This interview was conducted on March 22 at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

You recently stepped down after 14 years at the helm of the AFL-CIO.  In your mind, what should the major goals of the labor movement in America be over the next couple of years?

…The labor movement, under the leadership of President Richard Trumka, is preparing to do a lot more mobilization of rank-and-file workers. We probably had our best political program in the history of the AFL-CIO in the 2008 elections, because we were able to mobilize at the grassroots level hundreds of thousands of workers actively involved in campaigns. I think that the mobilization of rank-and-file workers has to be an ongoing practice throughout the whole year, not just be brought together shortly before elections, and that it shouldn’t be just a part of a political program but it also should be part of a legislative program and work on issues.

Last night’s victory [the passage of health care reform legislation] was a credit to rank-and-file workers who supported the President’s health program, and they actively engaged people, both union folks as well as folks who aren’t organized, on this issue and mobilized a great effort in terms of the number of workers that they have visited with.

We have an entity called Working America that was created four years ago. That entity has been able to organize three and a half million workers who live in communities where they have friends who are union members. In canvassing their homes, we have been able to build their support for being part of an organization. With polling and focus groups, we find that their issues are the same issues that are the priorities of organized workers; health care, of course, is one of them.

Jobs is a big concern of workers. People are angry and they don’t think that they have been treated fairly throughout this whole economic crisis, and they want to see more attention paid to issues such as health care and jobs and pension security, as well as education and training. There is tremendous interest in education programs and up-scaling workers for new jobs.

They are hurt by what has occurred, in terms of the outsourcing of jobs, as a result of bad trade policies and also the greed of corporations in looking for the cheapest possible deal in whatever country, the lowest possible wages in those countries. That has resulted in a loss of employment of millions of workers and it has essentially had the greatest impact, or the worst impact, on the middle class.

We see good jobs with good benefits just being abolished. The auto industry is as classic an industry as you could use as an example. But it’s not just the auto industry – it’s the steel workers; it’s the other industrial unions and union workers who have been affected. But that also has an impact in local communities, on public employees; it’s not just private sector. If the revenues for a city or a state are affected by the loss of industry and business, that impacts on public services, so that’s a really big concern.

You mentioned trade policy just a second ago. If you could advise President Obama about trade policy, what would you tell him?

Well, we had raised the trade policy as one of the issues that we were concerned about during the campaign, and the President has been very responsive on the need for reviewing our trade agreements and seeing what changes have to be made. Basically, we have to insist that workers’ rights and environmental protections, or human rights questions, are all part of what has to be addressed in our future trade agreements. We can’t be going for the cheapest possible deal for our trading practices.

We’re not only concerned about the impact it has on workers in our own country, but we’re also concerned about our trading partners – countries like Colombia, where they have a high record of assassinations of folks who are active in their own country on behalf of human rights and the atrocious murders and assassinations that have taken place with lack of enforcement of those who are the culprits in these situations. That’s just one example.

And it’s taxes, not just trade policy – our tax policies that have to be reexamined, and companies can’t be given an advantage for moving work out of the United States into another country with special tax considerations for them. If anything, we should be rewarding the corporations or businesses that can develop new jobs here in the United States.

I don’t know much about this area.  How did such tax credits for outsourcing get created in the first place?  In whose interest is that kind of policy, and who would be opposed to repealing those kinds of tax credits?  In other words, what’s driving tax credits for outsourcing?

What’s driving that behavior is greed.  It’s bad economic policy to be rewarding companies who are taking sources of employment out of our own country and sending them off to a country where the basic human rights are violated. Also, it’s not the right thing to reward those companies and those businesses to the detriment of workers here in the United States.

But I’m trying to imagine what argument congressmen or senators would make to sell this kind of policy to the public. How do they go about doing that? How do they go about selling the public on the idea that they’ve given tax credits to companies to move overseas?  I would think they’d be just the widest and fattest target for organizations like yours.

They are so vague…about…reducing prices on a product, about it being a better way of production. The lies that are told in all of the publicity on these situations is just so horrible, and we have to do a better job at educating the public at large. We don’t have to educate our members because they are living in the communities that are impacted by these bad trade policies.

