(Highlights) JEFFREY ROSEN

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Jeffrey Rosen is a Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School. He is also the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a Contributing Editor of The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. His latest book, for the American Presidents Series, is William Howard Taft. His other books include: Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, the best-selling companion book to the award-winning PBS series; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Freedom and Security in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. Professor Rosen is coeditor, with Benjamin Wittes, of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. He hosts the weekly "We the People" podcast. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the ten best magazine journalists in America, and the Los Angeles Times called him the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You are the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. You're also a writer, educator, a journalist. I think that so many of us, and certainly I, don't know enough about the Constitution. So why for you is the Constitution "the greatest vision of human freedom ever provoked?"

JEFFREY ROSEN

The Constitution expresses the Enlightenment faith. All human beings are born with natural rights that come from God or nature and not from government, and that it's the purpose of government to allow us to exercise our freedom. It's so rich and striking to see how the great thinkers who inspired the Founders of the American Constitution, beginning with the Greek and Roman philosophers Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics, and then continued through The Enlightenment, really were philosophers of happiness. And they believe that we have a right and a duty to pursue happiness, not by feeling good, but by being good. It's a classical notion of happiness rooted in virtue and civic virtue. It's both an individual and a political obligation. The individual obligation to pursue happiness is to master our perturbations of the mind, as Cicero put it, channeling Aristotle–anger, jealousy, and fear so that we can be guided by reason rather than passion and serve others and the public good. And then constitutions are formed to allow us to do that at the political level and to be governed by reason rather than passion, to slow down deliberation so that hasty factions don't crystallize and threaten liberty and equality, and to ensure that the government protects our natural rights rather than threatening them.

It's an extraordinarily galvanizing vision. It's crucially important for personal and political happiness. And that's why it's so exciting to learn about the Constitution.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Tell us a little bit about the founding of the National Constitution Center, its history, and mission.

ROSEN

It is exciting and it's wonderful to share the founding of this great institution that I'm so lucky to work at. So, the Constitution Center was founded by the US Congress during the bicentennial of the Constitution in 1987. It was started in 1988. It's a private nonprofit, but it was created by Congress with an inspiring mission, and I love to recite it at the beginning of all of our podcasts and programs because it gears everyone up for the learning ahead. The mission of the Constitution Center is to disseminate information about the US Constitution on a nonpartisan basis in order to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

Imagine the US Congress today creating a nonpartisan educational institution. It's hard to imagine in a polarized time, but during this brief shining moment, it was created and it carries out this mission on a remarkable series of platforms. It's a beautiful museum of the US Constitution on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, across from Independence Hall, with the greatest view of Independence Hall in America and with statues of the framers and the rarest early drafts of the Constitution and exhibits on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and women's equality and live theatre and interactive displays for kids. It's just this beautiful temple of the Constitution, which I hope anyone who is in Philadelphia can visit because we're now open again during this challenging time.

But our mission is carried out on a much broader platform and that's online. And we have this amazing platform called the Interactive Constitution that I would love your listeners to check out at www.constitutioncenter.org. And on this platform, you can click on any provision of the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment, or the preamble or the Fourth Amendment or whatever you like, and find the following amazing content. First, we have essays by America's leading liberal and conservative scholars describing what they agree about and what they disagree about. Imagine a thousand words about what the Second Amendment means that both the Left and the Right agree about. It's like a unanimous Supreme Court opinion.

And then you have separate dissenting opinions or concurring opinions for every clause, then you have the ability to explore early drafts of each of the provisions and see that an early draft of the Fourteenth Amendment, for example, which protects equal protection, would have protected African-American voting rights, although that provision fell out. And an early version of the First Amendment, for example, would have applied against the states. Madison proposed an amendment that would have required the states as well as the federal governments to respect freedom of conscience, but that amendment didn't pass. So that ability to explore early drafts is wonderful. Then we have all of the podcasts and public programs and videos that we host about contemporary events. And I have the great fortune of every week calling up a leading liberal and conservative thinker to debate the constitutional issues in the news from: can the president build the border wall? to most recently, we just recorded this week's podcast on: can he, by executive order, raise unemployment benefits? Or a historical podcast about the legacy of Frederick Douglass. It's just a thrill to learn from these great thinkers and to share them through the wonderful podcast form. Our podcast is called We the People and I hope people will check it out. And then finally, and this is the recent innovation that's just so meaningful, we've started offering live classes on the Constitution that are free. And I hope your listeners will check those out, too, as soon as COVID hit, we just went online and some colleagues and I started teaching the Constitution three days a week and we got thirty thousand students in middle, high school, and college students to sign up from March to July. And it was such a hit that we launched again at the end of August, throughout the term. The whole schedule is online at www.constitutioncenter.org three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with guest lectures like Supreme Court Justices.

