2021 Irving Kristol Award Presentation

Robert Doar: Welcome to tonight’s Irving Kristol Award dinner, and thank you all for being here to honor an outstanding scholar, citizen, and friend, Mary Ann Glendon. I’m Robert Doar, and I wanted to begin by saying how especially nice it is to have the former vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney, here with us tonight and Lynne Cheney.  

Amb. Glendon is an ideal choice for the Irving Kristol Award because her work reminds us of something that Kristol himself stood for and that we at AEI stand for. It’s the principle that policy and politics must ultimately embody our highest moral commitments. Virtuous public policy is built on the inherent dignity of every human being, the necessity of meaningful community, and the love of country. In the policy battles in Washington, it is easy to lose sight of these essential goods. Amb. Glendon keeps her students, her readers, and her fellow citizens focused on them. At AEI, we strive to stay focused on them too. Our best research responds to current controversies while offering long-term solutions rooted in a commitment to securing freedom, dignity, and opportunity for all.

For example, today, the primary threat to freedom and human rights in the world is the Chinese Communist Party. China’s leaders commit ethnic cleansing against the weaker minority, threaten Taiwan, and have suppressed Hong Kong’s freedom. We at AEI are committed to exposing the true authoritarian nature of the Chinese regime. AEI scholars, including last year’s Irving Kristol Award winner Nick Eberstadt, along with Dan Blumenthal and Derek Scissors and Kori Schake and Zack Cooper and Klon Kitchen and Oriana Skylar Mastro and others have been vindicated time and time again in their assessments of the true nature of the CCP.

But there are threats to freedom and dignity from within our borders as well. Proposals to expand the size and scope of government seek to redefine the relationship between the American people and our government. Here, too, AEI scholars defend free enterprise, human dignity, and individual liberty from great challenges, both from the progressive left and the populist right. As doomsayers condemn free markets and limited government, Michael Strain’s research shows that capitalism still works better to raise living standards and promote opportunity than any other economic system. To Michael, it is clear America delivers on its promise, and free enterprise is as integral to that promise to our prosperity, individual liberty, and virtue as it has ever been.

Every day we see misleading claims about the state of mobility and economic opportunity in America. The work of AEI’s Domestic Policy scholars led by Ryan Streeter takes on this needless pessimism with blunt, but collegial, critical analysis. Ryan’s work reminds us that the best and most effective antipoverty policies are those that expand employment and that the negative effects of government dependency can last for generations.

New and popular ideologies that hinder the pursuit of truth also present a threat to freedom, dignity, and flourishing. AEI scholars are telling the truth about the dangers these ideologies posed to the American creed. Three such scholars are Ian Rowe, Naomi Schaefer Riley, and Rick Hess. Their work exposes what happens when children are treated as instruments of adult political causes rather than human beings with great potential who need both loving and stable homes and schools, which promote hope and possibility, not division and despair.

Yuval Levin, who will conduct the interview with Amb. Glendon this evening, and his team are providing a vision of a renewed conservative constitutionalism that can unify and inspire diverse peoples under a common appreciation of the meaning of their American citizenship.

Now, all of this work by AEI scholars attempts to meet the very high standards set by our honoree tonight. For more than 50 years, Amb. Glendon has been contributing to the public discourse on important issues with intelligence and grace and a deep understanding of what true human flourishing requires. Now, I could talk about her many books and articles, her teaching, her diplomatic work, her public service. Rather than hearing from me, I want you to hear from someone who has seen her up close and in action on all these fronts.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called Amb. Glendon a mentor and a model. He was a student of hers at Harvard Law School, has been a friend of hers ever since, and called upon her advice and service when he ran the State Department. In President Trump’s administration, Secretary Pompeo stood for American global leadership, worked to bring greater peace to Israel in the Middle East, and championed decisive action against foreign terrorists. Thank you, Secretary Pompeo, for that service and for joining us and providing an introduction for your friend and mentor of many years. Secretary Pompeo.