Politicians just have to be convinced that this is bad for the country. We have tried to do exactly what you’re saying, in terms of holding politicians accountable on these issues, and we have been very successful. But there’s no question about it; we have to do a better job. I’m confident that more and more workers, and the average person, have become more mindful of how important it is to have good, fair trade agreements. We want to see the best trading agreements that we possibly can see. We realize how important trade is for our country, for the economy of our country. But it has to be fair trade, good trade.

We saw with NAFTA, as an example, the North American Free Trade Agreement, what happens when a country like Mexico has the advantage of a trade agreement. Sure, they’re interested in creating more business for their country, having better employment for their workers. But NAFTA was basically a failure. It lasted, or it was beneficial to Mexico for a couple of years, but those jobs are gone now. They’re not in Mexico. They’re off in Asia or in the developing world, wherever it might be. It is the same old situation that we see with the greed of individual corporations and their desire to get the cheapest possible deal.

You seek to ensure that human rights considerations, labor standards, and environmental concerns are all factored into our trade policy.  Are you willing to consider the possibility that even if we were able to include all of those factors in our trade deals, there might still be some industries here in America that wouldn’t be able to compete globally in the long term?

Well, it’s something that has to be watched, and it’s important that trade agreements be enforced. I think that the auto industry, which is a classic example, shows the vision of the autoworkers’ unions, in terms of what they have been able to achieve in their recovery, as far as it might be, of the auto industry, and the opening of…former plants, as well as new plants. I mean, there are some good examples of new industry in the manufacture of parts…that the union and management are working on, not just in Michigan but in other states around the country.

One final question: You talked about organizing, and particularly Working America. As you may know, Marshall Ganz, a professor here, was one of the architects of the Obama organizing effort, and particularly some of the community organizing strategies the campaign used to devolve power down the chain and empower local organizers. I’m curious to know whether the AFL-CIO or other labor organizations are adopting some of the same strategies or looking at the Obama campaign as an example of new and potentially innovative ways to organize?

Sure….I’ve known Marshall going back to those days of the farm workers, and I admire his good work, especially in terms of helping workers organize. I believe that the labor movement has to put more resources into organizing, that we have to educate and train young people in organizing, or convince them that it can be a very satisfying job. There are some changes that are taking place in many individual unions, in terms of…organizing programs.

I think that there has to be a greater focus on young workers. Liz Shuler, the new Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO spoke at one of the study group sessions and outlined our plans for helping young workers organize and involving young workers more, once they become members, in actual union activities.  We plan to engage them and seek their thoughts…on how they see the labor movement and what changes they think should be made to address young people’s issues and concerns.

“Had we cared a little more about the fate of ideas we tossed around so glibly, we might have paid greater attention to the actions and opinions of those who had been brought up in their shadow.” – Tony Judt in the NY Review of Books

Massachusetts needs a post-conviction DNA access law.  That’s a mouthful, I know.  Here’s what it means and why it matters:

In 2003, Dennis Maher was freed after spending 19 years in prison for three rapes he didn’t commit.  As Maher wrote in The Patriot Ledger on Jan. 25, “I requested DNA testing for years. The judge in my case blocked DNA testing, and I spent an extra six years in prison waiting for him to retire. Finally, the testing was conducted because the judge had retired and the prosecutor agreed to it. He didn’t have to, since there was no law on the books to make it clear that I had a right to DNA testing.”

Forty-seven states have post-conviction DNA access laws, but Massachusetts isn’t one of them. (The other outliers are Oklahoma and Alaska.)  While these laws vary state to state, the idea is similar everywhere – to use DNA evidence to eliminate as much of the guesswork as possible in criminal proceedings.

And the gaps are many. Believe it or not, DNA evidence isn’t always tested at the time of trial, and courts don’t always consider DNA evidence discovered after trial.  In fact, as the Innocence Project has pointed out, it’s “not uncommon for an innocent person to exhaust all possible appeals without being allowed access to the DNA evidence in his case.”  Finally, DNA tests are becoming ever more accurate, and newly developed testing techniques can often offer far more conclusive evidence than tests from years past.

