to move it too far. But water transcends these boundaries. I mean, this is where the Great Lakes become kind of front and center, right, because they’re a source of water under conditions of scarcity. So this connection between the local management, regional, national, global, transboundary supply, that’s one of the pieces that Aaron was alluding to that create this complication of how do we manage this important resource? We manage it hyper local, then we can see differences in inequities. We manage it at a higher level, where maybe we can be a little bit more equitable, but it takes much, much more connection and coordination. OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question as a written question: Could you speak to the state of water stress in indigenous communities in the U.S.? SALZBERG: Yeah, no question it’s not great, for a whole bunch of reasons, right? You know, it’s not just indigenous communities, but many Black communities in the United States as well. You know, we had historical practices that really limited access to some of these services for these communities, both for the Native American population but also for Black communities here in the United States. And, you know, it’s amazing when you see, for example, the progression of municipal services, how in some cases they actually wrapped around these areas. And you have doughnut holes where people are still on wells and on septic—on on-site septic systems because they were never brought into the municipal service network. And this is a real challenge. And, you know, Kudos to the American Recovery Act, because there’s a lot of resources there to hopefully address some of these challenges, and hopefully—you know, I’m certainly seeing states beginning to make lots of investments in correcting some of those longstanding historical practices and extend services into those communities. But that also comes with challenges, right? Paying for services is a complicated process. And this isn’t going to be easy. You know, on some of our tribal areas and tribal lands, they still also lack what we would consider to be, you know, typical service providers. And they’re relying on on-site systems that are not providing good water quality and/or are not providing good septic systems, which are contaminating water quality as well. And so this is a perennial problem that needs greater attention and focus. And I think whenever we talk about the United States meeting its SDG commitment, it’s really focused on how do we ensure access in those areas, and how do we scale up and make sure we’ve got sustainable supplies of safe water? You know, it goes a little bit as well to Marisol’s point. You know, the fact that we have, what, over one hundred thousand chemicals in manufacturing in the United States. And I would venture to guess all of them are inside of our water in some way, shape, or form. And so just keeping up with the challenges of ensuring water quality is hugely complicated. And in many areas, especially out in the West where we’ve got a lot of our superfund sites and things like that, we’ve got some real water challenges that have not been addressed that affect those communities. And I think tribal communities in particular are affected by that. AUGUSTINE: If I could just add, I mean, Aaron is hitting this right on. And I work in the Gulf of Mexico region—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. And I would say that there’s kind of two sides to this. I do want to bring in the Black communities and Latino communities. And just the under-resourced, disenfranchised, in addition to the native peoples, culmination in Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, Flint, Michigan. We are seeing—we are seeing examples—we are seeing it play out that decisions on water infrastructure investments, they take years, decades, generations to play out. But that’s what we’re seeing in these places, right? We’re looking—you know, in my region we have cancer alley, kind of between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. We have the Houston ship channel communities, kind of from Galveston to Houston. These are not water scarcity issues, right, but these are water infrastructure issues. There are contaminants. There are decisions that have been made, maybe a long time ago, that are being meted out now. You’re seeing it in health outcomes, high cancer rates. We’re seeing it in, you know, sanitation issues. And, you know, these are—these are, in fact, policy decisions about where public investments do and do not go. So at least in the United States, which is what you asked about, I can’t speak for indigenous populations across the whole country, but what I see in the Gulf of Mexico region I think is pretty reflective that these underserved communities, one, are underserved for a reason. Two, they’re usually not accidental. And three, it can take decades to see the results of these decisions and poor investment. So we have a long way to go. And I think we’re kind of hitting the end of the design life of some of this infrastructure and all these issues are really coming up right now, right? Like, now, we’re, wow, it’s that bad. And so we’re kind of lucky in the sense that we have the IIJA, the Investment Infrastructure and Job Act, that’s really at the precipice of being able to at least rectify through new investments of infrastructure. Because I think a lot of the answers to your questions is around infrastructure. SALZBERG: Yeah, and just to put a fine point on this, because—sorry, I’m passionate about this, and I can tell Lauren is too—this is a key part of addressing systemic inequalities here in the United States. AUGUSTINE: That’s right. SALZBERG: And, you know, when you look at the impact of lead exposure on lifetime economic earnings, you have to understand that, you know, putting communities in a position where they’re drinking water that’s not safe for them actually impacts them, and their kids, and it goes on and on. And so this is a real serious problem that I just don’t think we’ve come to grips with yet. GOODMAN: Thank you, both. Thank you. OK, Alexis, our next question. OPERATOR: We will take our next question as a written question: Can you speak to the potential of groundwater in supplementing agricultural water supplies, and what barriers exist to fully utilizing it? GOODMAN: Oh, go ahead, Lauren, and then I want to bring Matthias in on that. AUGUSTINE: I would just say this goes back to a statement I think we all made at the beginning, that you can move water, but not without unintended consequences. So you can take the water out of aquifers. And it happens all over the United States. It happens all over the world. And you do see impacts of collapsing aquifers, increased overland sheet flow, lack of absorption. These issues are longer term for the short-term gain of being able to irrigate. Usually, you know, it’s for agriculture, right? There’s usually—there’s a mass balance here. You can’t just take the water and think you’ve solved the problem. But I will let others talk, because I can talk too much on this one. (Laughs.) GOODMAN: Matthias. BERNINGER: I think looking at irrigated agriculture is critical in the water debate. And then the factor of energy plays a very important role. So one thing that worries me in the kind of task for transitioning rice production in India is that electricity there is highly subsidized. So in other words, that depletes groundwater in a really, really fast pace, and also means that we will have a water crisis in some of the especially northern Indian states much faster than many predicted. The same is true for the Midwest. You fly over and you see suddenly fields are all round. They are no longer looking like you would think an agricultural sort of land would look like. On the one hand, it looks like a piece of art, and on the other hand it’s clearly indicating that they have a challenge. So I believe that we need to move away from extracting groundwater in order to ensure our food supply, which also means—and that goes back to what Aaron said earlier—we need to have really good strategies as to where we produce food, how we produce food, what kind of food we are consuming. I think as long as we are consuming the amount of mammals we consume today as humanity, we’ll have a much bigger water problem than when it was a different diet. And these are all the questions that need addressing. My biggest worry is when in the midst of the water crisis also energy is subsidized in ways that just accelerates the depletion of major aquifers. SALZBERG: Yeah, I think just to add to that, at the end of the day it’s about reconciling demand with renewable supplies. And so ensuring that whatever extractions you’re making from groundwater or any sources are being replenished, and are being replenished at the same rate that you’re extracting. It’s balancing those two that’s critical. And groundwater is going to be an important part of climate resiliency going forward. Recharging of groundwater—you know, groundwater storage is a great way of—it’s much easier and much more resilient to store water underground if you can, than to sell it in big, large reservoirs that might be subject to evaporative losses. And so it’s an important component. But we really do over-extract it at a rate that’s just not sustainable in many places in the world. And in many critical places in the world—you know, the breadbasket in India—that we’re going to be in serious trouble if we continue to allow those trends to continue. Sorry to be redundant. GOODMAN: OK. Alexis, I think we—I understand we have two questions left. Let’s take both those questions and then we’ll ask all of our panelists to answer them and provide their final comments in our last four minutes. OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Joseph Bower. Q: A very simple question. First, thank you. It’s been fascinating. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more talk about pricing water. That really one of the—it is obvious that you would then have to provide the poor some way of paying for it. But the simplest way of getting control of this is to price it. We’re taking groundwater and other water and giving it as if it were cheap, rather than expensive. And I mean, Israel had a terrible water problem until they priced it. And then they had to do other things as a matter of policy. Thank you. GOODMAN: OK. Let’s take our next question as well, please. OPERATOR: We’ll take our next question as a written question. NASA just announced a mission to survey global water sources from space. What are your expectations for this mission and what it means for your understanding of water flows? GOODMAN: OK. Great questions. OK. Lauren, can you start with the answers to both those questions and your final comments? AUGUSTINE: I cannot comment on the pricing of water. I could guess and I could extemporize, but I won’t. On the—on the space question, you know, this is—this is one of these wonderful examples of human innovation and engineering prowess. But if we think it’s hard to move water through pipes on Earth, I think it will be extremely expensive and difficult to do it from space. Not impossible, and maybe that is the final frontier. I think it’s an exciting idea and we’ll have to see where and how we can be creative in basically creating new water. And so maybe an extraterrestrial source is in our future. I don’t know. GOODMAN: Matthias. BERNINGER: Let me start with the pricing. There’s a reason that’s similar to the reason for carbon pricing why in the political world folks have difficulties to kind of really impose high prices on both carbon and water. And that is because they get hammered in the elections for doing that. The business community has a bit more freedom here. And we have introduced an internal price for carbon, started with our own operations. We are now moving to our suppliers. And we will do the same on water. And I think that’s a way in the business community to really bring water into the boardroom conversations in ways it is currently not. On the second topic, the GRACE mission NASA is undertaking, which helps us to really understand water flows as well as the current state of aquifers, is the one that excites me much more. Because it helps to put a much stronger focus on depletion. And if you add to it the IPCC work on soil moisture, which is both scary but also very helpful, you really have two very good data points in managing water. And it’s a good foundation for what Aaron talked about, much better water information systems. Last point, I’m actually more optimistic that the topic will get more attention because in Sharm El-Sheikh people decided to combine mitigation and adaptation. Whereas mitigation is all about carbon or carbon equivalents, adaptation is all about water. So as this topic now reaches much more prominence on the climate agenda, I do believe you will also see more energy to focus on water in different ways. SALZBERG: Yeah, so just to follow up, yeah, I’m not sure I share Matthias’ optimism. But on costing, look, this is a really big challenge with water, as to whether it’s an economic good or a public good. And we have this tension that exists. And it’s a real, real problem. I mean, one thing, though, we have to recover the full costs of providing water services. And so whether that’s through the charging of tariffs, whether it’s through taxes, whether it’s through transfers of resources from one sector to another, we’ve got to recover the full costs. And service providers need to be able to operate sustainably—financially sustainably. And that’s critically important. What I’m more concerned about is that we don’t internalize the costs of other production processes on water. And so, for example, we’ve talked about farming. We’ve talked about chemicals. We’ve talked about industry, and stuff like that. We have to remove those things from water to make water palatable to drink again. And so how do we tax then and make sure that the goods that we’re buying—you know, if we’re buying a mug, or if we’re buying a computer, that the costs and the impact that that’s had on our water supplies is integrated into the cost of that product, so that it can get back to those then people who are responsible for cleaning our water. Thank you to whoever asked the question about SWOT. Sorry, if people don’t know about SWOT, you really do need to know about SWOT, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission, which is supposed to be launched today. It’s been postponed for twenty-two hours due to some condensation issues. Hopefully it gets launched tomorrow. This is going to transform our view of the world’s water resources. We are going to know, down to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, what water exists, what surface water exists everywhere on the planet. And everybody will be able to see it. And if we do the right calibrations, we’ll be able to measure discharge rates for every river system—something that we’ve never, ever been able to do. Imagine what that’s going to mean for our transboundary disputes, right? That means Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos will know what the reservoir levels are for every single dam in China and how China is managing those dams. Pakistan will be able to do the same thing for India. Egypt will be able to do the same thing for Ethiopia. All of a sudden, a veil is going to get lifted across the world overnight. And I think that’s going to be transformational. It's also a huge, missed opportunity by the United States. The United States, France, the U.K., Canada, they’re all responsible for this mission. That’s four of the G7 countries. You know, they should—SWOT should be a major initiative within the G7. The SWOT and its data products should be a major initiative that’s launched up at the U.N. in 2023. And we should be mobilizing partners from across the business sector—IBM, Google, and others—who can provide the graphical user interfaces for the consumers on the ground to utilize and access that data, all the way through to the universities, the University of Massachusetts, UNC, others who are providing the software to be able to translate the NASA data into meaningful water metrics. It's a huge opportunity that’s being lost right now by the administration not jumping on it. And I guess if that’s the last message I have to leave with, leadership—there’s really a lack of leadership here. And if the United States is going to capitalize on what’s going on in the U.N. and elsewhere, we need to step up. GOODMAN: OK. Thank you all very much, to our panelists and our participants, for joining us today with such an exciting discussion. We went a few minutes over, but thank you all for staying with us. SALZBERG: Sorry. AUGUSTINE: Thank you. BERNINGER: Thank you. (END)

