"ebony & ivy: race, slavery & the troubled history of america's universities." in it, and the m.i.t. history chair discusses how the campuses of many of the universities are not only built by slave labor, but funded by profits are from the practice of slavery. this program is about an hour. >> host: "ebony & ivy," professor wilder, i guess the first question is how did you start down the road? we were laughing before he spent 10 years ago when you first started you had hair. >> guest: not a lot, but i had hair. >> host: what started you down the road to actually put "ebony & ivy" together? >> guest: is actually a long story i can make sure. i've been moving from one job to

another. i just finished a book project on what i thought with the simple book, a simple article. i was just going to explain how black abolitionists got their education, given the fact they were excluded by race in american colleges and university. some of them went to europe. some of them what to do maintenance study privately. some said privately in the atlantic and became ministers and teachers and doctors. but in fact, one of the things that got more interested in was why they were excluded from these colleges, that these colleges in fact had a long history with black people on campus has enslaved people. but they also had a long history with native american and that's a very tight black students were excluded. native american students have been on campus for almost 200

years. >> native american students have been on campus doing what? >> guest: as students for 200 years. >> host: how are they able to be on campus this? >> guest: that's the beginning of the book. the first attempt to build the college for the native american students is about 210 years before the first attempt to build a black college. it graduates almost 200 years for the first native minister, probably 150 years before the first black minister. that sounds like native americans are privileged. in fact, part of the story the book is precisely the role of the university and conquest. it's precisely the role of colonialism that explains the early presence of native student on campus paper says the bible explains how universities turn to the slave trade to fund their enterprise. >> host: when you say the

conquest, from what i was reading inside the part of the conquest was this big as these are people that are inferior and we have to educate them or trainman or somehow make them on savage lake. i am speaking in reference to the native americans. >> host: >> guest: the belief was that it was to bring the bible to people and to civilize them in that way. but in fact the civilizing project went hand-in-hand with conquest and territorial expansion and none of the thing surprising to me was a quiet role in the early colonial period.

the american colleges and universities help take me as a kid with a single mother raising kids all by yourself in brooklyn, new york and turn them into a college professor. >> host: you and your sister who is in deed. >> guest: a pediatrician right here in d.c. so i've always thought of higher education in colleges and universities that these benevolent institution, the institutions that duke did if we can get access to them. but the research began to expose was this other role that universities can play. universities can be in my mind weapons of social justice. what shocked we were decided doing the research as they could be weapons of the social to start. they can play a huge part in undermining the integrity of native american nations and civilizations. one of the things i read about in the first chapter his desire

to christianize native people, through several attempts to build colleges both successful and failed. virtually all of the early colonial colleges have as a primary mission the education of native people. that has also said that the native society. it means they are going to be generational divisions between parents and children. it means that youngsters who are brought into the christian education system would be in english and only has the remnant of native culture in native language. >> host: in the book "ebony & ivy," to talk about the type of chasm that night at the created as a relief to intergenerational conflict? >> guest: sure, i talk about it in the first chapter of the book and showed the way they had a very militaristic world. part of their goal was to help

achieve the strategic name of the colony. and this is the right word. we often deploy education, deploys school of the colonial world to soften the resistance of native people to europeans. postcode let's fast-forward to the whole issue of slavery because the one thing that catches people's attention on the critics have talked about is how the slavery funded these college campuses funded and built these campuses. and who were these individuals that don't buy hybrids, the gals, the browns. many of us may remember the headlines from brown university that started with a study they are. how much of that had an impact on what was in "ebony & ivy"?