*            *            *

When I first learned about Dennis’ case, I was horrified.  How could a decent society allow this kind of thing to happen? I wondered.  I quickly helped form a group of concerned citizens interested in understanding the issue more deeply and pressing for change.  We’ve since learned that several bills to create a post-conviction DNA access law have come before the Legislature in recent years.  All have failed.

As best we can tell, the obstacle isn’t philosophical: nobody wants to see innocent people in prison.  Instead, the roadblock is financial.  In order to ensure that post-conviction DNA testing can take place, relevant evidence has to be preserved. (The cost of a DNA test itself is insignificant.) This raises some questions: exactly which evidence should be stored?  For how long?  And should local municipalities pay to preserve evidence, or should it be the state’s responsibility?

There are some legitimately tricky questions here.  This month, a group of legislators, law enforcement officials, and other stakeholders are trying to work out a compromise on these issues.  If they’re successful, post-conviction DNA access legislation has a shot at passing this year.

There are lots of reasons for the Legislature to move forward.  After all, for every innocent person in prison, a guilty person remains at large.  Post-conviction DNA laws make it easier for law enforcement to correct mistakes and track down actual offenders.

These laws also free up state resources.  Keeping someone in a Massachusetts prison for one year costs taxpayers almost $46,000. (Dennis’ erroneous imprisonment alone cost the commonwealth about $874,000 in today’s dollars.)

Some observers have worried that granting prisoners access to DNA testing would create a tidal wave of requests.  But this hasn’t happened in other states, and there’s no reason to think it would happen here, either.  As Mr. Maher has written, granting prisoners DNA access “makes the system more accurate, fair, reliable and efficient.”

Over the last several years, a broad chorus has begun to call for a post-conviction DNA access law in Massachusetts.  Recently, a Boston Bar Association task force – comprised of police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, former judges, and other stakeholder – issued a public call for lawmakers to move on the issue.  Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis has chimed in with his support.  Law enforcement officials from around the commonwealth have recognized that post-conviction DNA access legislation is just sensible public policy.

The technical details may be complicated, but the basic principle isn’t.  DNA evidence can help our law enforcement officials free innocents, find the guilty, and keep the public safe.   Forty-seven other states have managed to pass post-conviction DNA legislation.  Massachusetts should do the same.

Ernest Istook represented Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District from 1993-2007.  Today, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, and a talk radio host.

As always, this interview is cross-posted at the Harvard Citizen.

You’ve titled your study group, “Propaganda in American Politics.” I’m wondering how you define “propaganda”.

The correct definition of propaganda is “information that is designed to influence and sway people’s thinking and actions.” The information that they use for this may be totally false. It may be totally true. It may be true but warped and distorted. The point is that it’s designed to sway people’s thinking in a political fashion.

So I try to make the point that just because something is labeled as propaganda, it doesn’t mean that it’s false information. But it is information that should be treated circumspectly and with an understanding of the purpose behind what is being told to people. I hope that all who participate in this study group will have a healthy skepticism of information that they receive, and will look beyond the surface to understand what agenda is driving a presentation, what are any biases, and that they look to multiple sources for their news and information.

A Pew study from September of 2009 measured Americans’ feelings toward major news outlets.   All of the major media outlets – not just the cable news channels – had strikingly different approval ratings depending on the respondent’s partisan affiliation.  Is this an accelerating trend?  If so, should we worry about it?

In the very first session, I described and used a Power Point presentation to detail the news sources that are typically relied upon by members of Congress and other decision-makers in Washington, D.C. I wanted to convey to students an idea of how politicians intake information, how they process it, manipulate it and regurgitate it in different forms. At the highest levels of government people are constantly doing this intake and analysis and sending back into the media what the politicians believe people should know and think about the events of the day. It is a constant propaganda machine that’s in daily operation, making it important to understand where they get their data and then how they send it back out.

What were those news sources that you discussed?

I printed out a copy, thinking you might like this. Let me just go get it in my office.

[Mr. Istook returned a few minutes later with a printout of his study group presentation.]

