>> they say i was expecting a free-speech environment. i much more guarded here than in china or singapore. international students, it is what john stuart mills said. it is not about restrictions on speech from the government but that is what we are experiencing. >> did you say what country? >> in 2015 we thought it was just american universities but a lot of the same things are happening in britain and canada. by 2017, australia and new zealand. it is not on the continent. there is political correctness all over the continent but you

will be damaged or harmed if you respond to it. >> all these authors have been featured on booktv and you can find their programs in their entirety. site the other's name in the search bar at the top of the page. .. as bleeding kansas.today florence has a population of about 47,000 and home to the university of kansas. with the help of our medco cable partners for the next hour we will feature the areas local authors. at first we began with a driving tour of the city. lawrence was founded on a principal and it was founded in

conflict and the kind of characterized lawrence kurzweil in lawrence we took a driving tour of the city with historian and john brown interpreter carrie altenburg >> john brown, thank you for joining us today. or should i say carrie altenburg, john interpreter here in lawrence kansas. for those who don't know, who is john brown? ? >> john brown was an evolutionist, he came to kansas in 1935, left for the last time 1859. it had a major impact on the state. >> how long have you been portraying him? >> i started betraying john brown in 2006.>> are given new meaning to this root term riding shotgun. >> this is a period copy, which means it was done about the time the originals were done about 1853 slant reach chart, this is something that john brown would need to carry. >> where the three of us going today?

>> we are going down around downtown lawrence and then we will be taking a few excursion trips to other important sites in lawrence history. >> let's hit the road. >> all right. we are starting up here at the watkins history museum. tell me about this building. >> it was originally a bank building, jd watkins was an entrepreneur that in the 19th century he became very wealthy, land speculation, railroad, banking, and he built this building here. this 1975 i think it is it's been the headquarters of the douglas county historical society and it's a museum, county history museum. >> is a great place to come in and learn about the history of lawrence including ã >> for those who know about leading cans it would be the beginning of the civil war but it started before the civil war. and for 1850s.

it drew a lot of people in on both sides of the slavery issue. deciding whether kansas would be proslavery or not. lawrence was ãin 1850 bã after the civil war began in 1863 the confederate guerrilla leader led about 400 ã450 men into town at dawn on 21 august of 1863 and massacred at least 200 men and boys and burned a significant part of the town. it was the worst civilian massacre in the civil war. and it happened right here on downtown lawrence where we are. it's massachusetts tree because lawrence was founded by the new england immigrant aid company, which was in boston. that's where they organized it to bring supplies to kansas after the act was signed in 1854. that opened kansas up to white

settlement. and started off the problems that became bleeding kansas. prior to that, the decision on whether the state would be slave or free was up to congress and the campus made it up to a vote of the people. which brought people in from both sides and that's where the violence came from.>> today what is massachusetts street? >> is the main street of town it goes right down the middle of downtown lawrence. >> i'm seeing a lot of shops and restaurants and a lot of dependent business. is it kind of the spirit of lawrence? the independent spirit?>> yes and there's been a lot of effort to keep the downtown. >> where we headed now? >> we are headed toward oak hill metairie. oak hill cemetery was founded in 1863 after quantrill dray, the cemetery didn't have the space for all the people in it. that many people dying at once you have to really look for

places. if they wanted to have a nice beautiful cemetery. >> how many people who passed the quantrill's radar buried here? >> most of them were buried in the cemetery here. there was actually a mass grave of the ones that could be identified. up here on the right was the grave of jed lewis carpenter, probably would've been governor of kansas, maybe even president of the united states if he hadn't been murdered in the raid. and up here is only right that will be in the list. james lane, who was a well-known figure in the early kansas history the first senator from the state. probably the first that caused lawrence to be massacred by quantrill. he rated a town called ocl in missouri. in 1861. and the quantrill raters could be heard calling out, remember

ocl osceola during the raid. when he heard the noise he jumped out of his window in his nightshirt and they hid in the cornfield. the raters came by. then he hopped on a horse and pursued the raters all the way back. this is the grover bar. it was built in 1858 by joe and emily grover. who homesteaded on this land. they were both abolitionist. they were station masters on the underground railroad. this was a station on the underground railroad and escaped slaves stayed in this barn. john brown is most famous raid outside of harpers ferry was the bergen county raid in december 1858. because a slave who was in kansas legally he was selling

brooms came and asked if he could help liberate his family because they were about ready to be split up and sent south. he said yes so he and the county liberated 11 slaves and brought them to kansas and brought them up to kansas during the winter and in late january they came here. they stayed in the barn at least one night, maybe several nights. accounts vary. there was a man living with the drovers he wrote a diary and he wrote letters and we have documented proof at the time of what was happening. of them coming through here. he mentions this. so this may be the most well-documented underground railroad site in the country. >> you are devoting your life these days to telling the story of lawrence, of john brown, of fleeting kansas, why do you think it's so important for people here in lawrence to know their history and have a reference for that? >> the civil war was a seminal event in american history. it changed america.i've been told that before the civil war,

before lawrence, it was called the people said my country or they were talking about their states. or actually the united states was plural. it was the united states. there were a number of each state was individual. united states as a term is a plural now. after that it was a singular. the united state is as opposed to are that's what the civil war didn't lawrence was a player in that. this is a special place. it has a special history. it needs to be honored and recognized. the more that can be done, the better. >> thank you so much for showing us around lawrence today. >> thank you, it's a privilege.