>> guest: i was about four or five years in this project when brown university released its report on the former president of around courageously and in the face of great criticism angry criticism from around constituents. and she courageously articulated the purpose of higher education, which is the pursuit of truth. we pursue truth in all of these other arenas. we also have to pursue truth in art history says institutions. the broader per minute a lot because for five years into this project and this is a massive undertaking and it is about 2600 relay rouhani this was, how much time it was going to take, how

many years it was going to take. a good part of me didn't want to go forward. it just seemed enormous and it wasn't clear that five years later, 10 years later i would actually be done with the coherent book. but it seemed as good as more more and more information. at that time, the vote wasn't clear in my head yet. but i was clear about this the amount of material to go through to really pull the story together. the project took me from québec city in canada to the carolinas along the east coast to scotland into england, to holland. postcode let's start with those privates to the west. why scotland? i can understand england, but why scotland, bring people to

understanding. i would a book on race troubled history of american university, why scotland? >> guest: is in the sections about the rise of race and racial pot. scotland is a tremendous influence on the rise of colonial but america can ultimately on their exit the united states is a nation. scottish immigrant are the largest group of free people to cross. this is the largest group of free people to cross the atlantic in the 18th century in the decades before the american revolution. there are places like the pennsylvania backcountry, carolinas, westwood kentucky tours georgia. and with this enormous migration also comes the migration of ideas. the scottish universities play a

key role in helping to modernize the colonial american colleges, the scottish faculty succumb to teach in the america, scottish ministers over some of these tools. loads of american students who had to scotland to study medicine and then come back to north america to do things like established the very first radical school in the north american colonies will actually be established by american colonial students in places like new jersey and philadelphia to head off to scotland. postcode correct me if i'm wrong, they're one of the principal players in the slave trade were they? >> guest: they're not the usual suspects to look at. there's a trade that comes out of scotland in small towns in bristol. you have to remember just how massive the slave trade is.

part of what the book is about in many ways is the authority of the africa trade in the 17th and 18th century, the ways in which the trade shapes the atlantic world and not trade constituted the economy that connected europe to the americas to africa to south america and created a transoceanic trade out of which the united states will be brought. >> in terms of building campuses, who were these founders of these universities? where they save traders? >> guest: they're largely ministers from the various denominations. member this colonial schools are denominational schools. says there's puritan harvard and got this browns and episcopalian

columbia, which has been king's college in the dutch reformed queens college and the presbyterian college of new jersey, which is now princeton. these are denominational schools that emerge out of the church communion. once they are established enough to establish them in a unique money to do it. the first source of funds for the england. the colonists will turn to england. >> host: by would they want to find -- >> guest: that's one of the real problems. i joke and a discredit to myself as i was searching on these chapters i spy with the english want to get to. to money to establish a school in new england in massachusetts when in fact getting rid of the puritans was a great goal.

there is not necessarily warm from the relations between the puritans and anglican church. but this is where we get back to native american history. the american colonists were really quite skillful at raising money, using the up adulation of native people as the core. soon enough missionaries to britain at raising money under the claim said they were franchising native people in the america. the first building at harvard is where the money's coming from. >> guest: this allows the expansion of the colonial and therefore the expansion -- it

facilitates economic expansion, territorial expansion. and it is accelerate the crumbling of native society of the frontier and on the order. postcode so they are not quote, unquote slaveholders and eventually after independence -- they do turn the slaveholders. >> guest: they turn pretty quickly. these are religious schools to begin with. very quickly they have to actually figure out the sources of name. one source is going to be europe, england in particular at raising money off to the claim. the other sirs of money they have available to them is the right thing population of colonial elite, people who have money within the colony and that

group is made of slave traders were barbados versus the wealthiest man in british america. and manage their plantations from afar. postcode is sometimes the night go to military or the oldest night go to own the land. the mills shot at the next youngest will go off to the college. >> guest: though stationer in various points in october should think of them. these are family networks in which someone for instance the new york slavery who i studied for a long time will have very named warehouses in new york city and manhattan, was also

sent to the caribbean and established there and sending other to england, usually bristol or lundgren. from various points they could manage operations more efficiently and this money and goods more efficiently and it gives them a chance to make strategic changes in the plans for these extended shipping voyages. there's two reasons why they do this, but the americans close begins to turn to his population that increasingly wealthy man and families with interests in the americas and then begin to advertise themselves to these classes as institutions of their own making and their design that can cater to their children more efficiently. i use several examples of this. one of the more famous as john witherspoon who becomes a scott,

a minister from scotland who becomes the president of what is now princeton university. one of the first things he does for new private princeton is writes a letter. in fact, one of the chapters is named after him which he says the name has come to imply great wealth. and then he goes on to promise that if they send their boys to princeton dobie while taking care of and guided and supervise and turn into substantial responsible young man. but if you send them to england, british universities are too large and to decentralize to get that kind of attention. what he's really selling is the potential of the american colonies to serve themselves and the potential of educational institutions to cater to the needs of the colonial elites. the colonial elite is largely a product of the slave trade.