…This material relates to the classic question that was posed to Sarah Palin about what newspapers she reads. The very asking of a question like that is outdated because most people who keep up with current events turn to aggregators of news rather than to a single news source. An aggregator will give you information that may come from The New York Times; it may come from The Washington Post; it may come from newspapers or broadcast outlets from Seattle or Miami or Omaha, or other places.

I like Real Clear Politics. I think it does a good job of highlighting important material.  There are places like The Drudge Report on the right; there’s The Huffington Post on the left. There are publications such as Congress Daily, National Journal, the Daily Congressional News Briefing, The Note from ABC News, Frontrunner, Hotline – a whole series of these. Most function as aggregators rather than originators of news. It’s not healthy to depend upon one particular news outlet, but you need a way of tapping into multiple sources.

New media allows for the dissemination of information – including propaganda – in a variety of new ways. I’m wondering, though, whether propaganda tactics and techniques are changing as well.  In other words, is propaganda today the same as it’s always been, but just delivered in a new format?  Or are our public conversations facing new challenges unrelated to technology?

A few years ago, the term you heard used was “spin” and you would talk about “spin doctors,” who are trying to organize information and to channel people’s thinking into certain pathways. We’ve gotten well beyond spin. It is so strong that it needs a stronger term, which propaganda fits. Plus, with a government as complex as ours and a society as complex as ours, just giving straightforward data with no perspective and no context confuses many people more than it informs them. So some level of interpretation and analysis is necessary.

The question is whether media openly admit that they are doing this, or adopt a pretense of claiming that they are being objective when really they are not. In one of our study groups, John Fund [an online columnist for The Wall Street Journal] described it as saying, “You cannot expect media to be objective. You can only expect them to be fair.”

When you look at the political and media landscape, do you see news sources that our notably more propagandistic than others?

Typically, people will attribute conservative tendencies to Fox News and quite liberal tendencies to MSNBC. Now, in my observation, I think MSNBC has a more difficult time being fair.  They not only give their perspective but also cast aspersions on the integrity or intelligence of anyone who holds a contrary view. That’s not universally true of MSNBC or of others. But I think in their programming, they go the farthest in that direction. That’s not to say that Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity, or others, never disparage people of contrary opinions.  It is a real challenge to present news and analysis in a way that both attracts an audience and achieves a fundamental level of fairness.

Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers Magazine, talked about this in great length in our study group: Media tend to identify an audience to which they wish to appeal; then they tailor their presentation to appeal to the tastes and biases of that audience, sometimes to the extent of treating contrary thought as having no legitimacy whatsoever.

I’m interested in your distinction between MSNBC and Fox in that respect.

They’re not alone. I thought I’d pick them as examples.

Sure. You described MSNBC as less fair than Fox.  Is that an impressionistic view, or are you aware of any systematic analysis that could back up your view?

One of our guests, Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University – and a Harvard PhD – has undertaken to provide more statistical analysis of things such as that, which is the reason that we had him here.

I think about those characters that you mentioned – you know, Hannity, Beck, Olbermann, Maddow -

Maddow, Schultz. Yeah. I was on-air a lot of times with Schultz – we had a difficult encounter the last time I was on, so I don’t know if he’d want to have me on again.

Oh, how did that go?

It’s on YouTube. Give me an email, I’ll send you a link.  [The link is http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jack-coleman/2010/03/29/heritages-ernest-istook-again-runs-circles-around-exasperated-ed-schul]

Sure. You know, it’s interesting that you mentioned those folks.  To my mind, none of them are even trying to be fair.  They might think of themselves as serious news figures, but by no stretch of the imagination do they exhibit the sort of fairness and competence we would expect from serious journalists.  I’ve been troubled by the place that this group has come to occupy in the American media landscape.  That isn’t to say that I had full faith or confidence in the previous generation of news anchors or anything like that. But it’s a bit of a sad prospect if this group is playing a more prominent role now, isn’t it?

The failures of the old media and traditional media to provide fairness and balance have led to the situation today. The criticisms of traditional newspapers and networks for being biased are very legitimate criticisms.  Once they created the standard that says fairness is not a prerequisite of journalism, then they opened the door for people who don’t even have a pretense of fairness.