Mike Hoa Nguyen, assistant professor of education, faculty affiliate at the Institute for Human Development and Social Change, and faculty affiliate at the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University, leads the conversation on affirmative action. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to CFR’s Higher Education Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, Vice President of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Mike Hoa Nguyen with us to discuss affirmative action. Dr. Nguyen is assistant professor of education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He’s also a faculty affiliate at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and a faculty affiliate at NYU’s Institute for Human Development and Social Change. Additionally, Dr. Nguyen is a principal investigator of the Minority Serving Institutions Data Project. And prior to coming to NYU he was at the University of Denver. He has extensive professional experience in the federal government and has managed multiple complex, long-term intergovernmental projects and initiatives, focusing on postsecondary education and the judiciary and has published his work widely, including in Educational Researcher, The Journal of Higher Education, and The Review of Higher Education. So Mike, thanks very much for being with us today to talk about affirmative action. Could you give us an overview of where we are, the history of affirmative action, where we are now, and examples of criteria that are used by different institutions? NGUYEN: Well, hello. And thank you so much, Irina. And also thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations for having me here today. It’s a real honor. And thank you to many of you who are joining us today out of your busy schedules. I’m sure that many of you have been following the news for Harvard and UNC. And, of course, those cases were just heard at the Supreme Court about a month ago, on Halloween. And so today thank you for those questions. I’d love to be able to spend a little bit of time talking about the history of sort of what led us to this point. I also recognize that many joining us are also experts on this topic. So I really look forward to the conversation after my initial remarks. And so affirmative action, I think, as Philip Rubio has written, comes from centuries-old English legal concept of equity, right, or the administration of justice according to what is fair in a particular situation, as opposed to rigidly following a set of rules. It’s defined by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1977 as a term that is a broad—a term, in a broad sense, that encompasses any measure beyond a simple termination of discriminatory practice adopted to correct for past or present discrimination or to prevent discrimination from recurring in the future. Academics have defined affirmative action simply as something more than passive nondiscrimination, right. It means various organizations must act positively, affirmatively, and aggressively to remove all barriers, however informal or subtle, that prevent access by minorities and women to their rightful places in the employment and educational institutions of the United States. And certainly one of the earliest appearances of this term, affirmative action, in government documents came when President Kennedy, in his 1961 executive order, where he wrote that the mandate stated that government contractors, specifically those that were receiving federal dollars to, quote, take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and employees are treated during employment without regard of their race, creed, color, or national origin. Certainly President Kennedy created a committee on equal employment opportunity to make recommendations for this. And then later on President Johnson later expressed—I’m sorry—expanded on President Kennedy’s approach to take a sort of more active antiracist posture, which he signaled in a commencement speech at Howard University. In the decades following, of course, political-legal attacks have rolled back on how affirmative action can be implemented and for what purposes. So in admissions practices at U.S. colleges and universities today, really they can only consider race as one of many factors through a holistic process or holistic practices if so-called race-neutral approaches to admissions policies have fallen short in allowing for a campus to enroll a racially diverse class in order to achieve or reap the benefits of diversity, the educational benefits of diversity. Federal case law established by the courts have affirmed and reaffirmed that colleges may only consider race as one of many factors for the purposes of obtaining the educational benefits in diversity. So starting with the Bakke decision in the late 1970s, the Court limited the consideration of race in admissions and replaced the rationale for the use of race, specifically the rationale which was addressing historic and ongoing racism or systemic and racial oppression, instead in favor of the diversity rationale. So, in other words, if a college or university wishes to use race in their admissions, they can only do so with the intention of enhancing the educational benefits of all students. It may not legally use race as a part of their admissions process for the purpose of acknowledging historical or contemporary racism as barriers to equity in college access. If we fast-forward to something more recent, the two cases out of Michigan, the Grutter and Gratz case, what we saw there were really—significant part of the discussions of these two cases were really informed and conversations really about the educational benefits of diversity. That was really a key aspect of those cases. Lawsuits challenging the use of race in college admissions after those two cases now can sort of be traced to Edward Blum, a conservative activist, and his organization, Students for Fair Admission, or SFFA. So Blum has really dedicated his life to establishing what he calls a colorblind American society by filing lawsuits with the goal of dismantling laws and policies seeking to advance racial justice. This includes redistricting, voting rights, and, of course, affirmative action. So in 2000—in the 2000s, he recruited Abigail Fisher to challenge the University of Texas in their admissions program. The Court, the Supreme Court, ultimately ruled in favor of Texas in the second Fisher case—Fisher II, as we call it. And so that’s actually where we saw Ed Blum alter his tactics. In this case he established SFFA, where he then purposefully recruited Asian Americans as plaintiffs in order to sue Harvard and UNC. So the cases now at Harvard—are now certainly at the Supreme Court. But one sort of less-known case that hasn’t got a whole lot of attention, actually, was—that was sort of on the parallel track, actually originated from the U.S. Department of Justice more recently, during the Trump administration, which launched an investigation into Yale’s admissions practices, which also focus on Asian Americans. And this was around 2018, so not too long ago. And certainly Asian Americans have been engaged in affirmative action debate since the 1970s. But these lawsuits have really placed them front and center in sort of our national debate. And so I think it’s really important to also note that while empirical research demonstrates and shows that the majority of Asian Americans are actually in support of affirmative action, a very vocal minority of Asian Americans are certainly opposed to race-conscious admissions and are part of these lawsuit efforts. But interestingly enough, they’ve received a large and disproportionate share of media attention and sort of—I stress this only because I think popular press and media have done a not-so-great job at reporting on this. And their framing, I think, sometimes relies on old stereotypes, harmful stereotypes, about Asian Americans, and written in a way that starts with an assumption that all Asian Americans are opposed to affirmative action when, again, empirical research and national polls show that that’s certainly not the case, right, and much more complex than that. But anyway, so back to what I was saying earlier, in sort of the waning months of the Trump administration the Department of Justice used those investigations into Yale to file a lawsuit charging that Yale in its admissions practices discriminates against Asian Americans. This lawsuit, the DOJ lawsuit, was dropped in February of 2021 when President Biden took office. So in response to that, SFFA submitted its own lawsuit to Yale based upon similar lines of reasoning. So I think what’s—why bring this up? One, because it doesn’t get a lot of attention. But two, I think it’s a really interesting and curious example. So in the Yale case, as well as in the previous DOJ complaint, Ed Blum notes specifically that they exclude Cambodian Americans, Hmong Americans, Laotian Americans, and Vietnamese Americans from the lawsuit, and thus from his definition of what and who counts as Asian American. I think this intentional exclusion of specific Southeast Asian American groups in Yale, but including them in Harvard, is a really interesting and curious note. I’ve written in the past that, sort of at the practical level, it’s a bit—it’s not a bit—it’s a lot misleading. It’s manipulative and advances a bit of a false narrative about Asian Americans. And I think it engages in what we call sort of a racial project to overtly reclassify the Asian American racial category, relying again on old stereotypes about Asian American academic achievement. But it also sort of counters state-based racial and ethnic classifications used by the Census Bureau, used by the Department of Education, used by OMB, right. It does not consider how Southeast Asian Americans have been and are racialized, as well as how they’ve built pan-ethnic Asian American coalitions along within and with other Asian American subgroups. So the implications of this sort of intentional racialized action, I think, are threefold. First, this process, sort of trying to redefine who is Asian American and who isn’t, demonstrates that SFFA cannot effectively argue that race-conscious admissions harms Asian Americans. They wouldn’t be excluded if that was the case. Second, it illustrates that Ed Blum and his crusade for sort of race—not using race in college admissions is actually really not focused on advancing justice for Asian Americans, as he claims. And then finally, I think that this maneuver, if realized, will really disenfranchise educational access and opportunity for many Asian Americans, including Southeast Asian Americans and other communities of color. Of course, this case hasn’t received a lot of attention, given that we just heard from Harvard and UNC at the Supreme Court about a month ago. But I think it provides some really important considerations regarding the upcoming Supreme Court decision. Nonetheless the decision for Harvard and UNC, we’re all sort of on pins and needles until we hear about it in spring and summer. And I was there in Washington for it, and so what I’d actually like to do is actually share some interesting notes and items that sort of struck out to me during the oral arguments. So I think in both cases we heard the justices ask many questions regarding the twenty-five-year sunset of using race in college admissions, right, something that Justice O’Connor wrote in the Michigan case. I think the solicitor general, Solicitor General Prelogar’s response at the conclusion of the case was really insightful. She said—and I’m sort of paraphrasing here about why we—in addressing some of the questions about that twenty-five-year sunset, she basically said that society hasn’t made enough progress yet. The arc of progress is slower than what the Grutter court had imagined. And so we just suddenly don’t hit 2028—that’s twenty-five years from the decision—and then, snap, race is not used in college admissions anymore. There was also a lot of discussion regarding proxy approaches to so-called race-neutral admissions, right, yet still being able to maintain some or similar levels of racial diversity. I think what we know from a lot of empirical research out there is that there’s really no good proxy variables for race. Certainly Texas has its 10 percent plan, which really only works to a certain extent and does not actually work well for, say, private schools that draw students from across all fifty states and the territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific. And again, as the solicitor general stated, it doesn’t work well for the service academies either, for really similar reasons. I do think the line of questioning from the chief justice again related to what sounded like a carveout exemption for our U.S. military schools, our service academies. What’s really interesting, and might be of actually specific interest for the CFR community, of course, our service academies practice affirmative action and are in support of it. And this was also argued in an amicus brief written by retired generals and admirals. And they argued that race-conscious admissions is necessary to build a diverse officer corps at both the service academies as well as ROTC programs at various universities across the country, which, in their words, they say builds a more cohesive, collaborative, and effective fighting unit, especially, quote, given recent international conflicts and humanitarian crises which require our military to perform civil functions and call for heightened cultural awareness and sensitivity in religious issues. And so, to a certain extent, I think that same line of logic can also be extended to, for example, our diplomatic corps, and certainly many corporations. We also saw briefs from the field of medicine, from science and research, have all written in support of race-conscious admissions, along the same sort of pipeline issues as their companies and organizations. And they argue that their work benefits from a highly educated, diverse workforce. But what was interesting, was that there wasn’t much discussion about Asian Americans. It was only brought up sort of a handful of times, despite the fact that certainly that’s sort of the origin story of the sets of lawsuits. And perhaps—to me perhaps this is simply an indication that the case was really never about Asian Americans from the beginning. And certainly the finding from the district court shows that Asian Americans are not discriminated in this process at Harvard. And so we will all sort of see how the Court rules next year, if they uphold precedent or not, and if they do not, how narrow or how broad they will go. Justice Barrett did have an interesting question in the UNC part of the case about affinity groups and affinity housing on campus. So, for example, my undergraduate alma mater, UC Berkeley, has this for several groups. They have affinity housing for Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, women in STEM, the LGBTQ+ community, Latinx students, among many, many others, actually. So I think a possible area of concern is if they go broad, will we see a ban on these types of race-based practices on campus? Would that impact sort of thinking about recruitment efforts? So these so-called race-neutral approaches, sort of recruitment and outreach services for particular communities. Or would that impact something like HBCUs and tribal colleges, HSIs and AANAPISIs, or other MSIs? How does that all fit in, right? I think that line of questioning sort of sparked a bit of concern from folks and my colleagues. But I think, though, in conversation, we don’t think the Court has really any appetite to go that far. And I’m certainly inclined to agree. But end of the day, that line of questioning was rather curious. And so, with that, I thank you for letting me share some of my thinking and about what’s going on. And I would really love to be able to engage in conversation with all of you. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And we’d love to hear now from you all questions and comments, and if you could share how things are happening on your campuses. Please raise—click on the raised-hand icon on your screen to ask a question. If you’re on an iPad or tablet, you can click the More button to access the raised-hand feature. I’ll call on you, and then accept the unmute prompt, state your name and affiliation, followed by your question. You can also submit a written question in the Q&A box or vote for questions that have been written there. And if you do write your question, it would be great if you could write who you are. I’m going to go first to a raised hand, Morton Holbrook. And there you go. Q: I’m there, yeah. Morton Holbrook from Kentucky Wesleyan College in Kentucky. Thanks, Professor Nguyen. Sort of a two-part question here. One is, how do you reconcile apparent public support for affirmative action with the number of states, I think ten or twelve states, that have banned affirmative action? Are their legislators just out of touch with their people, or what? And the second part is, a recent article in the Washington Post about UC Berkeley’s experience, where the number of African American students simply plummeted down to about 3 percent, and at the same time that campus is still very diverse in other respects. Have you made a study of all the states that have banned affirmative action? Have they all had that same result with regard to African Americans? Or where does that stand? Thank you. NGUYEN: Thank you. Thank you for the really excellent question. I think it’s about—I think you’re right—around nine, ten or so states that have banned affirmative action. You know, I’ll be completely honest with you. I’m really just familiar with the bans that were instituted both in California and in Michigan, and those were through state referendums, right, and not necessarily legislature. So in this case, this is the people voting for it. And so I think that’s a really tough nut to crack about how do you reconcile these bans at the state level versus sort of what we see at the national level. And so I think this is sort of the big challenge that advocates for racial equity are facing in places like California. They actually tried to repeal this in California recently, in the last decade. And again, that failed. And so I think part of the issue here is there’s a whole lot of misinformation out there. I think that’s one key issue. I sort of said in my opening remarks there that, at least in some of the popular media pieces today about these cases, the way Asian Americans are sort of understood and written about is really not aligned with a lot of the rich empirical research out there that shows quite the contrary, as well as sort of historical research that shows quite the contrary. And so I think there’s a lot of public opinion being formulated as well as, again, just sort of misinformation about the topic that might be leading folks to think one way or another. To your second question about UC Berkeley, my alma mater, you’re right. After that Prop 209 ban, you saw a huge decline in undergraduate enrollment, specifically of African American students. And so Berkeley has been trying every which way to figure out a race—a so-called race-neutral approach in order to increase those numbers. And I think they are trying to—they are really trying to figure it out. And I think that’s why UC Berkeley, UCLA, other institutions submitted amicus briefs in support of Harvard, in support of UNC, because they know that there are not a lot—when you can’t use race, that’s a result that you end up with. And that’s because there are just not good proxy variables for race. SES or economic status is often talked about a lot. That again isn’t a good variable. Geography can—to a certain extent can be used. All these can sort of certainly be used in some combination. But again, they do not serve well as proxy variables. And I think that’s why we see those numbers at Berkeley. And I think that’s why Berkeley was so invested in this case and why all those campus leaders submitted amicus briefs in support of Harvard and UNC. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next written question or first written question from Darko Spasevski, who’s at the University of Skopje, North Macedonia: Do you think that in order to have successful affirmative actions in the higher education this process should be followed by affirmative actions in the workplace? Are the benefits—if the affirmative actions are only promoted at the level of higher education but are not at the same time continuing at the workplace? I guess it would be the opposite. Is it—you know, basically, should affirmative action be promoted in the workplace as well— NGUYEN: Yeah, I think— FASKIANOS: —once you get past the higher education? NGUYEN: Got it. Yeah, I think I understand that question. Actually, this was something that came up during this recent Supreme Court case. Again, the solicitor general was talking about specifically the briefs from the retired generals and admirals, as well as from various executives and corporations, talking about how affirmative action is so important at the university level because then it helps build a pipeline to recruit folks to work at those organizations or serve in the military, as well as that it trains all students, right, and lets them access and achieve the benefits of diversity and use that in their future employment, which research from areas of management show that that increases work productivity. It increases their bottom line, et cetera, et cetera. And so actually, in that argument, the—I think it was Justice Alito that asked, are you now arguing for this in the private sector, in corporations? And the solicitor general quickly said no, no. The context of this lawsuit is specifically or the position of the United States is specifically just focused here on higher education. And I think that certainly is relevant for this conversation today, as well as sort of my own area of expertise. But I think my colleagues in the areas of management and a lot of that work shows, I think, similar types of results that, when you have diverse workforces, when you have folks who can reap the benefits of diversity interactions, interracial interactions, then there are certainly a lot of benefits that come from that, in addition to creativity, work efficiency, so many things. And so, again, I’m not here to sort of put a position down regarding affirmative action in professional settings, only because that’s not my area of expertise. But certainly other areas of research have pointed in similar directions as what’s sort of shown in the higher-education literature. FASKIANOS: (Off mic) Renteln? And let’s see if you can unmute yourself. If you click on the unmute prompt, you should be able to ask your question. Not working? Maybe not. OK, so I will read it. So— Q: Is it working now? FASKIANOS: It is, Alison. Go ahead. Q: Thank you. I’m sorry. It’s just usually it shows me when I’m teaching. Thank you for a really interesting, incisive analysis; really enjoyed it. I wanted to ask about whether it’s realistic to be able to implement policies that are, quote, race-neutral, unquote, given that people’s surnames convey sometimes identities, ethnic and religious identities, and also activities that people participated in in professional associations. And when people have references or letters of recommendation, information about background comes out. So I’m wondering if you think that this debate really reflects a kind of polarization, a kind of symbolitics, and whether, while some worry about the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decisions, this is really something that’s more symbolic than something that could actually be implemented if the universities continue to be committed to affirmative action. NGUYEN: Really great question. Thank you so much for asking it. This was actually a big chunk of the conversation during oral arguments for both at UNC and both at Harvard, right. The justices were asking, so how do you—if you don’t—and this was sort of the whole part about when they were talking about checking the box, checking sort of your racial category during the application process. And so they asked, if you get rid of that, what happens when students write about their experiences in their personal statements or, as you said, recommenders in their letters in about that? And so this was where it got really, really—I think the lawyers had a really hard time disentangling it, because for people of color, certainly a lot of their experiences, their racialized experiences, are inextricably linked to their race and their identity. And so removing that is, at an operationalized level, pretty hard to do and pretty impossible, right. So they actually had some interesting examples, like one—and so they’re asking hypotheticals. Both lawyers—both the justices on all the various spectrum of the Court were asking sort of pointed questions. Where I think one justice asked, so can you talk about—can you talk about your family’s experiences, particularly if your ancestors were slaves in the United States? And so the lawyers—this is the lawyer for SFFA saying that would not—we cannot use that. They cannot be used in admissions, because that is linked to their race. But can you—so another justice asked, can you talk about if, you know, your family immigrated to the United States? Can you—how do you talk about that? Can you talk about that? And the lawyers said, well, that would be permissible then, because that doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to a racial group or a racial category. So again, it’s very—I think what they were trying to tease out was how do you—what do you actually—what would actually be the way to restrict that, right? And so I guess, depending on how the justices decide this case, my assumption is or my hope is, depending on whatever way they go, they’re going to—they will, one way or another, define or sort of place limits if they do end up removing the use of race. But I completely agree with you. Operationally, that’s not an easy thing to do, right? And when do you decide what fits and what doesn’t fit? And that will be the—that will be a big, big struggle I think universities will face if the courts ban the use of race in college admissions. FASKIANOS: Let me just add that Alison Dundes Renteln is a professor of political science at the University of Southern California. So I’m going to go to the next written question, from Clemente Abrokwaa at Penn State University: Do you think affirmative action should be redefined to reflect current social-demographic groups and needs? NGUYEN: Oh, that’s such a fun question, and particularly for someone who studies race and racial formation in the United States. And so I—you know, this is—this is an interesting one. I think—I think sort of the way we think about—at least folks in my profession think about race versus sort of the way—the way it’s currently accounted for in—by state-based classifications/definitions, those tend to be a little bit behind, right? That’s normal and natural. But I think what we’ve seen in the United States over time is race has—or, racial classifications and categories have changed over time and continue to evolve, right? The Census—the Census Bureau has an advisory group to help them think through this when they collect this data. And so—and so I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have a good answer for you, actually. But I think—I think that certainly, given the fact that racial categories do shift and change over time and the meaning ascribed to them, we certainly need to take a—if we continue using approaches for—race- or ethnic-based approaches in college admissions, that’s something that absolutely needs to be considered, right? But at the same time, it also means, as we think about sort of the future and what does that look like—and maybe, for example, here we’re talking about folks who are—who identify as mixed race. But at the same time, we need to look historically, too, right? So we don’t want to—the historical definitions and the way people would self-identify historically. And so I think—I think, certainly, the answer, then, would be—would be both, right? But what a fun question. Thanks for that question. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the moderator prerogative here and ask you about: How does affirmative action in higher education in the United States relate to, you know, relations abroad? NGUYEN: Yeah. Well— FASKIANOS: Have you looked at that connection? NGUYEN: Sure. I think—I think that—I think that’s really, really interesting. So something that we wrote in our amicus brief particularly regarding—it was sort of in response to SFFA’s brief and their claim, which was about sort of why Asian Americans here were so exceptional in their—in their academic achievements. I think that’s a—tends to be a big stereotype, model minority stereotype. That is how Asian Americans are racialized. So one thing that we sort of wrote in our brief was this actually is really connected to a certain extent, right—for some Asian American groups in the United States, that’s linked to U.S. foreign policy and U.S. immigration policy about who from Asia is allowed to immigrate to the United States, what their sort of educational background and requirements are. And so I think when we think about the arguments being made in this lawsuit and the way Asian Americans are discussed, certainly one key aspect there is certainly connected to historic U.S. foreign policy, particularly around—as well as immigration policy, particularly around the 1965 Immigration Act. So certainly they are connected and they’re linked. And something that we—that I wish more people could—more people would read our brief, I guess, and get a good understanding of, sort of to add to the complexity of this lawsuit. FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go back to Morton Holbrook. Q: Yes. Still here at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Speaking of amicus briefs, what do you think of the Catholic college brief from Georgetown University? Here we have a Court that’s been very partial towards religious beliefs, and they’re arguing that their religious beliefs requires them to seek diversity in college admissions. How do you think they’ll fare in that argument? NGUYEN: Yeah. This was also brought up in—during oral arguments. I can’t remember if it was during the UNC part or the Harvard part. And I’ll be completely honest with you, I haven’t read that brief yet. There’s just so many and I wasn’t able to read them all. But this was a really interesting—really interesting point that was sort of raised in the courts. And I don’t—I don’t—I don’t have a good answer for you, to be completely honest. I’m not sure how they’re going to, particularly given that these—that this Court seems to be very much in favor of religious liberty, right, how they would account for that amicus brief from the Catholic institutions. And so that will be an interesting one to watch and to see—to see how it’s framed, and certainly it would be interesting if they played an outsized role in the justices’ decision-making here. But great question. Great point to raise and something I’ll add to my reading list for this weekend. FASKIANOS: So Alison Renteln came back with a question following on mine: Why are numerical quotas acceptable in other countries like India but not in the United States? NGUYEN: Yeah. Great, great question there. You know, also in other places like in Brazil. And so we, in fact, used to use numerical quotas before the Bakke decision. It was the Bakke decision, University of California v. Bakke, that eliminated the use of racial quotas, also eliminated the use of what I said earlier about sort of the rationales for why we can practice race-conscious admissions, which was it cannot be used to address historic racism or ongoing racism. In fact, the only rationale for why we can use affirmative action today as a—as a factor of many factors, is in order to—for universities to build campus environments—diverse campus environments of which there are benefits to diversity, the educational benefits of diversity that flows for all students. And so, yeah, it was the—it was the Supreme Court in the late 1970s that restricted the use of quotas among many other—many other rationales for the practice of race-conscious admissions. Thank you for that question. FASKIANOS: Great. And I’m going to go to next to raised hand from Emily Drew. Q: Great. Thank you. I’m listening in from Oregon, where I’m a sociologist. Thank you for all of these smart comments. My question is a little bit thinking out loud. What do you think about—it feels like there are some perils and dangers, but I’m hoping you’ll reframe that for me, of some racialized groups like indigenous people saying, well, we’re not a race anyway—we’re tribes, we’re nations—so that they’re not subject to the ban on race-conscious practices, which, it’s true, they’re a tribe. They’re also a racialized group. And so I’m struggling with groups kind of finding a political way around the ban or the potential ban that’s coming, but then where does that leave us in terms of, you know, each group, like, take care of your own kind of thing? Can you just react a little bit to that? NGUYEN: Yeah. Thanks for that really wonderful question. Fascinating point about, yeah, the way to say: We’re not a racial group. We’re sovereign nations or sovereign tribes. I think what we’re going to see, depending on how the courts go, are folks trying—schools potentially trying a whole host of different approaches to increase diversity on their campuses if they’re not allowed to use some of these racial categories like they’ve been doing already, in a holistic approach. And