Mike Pompeo: Well, good evening, everyone. You know, as a secretary of state and now as an unemployed former diplomat, from time to time, I get the incredible opportunity — I’m called upon to talk about important events and my views on things around the world. But tonight, tonight is very different. Tonight I asked for a chance to speak about a very important event. I asked AEI if I might be permitted to share my personal love and appreciation for Professor May Ann Glendon. She is, as your president just said, a friend and a mentor of mine. This award, the Irving Kristol Award, is something that fits her perfectly.

The award itself is now two decades on and recognizes greatness in those who have influenced public issues and those who have mentored the next generation of conservatives. And I must say, Robert, under your leadership, AEI continues that tradition each day. You serve America in an important way, showing the world about the hope and optimism and exceptionalism of our great country. Bless you for that.

So, back in the summer of 1991, 30 years and three months ago, I had just left the United States Army. I was lucky. I’d gotten admitted to Harvard Law School, and I needed a job. The school rag — it was called the record, it was that little daily tip sheet — had an opportunity for someone who wanted to be a research assistant for a professor who was “writing about family, human rights, and the place of faith and community in the lives of every human being.” So, this young student said, “That’s interesting, but what’s important is that it pays $7.50 an hour.” And it wanted someone who would start immediately.

So, I went up and I had the first chance to meet and learn from my friend, Amb. Professor Mary Ann Glendon. It was my good fortune to have been fast on the draw because there were students from all across the campus that wanted to come be around her and work with her and learn from her. In that way, I’ve learned so much from her, although, as she reminded me one day when there was a particularly bad New York Times story, she says, “That was your idea, not mine.” True enough, Mary Ann.

Look, those of you who’ve been fortunate to know her, to read her many writings, know of her enormous intellect, she is even more profoundly a woman possessed with a towering commitment to her faith and to her family. I saw this firsthand. These twin capacities have made her a true academic giant in communicating the central understanding of family and community as the central feature of the moral well-being of both every person and of every culture and of every nation.

Her influence on the global discourse on this set of issues continues to this day. You would all know her from her time as the US ambassador to the Holy See. It’s perhaps what she is best known for in political circles. I remember reading about the amazing work she did when she was working on behalf of the Vatican at a women’s rights conference back before the turn of the century. When she represented each of those institutions, the United States and the Vatican, she spoke with enormous moral clarity. And importantly, if you know Mary Ann, always with good cheer.

When I became secretary of state, I watched. And the State Department would send — there’s a couple of my former team members here tonight, and Mr. Vice President, you’d know this too. The State Department sent cables around the world about human rights and what our diplomats ought to be saying about this. And I would read them from time to time and think, “On what Earth is this America’s understanding of human rights?” I promise you if I didn’t understand it, our founders would have had their heads explode. America on the global stage had adopted an understanding of human rights that was very much of the radical left and had departed from our nation’s history and traditions in ways that truly presented risk. As we spoke on the global stage about human rights, they had ignored not only our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution but the work that Eleanor Roosevelt and others did on the International Declaration of Human Rights. These cables suggested it ought to be on the ash heap of history.

So, in my spare time, I decided I was going to fix this, and I knew no better person to call than Mary Ann. She took me up on the offer, and by the time we got off the phone, we’d been sued by over 300 entities. My fault, Mary Ann, not yours. In the end, we created what was to become the US Commission on Unalienable Rights. And after months and months of hard work, she had empaneled a group from many faiths and from many American political traditions. And she’d built out a team, and she ultimately wrote what is an absolutely beautiful document. It’s called “The Report of the US Commission on Unalienable Rights.” Good luck finding it on this State Department’s webpage. But I believe that the work that she and her team did will stand the test of what it is America ought to be as we think about protecting the dignity of every human being as we travel around the world. I must say faith leaders from conservative Catholic groups to Islamic organizations, Muslim civil organizations have applauded the work that Mary Ann did. And she continues to work on it.

Today, she reminded me that I am paying her less than she paid me when I was her young research assistant. I must say, too, Professor Glendon lived out most of all of her academic and great work she did with the love of her life, Ed Lev. I had the privilege to get to know him; she allowed me to meet him. He was a Marine who tolerated this Army guy. And while Mary Ann is possessed of an enormous amount of grace, it comes naturally, as does her optimism. When I saw her in Ed’s presence, it was always multiplied with still more warmth.