I’m not saying that the names I’ve mentioned lack a pretense of fairness, but I just name them as some who are best known for providing opinion or invective.

In the presentation handout you provided to me, I noticed that you included a picture of the cover of Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent….

In one sense, I think his…thesis…is saying that there is an inherent bias created by the corporate ownership of the media, rather than by the attitudes of those who are reporters. I attend different events here where they bring in different reporters, through Shorenstein and such. But I find that most of them tend to reflect a consistent left-leaning viewpoint. Remember that it’s not always whether you make a slanted presentation of the news; it’s also the selection of what you choose to present and what you choose to exclude that can mischaracterize how things are.

When you think about fairness in journalism, do you think about it in terms of an equal balance of journalists who lean one way or the other politically?  Do you think about it more in terms of fidelity to the truth? Or is it something else entirely?

My point is this: Fairness does not dictate that every individual who reports events must give equal weight to arguments of either side (or multiple sides) on a topic, but it means that institutions should make sure that they are presenting multiple perspectives. There’s a key difference there. It doesn’t mean every individual has to portray every viewpoint as though each had intellectual or moral parity. But when an institution presents itself as a new organization, people take note of whether their self-portrayal matches what they actually provide. Today with the multiplicity of media and resources that are available to people through the internet and other means, you cannot hide your slant from being detected. There are too many routes for providing contrary information; it comes bubbling forth.

In your view, are there particular political issues around which the media actually makes it more difficult for Americans to have a useful conversation?  Where could we be squabbling less and talking more productively?

I think energy is one such area, and it’s not just the debate over global warming and man-caused climate change.  It’s also a failure to include the costs of alternative energy as a legitimate factor in the discussion. Some people, because they are totally devoted to a belief in man-made global warming, will disregard the costs to society and to families of what they propose as alternatives.

It’s a little known fact that – let me see if I can remember this accurately…the use of wind power to generate electricity costs about two to three times more than generating electricity with fossil fuel; and solar power costs about five or six times more. If you convert to those sources, peoples’ home electric bills will reflect that enormous increase; manufacturing costs and distribution costs will also reflect that extra expense. The ability of society to make possible a fair standard of living and opportunity for all will be diminished because energy is central to everything and its costs have skyrocketed. [Mr. Istook later provided the following link via email:  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jun/11/mike-pence/pence-claims-obama-said-energy-costs-will-skyrocke/ ]

People who try to squelch the conversation, either about cost or about the legitimacy of global warming, are doing a great disservice.  Yet a one-sided perspective is abundant in so much of so-called mainstream media.

I agree that if that perspective is squelched out of hand, there’s something amiss. My sense, though, is that what you’re saying about comparative costs doesn’t reflect the true social cost of producing energy with fossil fuels.  That social cost would include things like the externalities of pollution and global warming.

The challenge is that introducing a new measurement and labeling it “social costs” cannot be readily compared with other costs that are known through general accounting standards.  You introduce a broad subjective term by saying, “Well, you haven’t accounted for the social costs.” What is that supposed to mean? It should not be treated as though you were playing a trump card–claiming that other discourse had to be abandoned and other viewpoints must yield when someone says “social cost.”

Remember, too, that if you remove the ability of someone to live where they wish to live and work where they wish to work and move freely between those points – if you remove that capability because you make energy so expensive, that is a severe social cost imposed on us all. How do you measure that? How do you offset it?

Well, I agree that it’s a hard task. I don’t know that it’s impossible.  There are economists who try to do exactly that, to literally calculate the social costs that come with climate change.

Usually, they’re very vague and subjective variables.

It sounds like you’re skeptical about even trying to factor in these sorts of externalities.

I’m skeptical about the tendency to use that as a trump card as though it made everything else irrelevant.

I agree with you there. It needs to be considered carefully, just like every other part of the conversation.

Let’s return to Chomsky.  You summarized his view quite well – that given the structure of media ownership, the journalistic outcomes that we see are fairly predictable. I’m wondering whether you agree with this view.