so, yeah, that might be a fascinating way for indigenous communities to advance forward. I will say, though, there was one point, again, in the—during oral arguments where they started talking about sort of generational connections to racial categories. And so they’re saying if it’s my grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents, right, so sort of talking almost about, like—at least the way I interpreted it, as sort of thinking about connecting one to a race via blood quantum. And so when does that—when does that expire, right? And so is it—is it—if you’re one-sixteenth Native American, is that—does that count? So there was a short line of questioning about that, and I think the—I think the lawyer tried to draw a line in the sand about, like, at what point do you not go—what point does it count and when does it not count. And I think that’s actually a bit of a misstep, primarily because that should be determined by the sovereign nation, by the tribe, about who gets to identify as that—as a member of that nation or that tribe and how they—I think—you know, I think, talking to indigenous scholars, they would say it’s about how you engage in and how you live in it, rather than—rather than if it’s just a percentage. So, again, those will be the tensions, I think, that will—that already exist, I should say, regardless of the Court decision. But a fascinating point about states sort of exercising indigenous law there to see if that would be a way to counter that. Certainly, I should—I should have said at the top of this I’m not trained as a lawyer. And so I have no idea how that would be sort of litigated out, but certainly I imagine all different entities will find ways to move through this without—in various legal fashions. And I was talking to a colleague earlier today about this and he said something about at the end of the day this might be something that, if Congress decided to take up, they may—this would be an opportunity for Congress to take up, to maybe develop a narrow path for institutions. But certainly it’s—the courts seem to be the favored way for us to talk about affirmative action. FASKIANOS: There’s a written question from John Francis, who is a research professor of political science at the University of Utah: If the Court were to strike down affirmative action, would state universities give much more attention to geographic recruitment within their respective states and encourage private foundations to raise scholarship funds to support students of color who live in those areas? NGUYEN: Great, great question there. And I think that would be one of many things that universities are doing. We’re seeing schools where the states have banned affirmative action do things like this, in Michigan and certainly in California. But to a certain extent, it actually doesn’t work—I guess in California’s context—that well. I think, if I’m not mistaken, the head of admissions for UC Berkeley said in one of many panels—he’s wonderful, by the way—on one of many panels, like, that doesn’t work very well in the California context because only so many schools have sort of that large concentration of African American students and for them to sort of go there and recruit out of that. So it’s not a—the sort of geographic distribution is not so easy and clean cut as—I think as one would normally perceive. And so it actually develops a big, big challenge for state institutions, particularly state flagship institutions, in particular geographic contexts. Now, I don’t know if that’s the case, say, in other parts of the country. But certainly within the UC system, that seems to be a prevailing argument. And I think more than ever now, everyone has been looking to the UC system for insight on what they—on how to approach this if the courts decide next year to ban the use of race. I should also admit that—or, not admit, but proudly declare that I’m a product of the UC system. All of my postsecondary education is from those schools. And so I know that this has been a constant and ongoing conversation within the UC system, and I imagine that will be the case for schools both public and private across the country. But I think part of that calculation then requires institutions to think about not just from private donors, but really from state legislatures as well as the institutions themselves have to really think about how they want to dedicate resources to achieving diversity if they don’t—if they’re unable to use race. I think a tremendous amount of resources. So, to a certain extent, it’s going to make institutions put their money where their mouth is. And so we’ll see if that—this will all be interesting areas to investigate, depending on how the courts decide come next year. FASKIANOS: There’s a raised hand or there was a raised hand from Jeff Goldsmith. I don’t know if you still have a question. Q: Yeah. So I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how I might want to pose this question, but I was struck by—sorry, this is Jeff Goldsmith from Columbia University. I was struck by the line of questioning that you mentioned from Justice Barrett about affinity housing and your thoughts about how narrow or far-reaching a decision striking down affirmative action might be. And I guess it seems like there is the potential for at least some gray area. And you know, we run things like summer research programs that are intended to bolster diversity. There are in some cases—you just sort of mentioned the scholarship opportunities focused on increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds. And I guess I’m just sort of curious if you have any speculation about how narrow or far-reaching a decision might be. NGUYEN: Thanks for that question. Yeah. So I think this was—we—prior to the—to oral arguments, people had sort of talked about this a little bit. Would this be consequential? And I—in fact, the day before—the day before oral arguments, I was on a different panel and I sort of brought this up. And actually, a federal judge in the audience came up to me afterwards and said, you know, I don’t think the Court’s got a lot of appetite for that. And I said, hey, I completely agree with you, but certainly, you know, we’ve—in recent times we’ve seen the Court do more interesting things, I guess, if you’ll—if I can use a euphemism. And so—and so, it almost feels like everything’s on the table, right? But I think, generally speaking, I’m inclined to agree that if the courts strike down race-conscious admissions, they will do it in a very narrow and highly-tailored way. That was my feeling going in. That was my feeling on October 30, right? Then, on Halloween—October 31—while listening to the—to the oral arguments, you had that very short exchange between Justice Barrett, specifically during the UNC case, ask about affinity groups and affinity housing, and it felt like it sort of came out of left field. And not—and so I think that raised some curiosity for all of us about what—about why that was a line of questioning. But nonetheless, I think at least my—I’ve never been a gambling person, but if I were I would say that if they do strike it down that I think the justices wholesale don’t—I don’t think they would have a large appetite to do something so broad and sweeping like that. At least that’s my hope, if that’s the direction we’re moving in. But I guess that’s why I said earlier that we’re sort of all on pins and needles about that. And if that is struck down, then I think that’s got a lot of consequences for scholarships, recruitment programs, summer bridge programs, potentially minority-serving institutions, and all of the above. So, yeah, I—again, it seems like that’s a big reshaping of postsecondary education, not just in admissions but sort of the way they operate overall. And I don’t know if that would happen so quickly overnight like that. But that, at least, is my hope. FASKIANOS: (Off mic.) There you go. Q: (Laughs.) Thank you so much for your talk. Clemente Abrokwaa from Penn State University. And my question is, right now there is a push for diversity, equity, and inclusion in many areas. How is that different from affirmative action? NGUYEN: Well, great question. And actually, that’s a really difficult one for me to answer only because I think if we were to go and ask ten people on the street what did we mean by diversity, equity, and inclusion, everyone would give you sort of a very different and potentially narrow or a very broad definition of what it means, right? But I think with respect to affirmative action, particularly in a higher-education context, it is specifically about college admissions, specifically about admissions and how do you review college admissions. And in this case here, there is a very narrow way in which it can—it can be used for race—in this case for race, that it’s got to be narrowly tailored, that it can only be a factor among a factor in a broad holistic approach, that you can’t use quotas, that it can’t be based on rectifying previous or historical racism, and that the only utility for it is that it is used to create learning environments where there are educational benefits that flow from diversity and the interactions of diversity. Versus, I think, broader conversations about DEI, while of course centered on admissions, right, which is sort of one of many dimensions in which you achieve DEI, right? We like to think that—and I’m going to be sort of citing a scholar, Sylvia Hurtado, out of UCLA, who argues that, admissions help contribute to one dimension, which is the composition of a university, the sort of just overall demographics and numbers of that university. But there are many other dimensions that are important in order to create learning environments in which we can achieve DEI-related issues. That means that we have to look at the institution and the way it’s acted historically and contemporarily. We have to look at behavioral interactions between people on a university. There are psychological dimensions, among many others. And so that’s how I think about it. I think that’s how at least my area of scholarship and in our academic discipline we think about it and for folks who study education think about it. And so hopefully that answers your question. And, yeah, hopefully that answers your question. FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next question from Alison Renteln: What policies appear to be the best practices to increase diversity at universities, including disability? And what are the best practices from other countries? NGUYEN: Oh, wow, that’s a really good question. So we—you know, I think—I think a lot of other countries use quotas. Brazil might be sort of the example that most folks think about when they think about the way affirmative action’s practiced abroad. And certainly that’s not something that we can do here in the United States. So that’s—that—really, really important consideration. Sort of other practices that I think that are—that are not sort of the ones that are narrowly tailored by the courts are what I said earlier about sort of what the UC system has to really do and has to really grapple with, right, are using every sort of—everything that they can think of under the sun to go out and try to do outreach and recruit and build those pipelines throughout the entire education system. There’s been some work by some wonderful folks in our field—Dominique Baker, Mike Bastedo—who looked at even sort of just a random sampling, if you were able to do a lottery system, and that has actually found that that doesn’t actually increase diversity either, and so—racial diversity either. And so I think that’s—so, again, this all points to how crucial affirmative action is in being able to use race in order to achieve compositional diversity on a college campus, and that other proxy variables just don’t even come close to being able to help estimate that. And so, yeah, that’s—I should also note that really, we’re only talking about a dozen or so schools. Oh, I’m sorry, more than a dozen, but a handful of schools that this is really a big issue for. Most schools in the United States don’t necessarily—are not at this level of selectivity where it becomes a big issue of concern for the national public. Nearly half of all of our college-going students are at community college, which tend to be open-access institutions. And so something also to keep in mind when we talk about affirmative action. FASKIANOS: Thanks. We only have a few minutes left. Can you talk a little bit more about the work of NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools? NGUYEN: Yeah. So I’m a faculty affiliate there, and maybe I’ll preface by saying I’m new to NYU. I just came here from the University of Denver, and so I’m still learning about every wonderful thing that Metro Center is doing. It’s led by a wonderful faculty member here named Fabienne Doucet and really focused on sort of a handful of pillars—certainly research on education, but also a real big tie for communities. So real direct engagement with schools, school systems in order to advance justice in those schools. And so they have a lot of contracts with school districts and public entities, as well as nonprofit groups that come in and work as an incubator there on a host of issues. And so I think the work there is really exciting and really interesting. It tends to be—and I should say also very expansive. So the whole sort of K-12 system, as well as postsecondary. And I think that’s the role that I’m looking to play there, is to help contribute to and expand their work in the postsecondary education space. FASKIANOS: Great. And maybe a few words about your other—you have many, many hats. NGUYEN: Oh. (Laughs.) FASKIANOS: NYU’s Institute for Human Development and Social Change. NGUYEN: Yeah. They do some really wonderful, interesting work. And it’s really, actually, a center and a space for faculty to come in and run a lot of their research projects, including my own, which is the MSI Data Project, where we are looking at all the various different types of minority-serving institutions in the United States, how they change over time, and how the federal government thinks about them and accounts for them, as well as how do the schools themselves think about them, all with the goal here in order to work with students of colors and give them access and opportunity. I should say, depending on how you count them, MSIs enroll a huge and significant proportion of all students of color, almost half, in the country, despite making up such a small percentage, about 20 percent, of all college and universities. And so this is—certainly when we talk about affirmative action, we—I think a lot of folks center it around racial justice or social justice. I think sort of the other side of the same coin here are schools like minority-serving institutions which enroll and provide access to and graduate a really significant proportion and number of students of color and certainly an area that we need to bring a lot more attention to when we talk about issues of race and education. FASKIANOS: OK, I’m going to take one—try to sneak in one last question from John Francis, who’s raised his hand. You get the last one, John. Q: OK, can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. Q: Oh, that’s great. So my question is—has a certain irony to it, but there’s been a great deal of discussion of late that men are not succeeding in college, but that women are, and that certainly should be encouraged, but also there should be ways to find perhaps even changing when people start out in elementary school how that may be shifted to help men later on. And in this discussion, when we’re looking at that issue and it’s gaining some latitude, some strength, should we think about that as a possible consideration that universities should have greater latitude in making decisions to reflect the current set of demographic issues, be it race or gender or others? Has this argument come to play any kind of role? NGUYEN: Great question and a good last one, and if I can be completely honest, not an area that I’m—gender-based issues are not an area that I’ve done a whole lot of work in, if really any work, but I will attempt to answer your question as best as I can here, which is, I think—and sort of connected to sort of the larger conversation and question that we had that someone posed earlier about sort of the complexity and changing nature of racial and ethnic categories and what does that mean, and how do universities address that? And I think this is again where it requires universities to have some flexibility and nimbleness and autonomy to be able to address a lot of these issues, including what you’re talking about, John, depending on the context and the times in which we are in. You know, certainly one big area also connected to—for men in postsecondary education is sort of the huge gap we see for men of color from particular groups, and really we see foundations, we see the Obama administration really play—invest in this work. So, John, from what it sounds like, it sounds like I agree with you here about—that universities need flexibility and autonomy to be able to address these issues. Now, that may—at the same time, we don’t want to dismiss the fact that the experiences of women in postsecondary education—while certainly we see numbers increasing in enrollment in a lot of aspects, in certain disciplines we see a sharp decline; we see—in STEM and engineering fields, in the way those disciplines may be organized to sort of push out women. And so I think, again, this is why it requires some nimbleness and some autonomy from the universities to be able to design approaches to support students of different types of diversity on their campuses, in particular areas, disciplines, and majors. And so I think that’s the—I think that’s the challenge, is that we need to be a lot more intentional and think more precisely and run our analyses in ways that make sense for particular intersectional groups on campus and in the areas of which they’re studying. So yeah, I think that’s the—one of the big challenges that universities are facing today and certainly depending on how the courts rule, we’ll see if that ends up restricting autonomy and removing tools or allowing those tools to remain for various types of targeted interventions for various minoritized groups. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, Mike Nguyen, thank you very much for this terrific hour and to all of you for your questions and comments. This is really insightful and we appreciate it. Welcome to New York, Mike, your first New York—holidays in New York. So we will be resuming the series in January and we will be sending out also the lineup for our winter/spring semester of the Academic Webinar series, which is really designed for students, later this month. We do wish you all luck with administering finals this week and grading them and all those papers; I don’t envy you all. We have different deadlines under—at the Council that we’re working on right now, so it will be a busy month, but we hope that everybody enjoys the holidays. We will resume in January, in the new year, and I encourage you all to follow us at @CFR_Academic on Twitter. Visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, thanks, Mike, for this, and to all of you. NGUYEN: Thank you so much for having me. Really an honor. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Take care, everybody. (END)

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.

Shadi Mokhtari, assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University, and Ebenezer Obadare, the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at CFR, discuss how different regions around the world approach safeguarding human rights. Jennifer Butler, founder in residence at Faith in Public Life, moderates. This discussion took place at the 2022 Annual Meetings, hosted by the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion in Denver, Colorado. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: It’s great to be back at the SBL and AAR Annual Meetings in person. We haven’t done this lunch since 2019, so we’re excited to be here. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach at CFR. So thank you for being with us. This luncheon is hosted by CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program, which serves as a resource for faith leaders and policymakers, and offers a forum for congressional leaders, seminary heads, scholars, religion, and representatives of faith-based organizations to discuss global issues in an interfaith environment. If you’re not already a participant in our activities, we hope you will join us. Our programming includes two webinar series—a Religion and Foreign Policy Series and a Social Justice Series— roundtables, tailored briefings by subject experts, and a monthly bulletin. After the conference, we will send you an invitation to our next webinar, so look out for that. It will be on religious freedom and U.S. national security. And in the meantime, if you haven’t already, please visit us at our booth. The booth number is 127. I’m delighted to introduce our moderator who will facilitate today’s discussion—Jennifer Butler, founder in residence at Faith in Public Life. We have extensive bios in the programs at your seats, so you can look more there. I’m going to turn it over to Jennifer to introduce our panelists. Jennifer, over to you. BUTLER: Thank you. Thank you so much. (Applause.) Welcome, everyone. And a big thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations for pulling together such cutting-edge topics, such important discussions. I know we all benefit from these on a regular basis. This topic could not be more pressing today—if we’re going with the AAR theme of catastrophes—looking at the state of democracy and human rights around the world, we’re facing a downright recession in human rights, globally, and in democracy, which safeguards many of those rights. Over a quarter of the world’s population now lives in a backsliding democracy. Countries such as Brazil, now the United States by some measures, fit into that backsliding category—Hungry, Poland, Slovenia. And then, together with those living in nondemocratic regimes, they make up more than two-thirds of the world population. So two-thirds of the world population are living either in what is categorized as a backsliding democracy—hence where human rights are under threat—or in a non-democracy regime. And religion, of course, is playing a complex role in that as part of civil society, both in terms of fostering or weakening human rights. It plays an even more complicated role when it becomes a political ideology, as we see in the rise of religious nationalisms around the world, but also when religion is exploited as a tool of Western hegemony as well. And so there’s a lot of complicated dynamics that these two scholars are going to be incredible at helping us to unpack. We are very lucky to have them. And with that, I would like to introduce these astonishing professors here. Shadi Mokhtari is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. Her teaching and research focus is on the politics of human rights, the dynamics of political change in the Middle East, and on political Islam. And she is the author of After Abu Ghraib: Exploring Human Rights in America and in the Middle East, which was with Cambridge University Press, and that book was the co-winner of the 2010 American Political Science Association Human Rights Section Best Book Award. From 2003 to 2013, she served as editor in chief of the Muslim World and Journal of Human Rights. Her current research develops a typology of Middle Eastern experiences of the international human rights framework and is entitled, Experiencing Human Rights as ‘Mockery of Morality’, ‘Manifesting Morality,’ and ‘Moral Maze’: The Resonance of Human Rights’ Rhetorical Promise and the (Un)Persuasiveness of its Practice to Middle Eastern Populations. That is a mouthful, but a critical, critical theme for today and one we will be discussing in depth. Dr. Ebenezer Obadare is the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining CFR, he was a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. He was a political reporter for The News and TEMPO magazines from 1993 to 1995, and he is the author of numerous books. Dr. Obadare’s most recent book just came out this year from University of Notre Dame Press, and it’s entitled, Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria. He is the editor of the Journal of Modern African Studies and a contributing editor to Current History. He was the Ralf Dahrendorf Scholar and Ford Foundation International Scholar at the London School of Economics. And these two have so many accomplishments I will not read them all off, but they are in your bio. So our first question today, to open up this conversation, is going to be—and I think I’ll start with you, Dr. Obadare, because you’re looking straight at me, and we’ve been bantering beforehand. OBADARE: I should have not done that. (Laughter.) BUTLER: Never make eye contact, right, then you end up going first. I wanted to start off with both of you just asking, what is the current state of human rights in the area that your expertise is in? And then, we’re going to delve deeper into some very complicated questions. What is the state of human rights, and what role are religious organizations playing in this struggle? And what are the tensions between religion and human rights, broadly? OBADARE: Yeah, thank you for that. Good to be here. Thank you for attending this panel. So my work is on Africa so I’m going to speak generally about the human rights struggle in Africa. I think the first point to sort of get out is that you can’t understand the human rights struggle in Africa unless you put it within the broader context of the struggle for the integration of liberal democratic norms across the continent. So for the last three to four decades many African countries have been involved—forced in the struggle to remove the military from power in different countries, and then, consequence upon that, in a struggle to institute democratic norms in the continent. The language of human rights itself has to be inserted within the broader struggle to remove the military from power, first and foremost, but also to have liberal democratic norms be the modus operandi in different African countries. And you could say that, to a large extent, considerable progress has been made in different parts of the continent, even though—if you’ve been reading the news about the last five to six months—you also see that there’s cause for disenchantment because of the speed of coups d’état that we’ve had especially in some West African countries—Guinea, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, come to mind. So some of that points to the fact that some of the good things that we’ve experienced with respect to the consolidation of human rights and democratic norms, you start seeing a reversal of some of those norms especially with those military coups. And to sort of give a sense of the condition in the continent right now, from a high of about twenty-five, thirty in the mid-1990s—consequent upon the fourth wave of democratization of the continent—Freedom House now says that only eleven African countries can broadly be categorized as free. And Freedom House—I don’t know if you know about their index—they use free and fair elections, freedom of the press, property rights, different things like that as a barometer to measure the progress of different countries, on the road to democracy. The other part of your question is the role that those agents are playing in this struggle. And I think you could—it’s an extremely complex subject, where you could sort of divide that into two. One is the way in which different religious organizations are really just institutions—basically turned the mosque or the pulpit, as the case may be, into religious platforms, right. So religious agents—pastors, imams—especially when the continent was under the control of the military, they turned those platforms into political platforms. So religious agents or religious organizations of various sorts were part of the campaign to integrate human rights and liberal democratic norms on the continent. But the much more important contribution that I think religious agents or religious institutions perform was in the very philosophizing of the struggle itself—the way in which the struggle to institute human rights was turned into a demon vs. saint kind of thing, where the military was the demon and all the other forces within civil society that raged against them became the saints. So that philosophy was actually much more important than the actual work that some of them did on the pulpit or inside the mosque. And I think, to close on a maybe a more skeptical note, it’s also to point out that even though religious agents or religious institutions have been so central to the work of Britain’s liberal democratic norms and human rights on the continent; that some of the more recent patients of sexual and reproductive rights sort of call us back to the fact that while we ought to celebrate the involvement of religious agents and actors in politics. Oftentimes, when you now see some of the other things happening, especially over the last five to ten years with respect to LGBT rights, sexual rights, pregnancy, echoes of Roe v. Wade, on the continent—you sort of see a different kind of—maybe a much more conservative role for religious agents, so. I’m good to stop there. BUTLER: Interesting. Yeah, thank you for that complex picture. Dr. Mokhtari, what would you say? MOKHTARI: Yeah, so if we were to think of the big picture of human rights in the Middle East and North Africa, it is at once very dire and promising as well—with caveats, of course. So on the side of very dire conditions, repression essentially reigns in most parts of the region. You have—if we were to think of human rights in civil and political terms alone—and of course, there are social and economic rights, there’s the right to an environment—all of these are also very much compromised right now. But just on the repression level there, widespread repression, right, a lot of authoritarian regimes who ruled through repression—the very promising 2011 Arab Spring—many of those movements have kind of taken a very dark turn. Three civil wars, tremendous human toll in Syria and Yemen, and Libya as well, and then, the second wave of protests, which took place around 2019, in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iraq—which didn’t get much coverage, unfortunately, in the West—but those are kind of this very stalemate state where we don’t know where they’re headed. But the other side of it, what is really promising, in my view, is that, there are broad segments of these societies—and of course, there’s diversity in the region—and then I really can’t speak of the Gulf region much because it’s not my area of expertise—but in many of these other contexts, the norms of the human rights project and democratic liberal norms have broadly been embraced and overlap considerably with both the grievances the aspirations of large segments of the population. And in particular, the younger generations seem to be really driving the various protest movements. They are up against a lot of structural barriers and also kind of twenty-first century divide and rule devices through the means of social media, which has been a very effective means for authoritarian regimes in the region to divide and rule in a sense—or divide and conquer, and rule. So in any case, there’s a lot I can say about these protest movements and kind of the underlying promise, and I would say, new generation of human rights activism. But I think I’ll dig deeper with some of the other questions, so I’ll leave it there. BUTLER: Good. Yeah, you’ve piqued my interest there. Maybe we could stay with you for a minute just to continue in that vein. The Middle East has been thought to be a place where there is cultural and religious resistance to human rights, but your research has really challenged that. So can you help us understand? MOKHTARI: Yeah, so what I would say is that I’ve been visiting different countries in the region for over twenty years, and inevitably I’d be in a taxi somewhere or in a situation where someone would strike a conversation. They ask me what I am there for, and I say my research relates to human rights. And as soon as I use—it’s usually not an expression that’s used internally, I had noticed, but when I bring it up—almost kind of on key—the response would be, what human rights? Human rights don’t exist. And so over the years, I have come to the conclusion that while there may be these kinds of religiously-rooted, culturally-rooted, socially—social-norm rooted rejections of specific human rights norms, it’s not really the content, by and large—I mean, the bigger picture is that, by and large, people do not object to the core emancipatory promise of the human rights project. What it is that really makes them keep a distance from it is that, the practice, as they see it around them, is so widely corrupted, and that’s what I mean by experiencing human rights as a mockery of morality. So you can look at the way Western governments—and particularly the United States—have deployed human rights in conjunction with a host of very problematic geopolitical policies and essentially their hegemony in the region, and that what human rights—“there are no human rights” retort I heard the most right after 9/11, right, and after Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, and all of this came out. And so, there is this de-politicization of the human rights conditions in the region