You also are a teacher through your podcast and you know how meaningful these platforms are. I just find it so meaningful to be able to have conversations about the Constitution with my colleagues, to take those questions of students via zoom, and then to try to inspire people to learn more on their own. So that's what we do. And I am a teacher, as you said, and having the great fortune of being able to work with other teachers and educators at the Constitution Center and using these amazing online platforms to reach learners of all ages is so fulfilling. And that's why I am so lucky to be at the Constitution Center.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

So you have these great educational programs, and I'm sure you have lots of visiting programs with schools. I guess you could differentiate by different age groups, but young people, when they visit your center, what are they engaging with? And then with the online interactive website, what do you find really excites them? The ones that you find discover they might like to pursue law? How are you getting them in? What really is the turning point?

ROSEN

Well, of course, as you say, people engage in different ways at different ages. For younger students and learners, just seeing those statues of the framers, touching them, and sitting on their laps, and relating to them as human beings is so powerful. As the rap musical Hamilton shows, just seeing Hamilton and connecting to him as a human being is really great. And the live theater is so inspiring that we have a wonderful show called Freedom Rising, where an actor tells the story of American freedom in 20 minutes, and it's really great. But when it comes to online learning and to discussions about the Constitution, generally, of course, you need a question that people can relate to their own lives. So there's no point in talking in the abstract about Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. You've got to say something like, Can the school principal search your backpack if you suspect you might be carrying ibuprofen, non-prescription drugs?, which was a Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court, by lopsided margins, said, No, a school principal can't commit a strip search of a young girl in high school because he suspects that she has prescription drugs hidden. That's unreasonable and invasive, and people can relate to it. Or, can the government follow your movements on Google 24/7 by reconstructing your movements, getting your cell phone records, or tracking your browsing habits? People can relate to that, too. So you start with a concrete case, then you can go back and read the text and then learn about the founding stories that inspired the principles of the amendment, like the writs of assistance that sparked the American Revolution and led to the prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures, and then relate it to questions the Supreme Court has decided throughout history, and then get back to the present.

And throughout all this, we're having an interactive dialogue, and we often take votes before and after the discussion, and then afterward we see whose mind has been changed based on the discussion and whose mind has been opened to the arguments on the other side. And, even though no matter how many minds are changed, almost everyone's mind is open.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I would like to ask, on another level, beyond the law, which I know is hard to think about it, but I do get a sense of anxiety from young people and obviously from established artists and creative thinkers, that people feel people are very much aware of this Doomsday Clock, this reality we're living in. We feel a sense of responsibility. And I feel sometimes like if we wait for laws to be enacted or we wait for amendments, that maybe those changes will not happen in a timely manner. In terms of the things that are important to you or where you focus your interest beyond the law. What are some initiatives you're involved in or that you think are important?

ROSEN

Well, I asked Justice Ginsburg a version of this question. It's an important question, obviously, I asked her what her advice for my then 13-year-old boys was. She said a few important things. First, she always repeats the advice that her mother gave her, which is to master unproductive emotions like jealousy or fear. They're not productive, and they can distract us from useful and productive work. And it's the ancient Stoic wisdom. It's extremely difficult to achieve. She achieved it more dazzlingly than almost anyone I've ever met. Her astonishing focus and self-discipline and refusal to be distracted from her path of pursuing justice and being a great justice was remarkable.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Dahlia Haddad. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Interviews - FEATURED

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Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives.

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

PETER D. DITLEVSEN

Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO

Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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