I had the privilege too — I know Katie’s here tonight with you, Mary Ann. I had the privilege to get to know some of her family members. She lived out everything she talked about when she talks about the fact that family is the central unifying force for civilizations that are successful all around the world. Mary Ann, you have crushed it as a mother too.

I want to thank you all. Your decision to bestow this award on Mary Ann is so fitting. Her grace and force have benefited so many of us. She has been a shining light of this very fact, with respect to each human being, having the dignity that’s provided to us because we are created in the image of God. I once joked with Mary Ann that if you can teach a redneck from Kansas about Montesquieu, I might just be able to teach a Massachusetts girl a thing or two about the Heartland of America. My mistake, however, was that feeble attempt at humor misunderstood that Mary Ann understands the true heart of the United States of America and why it is so exceptional and so great and what our duty to it requires.

You and your hard work and talents, Mary Ann, have blessed so many of those who are here tonight, and to honor you and to be part of the celebration is truly a joy for me, my wife, Susan, and for our family. Congratulations, Mary Ann, on this much-deserved award, and may the Lord continue to bless you. Congratulations.

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Yuval Levin: I’m Yuval Levin and I’m here for a bit of conversation with our honoree tonight so that we can all have a chance to learn something from her. Mary Ann Glendon, congratulations, first and foremost. It’s just a thrill for us to be able to honor you in this way. And on behalf of everybody here and everybody at AEI, thank you for allowing us to honor you in this way.

I guess the place to start is really the breadth of your career as a legal scholar, as a teacher of generations of lawyers, an important public voice as a writer, and as a diplomat, as a public servant. There’s a lot we could talk about in that. But it strikes me in looking over that broad career that one thing that really stands out again and again in the work you do, and in what you try to remind us of, is the idea that we all owe one another something. And that question of what we owe each other is somehow really central to the idea of the human person at the core of your work, what we owe each other as human beings and as citizens. You’ve given us a kind of vocabulary of moral obligation and responsibility alongside the essential vocabulary of individual freedom that’s so much a part of our national character.

And I want to dig in a little bit to that question of what we owe each other. Maybe the place to start so that we can begin where Secretary Pompeo took us and kind of dig from there is with that work you did leading the Commission on Unalienable Rights for the State Department over the past few years. Tell us about that experience. Tell us why did you take that assignment, and ultimately, what did you see as the purpose of that work? How does it connect to the concerns you bring to your work?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, it was a pretty easy decision to take the assignment. One of the things that I always admired about Secretary Pompeo was his determination to advance American interests while never losing sight of American ideals. And when he told me that he thought there was a need to take a look at the underlying principles of American foreign policy, I was intrigued. And when he told me that he wanted the study to be grounded in the distinctive American rights tradition and the tradition that we committed to when we approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I really couldn’t refuse, since so much of my work had been in that area.

And the fact is that it was high time for such a study. As the secretary said, the understanding of human rights — generally, not just in the United States — was in chaos. The consensus that had supported the post–World War II Human Rights Project was falling apart. And yet, there were and are millions of men and women all over the world who are suffering the worst kinds of violations and who still look to the United States for leadership, hope, help, and encouragement. So, it was an easy decision.

The only thing that made it hard, Yuval, you will remember the commission that you and I served on a long time ago, President Bush’s Council for Bioethics. And I knew that this was not going to be an easy assignment, but the chair of that commission was a previous recipient of the Irving Kristol Award, the great Leon Kass. And it was in good measure Leon’s example that made me think you should not decline a difficult task when you’re asked by someone you respect.

Yuval Levin: What ultimately was the core case of that commission, as you see it? What was the argument you were eager to get across?

Mary Ann Glendon: I’d have to start by mentioning one of the main conclusion, one that we all felt very strongly about, and that was that the United States has a special obligation to promote human rights, along with everything else that it has to promote in its foreign policy. But that conclusion required clarifying a couple of points about the very confused area. And so, one of the things that had to be cleared up was that the list of human rights to which there is international commitment is relatively small. Not everything that a particular nation-state considers a right, not everything that a particular advocacy group considers a right, is an internationally recognized human right. So, that had to be cleared up.

