LA Times Festival of Books @ UCLA

Went to the big event at my old campus on Saturday. Had tickets to the session at 3:30 in Haines 39. The moderator was Larry Mantle of KPCC Airtalk. The four authors were on this panel because they were finalists for the LA Times Book Prize in Non-Fiction.

Mantle posed a few questions first to Judith Levine author of "Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children from Sex." Her premise is that the overemphasis on abstainance sex education and restrictive laws are not helpful. She acknowledged her views made her extremely controversial. In particular was her comments on sexual abuse. She highlighted research that said female minors almost always viewed unwanted sexual advances as negative but that male minors did not always have such a negative reaction. Though she didn't say pedophilia is okay, her remarks pointed that way. She became a lightening rod for those remarks and became a target of a smear campaign.

I certainly don't think people should be smeared with false charges but if you are going to use your first amendment rights to speak out on controversial matters you shouldn't be surprised critics will use their first amendment rights to fight back.

In another particularly interesting exchange with Mantle was over statutory rape laws. Mantle following the logic of her arguements asked whether such laws made sense. Levine countered by saying it is a complex issue because what defines sex and what defines age of consent. She cited that in some states sex with a 16 year old would be statutory rape while in another it might not be.

Her topic was quite timely in light of the Sen. Santorum controversy. However, when we move from consenting adults where I'm cautious about trying to "legislate morality" to matters involving children, I would be less sanguine than she appears to be. She seems to believe that children are capable of dealing with sexual issues. I'm not comfortable with that supposition. It seems to me our sex drenched society robs the innocence of childhood.

Mantle then moved on to Timothy Ferris author of "Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril." This was the one "feel good" book of the lot. Ferris described how of all the fields of knowledge only astronomy and mathamatics has amatuers who make significant contributions to the field. He talked about how technology has made it possible for many non-professionals to study the sky and add to the research of the PhD types that have access to the giant telescopes of the world.

It was pretty obvious that the other 3 authors were getting a lot of the questions. But the Mantle being the ever thoughtful host made sure the final questioner of the session would direct a question to Ferris. Interestingly, Ferris took that opportunity to put his subject into the context of the world events. He remarked that the startling advances in technology and science coincided with the rise of liberty through democracy. He believed the two were not unrelated phenomena. As such, recent world events have made us think about the value of democracy and what are the elements that actually make it work.

Samantha Power author of "A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide" and Kira Brunner editor of "The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention" were the final two panalists. Both recounted in their books examples of genocides and ethnic cleansings in recent history and the actions and in many cases inactions of the nations of the world. They both acknowledged that the USA is often in a "dammed if you do and dammed if you don't" situation in regards to slaughters throughout the world. They like multi-lateralism but realize it is hard to organize. They believe governments should do something to stop killings but realize that intervention still has to be on a case-by-case basis. Most helpful was their observation that the reason inaction is the default position of governments is because of domestic politics. Leaders are not going to be voted out for doing nothing but if they do something and it goes badly they will suffer domestic political consequences.

One interesting exchange with an audience question was in regards to the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turkish. Power recounts that at one time the Turkish government was investigating it to identify responsibility but eventually dropped it and now more or less deny the slaughter ever happened. Power said that when governments acknowledge what happened there is often healing. She cited how Germany made sure everyone growing up in Germany knew what happened in the Holocaust.

An additional point about the Holocaust that they made was that in some perverse way the fact that we know so much about the Holocaust of WW2, we almost seem unable to believe it can happen again today. The idea of 800,000 people dying in Rwanda is incomprehensible.

Their presentations were informative but at times they "stepped on their points" by attacking the Bush administration's intervention in Iraqi. I don't think it was lost on all the audience members that with one breath they criticized the inaction (Rwanda) or lateness of action (Bosnia and Kosvo) and in the other breath belittled the US effort in Iraq. They seemed unable to give the USA any credit for taking a stand on Iraq.