AMES
MSNBC anchor and business correspondent
Ali Velshi was in London in June during the prospective withdrawal of
the United Kingdom from the European Union.
On June 23, a referendum was held to
decide whether the UK would leave the EU. The referendum saw a 51
percent vote in favor of the UK’s departure — a departure that is
widely known as Brexit.
“Brexit was the real wake-up call,”
Velshi said. “Everybody in London did not want Brexit, but everyone
(in England) outside did. It was this issue of mineworkers and
manufacturing workers who felt that their jobs were being stolen by
technology, globalism and immigrants. Sound familiar?”
Velshi was invited
to Iowa State University to present the fall 2017 Manatt-Phelps
Lecture in Political Science. He discussed the impact of the Trump
administration’s domestic and international policy shifts last
Wednesday night in front of hundreds of students and faculty in the
Great Hall of the Memorial Union.
The Manatt-Phelps Lecture in Political
Science was established by Charles and Kathleen Manatt together with
Thomas and Elizabeth Phelps in 2002.
Charles Manatt grew up on an Audubon
farm and graduated from Iowa State University, along with his high
school sweetheart wife. Charles Manatt and Thomas Phelps founded the
national law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, headquartered in Los
Angeles, California. In 1965. Charles Manatt was chairman of the
Democratic National Committee in the 1980s and U.S. ambassador to the
Dominican Republic from 1999 to 2001.
The Manatts remain involved in Audubon
County, notably with the Taylor Hill Lodge.
Charles Manatt passed away in 2011. His
wife and daughter Michele were present for Velshi’s speech and a
reception at Iowa State.
The lecture committee extends an
invitation to prominent professionals and scholars to address issues
in international policy and economics as they relate to Iowa and ISU.
Velshi is an anchor of MSNBC Live. He
is also a senior economic and business correspondent for NBC News. He
served as a business correspondent for CNN from 2001 to 2013. He
would then work for Al Jazeera America from 2013 to 2016 before
joining MSNBC.
Velshi started with an excerpt from an
acceptance speech given by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., after the
senator received the National Constitution Center’s annual Liberty
Medal:
“To fear the world we have organized
and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we
have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of
international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope
of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism
cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve
problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma
of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
“Our attachment to democracy
sometimes clouds us to the thing that holds it up, and that is
pluralism — the idea that we are not meant to be the same,”
Velshi said after the excerpt. “There’s a lot of things happening
in this country to suggest that we are moving away from that”
Velshi cited the Arab Spring, Brexit
and other instances of political unrest to support the notion that
people in several nations — including the United States — are
feeling economic and political angst fueled by unevenly distributed
wealth.
He also cited the September retirement
of Equifax CEO Richard Smith as an example of CEOs “being paid too
much to lose.” It was reported that Smith would receive $90 million
from the credit-reporting bureau after his departure.
Smith was the third Equifax executive
to retire following a data breach in early September that put the
personal information of as many as 143 million people at risk,
according to Fortune.
“That is what’s wrong with our
system,” Velshi said. “All over the world there are examples of
regular people that have struggled for decades to try and advance
their station in life — and all they see around them are rich
people — and television shows about people making money and
flipping their homes.”
Velshi was also critical of U.S.
Democrats and Republicans — stating that they should focus less on
debating and more on solving problems.
“We have real issues to contend with.
Being sensible has got to to trump everything else,” Velshi said.
Velshi concluded by saying that health
care and climate change are the two most important issues in the U.S.
He said that the Trump administration’s alteration to the Obama-era
Affordable Care Act are incorrect. He suggested that the outcomes
that come out of countries with universal health care, like Canada,
are better than the outcomes that come out of the U.S.
He also stated that climate change is
real and that it’s “almost a uniquely American phenomenon to be a
climate denier.”
“This is a remarkable time to be
alive,” Velshi said. “It is a remarkable time to witness greater
change at a faster pace than you can ever imagine. We have
auditoriums like this, full of students that are going to solve the
world’s problems. You will be the ones who will right the ship and
get America speeding along in the right direction.”
In an interview after the speech,
Michele Manatt said that she was amazed by the range of topics that
Velshi can talk about. She said that Velshi was delightful to work
with and eager to speak at Iowa State.
“He was quite masterful in the way he
made his points,” Manatt said. “I leave here sober about how
things stand (in the U.S.) as we speak. We have a lot of work to do.”
Michele Manatt was a senior policy
adviser in the State Department during the Bill Clinton
administration. She led congressional affairs in the White House Drug
Czar’s Office. She is now involved in public diplomacy as a board
director of the U.S. Diplomacy Center Foundation.
“He was very generous with the time
he spent with students, which is what you want,” Michele Manatt
said. “We would like to hear suggestions from students on who they
would like to come next fall.”
Manatt said that she will be looking to
invite a senior elected official to give the 2018 Manatt-Phelps
Lecture. She added that the lecture committee was also looking at
inviting someone of international origin.
Anyone with
recommendations for next year’s lecture is encouraged to contact
the Iowa State Lecture Program or the Iowa State Department of
Political Science.