I think there are flaws in his basic thesis. Basically, people who adopt his view tend to say that since people with more wealth tend to have larger megaphones, therefore the answer is for government to step in and use taxpayer resources to give more megaphones to more people.

Part of the challenge today is that government is the source of so much propaganda. Rather than reflecting what people are saying, government resources are often used to try to change public opinion to match the desires of those who hold office.  That’s part of the difficulty that we have today.

It sounds like you’re talking about public financing of elections.

Oh, that’s only one aspect. But if you look at a lot of the studies that are produced from Washington, D.C., many of them are predetermined in advance to further a particular cause or point of view.  That’s not to say all, but there’s a significant number.

I would think that there’d be at least some instances in which it’s appropriate for the government to intervene in some way, to try to change the minds of the populace if they don’t have access to the information they need.

Who decides that?

Well, we put warning labels on poison to make sure people know that there are dangers.  Do you think it’s never appropriate for the government to try to change the minds of the populace?

Warnings on poison bottles are one thing, but the extent to which warning labels have proliferated through government edict are another. We have to remember that government generates a lot of costs.  Take health care as an example.  Most people don’t realize that the costs of health care are magnified by the fact that medical providers are subjected to over 135,000 pages of government regulations.  That creates enormous administrative overhead and bureaucratic cost in the health system, which is reflected in the cost of medical services and the cost of medical insurance. Yet, we don’t see an effort to make health care more affordable by reducing the bureaucracy that has been dictated by government regulation, even though reducing this would go an extremely long way toward improving the affordability of health care.

I’m curious – what percentage of the costs of premiums are represented by the costs of complying with government regulations?

The leading study was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of the American Hospital Association. [Istook later provided this link: http://www.aha.org/aha/content/2001/pdf/FinalPaperworkReport.pdf] The manner in which they described it was to say that for every hour a health care provider spends with a patient, they typically must spend a half-hour to a full-hour on the government-required compliance in paperwork. Now, if you realize that red tape adds 50% or 100% atop the time of actual patient care, you begin to realize the huge cost.  Now, I’m not saying we should abolish all government regulations, but there ought to be an effort to improve this so that people are paying more for actual care and less for bureaucracy and cost-shifting.

As usual, this interview is cross-posted at the Harvard Citizen.

What kinds of contributions do you think that Kennedy School students and the Harvard community more generally can make to Haiti right now, both for the country’s recovery in the short term and for its development in the long term?

In the short term, I think it would be interesting to propose field studies to the students. We need skills, we need competence – that we don’t always have – and it would be important if students here, who are acquiring knowledge in different fields, can come, let’s say, during the summer or when they have a break and participate in some projects, whether it be in health, in education, in environment, in reconstruction – housing, or infrastructure. There are going to be a lot of opportunities and at the same time there is a lack of resources at home in all these different fields.

We, on our side in Haiti, have to work on the framework of the projects, so that when they come, they know that they are going to be of use…and there’s not going to be any waste.

In the long run, perhaps more structural projects can come along.  Also what the university here could do that would be very interesting – because all the universities in Port-au-Prince, where there’s a concentration of higher ed buildings, have been destroyed – is to set up with universities in Haiti some kind of distance learning program, especially in the scientific fields where we have a large deficit.

Also, I know that it’s very difficult for US universities in general to raise funds for the reconstruction of physical buildings, but they can perhaps find grants that can help us to set up labs, computer labs, scientific labs, even if they are small. That can be extremely helpful to students in Haiti, whether in Port-au-Prince or in other parts of the country, because I also believe now is the time for decentralization.

And then, of course, the field studies – that can be helpful to us, but also to the university, for research or development of models that can eventually be applied in Haiti. The university will also be part of the reconstruction process.

Thank you. I’d like to return to that in a moment, but first, I’d like to step back a bit. As you know, the US and Haiti have a very complicated historical relationship. Do you feel like Americans have an accurate picture of that history? And if not, what would you like to share?