bartsch plantation owners in the caribbean. >> host: we read the reviews as most people well before without getting into the meat of "ebony & ivy" and talking with professor craig steven wilder. the boat, the sub title "ebony & ivy: race, slavery & the troubled history of america's universities." the impression is that slaves built these universities not just the money from the slave trade finance them, but was there actually the presence of slaves on the universities of harvard, yale, princeton, brown and in what capacity does it related to labor? >> guest: be enslaved people are often called basically the dormitory of the colonial. they clean up after the student.

the prepared meals. they collectively come together with her fires. they are in charge of lighting the candles and putting them out in the evening, cleaning up the study rooms and running parents with the students and the faculty. at harvard, you know, columbia, princeton, and many of the college presidents on the enslaved people of iraq to campus for slaves. within a couple years the purchase of these two people for the main house and one for campus house. >> host: were these individuals inc. are they under the ownership of various professors? >> guest: the problem is this is kind of a technical issue that's a little bit harder to decipher the colonial. for instance, one of the things

i look at ssx worrying with a lot of the county records in which our counties for these colleges are. very often you have to name of the president or the name of the professor and listed with their taxable property would be an insane person or two or three. >> host: students actually brought thursday fiscal without. >> guest: what happens if you look at the name of the president's reliance overcome a private taxable property isn't enslaved person. what shall often have in the case of princeton or harvard, he'll have the president's name ditto for college. well, who wants the person? in the common knowledge of the time, of the local area, the president and college are inseparable anyway.

so i didn't spend a lot of time trying to decipher that because in fact the president and college are largely -- >> host: it's a college town. >> guest: and they're very much for college town and then they are now. even more dominant. >> host: so camera should be a college town. >> guest: the tallest building in america when it's built. these colleges dominate the environment. >> host: one of the themes that i also found fascinating about someone in the talk about the slaves who built the campuses and waited on the faculty and the student was the curricula, this white supremacy that was perpetrated. i mean, you have a history, this message or video -- i don't know

how you maintain your intellectual sanity and you obviously knew this before, but to have a supported in the actual research of these quote, unquote, what we now consider several institutions teaching white supremacy. i'm not trying to sound as if i am surprised, but if you said that now about dl or harvard, people with their, my good as, when did they start? how did it get started? you sort of explain that because of the people who started these universities. the american revolution approach it any attention between the colonies and england and the capacity to raise money in a good, the indian college at

harvard is largely taken down at the end of the 17th century. they're using it for other staff. to be perfectly honest and i ride in the look, as the native american military threat in doing a decline, the interest and eventually see native americans to clients with that. and that doesn't mean we will evangelize native people christianize them. it means there was also a strategic interest in evangelizing and christianizing. so one of the things that have been that i wrestled with in the book and is related to the question you asked me earlier about students bring slaves to campus? yes, they do. they actually pay fees to house the essays on campus.

at columbia and kings college, george washington comes to new york city and jackie slave, joe. the president of colombia, kings college at the time, miles cooper gives him a suite of rooms that jackie fenn has painted and suited to his taste and show was actually in the smaller bedroom of the two. so yes, the students arrived for slaves to campus. the faculty often had slaves. particularly in the chapter that incite people on campus, and save people were inseparable of the college experience in the colonial world. they were exposed to higher education. >> guest: at their expense of

this. taxi stopped in actually studies in the library and becomes the next jordan air of the gifted biblical scholar to where she's actually been consulted by biblical scholars in other parts of the united states. and she's largely self-taught. the president throughout her actually gave her instruction. he instruct vader and the presidents house and she continued to study on her own as she got older. housecoat let me share something i highlighted that comes in the chapter cotton comes to harvard. it was first of all, who was the? the reason i bring this up is you raise here this feature cotton planter and they were talking about henry watson junior also wrote that the

ancient egyptians had the curly hair and other features of the african race in the contemporary egyptians from the lighter in complexion because of centuries of mixing with europeans and professor fallen did not see the students to infer the lack africa's cradle of civilization to refuse all the false barriers so often advanced in favor of slavery. expand on that because it seems to be a pair on what you're saying here was this conflict they take it who were the egyptians, how is racism taught, who were africans? who weren't africa's? even to the point this argument takes place today. just go it sounds very modern. this is the argument we're having all over.