that the West contributes to—I mean, in addition to kind of the commissions that take place after 9/11. There’s a host of other ways that human rights discourse becomes a discourse that’s widely corrupted in the region. The focus on just women’s rights as if attributing all the human rights ills of the region simply to backwards culture and religious practices, right, as a way to de-politicize. So in any case—I mean I could go on about this quite a bit, but this is what I think often kept—people wanted to keep a distance from that discourse. Now what I then go on to discuss is how that shifts in a lot of places after 2011, and that (un)persuasiveness of human rights. The “un” is in parentheses because it can be persuasive if it’s practiced in a way that’s considered not disingenuous, which is the way that it’s widely been experienced, not only because of the Western role and kind of the hollowness of Western rhetoric on human rights, but also the way their own authoritarian regimes are able to game the system, because of the way there’s an NGO sector that has conferences in five-star hotels and trainings, but in the end nothing changes, right. And it seems like everyone’s kind of—it’s almost a farce. There’s this discourse that promises so much and delivers so little to them, but that changes after 2011. And I don’t want to go on too long here. BUTLER: That’s Abu Ghraib. Yeah, back to Abu Ghraib? Is—(inaudible)? MOKHTARI: No, no, no. The uprisings in the Arab world, right. BUTLER: I got you. MOKHTARI: So then you have this new generation of human rights activists and social activists—social movement activists who are deploying human rights very differently than it had primarily been deployed in the past. And it’s about challenging the structures of power—economic and political—in a very—in a much more meaningful way than it had been in previous human rights discourses. Now, of course, then I talk about the moral maze, which is where the polarization comes in, the disinformation, misinformation comes in, and then there’s just endless contestation. And so the kind of moral clarity that you get at the inception of some of these protest movements gets more and more foggy. If people are interested I could elaborate on that. It’s certainly something I’m worried about in terms of what’s happening in Iran. BUTLER: Why don’t we move on to Africa for a bit, and then we’ll come back to some of the— MOKHTARI: I just want to say one last sentence on the—because I didn’t bring in the religion part in the initial answer. So I do think that political Islam is on its way out as an ideology—not religiosity within the different societies. Different societies are different places, but I think that political Islam as a project—certainly in Iran, but also in a lot of Arab contexts was quite a force to reckon with up until 2011. And then you had—I mean, I can get into kind of the key points where there’s a shift going on, but essentially at this point there are a lot of—well, overall it’s considered an experiment—an ideological experiment that’s kind of run its course. I’ll leave it there, and if we want to pick up on it— BUTLER: Wow. And that’s a big assertion and a very exciting one, so I’m sure—we will have a time of Q&A, so prepare your questions now. Dr. Obadare, similarly you’ve studied a very similar concept in African studies—the recent decolonial turn has targeted Western ideas and epistemologies, and as part of this movement some scholars have even branded the idea of human rights as a Western construct. So what’s your attitude toward this intellectual development, and do you see human rights as a Western construct? OBADARE: I certainly do not. I think this is one of those moments when we have to be very careful. I think there’s a tendency to conflate human rights with Western countries and the hypocrisy of Western countries. I could write three books on the hypocrisy of Western countries. I’m sure we all could. America has not always—I mean, the West in general has not always matched its rhetoric with its action, but that has nothing to do with human rights. Human rights—there are two components. I think we talk about rights we forget about the first word, human. Human rights are universal. They transcend race. They transcend gender. They transcend sexuality. They transcend religion. They are rights that pertain to you because you’re human. Whatever corner of the world you live in, whatever historical oppression you’ve been exposed to, no matter legitimate—how legitimate your grievances, that has nothing to do with the fact that human rights are human rights. There’s no such thing as African rights. There’s no such thing as Arab rights. To the extent that those subcategories of rights exist, they exist under the broad rubric of human rights. It is the only thing that is left to the oppressed, in different societies. So I was a journalist in Nigeria in the early 1990s, and when you live under military rule, you appreciate what it means to be denied your human rights. So I think—I mean, the idea that human right is a Western construct I think it’s absolutely—it’s ridiculous. But the other point is this, I think people also fixate on the genealogy of ideas, and then make inferences on the basis of those genealogies. So if I say, oh, women have every right to be the equal of men, nobody in this room is going to ask me, where did that come from? Is that from Mongolia? No, it just seems intuitively right. I think the problem with de-colonialist scholarship—and  there’s no time to go into it in-depth here—the problem is the failure to separate the genealogy of the concept, or even the hypocrisy of someone pushing a concept from the soundness of the concept or the principle itself. So when it comes to human rights, for me the question is, is not whether the United States or the West has been hypocritical. The question is—and this is the same question I ask about every other principle—does it tend to human flourishing? Does it allow me to make a case for equality between men and women in an African context? It does. Human rights are not the property of any specific region or culture. Human is what we should focus on. To be human is to be universal. BUTLER: Now you’re preaching, I have to say. (Laughter.) OBADARE: I’m preaching. I’m sorry. (Off mic)—right now, so. BUTLER: And I had to do like one of those kind of internal amens for a minute because this concept of human flourishing, or human dignity, is one we’ve been using a lot at Faith in Public Life as we find human rights in America questioned—or in the United States, I should say—and even voting rights under question. And it leads me to this next question. You two have already commented a bit on the connection between what’s happening in the United States, and the United States and its legacy in history, and your respective regions—I wonder what impact the faltering of American democracy in human rights has, if any, on your regions? But also, are there any other connections between the U.S. role in human rights in your regions that you wanted illuminate for the participants here? Either one can go first. MOKHTARI: Yeah, I mean, I could build on what was just said. I’m sure you’ve seen Matua’s Savage-Victim-Savior metaphor of human rights. So it’s an article from the early 2000s that really kind of illuminates the traditional—what I’ve called the East-West geography of human rights, where there’s this one-way traffic, right, and you have the savages in Matua’s formulation are non-Western states, but really kind of underlying their savage culture. And then the victim is usually women and children in those non-Western contexts, and the savior is Western actors, states, NGOs, and in his formulation, these principles—Western values. And it really does shed light on—I mean, it exists. This dynamic has been longstanding, and if you ever want to see an example of it, look at Barbara Bush’s radio address when the U.S. is entering Afghanistan and she talks about American troops saving Afghan women. I mean it’s a textbook example of Matua’s Savage-Victim-Savior. Now what happens is that increasingly people are conscious of what saviorism—a kind of formulation of human rights—and so what we then get is a brand. So when you take that, in conjunction with states like Iran, and Syria and Russia—that claim to be anti-imperialist—and Venezuela—where the state or the government is essentially saying we are against the West’s imperialism—people who see Savage-Victim-Savior then start focusing on Western hegemony in a way that then obscures the non-Western population’s experiences of suffering vis-à-vis their own governments, right. So we’re so fixated on Western imperialism—which exists and has been very problematic—that we then engage in a different kind of saviorism. What I tried to develop as a progressive form of saviorism, where—and I’ll wrap it up very quickly—the savage is Western governments, and the savior is the population and the state—excuse me, the victim is the population and the state which are conflated—and the savior is kind of sometimes this anti-imperialist leftist factions and their thought. And I think that is just as essentializing as the original form of Savage-Victim-Savior, and it essentially obscures the lived experience of these populations who sometimes will say—as in Iran—yes, we understand what the U.S. has done to us and how the U.S. has been responsible to where we are today, but at the same time our biggest battle right now is with our own regime. But that gets obscured. BUTLER: Wow. MOKHTARI: So there’s a lot there. BUTLER: Hard to believe the complexity, right? MOKHTARI: I said that it was—(laughs)— BUTLER: (Laughs.) MOKHTARI: —I tried to make that as brief as I could, but there’s a lot to say. BUTLER: No, I’m feeling it over here. I’m feeling the complexity of it all. MOKHTARI: OK. BUTLER: Dr. Obadare, you had a lot to say on this. OBADARE: I actually—I find the travels of the United States instructive for a different set of reasons. I think it’s actually something that—maybe not to be applauded, but it’s something that we should—that—so there are no perfectly democratic societies. There are democratizing societies, and different societies have achieved different levels of progress. I think there’s no way of escaping the kind of trouble that the United States is going through—a very multicultural country spread across such a wide geographic space with people divided—North and South, East Coast and West Coast. If there’s anything for me to take away, it is to tell people who look at the United States as a beacon of democracy and say, the United States remains a beacon of democracy. The fact that it’s struggling does not make it less of a beacon. Look at what it’s done right. Look at what it has done to get to where it is right now. Keep in mind that, as you go along your own journey, maybe not the same thing, but the variants of the same thing will happen to you. Why? Because democracy is work. If there is anything that we ought to blame the United States for, it is the hubris that gallivants, and—(inaudible)—and says we are a democracy, period; we’ve nailed it. I think the good thing about what has happened to us over the last five, six years is we are realizing that it—timeout like vigilance is the price of liberty—that even when you think you’ve done it all, because it’s a democracy there is always more work ahead. And I’m taking that tact because I’m leery of—either people, on the extreme right or the extreme left of the spectrum, on the extreme right people would say, I told you democracy does not work; we prefer a theocracy. And those on the extreme left who will say, I told you this thing doesn’t work; we prefer some form of collectivization. Liberal democracy works. The United States is the perfect testimony to that. The fact that it is struggling is only a confirmation that it is not perfect. It is—it does not mean that we should abandon democracy. If anything, it’s what—the messiness itself is what recommends democracy. BUTLER: Oh my gosh. That gives me great encouragement, actually. It reminds me of what John Lewis said right before he died about how democracies don’t just exist. You have to work for them. You have to struggle for them, and that’s essentially what they are. OBADARE: It’s a lot of work. BUTLER: So thanks, again, for preaching here. (Laughter.) You’re both preaching. But it’s helpful because I think in these times, we need some encouragement. And so as we look to close and kind of open things up to the audience, we’ve talked about the impact of the U.S. on your regions, but what are the implications of the struggles in your regions for the future of human rights? What lessons do you bring for the rest of the world? And what are the implications? And I know both of you want to comment on Iran, too, and you might weave that into the context of that question, and what’s happening there. MOKHTARI: I think I’m not even going to start on Iran. OK. Very briefly, I would say that it is incredible to see women leading protests and men following their chants, and that says something—I mean there’s this really extraordinary shift in norms that’s taking place, which does not mean patriarchy has been eradicated in Iran, as it has not been eradicated anywhere else. But there’s something really, really very inspirational that speaks to the human quest for justice that is very powerful coming out of Iran. Pay attention to that. There’s also a lot of, I think, what’s being talked about in kind of popular discourse in the U.S. is noise. So there’s all sorts of contentiousness amongst diaspora groups, and polarization and state-sponsored polarization, and all sorts of actors in the region who would like to see Iran weakened and—but are not necessarily committed to meaningful political change. So it’s going to be a very uphill battle, but I don’t think the population is going to give up, and I don’t think that’s the case in Iran or a lot of the other places where we’ve seen protests—particularly the second wave. It’s just covered up by the repression right now, but it will resurface when it can in other places. That’s my own personal view. And I’ll just say briefly about the contribution to human rights—just to connect it to what I said earlier—that human rights was a discourse that was dominated by, again, the kind of hollow disingenuous alienating politics and practice and discourses that encompass Savage-Victim-Savior in a sense. And it gave rise to a lot of cynicism, and I think the way that it’s being practiced by protest movements in the Middle East breathes new life to the project. It makes it something that’s much more meaningful and kind of resonates with people beyond the region, and I must say that after 2011, we saw the rise of protest movements in a lot of places beyond the region. And these are protest movements that essentially have some element of rights—demands and rights consciousness embedded in them. For years we’ve been seeing scholarship talking about the impending demise of the human rights project. There’s a book called The End of Human Rights, and a lot of the problems with human rights—which, I mean some of them are very valid critiques—but I think the sense that human rights was out the door is—it’s not, right. And it’s interesting to think of it in the sense that human rights was supposed to be something that saves the Middle East, according to the traditional kind of formulations, and it may just be that the Middle East, and broader Global South, end up saving human rights. (Laughs.) So that’s just something to think about. BUTLER: That’s beautiful. Yes, Dr. Obadare. OBADARE: So quickly, Iran—I think a couple of things about Iran. One is to put it in the wider context of similar protests that have been going on in different parts of the world over the last five, seven years. The protests against the monarchy in Eswatini, in Southern Africa; the anti-monarchy protests in Thailand led by a human rights activist—I’m blanking on some of the other protests that are going on out there now—but the Iranian struggle for women’s liberation, for human rights has to be put in that context. To appreciate that context, please pay attention to the slogan: woman life freedom. I love all those things. There’s nothing not to like in all three. What the women in Iran are saying is that they are tired of conservative religious persistent supervision of their lives. They want to have control over their bodies. You know where else they say that? In the United States in the context of Roe v. Wade. So, again, the universality of human rights. And part of what I think—I find disappointing is that there hasn’t been as much attention to the struggle in Iran and for all kinds of reasons I probably don’t want to get into here. But if we say we care about human rights and gender equality, the struggle of the people of the women of Iran that’s our