>> i'm on the campus of the university of kansas where we speak with ku professor david barber on his book "taken hostage". i think the 1979, 1980 hostage crisis between the united states and iran really set the tone probably for relationship all the way to today. it was really a significant juncture point in how the united states people thought about political islam, the nation of iran and how they think about us. they were two false elements in iran, both the united states but one more than the other. there was a communist insurgency within iran. the soviet union was trying to foster a communist insurgency in iraq.we sided with the shot because he crushed that communist dissent in iran. i don't think most american political leads thought to much about the islamic dissidents in that state. it was kind of off our radar. part of the reason i wrote the

book "taken hostage" was i was trying to get across how reasonably so but narrowly so americans tended to look at our alliances in that part of the world. we didn't really think of islam as a political force. we fear communism. we cheered on what we thought of the capitalist development. we hoped for democratic development. we just didn't see the islamic, the green revolution that was coming. united states and iran has had a cup located relationship for a long time. really since the 1950s. up until the 1950s iran was kind of a client state great britain but when world war ii ended and britain moved back from its colonial periphery, united states stepped forward. one of the things we did is we became very involved, the iranians would say barry, too much involved in their affairs. in 1953 united states using it's pretty much brand-new cia

helped engineer a coup. that coup put in the power shot of iran who was a dear friend of the united states. after that coup that the united states help support in iran, radio people were two mines, those who are prone shad well-to-do people they looked favorably on the united states, it's fair to say that a fair number of other iranians did not look so favorably on the united states and really on that coup forward from 1953 until the islamic revolution in 1979, there were a lot of people in iran who looked at the united states and i guess the phrase then should become the great satan who did not think we have the right to interfere in their internal affairs. it's interesting to think when the united states realized they did not have a good handle on what was happening in iran. there were signs in 1960s.

it was really interesting that we had this great relationship with iran in terms of training their new elite. if you are a bright arabian man or woman, mostly men, he probably came to this u.s. university and the starts in the 1960s, think about that. take about what's happening in the 1960s in the united states. these young iranians are exposed not just to the wonders of the american university but the dissidents of the 1960s student movement. this radicalized some iranians. it made them think about their own voices and their own set of concerns. this is a complication for america's relationship with iran. the shad of iran did not expect his young people to come home with the political consciousness. he wanted them to come home with a technocratic consciousness, oil engineers, doctors, not threats to his regime. the iranian revolution, like almost any revolution, is a messy affair. it's not clear to those who

were revolting what's going to happen. they are living to chaos and violence and turmoil. they are all vying for legitimacy. the iranian revolution starts to break out right at the cost of 1978, 1979. it's not clear who's going to take control. there's all kinds of factions. there's a communist faction. there's a democratic liberal faction. there is a parliamentary republic faction. there's an islamist faction who wants democracy. all minds are controlled. it's not clear who's going to win. they are all trying to find tools for legitimacy. when ãbreturns from exile in france to come back to around. he is treated broadly as a liberatory figure. it's not clear he's going to become the leader of this country, i think he wanted to be the leader of the country but there were people who were cheering that on. so by the summer of 1979 theocratic faction is gaining

power and prominence but young people in particular were trying to figure out what kind of government they wanted to live with them back who did they want as their leader? how did they stand up from autonomous iran. you start to see, unfortunately, from an america perspective, a decision by some young people to unify the country. they dreamed by creating an external enemy. i unifying the iranian people who were functionalized at this time around one big enemy. we in the united states really almost no one knew about the 1953 coup. we thought of ourselves as a benign baby good progressive force for the iranian people. many of them did not see us that way. they had the memory of the ku seared into their minds, this was part of the historic

memory. we are a potential enemy. we are the ones who kept the shad power, we are the ones who kept the military in power, we gave the sub box the internal force in authority. the students decide to begin to plan let's protest. against the u.s. embassy. the fear that they might start a ku against the american people. it's not clear exactly who that government is and one group of students in the midst of many protesting students decide that they are going to make a powerful protest against the u.s. embassy. and we are still even all these decades later not 100% sure what happened or who.what will, there is a strong argument to be made that a group of these students from universities in toronto decide to emulate the african-american civil rights.

they are going to have a sit in at the u.s. embassy to demonstrate the legitimacy of the american government's presence in their country. and to witness against american power. when the iranian students decided to make the protest to witness against to plausibly hold a sit in, i think all along there were some who knew they would go further. what happens is really a catastrophic affair from so many angles. there were thousands of people protesting outside the sun embassy. this one group, this group of students decides to climb the fence to come into the u.s. embassy, may be to hold a sit in, maybe to do more. and for the american government it wasn't clear what to do even at that moment of crisis. what's the job of the u.s. marine corps who are supposed to secure the embassy?it's not to face-off mobs of people. we know this from subsequent

tragedies. you have to count on local governments to protect the international diplomatic immunity of your embassy personnel. the iranian government didn't do that. those students who jumped the barricades to climb into the u.s. embassy suddenly realized they kind of had carte blanche to do what they want and instead of just a peaceful fit in, very quickly it evolved into a hostage taking situation in which the americans did not fight back with weapons, they feed into the stake assuming it would be very short-lived. it wasn't short-lived, it was 444 days of the seizure of the u.s. i'm sick. people understood in the u.s. embassy that trouble was brewing in iran. there was a revolution going on. there'd been attempts to fortify the embassy but you can only do so much. because there was sense there was troubles in iran, the u.s.