And then the other thing that had to be cleared up is that universality of a general principle does not mean uniformity in bringing it to life. It has to be enculturated within each national context. So, the core case, as you call it, really the heart of the report was drawing upon the great distinctive rights tradition of our country in order to refresh and reinvigorate our commitment to the international principles.

Yuval Levin: You know, the way that you put that, that work obviously bears on the debates we’re having now about American history — how to regard it, how to teach it, how to approach it in front of our children, how to think about its highs and lows. How do you regard that peculiar debate, if you can even call it a debate, that we’re having now about the place of American history in our self-understanding?

Mary Ann Glendon: I think one of the most important contributions of our report and one that we were not conscious of making at the time we worked on it was to provide a corrective to the flawed narratives that were about denigrating the American founding. I would urge everybody to read the part of the report on the American rights tradition, which we did not view as linked to a particular date or a particular aspect, but as a blend of many influences that gave it, that sometimes they push against each other, sometimes they reinforce each other. But they give our tradition a great capacity for self-examination and self-correction.

Yuval Levin: You know, you described our tradition as the American rights tradition. And yet, in some ways you’ve thought more deeply about the limits of rights talk than maybe anyone in our country. The work of yours that I first encountered was your wonderful book “Rights Talk,” published about 30 years ago that warns about thinking about what we owe each other too much in terms of rights, that says there’s more than rights to this. Help us think about that argument. And where does it stand today? Thirty years later, how do you think about the development of American discourse around these kinds of questions?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, 30 years ago, when I wrote that book, it was a critique of a particular way of thinking about rights, but it was a critique from the perspective of a person, myself, who had a great appreciation for all the good things that rights can do. And you remember what was going on in the world at that time. Like the rest of the world, I was watching the impending demise of apartheid in South Africa, the impending collapse of totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. And, at the same time back home, I was noticing the things that rights aren’t well suited to do. I was noticing that the more the rights idea gained power, the more various contending groups were attempting to harness that power to their own agendas. And what was already clear back then and becoming ever more clear is that rights, while they can do a lot of great things, they are not particularly well suited to resolving complex social issues or profound moral controversies.

Yuval Levin: The language of rights very often turns out to be the language of a side of an argument that feels itself losing the argument. It’s made in defensive terms. And in the last few years, in particular, we’ve seen a lot of people inclined to that kind of talk, especially around the question of religious liberty. For obvious reasons, for valid reasons, people have argued that assaults on religious liberty are the way to understand some of the ways in which this country’s traditions have been under attack. You’ve argued that we should be careful about talking about religious liberty, that we should be careful to understand what religious liberty protects and not simply the fact that it is somehow the right of an individual. How has that argument about religious liberty that so many people in here in this room have been and so many of us have been engaged in look to you from that perspective, seeing the limits of rights?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, in my view, most of the religious liberty disputes that we have right now involve tensions between religious freedom and other good things — nondiscrimination, for example. And it seems to me that the best way to approach those is not the all-or-nothing run-to-the-court rights approach, but the way we have often handled those most successfully in our society is Aristotle’s sense of free persons deliberating about how to order their lives together. We seek accommodations between competing goods, and in most cases, accommodations are possible. So, I think that there are a couple of obstacles to making those accommodations.

By the way, the United States was once the wonder of the world for creating a society where members of all religions or no religion could live together, not only coexist but flourish. But right now I’m an activist in that area.

So, I see two big obstacles. One is that a lot of the most vocal opponents of religious freedom don’t want accommodation. They don’t want to learn how to live with their neighbor. They want to run him out of his job, and they want to destroy his business. They want to undermine his institution. But I think an even bigger obstacle than that is that it’s getting harder and harder to convince people who — in our growing population of people identify as nonreligious or unaffiliated, it’s getting harder to convince them that religious freedom can not just be collapsed into speech and assembly. And what that means as a practical matter for friends of religious freedom, as you yourself have written, Yuval, we have to do a better job of convincing people that religious freedom is a not trivial pillar of our democratic experiment, that our society is better and richer for its religious diversity, and that government should not ask people to violate their deepest beliefs without a very good reason. We have to work harder.