struggle. That’s absolutely our struggle. And it’s one of those contexts in which the United States ought to play a leading role. I’m aware of white superiority. The problem with white superiority is that it means it verifies every attempt to intervene in the problem of another country. It’s interpreted as white superiority. No, if we believe in the universality of human rights, some forms of intervention are legitimate. There must actually be times when you back people up with muscle. I’m not saying we should back Iranian women up with muscle. I’m saying we should be as vocal and expressive enough in the United States to support what’s going on, to give the women in Iran every bit of our support. And this takes me to the question about—maybe a couple sentences about the United States itself. The most important thing—so over the last twenty, twenty-five years, the United States has given material and moral support to pro-democracy and human rights advocacy groups in Africa. We should continue to do so. But much more than the material support, what we ourselves represent is important. We cannot go abroad championing democracy if we can’t have elections that are credible. We can’t keep sending election monitors abroad to determine whether those elections are free and fair when our own elections are riddled with doubt, cynicism, and skepticism. The United States is the beacon of democracy in the world. It should not let this side down. Thank you. BUTLER: OK. Wow lots to think about, and now it’s your turn in the audience. So when you’re ready just raise your hand, and we’ll bring the mic over this way. We’ve got a question and one here on the edge. Yup. OK. I saw you next, and then here in front after that. RICHARDSON: Thanks very much to the panel. I’m Kurt Richardson. I lead an academic philanthropy called Abraham’s Bridge, Institute for Abrahamic Relations, and we work to build capacity within universities and professional lives in the Middle East—so Lebanon, Iran, and Israel. They all have an obligation to each other, if they only knew. But one of the things I think that’s extremely important about the work that is human rights, in many ways if you can be in a partner attitude, if you do have access, then you are a shared co-laborer in the constant project that is democracy and human rights formulations. It’s extremely important that a culture—a larger culture, multicultural, formulates their own document. So while things were downgrading so severely in Iran in the last decade, Rouhani fulfilled a promise of Khatami from—prior to Ahmadinejad, that a formulation—an Iranian—authentically Iranian formulation would be produced. He gathered 180 Iranian scholars. It was not produced by the government, and there is now a statement in Farsi, Arabic, and English. The divisions between Shia and Sunni are more acute than they’ve ever been. All of the fault lines are along religion, and so although I’m a Protestant, I would—I do commend, most highly, the work of Vatican II on Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom of conscience. There is a special theological contribution born out of the religious wars of the seventeenth century that produced the basic theological foundations for liberty of conscience that produces religious liberty, not merely toleration—that’s majoritarian religious supervision of what is tolerable and what is intolerable—but rather on the basis of negative liberty. Then an individual culture needs to appropriate an educational document, which is what the U.N. statement of forty-eight really functioned as but over the generations it’s produced the human rights courts in Canada. And the big question over and over is the separation of the religious court and the civil court. But until a culture has that acumen to—they will not be able to educate their own people in human rights principles that have been contextualized, but in agreement with the universal humanity that you were describing. Thanks very much to this panel. BUTLER: Thank you for that contribution. Let’s also take a question over here so we can get a couple things on the table for the panelists to respond to. And then we got a gentleman down front, and there’s a woman way here in the back. So I can get each corner of the room, at least. Go ahead. BLOOM: Hi. Thank you so much for the panel. My name is Mia Bloom. I’m a professor at Georgia State, and I wanted to direct my question specifically to Dr. Obadare. So I do research on Boko Haram. And I work with Faktina Akelo in Abuja, and I work with Maji Peterkson in Kaduna. And one of the things that has happened with the women who were freed, rescued from Sambisa, is that the military forces turned around and did to them what Boko Haram did to them. And so when we’re talking about human rights and we understand that it’s usually clear who are the bad guys and who are the good guys, what do we do in a case like Nigeria when you have either the peacekeeping force, which isn’t really keeping peace, or you have the soldiers in the military that are the ones also abusing human rights? And so this is why the women are running back to Sambisa to their Boko husbands. OBADARE: Thank you. There is no problem there. You are describing a situation in which women are caught between male power from the point of view of Boko Haram and male power from the point of view of Nigerian soldiers. When you come for the woman, you’re screwed. There is no conflict there. The way to get out of that—and I was going to ask the gentleman who spoke earlier about the document in Farsi, which connects to this—did you read the document? What does it say about the rights of women? You can’t say you want universal right and then not respect women. How are you going to do it? You want universal right as long as it suits men. The people— RICHARDSON: It includes men and women. OBADARE: It guarantees for rights for women—the right for them to dress the way they like, to dispose—to own and dispose of property. Really? To marry whoever they want? Let’s stop kidding around. Look, the argument for culture who lapses once at a certain point you cease to make progress with the argument for culture. Look, the argument for culture, you know why it affects me and where I’m coming from? It basically says I have a right to marry as many women as I like. I own them as property. The women have no right. I love that culture, right? What about the women? Culture has to bow to the universal. It does not matter who is saying it. If a white person is saying it, the argument is still sound. The problem I think people face is because they say it’s an American that is saying it, so the argument is flawed. Remove the person saying it. Go to space and say, I want men and women to be equal. It sounds right to me. BUTLER: All right we had a question—I promised down here in the front, and then we’re going to go to the back of the room here on the right. And then I’ll watch for the other hands, if we have time after that. Trying to get everybody in. CHARNES: Thank you. I am Rabbi Joe Charnes and I have a question for Dr. Obadare. I appreciate your focus on the human dimension of human rights because, sadly, I think we often, all of us, focus on the rights part and forget that there’s a human being that those rights are supposed to inspire, and give dignity and meaning and hope, too. I often speak of the humanity of rights. And my question for you is, when you spoke of human rights transcending race and culture and gender and society and religion, there’s one area, unfortunately, that I don’t think it transcends, and I wonder, what is your—at least attempted solution—or both of your solutions to this because we’re all in the same boat. Human rights, unfortunately, don’t transcend politics. What do we do? I’m not looking for saviors, but I’m looking for some hope. OBADARE: The key—the word is not transcend. The operative word is underpin, right? If we are going to have a robust public sphere of deliberation—a deliberative democracy—where I am Muslim and I am free to speak to the rabbi, where the rabbi is free to associate with one of the nuns. It has to be predicated on mutual respect. Where does that respect come from? It means I have to see you beyond your color. I have to see you beyond your gender, beyond your location, beyond your class. I see you as a human being is the most important attribute that we all bear. The human, that’s where our dignity comes from. That’s why certain things are forbidden. That’s why we say you can’t do that to fellow human being. There’s no problem here. Human rights is the very foundation of my own conception of politics. BUTLER: Dr. Mokhtari, you want to tackle that one? MOKHTARI: Well, let me actually go back to the Iran document that was mentioned. So I think part of the problem is the conflating of—in well-intentioned kind of progressive attempts, and peace and conflict resolution type attempts—the conflating of the state and the population, right, and states that claim to speak for—and this is kind of cultural relativism more broadly, too. So I always tell my students take cultural relativism claims seriously, but do not concede them on face value because usually you have to ask, who is it that’s making this claim? And cultures are usually contested. Religious interpretations are contested internally. They’re dynamic. And so cultural relativism claims a lot of them can be responded to by looking at who it is that’s making the claim and what are their interests in that. So if you are at the helm of power and if you are a—in the case of Iran, a male-dominated regime that constructs its ideology in opposition to the West by bringing in Islam and listing Islam—that’s not where the real work needs to be done in terms of bridging cultures and norms, I think. It has to really be done—and Khatami and Rouhani played an important role. In the end, their project failed. There’s a lot to be said about them and kind of post-Islamists and attempt to have Islamic reformist movements within the state in Iran. But in the end, the population was in a very different place it seems like, normatively. There are religious segments of society that need to have that kind of engagement in terms of human rights and where they feel that it does not coincide with their religious and cultural sense of morality. Another debate we have in my human rights classes—when is shaming effective, and when do you need to have an engagement strategy? And calling in versus calling out—when is each more appropriate, and when is shaming going to backfire? And we talk about when people hold—I mean, FGM is a great example. People holding the belief that what they’re doing is in line with their moral code. And you come in and you pass judgment on them and say you are being misogynist, you’re a terrible, that’s where we should have engagement with people. But I would just caution against conflating—essentially doing what these states that claim to be anti-imperialist through their ideology want you to do, which is to conflate them and their agendas with that of their population. And in terms of sectarianism in the Middle East, a lot of that is fueled by political actors who would rather the population is focused on sectarian divisions then the grievances they have against the authoritarian regimes in power. BUTLER: Interesting. All right we had the question here in the back, and I promised back here so let’s get to the back of the room. MOTHOAGAE: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Professor Itumeleng Mothoagae from University of South Africa. I just want to ask a question—I must say, I think it’s Dr. Obadare—there’s somewhere that I actually differ with you completely—on the issue of universalism and the idea that says, look, United States is a beacon of hope. I actually completely differ with you on that. And in South Africa, for example, the land is in the hands of the minority, who happen to be white, number one. Number two, the economy is dictated upon by whites. So how do we speak of human rights in a context where the majority that live beyond poverty line are Black? So how then? Because the South African image of segregation was taken from the United States. If you compare the conditions of a Black American in the United States, you have to compare it to South Africa. That’s number one. Number two, I have also another problem is that we’ve got to look at existential experiences because it is experiences of the people that should be translating into how we ought to translate and understand the notion of human rights. Now we look at the ideas of the human rights charter. They came when a white man started killing another white man. Prior to that, the notion of human rights did not exist—slavery continued, disenfranchisement of Black people continued without any problem. But when a white man started killing another white man, then we started talking about human rights. At exactly the same time, South Africa went into an apartheid system when here in the United States in San Francisco the human rights charter was launched, where Black people were further dislocated from their homes. Now post-1994 in South Africa, we are told about these notions of human rights, which if you look at the South African Constitution—chapter one of the South African Constitution talks about the bill of human rights. Yet, the people who do not benefit from that are still the ones who did not benefit even during apartheid. Now, I need to ask you this question. Britain saw it and tempted fate together with the United States to see to it that they put sanctions on Zimbabwe because Robert Mugabe refused to abide to them, regardless of the benefits and whatever that was going to affect the people of Zimbabwe. Rwanda becomes an example, in which we can say, opposite the United States, opposite Western democracy, Rwanda gives us an alternative democracy, where the cultural system is incorporated with Western system. So I would like you to respond to that, please. Thank you. OBADARE: Thank you. There’s a lot to unpack there. I’m just going to say maybe three or four sentences because—and maybe you and I can continue over coffee or something. Rwanda is no democracy. It’s totalitarianism pretending to be a democracy. You should look beyond culture. You’re not seeing properly because of your affection, because you like Mugabe, too. I thought Mugabe was a monster right away. And if you don’t believe me, check the economic indices under Mugabe. Look at what happened to the people of Zimbabwe under Mugabe. I don’t care about Mugabe. I care about Zimbabweans. I insist that the United States is a beacon of democracy, of course. The United States is by no means perfect, and it has not always reconciled its creed with its actions, but that creed is sound. You don’t believe me? Look at Venezuelans. Look at Mexicans. Look at Paraguayans. Look at Nicaraguans. Thousands of people are dying struggling to come to the United States. I came here out of my own volition. I love the United States. I am aware of historical injustices in the United States, and I think that if you’re going to have any problem at grasping—grappling with those injustices, human rights is your friend. It’s not your enemy. The fact that an advocate for a good has been disreputable does not change their focus itself. You are mixing categories here. Human rights are universal—even in South Africa, right. So you talk about economic disparity between Black people and white people, and then I will challenge you. South Africa has been under Black rule since 1994, right. Let Black people in South Africa take possession of their own destiny. If they are going to do that, you know what’s going to help them? The language of human rights. The human in human rights. If you focus on the human in human rights, it makes you pay attention to the economy. It means you pay attention to the infrastructure. One of the things that the intelligentsia outside the United States has to stop doing is to stop holding outsiders responsible for their own problems. I saw that trope in your questions. MOKHTARI: Can I add, maybe, a couple things here? BUTLER: Yeah. MOKHTARI: I mean, I must say that I also would not completely agree with a couple of statements here. One, that the U.S. should be viewed as a beacon of democracy. Now, I would definitely accept that the U.S.’s relationship with the human rights paradigm has been complex and there have been times where it’s had a positive impact, but there’s also a lot of problems there that we don’t have time to kind of really get into. And the other is the statement that was made earlier that it doesn’t matter who it is who’s invoking human rights. I think that it does sometimes matter. It doesn’t always, but sometimes it does matter, so. There’s an image I showed my students of—and I forget the name of the U.S. congresswoman from New York who had worn a burka where she did the speech in front of