every tableside chemistry site bookseller was engaged in this debate for some crowd for at least a decade. it does sound very modern and it is very modern. but let's think about who this is. under watson junior street east windsor, connecticut, who goes to washington college in hartford, which is now trinity college and finishes his education at harvard graduates in the early 1830s of his ba from harvard and sets out on the world. the introduction to the book largely uses henry watson junior story. he is looking to become a tutor on a plantation to make the money he can save and then go to law school. the reason i find fascinating is like a lot of young college men in the 1830s, the south represented an extraordinary field of opportunity for him.

it was precisely the wild of some voters who was the wealth point he should. it was also the educational neglect to create opportunities for well-educated northerners who wanted to have set to begin their careers. like a lot of them, watson plan to just go for a year, make money, go home and become an attorney. >> host: you'd be educating the children -- >> guest: he would be working as a tutor to the plantation sons and daughters and perhaps inadequate distribution of time. so is looking for this reward. i give examples about this lots of young men who make this choice after graduating the same time period, to become famous like benjamin filament, winds up one of the most important science professors in the history of yale. the professor who begins the geoscience program faces the same choice when he faces

college. the watson heads out and is disappointed. he doesn't get this job that he wants. he doesn't find it. so we had some of his fathers of supporting him and he is increasingly self-conscious getting money from his father when in fact the endeavor has proven fruitless. but he has backed to connecticut. he actually does study law and then he south again. he has read back to alabama and establishes south and over the next decade becomes quite about the quite successful. on the eve of the civil war he owns more than 100 people. he owns more than a hundred people and is a leading voice in defense of southern slaveholders. that young man sat in the class of demand of an abolitionist at harvard in the early 1830s. here you can make an argument,

not just another wish list argument, but antiracist argument. pollen was trying to argue that the mountainous miss that were being used to defend american slavery are nothing more than not. they were just that. if one like that history -- >> host: style and approach this in a scholarly way. >> guest: he chose history. he shows examples from science. he harshly used history and he made the argument that we were all on the street corner in the 1990s. ..

it's the trustees and the offices. the president. >> because of his position. >> it is a few things, but his position on slavery is critical. that is the excellent that really, you know, in flames of fire. >> at some point we do begin history, and you do write about it, at some point some slaves to african-americans were allowed to attend the harvest, the yield at what point did that change? >> it happens in stages at a very different points. you could go all the way back actually to the revolutionary era. the first by people that come to campus of students in what becomes the united states.

it's probably right after the revolution. what happens is a number of presidents no wonder colonial, early american schools actually begin taking black students for private study. >> for what reason? >> the reason is a very different prism of them are affected by the rhetoric of revolution itself. it actually resonates in the begin to question slavery themselves. there is an active anti slavery debate happening on american campuses in the aftermath of the american revolution. there's an active discussion happening on seven campuses. >> really? >> yes. college faculty and college students actually would debate the question of slavery quite a bit. >> in such universities that we would recognize today. we talked about northeastern

university. less talk about this other universities. >> georgia, north carolina, university of georgia, the university of north carolina. they actually have an abolitionist speaker guava graduations. and this is in the early 19th century. and the trustees actually publish the speech and it is actually circular of the united states. >> are these individuals who live in state-mining states, again, an attorney in ivory you write about, are they abolitionists, a free exchange of the initial debate and discussion. >> it's also often driven by abolitionists or lose by people who are uncomfortable with the continuation of slavery as is. the new york machine society which is made up was a of slaveholders then is establish