Yuval Levin: I mean, where would you start in persuading a person for whom this is not a personal investment, a person who’s not religious, who doesn’t see their own lives directly affected by the debate? Where do you begin? Why does this matter?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, this is a tough argument to make, but I think you have to go to the cultural supports of the democratic experiment. And, you know, the founders said that this was an experiment, and it would require a greater amount of civic virtue in the citizens than any other form of government. And where do those qualities of character and competence come from? They have to come from what I call the seed beds of virtue. So families, religious groups, schools.

Yuval Levin: You talked about a first obstacle before this second one, which sounds basically like the unwillingness of, frankly, the cultural left in America to engage in a process of accommodation, of accepting the reality that people with different views are going to continue existing. And that way of articulating the challenge, I think, naturally points a lot of people to worries about the academy, about what’s happening on campus, dangers about fundamental academic freedom, and really the question of how people within the American academy now understand what they’re up to and what they’re doing. You have been a professor of law at Harvard for a long time. You’re in the middle of these fights. Tell us about these fights from where you sit. People may not be depressed enough, so we need —

Mary Ann Glendon: I don’t want to get in trouble here.

Yuval Levin: You won’t get in trouble here.

Mary Ann Glendon: I’m worried as a person who has spent most of her adult life, I’m worried. I’m worried about the movement away from the traditional aims of a liberal education, transmitting knowledge, encouraging independent thought, encouraging the pursuit of truth, enabling students to make balanced and informed judgments about competing views. I’m worried about the increasing intolerance on college campuses of views that don’t accord with prevailing academic dogmas. Irving Kristol said a long time ago, he referred to American universities as little islands of intolerance in the sea of diversity, the sea of freedom. And I was thinking — you know, it was a long time ago when Irving said that, but I was thinking, well, the islands are, you know, they’re turning into peninsulas, and the sea is getting very choppy.

Yuval Levin: How do you handle that? Where you sit, how do you handle that as, you know, let’s say someone with tenure, relatively safe, but you’re watching this happen? You’re watching it happen to your students. You’re watching it happen to your colleagues. What do you propose? What can be done?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, I think it is really, really important. I’m going to quote Irving Kristol again just because he has such piercing insights. Irving said one time — I think it was Irving, maybe it was Norman Podhoretz, because the two of them, I was in many seminars with them, and it moved very fast. But he said in the 18th century, England, intellectual life had passed from the universities into the coffeehouses and that in America, it had passed into the think tanks. I think that was when he was associated with you guys, but it is absolutely crucially important to have independent-minded scholars. And, I mean, a disappointment for me is when people get tenure, what are they afraid of, that somebody won’t have lunch with them? Come on. So, I think independent scholars ought to take advantage of the fact that tenure was established to enable them and do — after all, it’s a very privileged job to teach in a university. And so, why not teach?

Yuval Levin: Imagine that. On that line, maybe, tell us a little bit about how things have changed on campus. How have your students changed over the years that you’ve seen them? You get to see some of the most elite students in America. Presumably, Secretary Pompeo was not an average student, but you see impressive people. Are they still impressive people? Have they changed? Is there something different about the character of today’s students that contributes to the situation we’re talking about?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, I started in 1968, so this is a long span. But, I think it’s significant that in a group of highly qualified college students who come into law schools. I teach first-year property. And those are big classes, and you don’t get to elect that course. So, I got a pretty good sample.

What do I notice? Well, first of all, English grammar, writing skills, are really the most — in my opinion, the single most important skill of a lawyer is writing. That seems to have declined. But, more importantly, more importantly, it’s somewhat dismaying that the knowledge of our institutions, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the structure of, you know, James Q. Wilson’s book on the American political system, somehow they don’t have a grasp of that. And that’s really depressing.

Yuval Levin: Your description of what’s happening on campus, in a way, points to a broader problem, right, well, beyond the campus where we’re clearly having trouble now in a lot of American life talking about divisive questions. One way to describe our situation now, the kind of cliched way, is to say we have two parties. They’re always at each other’s throats everywhere you look. But if you really look at what’s happening in America, we have two parties who have each escaped into its own little echo chamber to talk about the other. And we don’t have a lot of engagement. We don’t have a lot of real civic discourse in America.