Congress— OBADARE: (Off mic.) MOKHTARI: I’m sorry? OBADARE: Is it one of—(inaudible)—I think? I’m trying to jog your memory. MOKHTARI: So she wore a burka, did a speech on Afghan women and their oppression. So I showed that image—and this is in the context of the U.S. wars, right—and then an image of an Iranian woman who’s holding up a scarf she’s taken out. Both of those people are challenging a mandatory hijab in a sense, and I asked my students to think about what’s the difference, right. And I think that there is a lot of difference there because there’s a lot of baggage and civilizing mission with goes with the first picture. And there’s—it’s an active agency in the second picture that’s not there in the first. So there’s a lot of layers there. Now I do believe that you have to try to make your tent big, as big as you can, and bring in people and engage with people even though there may be some disagreements, but it does matter. I mean, there’s a very political context that can be brought in with someone invoking sympathies for human rights in this place or that place. So what is happening that I think is very interesting is increasingly there’s South-to-South human rights learning, right. So Chile is a place where there’s—if you don’t know about Chile, there’s tremendous advances taking place that incorporate social and economic rights. And I guess it also goes to the last question we had in the sense that traditionally—again, Western-driven human rights discourses have been very neoliberal, right, and have—and in South Africa you had the truth and reconciliation process that dealt with civil and political rights violations and nothing about the economic structures, right. But what’s happening I see in the Global South is a new generation of human rights activists who are very attuned to these dynamics and are changing what we mean by human rights so that it’s not in the forms that have traditionally been as problematic. Now will they be successful in making human rights a more politicized—and politicized in the sense that looks at political structures and more meaningful discourse? I don’t know because they’re also up against a lot in that project. But I think the South-to-South learning is also very interesting—and cooperation. BUTLER: Exciting. All right we have a little time for some more questions. Someone down in the front and then over here. Perhaps we could take two at a time? Yeah, right here in the front. It came up first. I’m trying to get them as they come in and go around the room. Q: Thank you very much. This has been terrific. I’m wondering—and I’m asking out of my own guilt—should we have left Afghanistan, or should we have stayed? (Laughter.) BUTLER: Big one. Big one. Since that’s a big one, let’s also take this one over here on the—right behind you in the gray sweatshirt just so we can get in as much as possible. ALEXANDER: Thanks. My name’s Laura Alexander. I’m at University of Nebraska at Omaha. I teach a course called Religion and Human Rights, so this one of those deceptively simple questions I want to know what to talk to my students about. In your work with communities on the ground when you see folks who are protesting against unjust structures who are protesting for their rights to control their—I shouldn’t say right—protesting to control their own body—do you see folks using language other than the language of rights, or of human rights? Or do you primarily see those groups really continuing to use the language of human rights so that that remains that kind of fundamental language that folks will talk about? Thanks. BUTLER: Do you want to go ahead and— MOKHTARI: Yeah, so—so I mean, again, this is why I said the Middle East has moved on from the project of political Islam. In Iran we had several cycles where people were pursuing reform from within, and that entailed making the case for rights through religious discourses, couching rights claims. And in Iran it’s somewhat unique because that’s what you had the space to do. The government—you didn’t have much more space to use secular framing. But in any case, I mean this was also happening in other Arab countries, where you try to bring in religious communities through religious framing. But I think that these societies—definitely Iran is in a different place right now, and by and large the move is more towards secular couching of rights at this point. In Iran, I’m paying careful attention to the slogans being used. I don’t see—the only reference to religion that I saw was one slogan that says, “rape in prisons, where is that in the Koran?” And it's an indictment of, obviously, this regime that claims religious morality. But beyond that people have moved on to very secular discourses, so. In terms of Afghanistan, I mean it’s such a difficult—I mean, so much of the problems in Afghanistan as in Iran it’s like Western intervention played such a critical role in the rise of the mujahideen in Afghanistan historically and kind of religious politics in Afghanistan. And so then everything that happens post-9/11, I mean, so—ultimately, I say, yes, the U.S. had to leave because it couldn’t be there forever and it’s a fight. The Afghan people and Afghan women—it’s a fight they’re going to have to create the space for, but again, I mean just as in Iran, I don’t think it’s something that outside—now outside forces can be somewhat supportive in certain ways. But ultimately, it’s a fight for the people themselves. And it’s fascinating to see Afghan women protesting, even though they are now subjected to much—I mean and replicating some of the same slogans in Iran—even though they are subjected to much more brutal repression right now, and have much less space to try to push forward a movement like this. I mean I think part of the reason Afghan women suffer from, again, what I call the double curse of Western hegemony. So, the Savage-Victim-Savior formulation and then the overcompensation for that, which obscures what people on the ground experience at the hands of, again, forces that claim to be furthering religion, right. I think if Iran goes in the direction that we hope—I hope that it does—it’ll open up space for a lot of other places in the region and maybe one day Afghanistan, too. I don’t want to say it’s just because of Iran, but I think it’ll have a positive influence, I think. BUTLER: Did you— OBADARE: Afghanistan, I think it depends on the question of why you think—what’s your sense of why we went to Afghanistan in the first instance, right. If you think we went there for the sake of oil and geopolitical reasons, maybe. If you think we actually have anything to do to help countries, another culture of different kinds of autocracy, maybe you say yes. But what I want to say is, I really don’t think we should give up on intervention. The word has attracted so much problem of late, understandably. Because the United States is not always covered itself in glory, but it will be the wrong lesson to take from that to then say we will never intervene in the affairs of other people. We will not go—there are different kinds of trouble. There are trouble that come looking for you, and you find that that you have to actually—I mean, so should we intervene in Ukraine? Of course we should. We’re doing the right thing. The people of Ukraine are repelling an odious dictatorship. The moral line for me couldn’t be clearer. We should be there. We should commit resources. We should fight it to the last. And it’s the same way I think about what we do outside the United States. There are times we’ve behaved—look, I could—I know more about the history of American misbehavior—probably more than anyone else in this room—but we shouldn’t give up on the agents of the United States to do good. This is the only country that can muster the kind of resources that it only can muster. Let me swing at your heart a little bit here. Do we all remember Malala Yousafzai, the young woman? Do you think it’s OK to help people like that go to school? Don’t you think it’s OK to repel regimes that prevent women from going to school? And you’re going to hold back because of accusations of your intervening in another country? Not all interventions are alike. There are good interventions. There are bad interventions. The West should commit to the good type. The West should renounce the bad type. BUTLER: All right. Room for two quick— MOKHTARI: Let me just say one— BUTLER: Go ahead. MOKHTARI: —I think that’s a very—there’s a lot to dissect there because who decides what’s a good intervention and what’s a bad intervention, right—(applause)—and how do we define—I mean, the intervention—I mean, are we talking about military interventions here, or are we talking about— OBADARE: No, no, no, no, there are different kinds of intervention. There are times when the United States and the West are the only agents that people suffering can call upon. Don’t pretend that you don’t know that because it’s coming next week or the week after. And it’s going to be a moral problem, and you are going to have to address it. You can’t say because you’ve gotten certain things wrong in the past that you are no longer going to try in the future. There are bad interventions, I agree with you. We should forfeit those. We should try as much as possible. But if people under tyranny call on us for help, we should give them help. That’s what the United States is about. BUTLER: So we recognize there’s some gray area there, and if we had time, we would create some more nuanced framework, right, and yet stand to the standards of like human rights is a thing we want to stand for, protect it in some way and not make it so relative that everybody’s frozen and can’t do anything, which is where we’re at. And that is a tough, tough order. We would need several hours to unpack our framework, wouldn’t we? (Laughter.) MOKHTARI: Yes. BUTLER: But we’re trying to compensate here, too, I think, for some of the extremes. OK. So we have somebody in the middle here, and somebody here. Let’s take these two really quick, and then we need to wrap. Thanks for being persistent. PROCIDA: Hello. Thank you for your comments. My name’s Rich Procida. I’m an attorney, and I studied law and international service at American University. And I’m also founding the Truth and Democracy Coalition, which works to build a pro-democracy movement in America in order to promote and defend democracy locally, nationally, and globally. So I have two questions. The first is for Dr. Obadare, and then, the second is for both of you. When we look at The Economist Democrat Index of Democracies, we see that in Africa—I’d like to say—sometimes I say the Iron Curtain runs through the heart of Africa. Yet, in South America we have mostly democracies, and the question is, why? And then, the second question is, is what does protecting, defending, promoting democracy in Ukraine, Iran, and Africa look like? BUTLER: OK. We had a second question over here. Go ahead throw it on the table, and we’ll see where we can get to. COHEN-SIMAYOF: Hi. I’m—it’s off. BUTLER: Keep going. Keep going. COHEN-SIMAYOF: OK. Is it on? (Laughs.) BUTLER: Yeah. COHEN-SIMAYOF: I’m Ophir. I’m from the AAAs Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. My question is about technology and the role that it plays in democratic backsliding or democracy building. I am twenty-four years old, a Gen Z-er, I feel like I’ve lived the majority of my adult life, especially post-COVID or during COVID, online, and I was just wondering what—whether it is in your own regions, the regions that you study, America, beyond—but what role does technology play, both as a tool of oppression as a tool for civil society, and especially in the wake of Twitter being a tool of  information sharing, but also now being a little bit of a dumpster fire? Yeah, so I wonder if you can speak to that. OBADARE: Do you want me? BUTLER: Go ahead. OBADARE: Yeah, social media, yes. I don’t know if you know what happened in Nigeria in 2020—October 2020, the End SARS protests. Most of the people who took part in the protests were just people like you—Gen Z-ers, and a little bit older. But I think—I bring it up because one of the things they did was to use the power of social media, too. So this is a very vast subject, of course, but you could sort of see social media going in one direction—being used positively to advance democratic space to support human rights struggle. But you also sort of see in the pushback by reactionary forces working for the state to use social media to sort of—I mean, think about what President Trump did with his Twitter handle. There’s a whole study there about how occupiers of state office can manipulate social media. So social media is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. How we deal with it as human beings is going to be the issue. Ukraine, before you get to Ukraine in—before you get to democracy in Ukraine, you’ve left something out. You have to keep Ukraine as a country. If Ukraine is not a country, how is it going to be democratic? The most important thing we have to do is to make sure that we help the people of Ukraine in their struggle to maintain their territorial sovereignty. Once we have that, we can then have it. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why I think—other than the fact that its territory has been invaded by a hostile neighbor—the fact that philosophically we see eye to eye with the people of Ukraine that it’s a democracy—however flawed it is—makes it all the more incumbent on us to give support to Ukrainians. MOKHTARI: On the social media front, I mean, so there was a lot of celebrating of social media around 2011 with the Arab uprisings, and then we saw the darks side of it and the way that a lot of—particularly Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran—a lot of these governments figured out very quickly how to not only target dissidents through social media, but to manufacture and disseminate all sorts of disinformation, which then circulates as misinformation. And they have been very, very effective at that. And so it’s like the pendulum has swung, but then now that I look at Iran, I mean, I see both effects very—almost evenly. I mean, I don’t see how these protests could have—we’re now in, what, the end of the second month. I think we’re in week ten. I don’t think how it—that it would have endured without people being able to get those videos online and the world seeing what’s happening. At the same time, there’s a lot of, lot of, lot of misinformation. One of the people that sent me an image that was an iconic image of the Egyptian uprising. It’s called the Blue Bra incident. So it’s a woman that security forces are beating. She’s a protestor, and she’s got a veil so she’s religious, but you can see her blue bra. And they sent this to me as an example of the Iranian government’s moral hypocrisy, as if we needed more examples. But she doesn’t know, and I had to tell her this is actually from Egypt, not Iran, and then she stopped sending me things, so I was like, oh, this is bad. I need her to send this for my research. But in any case, both are—and that’s a somewhat benign example of misinformation, but there are more problematic ones. In terms of what intervention is helpful in Iran—I’ll just limit it to Iran quickly—this is the big question. So it used to be the U.S.—don’t say anything because then the government could shut it all down by calling this a U.S. agenda and a Western intervention, and so activists treaded so lightly, have such a confined space within which to operate. And what I think is fascinating is that a lot of—led by diaspora activists who have unfortunately, taken it a little bit to the extreme. But they have opened up the space so that you can say, Biden administration make a statement on this, and a lot of them, actually, go much farther. And it’s—I’m not quite there at all, but sanctions are OK. And even there are—there’s an interesting segment of the population outside and inside Iran who would’ve loved Trump to start a war in Iran because they saw that as the only avenue for them to be able to get rid of this regime. I mean, they couldn’t find—they couldn’t see any other way to get out of the grips of the regime. And there’s, of course, a lot of trauma, and there’s a lot of other things going on. But I think it is interesting that they’ve now opened up a space where at least statements are possible. But I think just the issue—the international spotlight on the protests in Iran and elsewhere in the region is very helpful because even the Islamic Republic of Iran really does not want to have all of this bad press that it’s getting. It does have an impact. BUTLER: Incredible. Unfortunately, we need wrap. I want to thank our audience. You all have asked incredible questions. And to Dr. Obadare and Dr. Mokhtari, it’s been inspiring and illuminating and complexifying, so thank you. (Applause.) OBADARE: Thank you.