That’s a very good question, you know. While I’m here, I’m working on a keynote speech that I’m going to give at John Carter Brown Library at Brown University on May 7, and this is exactly what I’m working on. They wanted a more specific subject, so I chose the trade relationship between the US and Haiti which started even before independence – before the US independence and during Haiti’s colonial time.

I went back to my history books and I am learning a lot. It’s a fascinating history, really, because it started early in the 16^th century, and it’s so complex. But I don’t want to say too much now, and will come back to your question.

I think there are too many clichés about Haiti, too many stereotypes, and there’s a need, first and foremost for us, Haitians, to explain more the complexity of our country, the paradox that we live in, and to project a better image of Haiti. To me, the US – I’m talking about the government now – has an unchanged image of the country. It’s as if the Haiti of the time the US occupied Haiti from 1915-1939 has not really evolved. The policies that were applied then are barely reviewed and re-adapted, but they hardly take into consideration the complexity of today’s world.

There is a need for us to better explain our situation, and find relays like the US universities to convey the truth about the country. That will help to better explain the role the US can play in trying to help us come out of today’s catastrophic situation.

A lot of aid flowed into Haiti in the wake of the earthquake.  Some observers are concerned what while lots of aid is focused on immediate humanitarian needs, not enough has been earmarked for long term or structural development and government capacity-building.  Is the aid going to the right places? And if not, where should it be going?

When you look at a post-disaster situation, there is first the relief effort, the relief phase. You have to bring food, water, medicine to help the survivors. Today, it’s dramatic. We have one million people in the streets. They’ve lost everything they had. The relief effort is an important phase, but it is taking too long.

There are a lot of complaints on the part of the Haitian people.  It’s not so much because there is not enough supply; it’s because the distribution is not coordinated, not properly coordinated. That’s also the responsibility of Haitians and that of the Haitian government.  But the government seemed to have been in such a state of shock that it did not show any capacity to respond to the population’s needs at that particular time.

We had to take care of the dead; it’s true. We had to mourn our dead. We still have to go through the grieving process. But at the same time, we have to continue to save lives. And I think the lack of coordination is probably one factor that was most visible at the time.

Now, your question also had a very important aspect. Haiti will not develop with humanitarian aid. Haiti will develop with investment – investments that create jobs, jobs in the formal sector. And that’s not the type of jobs that are created now. Because there is so much to do after a disaster of such magnitude, the jobs being created are temporary – which is good in terms of giving people revenues right away so that they can get by – but at the same time they are not durable, sustainable in the long run. On the other hand, there has to be some coherence between what is being done for immediate relief and the long-term reconstruction process.

The long term has to do with investment – public and private investments, in infrastructure, in ports, in airports, housing, water, electricity, agribusiness etc. We have 1,800 kilometers of coast and we only have three ports.  Look at what is happening now. The port of Port-au-Prince collapsed and there is only one international airport, with one runway, no taxi ways. That’s why the 82nd US Airborne came in and said, “Hey, there is going to be a disaster”. They took command.  Within hours, we passed from having 10-12 flights a day to a hundred. And we were not at all ready to have that type of air traffic.

The German Public Policy Institute has argued that much of the perception that has shaped the international response has underestimated Haiti’s government capacity that was already in place – that there’s this oversimplified notion of Haiti as a failed state.

It is probably true, but we still have to reinforce the institutions. The government role is essential but we have to build local capacities. It can only be done through our acceptance of technical support, of technical assistance. It’s true for the justice system. It is true for the public works system, the education and health system.

So we should be open. That’s also one area where the Haitian-American students can be very helpful. They can have internships in the ministries and be helpful in different areas. We need to review some of our policies. It’s true. But sometimes, we have very good policies and have no way to implement them because we don’t have the administrators who are competent enough, that have the skills to implement those policies.

Women and girls remain deeply vulnerable in the wake of the earthquake. What can the government, NGOs, or other organizations do to ensure their safety, particularly against the threat of rape in tent cities and elsewhere?

There have been a lot of rapes in the camps and they’ve been recorded even by institutions like CARE. Four major women’s organizations have created a forum mostly for advocacy on violence against women. They have also created a clinic for women victims of rape, sexual harassment and other types of violence where they are given medical and psychological care.  In that process, they also document the cases so that they can eventually bring the cases to court.