read the end of the revolution and begins to fund an award at columbia for the best speech against slavery. that actually expose is the immorality of slavery in the slave trade. this is actually given at graduation. and so it's based on some and that happened in england already . borough the mono of the center was a discussion by offering a model. and so the debates are happening across the campus left. some of the people are affected. they have been exposed to the british anti slavery campaign. the extraordinary political force that's is represented, and some of them have been slaves. there was another group who actually begin secede black americans as potentially the

tool for christianizing africa. so they begin to take on black students with the help of preparing them as missionaries to, as they put it, send back even the most of these people had never been to africa. under the logic that much like native americans. >> i was going to say. >> if you remember 200 years earlier, how do you christianize and native nation? un christianize the children. and they become a second generation, and i follow you. >> and in fact, those was displayed to evangelize native nations would be people of their own fault color and tongue. betake native children, a tournament to missionaries, late

teenager's, early 20's. they will do the work of evangelizing. >> as you are talking -- and i'm just curious, this creates, once again, i will use the term a chasm between older black and the undereducated black who are being educated, but for other purposes. you understand what i'm trying to do with this? and, you know, we often have this argument even today. well, you are just a tool. that is really what i am getting at. did you discuss that? were the, educated african-americans, tools, they knew they were being tools. >> and i try to be careful with native americans who receive the education in the way that i talk

about them, try to be cautious because, in fact, actually, for instance with the native americans, during king philip's war and 6075 in new england, the paint indian resistance campaign committee largest, who the english call king show. and it is a combination of native nations against the penguins. and it almost conkers christian new england. cause her clothes. without some external help and some, you know, deadlock, christian my fallen. serving with king philip actually, at least two or three native people who had been educated at harvard. that is also true two centuries later as we begin to take young black men and women and prepare

them for these various roles. very often, actually, the education becomes radicalizing experiences, not necessarily do civilizing ones that the benefactors of imagined. the capacity of people of color to use their education, to pursue their own and, and to pursue the liberating -- the project of liberating their people should not be ignored or swept under the rug. we actually have to pay attention to that. education always in succeeded in the goal. to say that education, we could use education strategically is one thing. it in fact you find loads of examples of people who took those educations in turn them to

radical enhancement toward purchases within their own community. >> what in your research -- ten years you worked on this. ten years. when you first started with this concept of that is turned into ebony and ivy and, i get, dr. krantz -- craig steven wallach, fascinating read. i am just curious if this will be the required reading. >> i never asked students to buy my book. >> you are very unique. >> while standing there. this. >> was there anything to as a historian, was there anything that just surprised u.s. you were researching and writing ebony and ivy? i mean, just to this day if i were a student in your class and

asked that question, professor weiler, what really caught your attention? what really stuck with you, surprise you? >> honestly, i think the thing that i wrestle with the most as i was writing the book, and this was reviewed in my own experiences as a black man growing and the united states in the era than i did was how to balance these historical narratives of different groups of people. it once you take up the topic of colleges and take up the topic of colleges and slavery, it seems to me that it would be a less than honest telling of the story if i did not actually explain the relationship between these colleges and native american nations. but the story does not make sense. for instance, in the colonial time you cannot tell a story of

how these colleges got involved in the slave trade and how the trustees ended up becoming slave traders and how they created these very cozy relationships to planters in the south on the west indies. slave traders in the northeast and europe. why they cultivated this class of people so aggressively for so long. the story actually does not ultimately make false sense unless you actually look left. and you think about the condition of the colonial project. >> native americans west of the east coast. and you actually think about the native american nation aligned along the boundary between the colonies and indian country as it often gets calls. so i had to -- i felt to tell the story well i actually had to become a student of native american history.

v. >> what you're just telling us, it was a common historical fought that we are often taught, native americans did not make good slaves. but you do talk about them being in slave trade. you talk about them. so is that amid? really, is that a myth and a fallacy? >> we have all sorts of ms. about native people. if you think about native slavery, there is an enormous trade in native people in the colonial america, in the carolinas, as one historian has pointed out, you know, south carolina and north carolina are created by to slave trades. it is a trade and enslaved africans being brought in and a trade in concord and enslaved native people being sold out of the carolinas.