Why has it become difficult to talk about hard questions, maybe, especially the kind of questions that you have worked on, the questions of what we owe each other and how we should think about that? A lot of your work — and “Rights Talk” was like this, too, in a way — it’s really about American political discourse, social-cultural discourse. How do you describe, how do you understand where it stands now?

Mary Ann Glendon: To me, that’s a very troubling question. And I think it is maybe if not the biggest question facing the country but certainly right up there because it forces us to face the problem of what binds Americans together. What makes us a nation rather than a geographical entity with a line drawn about it and a government? And then even more troubling, that forces us to think about a very old question and political theory. Can you have a republic in an extended territory with a heterogeneous population? And all the classical political philosophers, as you know, said no. And in fact, if you try it, it will eventually end up in despotism. And the American founders said, “Yes, we figured out a way to do it with our ingenious design for government.”

But as I mentioned earlier, they said this particular form requires certain characters and certain kinds of character and competence in the citizens. And there’s a really curious passage by Madison and Federalist 55, where he sort of alludes to this question, and he says, “I think the present genius of the American people will suffice,” but he declined to speculate. He’s actually thinking about the country growing. He says, “What will be the case when the country expands in population and territory would require a prophetic spirit to declare.” And I think really that’s a big question that, I mean, you don’t even want to raise it because it’s so big. But I think that’s really where we are.

Yuval Levin: And how do we find our way to a better answer to that question? If what’s required is civic formation, if what’s required is republican virtue, to use an old-fashioned term, where do you begin? Where does that come from in a society that can’t take it for granted, that has to make sure the rising generation is somehow formed around it?

Mary Ann Glendon: Yuval, whoever can answer that question would get a Nobel Prize. You know, I think, the — it begins in small places, and it really requires a transformation of culture. Do we still have the right stuff for a transformation of culture that will support this amazing experiment? This is America’s gift to the world, this great design for government. This is our monument, and it’s worth saving.

Yuval Levin: I’ve led you down a few paths that point in worrisome directions. So, maybe let’s think about what makes you hopeful from your vantage point. You’ve seen America from all kinds of angles. What in this moment is the greatest cause for encouragement and hope for you?

Mary Ann Glendon: Besides the Virginia election.

Yuval Levin: That’s good too. You’ve read the room.

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, a good friend of mine gave me this little bracelet that says “hope” on it, but that’s to remind me because a combination of my Irish heritage and my New England congregational heritage on the other side gives me an exceptional capacity to see the dark cloud behind any silver lining. But we do have a lot going for us.

There are reasons to hope. I think among them are stubborn religiosity, our attachment to a risk-taking, gambling, profit-making economy. And maybe most of all, Federalist 1, the belief that we are not just the playthings of force an accident. We can affect the course of events by reflection and choice. And that’s — I mean, reflection and choice about what we want to pass on to our children and our grandchildren. And that’s why I think education is just crucially important. We need to pay attention to that at — from K–12. You know, you talk about the universities and the sad condition that most of them are in, but the universities are just building on ideas and attitudes that are being inculcated at a much earlier stage.

Yuval Levin: As you see that the people in this room very much agree with that. We’re a community of scholars dedicated to precisely that kind of vision.

So, maybe to end, what advice do you have for us, for AEI, for scholars here, for our larger community,? Where do you think our energies should be focused?

Mary Ann Glendon: Well, I hesitate to give advice to such a distinguished group. I do think that I do want to once more reemphasize the importance of independent scholars and wherever they are in think tanks or universities. They are going to be crucial to keeping the lamp of learning alive in what is a difficult age. And as for advice, I really can’t improve on the advice that Vizsla Harvil and Carol Wartsila gave to Eastern Europeans in the most difficult years. Live in truth and call good and evil by name.

Yuval Levin: Amen to that. Well, thank you very much. It’s such an honor for us to celebrate you. And as you see, you’ve got a room of people here who are ready to learn from you. We just appreciate enormously your accepting our invitation to do this.

And before we fully close, I just want to thank all of you and thanks, Secretary Pompeo, and also thank the people who are watching on our livestream tonight. This will end the livestream. For those of us here in the room, it’s time for dinner.

So, let’s end with one more round of applause for the great Mary Ann Glendon. Thank you.

Mary Ann Glendon: Thank you. What a pleasure.