embassy which had been a massive affair, huge numbers of personnel had cut back to only the absolute necessary folks. i think at the moment the iranian takeover there was 66 people still working at the embassy. this is an empty vector that hundreds of people in it. the people there knew they were in a risky position. they knew this was dangerous posting but i don't think any of them expected what was going to happen to them. this is all occurring in november 1979 almost exactly one year before the 1980 presidential election. jimmy carter is and what we now know the final year of his presidency. he knew he was going to run for reelection. this was a difficult, arguably catastrophic event, for his presidential administration, i think when it first happened, when he was first alerted he was alerted very quickly to what was going on and probably saw it as an opportunity so

carter was being criticized from several directions. economic reasons, political reasons, cultural reasons. foreign policy reasons. he knew if he was gonna get reelected he was going to have to convince the american people that he was strong that he was capable and he could take care of america's business.i think at the very beginning when this took off carter saw perhaps a chance to show leadership. he were these thugs trying to take over u.s. embassy and the midst of turmoil, carter would show strong leadership and negotiate his way out of this and there would be a happy ending. it couldn't have gone worse. carter did something that in retrospect probably wasn't wise. he kind of took upon himself the leadership of solving this what he thought was probably a short-term crisis. and he went out in front, he talked to the american people,

he certainly instructed his staff that he wanted hands-on responsibility, this was very carter he was very much a man who manage the situation before him he was not a delegator like ronald reagan would be down the road. carter hoped that by seizing the stage, taking care of this trouble the american people would see him as a strong leader. he basically did everything right, that's the irony of the situation he quickly got a hold of the iranians, he talked to people who you thought were responsible figures in the iranian government. remember the iranian government is functionalized, not exactly clear who's in charge of what. and ayatollah was still seen as figurehead not hands-on leader. so it was a riddle for the american government. he quickly got a hold of our allies. carter he's that kind of mind he kind of step-by-step moves through the process to resolve this issue., what he didn't realize was that there were factions in iran that did not want to resolve the issue.

that this crisis was good for the iranian factions wanting to create an islamic state. they wanted to maintain a crisis with the united states. you got american government trying to rationally resolve a very unpleasant nomadic problem and you have a factions with iran, who want to foster and inflame this crisis. to gain legitimacy for the islamic action really trying to see total control of the islamic government of the iranian islamic government by that time. to negotiate barriers with very different interests. in terms of the takeover of the u.s. embassy religion had always been a factor. there was a strong sense that many protesting outside the embassy. it doesn't happen in one day. it takes place over time. there were strong islamic presence in those protests. big faction of the revelers near revolutionary movement.

the united states government is conscious of that but doesn't see them as a primary threat. we are still thinking soviet union. we are still thinking the communist party and iran. that's the real fear. iran to become a proxy state of the soviet union. all that oil suddenly under the soviet control. we never really take as seriously as related to the islamic presence. it was there. what happens when those students come in and despite the fact that the claimant was peaceful, a few of them at least had weapons. something was off from the beginning about their so-called peaceful intent. they do though at first sees

the hostages in the sense thinking it might only be a day, two days, it's not exactly clear what's going to happen. and as time goes on and things don't get resolved decisions are being made in all parts of the iranian government. one decision that is made is kind of fascinating. it's the iranians decide that because they are good islamic people is not right to keep women as hostages. so they give matt members of the delegation the right to leave. so who are these iranian revolutions, they say we are consolidated with third world people all over the place. all of the black members of the delegation they are not ãb they are all free to go. several marine guards were asking so they are allowed to leave. not all pick up his allowance. he suddenly go from 66.2 53 at this point.

they are playing a political game and this is done in full of the cameras. meanwhile the iranian government is trying to decide what's going on is this good is this bad inspections in the government are trying to resolve but the tallest faction they see this as useful and the students are the ones who say we are the students in line with the ayatollah humanity. they are his people. the iranian people responded positive.not everyone by any means but a lot of iranians are saying, we are showing the american. victim of america now we are in control of america. this gave the ayatollah khomeini faction a lot of credibility, a lot of legitimacy. maybe we shouldn't let them go. so somebody gets stalemate. fairly quickly black americans are given the permission to

leave if they chose. women are given the permission to leave if they choose. but the others, no. there's a side story which at the moment of takeover of the american embassy personnel, the great movie that got made by ben affleck and others say there are six at this point escape and run in the streets that's a whole other story. as hostages escaping, taking root in the canadian embassy. but the others are sitting there blindfolded in squalor at this point not being tortured or anything like that.but by no means being housed comfortably. as the days and start to take on work. for the american government it was a really hard set of decisions as to what the leverage point, how do you fix the situation? jimmy carter is very methodical thinker, in a good sense. he goes through every possible avenue of consumer a double consideration to release the hostages peacefully so we go from diplomatic talks to

sanctions. there's economic sanctions, of course does play a vital role in donald trump's considerations many years later. we use the un, we use every possible ally we have and they are all on board and you and is on board, nato allies on board, regional allies on board. none of it works. so all along the military has been planning for alternative scenarios. but ãwhat is it, five months ago on, five months go on before carter finally says, we know ticked through every possible point of pressure and none of them are working. gentlemen, anything else we can do? the pentagon steps up and says, yes sir we been practicing we have a plan. the plan is to take a few