The forum’s advocacy campaign convinced the Haitian Parliament to adopt two new laws: one on adultery – because it was very discriminatory against women – so there’s more equity towards women; and then the law on rape, because rape was not a crime in Haiti.  The women’s organizations have been working a lot since the earthquake, going to camps, registering the cases, and also helping with the psychologists they have working for them. These women’s groups are doing a very good job, and they try to work as closely as possible with the Ministry of Women’s Rights, so that the government is engaged also in that process.

Haiti’s a deeply religious country. Can you talk a little about the role that faith institutions and faith traditions have played in Haitians’ response to the earthquake?

I think the churches were really hit hard by the earthquake.  Usually in a situation like this, the voice of the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church or the Episcopalian Church would have been heard right after, because they have a huge constituency in the country and have played, and continue to play such an important role in Haiti. Lots of people are wondering why they remained so silent.

The Catholic Church has paid a high price. The cathedral and practically all the churches in the capital have been destroyed. The archbishop died under the rubble. Lots of priests and an incredible number of nuns and parishioners died when the churches collapsed.  So it’s a huge, huge disaster to the Catholic Church. Moreover, a lot of Catholic schools also collapsed and many students died in those schools.

I had at least three meetings with the Nuncio, the diplomatic representative of the Vatican, since the earthquake and the last one was with the Cardinal of Boston who was visiting Haiti a few weeks ago. The Catholic Church says that its priority is to rebuild the Catholic schools. But at the same time, they need to know what the government’s reconstruction plan is.  Now, the Episcopalians also lost a lot. They had a beautiful cathedral with murals from the most prominent Haitian painters, as well as a school for the handicapped and a music school, all of which collapsed.

All this said, people are praying a lot, in the streets, in the public places, on the rubbles, you can hear the prayers, the chants, and the cries sometimes.  They also go to the Vodou temples. Some [commentators] from some Protestant sects have tried to imply that Haiti and Haitians are paying for their wrongdoings. But of course, that has nothing to do with reality. In fact, a lot of us were upset with this kind of interpretation of a natural phenomenon and with this idea of blaming the victim.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you to you. I hope it was useful.

“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.” – Albert Schweitzer

This sounds about right to me.  A reverence for life, and perhaps a desire for coherence.

I think I agree with absolutely all of this.

Last night, Americans extended health care coverage to tens of millions of our fellow citizens.   As far as I can tell, this is the single most important instance of social progress since the Great Society.

Before our national conversation moves on to the details of implementation, (or to another issue entirely) it seems important to pause and reflect on what’s been at stake throughout this process – our commitments to one another as citizens of this country and as human beings.  Quite often, we preach a poetic set of moral values, but we live by another set of values entirely.  Last night, we closed that gap a little bit.

In the world of gay-bashing, this may well be a first.

As disturbing as this kind of assertion is, I’m sort of heartened by its out-and-out absurdity.  Homophobes are having to reach further and further to justify their views; does that mean that those views are further and further from the mainstream?

Dwight Garner has a review of Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land in the New York Times.  I haven’t yet read the book, but if Garner’s review is to be believed, then Judt sounds a little quick to valorize previous generations of statesmen.  On the other hand, Judt has some deeply interesting things to say about the current situation.  This cherry, for example:

‘”Oddly enough, Mr. Judt writes, the left and right have swapped political modes. The right has become radicalized, abandoning the “social moderation which served it so well from Disraeli to Heath, from Theodore Roosevelt to Nelson Rockefeller.” It’s the left that now has something to conserve, “the institutions, legislation, services and rights that we have inherited from the great age of 20th-century reform.”’

And yet so much of that radicalization feels purely rhetorical.  Despite the hard right’s railing against ‘big government’ and ’socialism’, how many Republicans would really be willing to roll back programs like Medicare and Medicaid if they could do so without fear of political consequences?  How many talk radio personalities truly believe that these services could be adequately provided via private means (or that it would be okay if our society simply failed to provide them)?  My guess: not very few.