>> and sold out of the carolinas to -- >> into the caribbean island after france and canada. and so from the 17th century on eastern canada have been a healthy and receptive market for native people in slaved to drop the americans. native people are often enslaved and solvents the caribbean. so these are advisory -- we have a lot of myth making about slavery, but it when it comes to the thing that surprised me the most. -- and that is was surprised me in the book. i'm so glad we managed to discuss that because it is the common thought often expressed in casual historical conversation, reason blacks and africans were brought here is because native americans simply did not make good slaves. they ran away, disappeared into the western wilderness. >> and the part of the enormous debt three, the extraordinary mortality rate.

to the new diseases. the first hundred years of contract. in fact actually none of that stopped the in slavery have made people. not a single one of those factors stop them from capturing , enslaving, and selling native people into bondage in other parts of the americas demonstrating enslaved people. native americans lives and college campuses right here owned by both faculty and officers of colleges. and so the reason that i wanted to make sure we emphasize that is because as people get into ebony and id, you know, in my start saying, well, when we get into the african slave part of it. you spend a great deal of time, as you say, profits in the relationship of africans and slavery with what happened prior to africans being, in essence,

brought in. this is the other question as we start to wrap up. there will be those in who read ebony and ivy. i also have the sense, correct me if i'm wrong. this is almost two books in one. what i mean by that, and i mentioned that earlier. it is the glossary, the footnotes. i tend to turn to help people come up with the narrative that there read about. it is just amazing. you have done that on purpose so that, again, researchers, historians can see where you have got this information. expand upon it. >> my goal was to take a difficult topic and make it accessible to the public. to make a regal and approachable.

now, there is also, in fact, another public that i write for which are academics and people who are doing research in this field. i wanted to provide them with an accurate and clear map to the sources, if i could, to help along the project, the work that they have been publishing, it certainly helped me in this project. >> i would be remiss if i did not ask about your own institution, where they fit in. >> we show up at the end, the very end of the book. the rise of the technical and engineering colleges and universities in the decades before the civil war, which is very much influenced by the expansion of the common culture of the united states. cotton textile manufacturing in new england produces a whole wave of new work. the need qualified engineers. and the owners of those mill towns and investors in those mill towns also begin investing in engineering and science

education at the existing universities. >> of these southern plantation owners that have become which goods manufactured in england, financed in new york. the raw materials in the south produced by slaves, financed by new york bankers and finance. and insurers. and then the industrial organization. >> the manufacture into textiles >> and the products sold around the world. >> in an order you scientists, engineers. we begin investing been in razing whole towns along the riverbanks where we can actually do this twice come manufacturing. >> there would also be those who may finish reading ebony and ivy and say or ask the question, did these universities os the word

preparation? so i don't know if that is your next book. i don't know how that discussion comes up. because that might be the thought process of some people. and what is your thought behind it? >> i would have to go back to what we were talking about about that most surprising thing. one of the things i learned in doing this book was that, you know, history is not a race to see who is worse off. and who is most depressed. and part of the reason i wanted to bring together the story in the histories of native americans of african americans, european christians was to actually get to the truth, the fact, the detail of what happened and explain them as

accurately and carefully as i could. and i see my job as a historian not to avoid difficult -- difficult topics, but to choose difficult topics. my path is to take readers through that, help them, guide them through difficult moments. there are consequences for these universities. >> such as. >> already begun to initiate and to implement the recommendations from the committee in 2006. and ways in which brown can actually reconcile its current reality with its history. >> might bring people up today. >> there was a new center that was established on campus. a decision to make a more aggressive investment and financial aid in scholarship money and to just be proactive, to recommit to a diverse campus.

a campus that recognize that education could be a tool of social justice. there has been movement in that same direction, an exhibit on campus at the university of alabama there was a faculty statement about the history of the institution with slavery. nothing that is in some ways the right motion. i don't have a prescription for all the universities that i read about in this book. i do think that universities have to engage their own history, and i recognize that there are consequences. >> he said the universities have to engage. in the book again, ebony and ivy, the race slavery in the troubled history of america's universities engaged in this deal with their own consequences. that should be left up to the

universities to decide? >> i think it's about the students. it's about the alumni. it is a conversation that needs to happen. it is also about the surrounding areas. >> meaning? >> these neighborhoods in which they live. that think that the solution for yell is different than the solution -- >> or for cambridge. right. part of really honestly grappling with the troubled history of the american university is also recognizing that the troubled history of the american university did not end when this book and it. one of the things i did was i stopped in the 1830's at the high point of scientific racism because i wanted to give the reader to the point where they could see the modern university emerging without necessarily spending another ten years.