helicopters, fly them in, having already placed personnel, some of this is still secretly literally to this day don't know every detail people have been placed securely near the embassy ground to facilitate the release. the idea was helicopters would fly in, come onto the mc ground, at this point there called delta forces special operators who come in and free the hostage. >> united states military has tremendous capacities. we don't necessarily have tremendous capacities in 1980, to engineer this kind of clandestine line special operated driven rescue attempt. the israelis had done something like it, not so far before in the earlier 1970s. we trained and learned from the israelis but we never really done anything like this before as a military. it was really hard operating desert conditions and enemies everywhere.no clear support system. there were a lot of reasons this wasn't going to go well. from the iranian perspective it

didn't go well. >> what happens is the helicopters began flying into tehran and fly over the desert they have to fly low to escape any supervision and surveillance. and just terrible luck, a dust storm, a sandstorm blows up and does a number on the mechanical components of the helicopters. and just all hell breaks loose. helicopters are grounded, they crash into each other. the operation doesn't even get to tehran, it just fails. and then men die. the one military operation that was tried is just a disaster and boy does that hurt jimmy carter's chances for reelection. the iranian hostage crisis arguably never really happily resolves itself in any expeditious way. it goes on month after month after month.

so after a year things are still terrible. but a new attempt has been made to bring in a third party mediator, the algerian government. the algerian government but through international players, legitimate international players say we think we can help in this situation. the iranians look at them as fellow revolutionaries. it's a predominantly islamic country that they don't have an islamic government at that point. the algerians kind of go in there like switzerland. go in there and do a really good job slowly working through problems negotiating point by point issues. and if the algerians who get a lot of credit for finally resolving the issue. the clearing is play one lost

charge of president carter, they were furious about the military rescue attempt. they refused to allow the algerians resolve the issue and free the american hostages. until jimmy carter is out of office and ronald reagan is sworn in. it's not until the inauguration of ronald reagan 44 days after the hostage taking finally those americans are less go to come home. it's 1981 and ronald reagan is the president of the united states and it's an interesting moment in world affairs on the one hand you might think the new reagan administration could look toward this new islamist presence in iran and growing presence in the region and say, we got a new threat. we've got a new challenge. how are we going to resolve this issue? but that's not what ronald reagan's head was at. he is in old cold war warrior committees focused on the soviet union. so the islamist presence, the

challenge it presents, is basically put away deep in the background. we have a terrible relationship with iran. we don't resolve it during the reagan administration. we don't recognize their government. we keep as donald trump would tell us later, a huge hunk of their money hostage in our banks. we don't give it back to them. and we just have a deteriorating back story relationship.and of course the irony is its during the same time that ronald reagan sees opportunity with a different islamist group. the group that eventually we called al qaeda in afghanistan. because he's such a fierce anti-communist warrior, ronald reagan chooses to side with the islamic revolutionaries in afghanistan. provide them weapons. training.money.

rather than say, islamism presents an interesting challenge, we don't treat it seriously.we embrace it in afghanistan because they are anti-soviet. they are anti-communist.that didn't turn out so well. i think the united states again to take more seriously the changing temperament of the middle east. you could make a case certainly by the late 1980s our expertise was going. we had people who could speak arabic more commonly. we had farsi speakers but we started and treated as a central problem in the u.s. formulations. so when 9/11 occurs in 2001 i think overwhelmingly for americans and even government elites, it was a shock. why has this happened to us? the anger and disrespect that many people in the middle east have for the united states was still a mystery to us. while we certainly increase our capacities we never took it as seriously as we might have that

growing crisis in that part of the world. even now 17 years later i think we are still trying to figure out who are friends and who are enemies are in the middle east and how we keep the islamist challenge manageable. and recent events in saudi arabia have shown we are still struggling to find that part of the answer in the world and it's a real challenge and there's no easy answer for jimmy carter understood way back in 1979. >> we are in lawrence kansas for learning about this literary scene. next we speak with ãbon her book "no place like home" which talks about lgbt activism movement here in kansas. >> when people think about the lgbtq movement i think the first cities that come to mind are san francisco, new york city, los angeles, washington dc. and lgbtq people are

everywhere. they're the same percentage of lgbtq and kansas as anywhere else in the country. what's especially interesting about kansas is that topeka is home of the westboro baptist church so when people think about the little tiny group of protesters about 20 or so years ago protesting funerals with the signs that say god hates fags and other sort of unpleasant things. that's a group of people that is based in topeka kansas. kansas is a very complicated place it has a reputation of being a red state right in the heartland but its history really goes back to the pre-civil war days it was really established to be a free state and there was this really bloody border between the slave state and kansas, kansas very

proud of its free state history. what's interesting about the lgbtq movement in kansas is that back in 1978 wichita was one of the first cities that tried to pass an ordinance protecting lgbtq people from discrimination, it was a huge controversy and did not go well. when that didn't work, people sort of retreated and went about their daily lives. i don't think that that was necessarily anything special or unique about wichita is the biggest city in the state. it's a big city. cities and kansas go. so you had an urban population there, you had a lot of gay community who had left their small towns and onto the big city. so the movement was started by a small group of people there.

like i think happens in all small towns and small states with a few people who decide to do something but then i think to the 80s much of the gay community efforts were focused on fighting aids so that took the focus and the efforts certainly for a lot of people. i don't know that a lot happened then until the mid to thousands when kansas like many other states around the country decided to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. so kansas did that in 2005, a lot of other states around the country did that in the 2000's. 70% of the voters in kansas past the constitutional amendment saying marriage is only one man, one woman, this was a big movement back in

those days. the people who try to fight that in kansas tiny little disorganized group of people who had never really gotten together to do any kind of political campaign on behalf of the lgbtq cause.but there were also laws on the books. there's the sodomy laws that have traditionally been used to sort of claim that gay people having sex is immoral and illegal. the supreme court ruled sodomy laws were unconstitutional. back in the 80s or 90s. quite a while ago. but kansas sodomy laws are still on the books of the state legislature refused to take them off the books. i can't really be enforced but it's still there. more recently just in the past legislative session they passed a law saying that adoption agencies could refuse to place

children with same-sex families if it violated their religious beliefs. another issue that comes up a lot almost every legislative session is what's called a religious freedom amendment or religious freedom bill, which you are seeing a lot of these and other states also and it's up to the supreme court even saying that if saying businesses and public agencies should not have to violate their religious beliefs in order to serve the gay community. so kansas has considered those laws pretty much every year in recent memory. they haven't passed because enough kansas legislators have seen the discrimination there so we had discriminatory laws

passed but is also been able to stop some of them from passing so it's come get it. regular ãwhen they see the laws passing or not passing i think lgbtq kansans know they live in a conservative state. they know they are not the only ones who are facing discrimination or facing these issues that are painful. and they do what they can to educate their neighbors. and their family members. and their elected officials. they are bosses. whoever is a part of their immediate surroundings. it's about with the real-life effects of these laws and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. as public opinion has changed over the years lgbt people feel more a part of the community of the overall larger community,

they are less scared. they feel more accepted. but they also know that all this could change at any time. it's a scary time to be any marginalized group in the united states right now. we know that everything that people have worked for could be reversed at any time. >> we are in lawrence kansas learning about the city's literary scene. we speak with author andrew eisenberg in his book the republican reversal which looks at the conservative stance on the environment from nixon to trump. >>. >> i think what people think of the republican party and the environment today, they think will the per public and party is not in favor of doing anything about problems with the climate and their generally in favor of rolling back

regulations for clean air and clean water. that's not always been the case. that in the 1970s the republican party was instrumental in joining with democrats to create the environmental laws that we have. the clean air act, the clean water act, endangered species act, republicans were in many cases unanimously in favor of creating these laws. ronald reagan and other conservatives a lot of them coming out of the west where there was a lot of opposition to government control of public land, there's people in the 1970s together with the rise of the moral majority and evangelical voters in the late 1970s they engineered a rise of conservative republicanism that changed republicans position on the environment. for most of the next decade from 1980s into the beginning of the 1990s. he had back and forth between

moderate republicans who were still in support of environmental laws and conservative republicans who thought first of all that this was inhibiting business and that was a bad thing and secondly that any kind of government regulation was in inherently bad thing and should be rolled back simply nonphysical.the republican party has a long tradition of supporting the environment that goes back to the 19th century. it was a republican president. abraham lincoln, who created yosemite as a national preserve. and it was under ulysses grant and other republicans at yellowstone park was created, benjamin harrison, another republican really had a strong hand in creating the national forests or what became the national forests. teddy roosevelt yet another republican did a lot in terms of creating national parks, national monuments, setting aside a lot of land for national forests. the republican party really at

the beginning of the environmental age in the 1960s, the republican party had a stronger claim to environmental stewardship than the democrats at that time. during the administration of richard nixon most of these in environmental laws came into being and although nixon was a republican, he was very much in favor of these kinds of laws, in fact in one of his early annual addresses he pronounced the 1970s as the environmental decade. he created the environmental protection agency by executive order and signed all the major laws into being the national environment of policy act, the clean air act, the endangered species act, and the reason he did this was not necessarily that he had a strong commitment to environmental policy. i think like everyone else at the time he was concerned about pollution, but the environmental movement was extraordinarily strong in the early 1970s. the first earth day in two 20 million people to meetings at

the cities and other places across the country and that got the attention of a lot of politicians whether republican or democrat. the republican party of the 1960s and early 1970s was dominated by moderate republicans. these are moderate republicans who were pro-business and wanted limited government but at the same time the republican party in the 1960s was as strongly in support as civil rights legislation, particularly northern republican, then democrats. it was a party that was interested in doing things for the public through government action. that predisposed him to be favorable to environmental protection laws. i think we started to see the shift away from republican support for environmental protection laws in the middle of the 1970s. there are a lot of factors involved here but i think the one that i would pick out as

one that has not had enough attention is the oil crisis starting in 1972, 73 and up to the end of the 1970s but up until that time a lot of americans had been saying we are consuming to many resources we need to dial back what we are doing and be more thoughtful about the way we are consuming resources and actually we probably need to pay more for the resources we are consuming in order to stretch out there use or retain some use. then all of a sudden with the first oil crisis the price of oil went to the roof. there are lines at the pump. there is rationing. and people had who all of a sudden do the things they been saying with out a lot of planning, they had to do it immediately and in a rushed away in a way that many people are not prepared for and that stopped a lot of enthusiasm with this kind of environmental protection out of a lot of people. the rising opposition in the