>> and i love the term scientific. just quickly, what do you say in the book? what is scientific racism? >> there are a few chapters in the book or just right about the emergence of race with in science. one of the things that i argue is that not only does science become one of the keyways for establishing the legitimacy for the racial defense of slavery. >> white supremacy. >> the racial defense of slavery, the idea that african people are inherently inferior and creative, prepared by nature for certain levels of humanity. and for a certain level of

treatment. the lives of slaves, to put it bluntly. created by nature for that existence. that idea preexists the rise of the scientific academy, but it gets coopted. and in many ways science becomes one of the key areas for defending race and for defending the injustices of modern slavery. and i right about that and the book for a few reasons. one of the key ones is actually did that is the path that allows universities to emerge by the 1830's as independent actors in the political sphere. it is actually precisely the ability of university faculty and officers to argue in defense of slavery that creates a space in the public's fear. >> because it is a university. they are the center of learning.

so therefore, what more appropriate place to validate this racist science or race science to your talk about. >> the experience of the university rises with race. and race creates the prestige. so race ultimately unfetters universities. at the beginning of our conversation we said these are church -- denominational schools. they break free of the church in the 19th century. and largely because they now have the capacity to science to make secular arguments. they start with non second funding and then as they progress and become more influential they break free of that and align themselves with this pseudoscience.

>> and the rise of racial science creates a new public age . but the modern university is found in exactly that moment. so one of the things i would argue about the question of revelations and social justice and all that is that we have to remember that the troubled history of the american university does not end with the book. it continues into the 20th century because those same original concepts actually come to justify all sorts of new brutality in the modern world, and we should not forget that a lot of those ideas to not have their origin on campus but got their legitimacy on campus. they guy refined on campus. they got validated on campus. they got modernized on campus. and they got their political and social prestige on campus. >> is there another ten years? [laughter]

to go from 1830's -- >> i will help them every step of the way. you know, the young person with a full head of hair who was the project, will help them every step of the way. >> amazing. i mean, it is, you know, to say it is a page turner does not do it justice. and i encourage everyone to please read this book. and i start off making sure that people understood that this is not a textbook. this is not a textbook. this is an excellent chronological experience that you've taken by universities that we hear so much about. really it is their history. it is their history from beginning to where they are now. i just hope he will spend another ten years doing it. thank you very much the book is

ebony and ivory. professor craig steven while there. you have my most admiration. high health. >> i told my colleagues. >> there you go. >> thank you. great book. ebony and ivy. >> that was book tv signature program in which authors of the lead is nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators, and others familiar with the material. airing every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday, and volume on monday. you can also watch online. go to booktv.org and click on after words in that book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page.

>> this fall book tv celebrates its 15th anniversary on c-span2. here are some of the headlines around in the publishing industry. our first year on the air. estimated that total sales for all books in 1998 reached about $28 billion. online books sales increased to an estimated $650 million. in 1998 amazon reported a net loss of about 124 a half million dollars with total sales at about $610 million which was up about 312%. amazon had 6 million customer accounts in 1998, up from one and a half million a year before some of the authors who died in 1998, barry goldwater, a five term republicans in her from arizona, 1964 republican presidential candidate and author of a conscious of the conservative. awarded the 1990 nobel prize literature, war correspondent and author of the face of war

martha adelle horn and dr. benjamin spock author of baby and child care, first published in 1946 and now in its ninth edition. for more information on this and other facts, book tv first year on the air, visit booktv.org. >> you're watching book tv. next, steven meyer said down with book tv and freedom fest to talk of his latest book. in the book discusses the mystery surrounding the origins of the animals that appeared during the cambrian explosion, over 500 million years ago. this is about half an hour. >> steven meyer of the discovery institute and author of our one step, the explosive origin of animal life in the case for intelligent design. dr. meyer, what was there was