1970s to environmental protection did not immediately manifest itself in terms of legislation. what happened first was that you saw some republicans begin to drift away from the bipartisan consensus on the environment. i think the best example of this is ronald reagan. when he was governor of california between 1967 and 1975 he had a pretty good record on the environment.he passed what was strongly in support of and signed air quality legislation that was actually tougher than national air quality legislation. he set aside land for public parks and opposed building of dams and his record was very good on the environment and that's not surprising he was government of california at the time when the environmental movement was at his height. he had to trim his sales but then when he started campaigning for the presidency he started inserting opposition to environmental laws and

environmental is an end to his campaign that was really at odds with record of his government. he was sensing rising anxiety and opposition to environmental laws in the 1970s. one of the first things of the reagan administration did when he came to office in 1981 was the revved up the production of oil, coal, natural gas from american federal lands and offshore, which the federal government controlled, that has continued as a policy since reagan took office in 1981, even during the clinton administration, even during the first part of the obama administration, high levels of american fossil fuel production has been the rule because we did not want to run into another oil crisis like we did in 1970s. high levels of fossil fuel production and doing something about climate change these two things did not work well together some of the important reasons i think the republicans are opposed to doing something serious about climate is that

it means completely rethinking our energy sources. if you look at the republican party today in the way that they deal with environmental legislation i think you can break it down into two broad areas, one broad area is the enforcement of clean air and clean water legislation. generally speaking. republicans have said that they are in favor of enforcing those laws. that they describe their approach to environmental regulation to objective basis approach where they protect air and clean water. one reason they do that is their strong public support for those laws the problem with that in my mind is that republican actions on these things do not align with their rhetoric about clean air and clean water. that's one area. the other areas about climate. and concerns about climate

change emerged largely since the passage of those environmental laws in the early 1970s.one of the things that happened during the obama administration is that the obama administration pushed to have the emission of carbon dioxide regulated under the clean air act as a pollutant that was directly affected people's lives. the courts agreed that this was something they could do and this was something republicans have opposed. republicans generally speaking have opposed to doing things about climate. dave said climate change is either not happening or we need to study it more or it is happening but it be too expensive to fix or it is happening but it's too late to fix it.they have mixed and matched these different ways of opposing doing something about climate change. the current administration, the trump administration, has both departed from previous republican stances on the environment and also just

doubled down on some earlier republican census on the adverb. in the sense that they're discontinuing what was done before. the things that donald trump said on the campaign trail and once he's been in office the climate change is a hoax, the environmental protection agency should be done away with he simply repeating things that conservative republicans have been saying so there's nothing actually knew about that extreme opposition to environmental regulation. what is new is that donald trump has not tried to soft pedal is opposition to doing things in favor of the environment, particularly when it comes to climate change. even the george w. bush administration, which was extremely pro-fossil fuel, non- abdo loss rhetorically at least tried to offer some support to doing something about climate, even though in actuality they didn't do very much. the bush administration's approach was because they recognize the american voters

were concerned about this. donald trump has made his opposition to international climate agreements a positive thing. instead of being something he thinks conservative republicans should try to obscure and not put forward, he's made his opposition to those things a calling card for what he does. he's merged his opposition to international agreements about climate change to his america first populism. i have not given up hope on the republican party and the environment. i think in the first case something is going to have to be done about the environment. you can either happen with some forethought and planning and compromise while there's a lot of environmental quality left or can happen in a hurry desperately when we have to do something and have fewer choices. something will happen one way or another but what gives me hope if you look at what republican voters walked they

are in favor of a lot of the environmental protection that's being proposed by members of the democratic party. but the republican voters oppose that because it's democrats who are seeing it. >> i think what voters want is a bipartisan consensus on the environment like the bipartisan consensus that was the case in the early 1970s when the environmental laws were first passed. but there are such tribalism in american politics that republican voters are in support of republicans who are advocating things in the environment they actually are not in favor of and they opposed democrats advocating things for the environment that they are in favor of and eventually that situation will reach such a point of cognitive distance that it will break. if people read republican reversal there's a couple things i like them to take away, one of them is that i guess we should be concerned,

we should be concerned that there was once a consensus on the environment and now that consensus has broken down at precisely the time when we are facing extraordinary threat with climate change. and that you need to return to a bipartisan consensus on doing something about these environmental problems and the sooner we do it will be better for everyone. >> the university of kansas is located on mount oriented, the highest elevation point in lawrence. founded in 1865 it has a student body of just under 30,000. making it the largest diversity in kansas. he was here that we spoke with ku professor jeffrey mori on about his book, 1925 scopes monkey trial. >> the scopes trial is

significant because at least in part it was the most famous trial of the 20th century. the only major trial that was famous that didn't have a dead body in the middle. it was important for the themes it raised. questions of what educational system was for, it raised the big question of what do you do with religion in public schools? how much do you pass morality down to the next generation? and then of course the question of how you interpret the bible. what role does the bible have in american public life in the scopes trial is the best example of when we can talk about that. the scopes trial took place in dayton tennessee, a small town, still pretty hard to reach in tennessee, for what dayton had that a lot of schools didn't have at this time and a lot of other towns didn't have at this time, was a small group of boosters who thought once the state legislature had passed the butler law, which is debate over provisions that basically

it was illegal for any teacher in the public schools, public funded schools in tennessee, to teach any theory that man is descended from animals and that contradicts the divine story of creation as noted in the bible. once legislature passed the butler law and the governor signed it, with expressing that nobody would be a fool enough to enforce a law like this. his intent was to prove that the legislature believed in the bible. the national civil liberties union at the time thought that the butler law was a terrible loss. it conflicted with freedom of speech in the first amendment and also conflicted with the rights of teachers and that was one of the reasons why the civil liberties union had been created to defend the rights of

teachers. so they needed a test case because they thought, the only way to get rid of this is to take the law up to the supreme court. some people might have argued and did argue and we might argue the best place to get rid of the law like that is actually to get tennessee to repeal the law. but the civil liberties union put his hat on the supreme court and never actually got there. but one of the problems with trying to get a case between the supreme court is that you actually need a case so you run a test case and find some of the willing to break a law and then pursue it from local courts up to state supreme court of two appeals courts and they thought they should get this case taken all the way up to the supreme court. the only place where they found a defendant was the sleepy little village of dayton tennessee. the civil liberties union came

across john scopes as a possible defendant for his test case. kind of by accident. they had advertised for a test case throughout the south and especially tennessee. and for local boosters town leaders got together and gathered in ãbdrugstore in dayton tennessee and telescopes was 26-year-old general science teacher and football coach and he was friends with these town followers and he thought that it was a bad wall too so when they asked him how would you feel about being a defendant in this he said it sounds like a good idea. he was young, unmarried, did have real ties to the area. i think he was figuring if he was pillared for breaking the butler law there was no big deal, he could move somewhere else. and he did move away from tennessee after the trial. but he was a perfect defendant and his friends had asked him

to be a defendant in order to create publicity for dayton and that's how he got pulled in, the trial was held at the county courthouse in wade county, our eha county. in dayton tennessee. it was a small little courthouse. the trial gained attention immediately. the trial in particular became a national craze i guess you could call it because williams jennings bryant, one of the most famous men of the country had joined the prosecution and that brought forth clients darrell, the most famous defense attorney in the country and notorious agnostic.which the prosecution brought out repeatedly. to offer his services and that was really controversial the civil liberties union spends the early part of the trial trying to elbow him off the team. but he stuck around and john

scopes wanted him to be his attorney.that's how it became a national cause. imagine the most well-known attorneys in the country or well-known people in the country deciding to fight over controversial law in a court of law in this little court of law so it got hacked, journalists descended on dayton in droves so they were elbowing each other around and local data hellions also wanted to show up. they weren't particularly busy so they wanted to go to trial this was something that happens in rural towns, especially before television was invented. what you do for entertainment? go to the courthouse and see what's going on. especially in a case like this they wanted to see some of these great orders so they all crowded into the courthouse and it was a problem because the temperatures were in the neighborhood of 100 degrees fahrenheit. it was sweltering the hot and the courthouse.and eventually

the judge actually moved the trial outside because the heat and because he worried that the courthouse floors could hold the weight of all these people. so the rest of the trial after day six when we get into day seven, the rest of the trial takes place outdoors. ... ...

the town fears wanted the publicity ask delay got it. it's funny what lapse to john scopes during the trial. he actually never got to speak in court. at the very end he got to say i believe it as bad law, essentially, but day after day we never hear from john scopes, he was basically stuck listening to the attorneys arguing back and forth and never got to say his piece himself. trial lasted appropriately enough, i if we go back to genesis, lasted for seven days. essentially as long as it took to create the world for god. and one of the great things but the try and what make it such a fun thing to look at, is on the seventh day of the trial, women

jennings bryan, most famous religious man in the country, actually agreed to be cross-examined by the defense, bioscopes' defense, and clarence darrow who led the defense, has the opportunity to grill bryan for hours, outdoors, under this mercyless tennessee sun, and again, about hundred degrees, and he asked all of the questions thatting a not sticks and athiested hood been posing to believers since the mid-19th century and before. where did cain get his wife? did jonah really get swallowed by the whale? was there really a worldwide del luge as we see that noah managed to get all the animals of the world on to the ark for. and william jennings bryan fell back on literal words in the bible. didn't want to depart from the literal words and said, i believe it as it's written in

the bible. could god make the world stand still? as -- while joshua was holding up his hands. these are questions that are very hard to answer if you want to stay with a literal interpretation of the bible, but all day on the seventh day of the trial, darrow was forcing bryan to answer the questions. the last part of the seventh day, darrow got bryan toed a mate that the seven days of creation might not have been seven days of 24 hours appeals but each day may heave been thousands, even millions of years apiece. this is a standard fundamentalist interpretation of genesis but the defense took it to mean, well, in other words, we can't take the bible literally, so how could scopes have broken the law, what was the divine creation of man if we can't talk but the bible as being a factly as it's written?

the short term outcome of the scopes trial was in fact paradoxically a loss and a victory for the defense team. clarence darrow, essentially wanted to be able to appeal a loss in the scopes trial. one of the things but making appeals so you can appeal it up to the supreme court is you have to lose the case, and so he essentially went before the jury and said, i don't particularly care what you think -- good way to butter up the trial -- the jury -- i don't care what you think but for our purposes, we'd like you to find the defendant guilty and i expect you'll try to find him guilty anyway. in fact the jury agreed. it took them nine minutes to reach a guilty verdict for darrow, and so that was the success and a failure.

and so darrow was able to appeal the decision occupy the state supreme court. which made a very clever maneuver. the state supreme court agreed with darrow, that scopes was not guilty and so darrow no longer had a losing case to appeal. but state supreme court also got admission or agreement from the state that it would no longer enforce the butler law, and so this was what one newspaper called the most baffling legal wet blanket thrown upon an appeal. so the civil liberties union won the case and lost the case, but couldn't take the butler law any further beyond the tennessee state supreme court. and so at that point they're at an end. there were a few other attempts

in southern states, such as arkansas, to pass similar laws but they petered out partly because no other states want tote be red called the way tennessee had been ridiculed. and eventually there was not much call for this outside of the south. the rhode island legislature responded to a proposal for something like the butler law by referring it to the committee on game and fish, and so hasn't evolution laws didn't get a whole lot of traction after the scopes trial ended on july 10, 1925. the legacy of the copes trial is mixed. for a little while it stopped lauds from being passed -- laws again evolution from being passed because of the ridicule that the scopes trial brought upon the south, and never had much traction in the north. nevertheless, there is an

antievolution movement that still exists in the united states. it had run underground for much of the 20th century but around 1960 or so, it exploded into public view once again. in the united states actually, a majority of the population, believes that the earth is actually about 10,000 years old, and slightly over a majority of the population believes that god created humanity in moral its present form. as it is. and that evolution did not play a role in this. which is a problem if you are a biology teacher but works well for certain religions and certain interpretations of the bible. >> scopes trial should give us the opportunity to reflect on how far we have come and how much we're still enthralled to a much older way of thinking but the bible and older way of thinking about the public schools for that matter.

>> i'm on the university of kansas campus. >> historically there have been many misconceptions but the rolled of africa fathers -- african-american fathers in the home or being part of families, and i think primarily there's this misconception they're just completely absent or they're useless and that women are dominant and n the family sphere and she household and men are simply present, if they're there, but i would say that by far it is the absence of fathers that they're just not relevant to family life or household lives in the african-american community. so, when you take a look at the rid tour that was coming out, the '7 associations '8 associations '9 sod on the black experience and black family in

the 1960s prior to that. a lot of that work accepted the notion that black fathers were absent from the home. it certainly was true that increasingly children, african-american children, were being raised and a one-parent home and that was typically by the mother, but that didn't necessarily mean that black men were absent and that's kind of how got my work. part of the expertise i needed was how do i actually access this community that i want to study? i was very fortunate to have someone in social welfare i could sort of talk through, talk through that particular challenge. i knew for the question i had that is what this experience of african-american fathers, needed to actually interview african-american fathers and i couldn't interview mothers. i couldn't interview children because that wasn't my question. and so i set off to interview african-american fathers. i interviewed 88 more or less

from texas, but i also took interview material wherever i went, and one of the thing its learned quickly is that african-american men are very open to having a conversation about themselves but especially about being a father but a it wasn't a question they were being asked. they weren't a population they were reading about in the news except for in very negative ways and that is that they were absent or they war deadbeat but the men i was fortune to meet told a different story. i think there's probably no one harder on african-american men and fathers than african-american men and fathers themselves sometimes. it's not easy to say, yes, i'm a dad, and i don't see my child very often. or, yes, i'm a dad and i don't make enough money to see them, and i think that's what i should be doing so i just don't see them at all. in fact one of the things i

learned is that one of the hardest things that fathers had to do was to see their child and say goodbye. it was the hardest thing in the world for many of the fathers to do. because they think but this motion about father, not just father, but that word aside and talk about dad and daddy, because that's really how many of these men describe themselves. if you describe yourself as the daddy, then in some ways that's a little -- that means you have a close he relationship with your child, order at least you want to if you just con see yourself as a father. and so for daddies, one of the most difficult things that they expressed was going to see their child and, at the end of the visit, because of often times a visit and not -- may not have ban court ordered visit because a lot of these men did not have

that kind of formal relationship -- they had to say goodbye. and it's very difficult to not believe what they're saying when they kind of describe that level of emotion. and sometimes it was really lard to go see their child because they knew they'd have to say goodbye and how do you do that as a daddy? a daddy is supposed to live with their child. they're supposed to be able to pay for their school clothes. they're supposed to be able to take them to school and protect them as they walk back and forth forth. supposed to be there at night to kiss them good night, and when a daddy can't do that, then what does it anyone be a daddy and that's how came to the tight of my book. some of them agreed with the stereotyped because they didn't feel good but themselves as fathers and believe others -- for those who were better fathers than others -- i should

say i'm not sure how to say thatthey believed there war a lot of black men who were deadbeat fathers and they bought into the stereotype and they were the exception to the stereotype, but for others they believed that, yeah, that is true because that is describing me. now, the problem with the stereotyped is it an exaggeration, right and it doesn't describe everyone and it may not describe anyone at all. so, even fathers who said that stereotype describes me, when you talk with them you actually saw their story was much more complex that a stereotype could ever offer, and i think even today, if we were to ask black families but black fathers you would still find the stair joetype of a black male as being absent, decide beet, is pervasive and among black communities, as well as outside. stereotypes but african-american men hasn't really changed over time. they're still very negative.

and sew maybe the question is what does the future hold for black families? i don't know. i think that i've always thought but black families being more than what we see on television, and i've always thought about families as being more complex, than a simple nuclear family, and for me, black families will continue to be what black families are. the question is, are we providing the support and resources to all families, regardless of the form, so that they can be healthy. i've always seen african-american families in and the black experience and native american families, another families that tend to be at the very bottom and the most vulnerable, as being like -- as being an example of where we will all be should we not do

better by those most vulnerable. >> twice a month c-span city tours take book tv on the road to explore the literary life and history of a selected city. working with our cable part in other words we visit various literary and historic sites and interview local historians, authors and civic leaders um you can watch our past interviews and tours online but going to booktv.org and selecting c-span cities tower from the series drop down at the top of the page or by visiting c-span.org/citiestour. you can follow the c-span cities tour on twitter for behind the scenes images and video from visitment the health is is,@c-spancitys. [inaudible conversations]