MOUNT MADONNA SCHOOL Interview with Bonnie Campbell Director of the Office of Violence Against Women - Justice Department May 22nd, 2000 Alison Alderdice: What was it in your life that inspired you to take on such an active role in women's issues? Bonnie Campbell: Actually I think it was something of a mistake. I'm not sorry I did it but I also wasn't planning it. When I was State Democratic Chair in Iowa, I set up a crime committee because I wanted to see if the party's view was in the mainstream. I discovered that a lot of the people who were most unhappy with the Justice System tended to be women, particularly women who were battered or women who were rape victims. I was really intrigued by that and it sent me on this journey to find out what is different about these crimes. In large measure, it was a product of the times. I was inculcated politically in the "60's when the women's movement was gaining a lot of steam. But I was really intrigued by this sense of alienation that women had and that is what keeps my interest in the criminal justice system and the rights of women. Good question. Alison Alderdice: Why do you think it took until 1995 to create the Office of Violence Against Women? Bonnie Campbell: That's a very thought provoking question because the question is also being asked by many people why there is a Federal office dealing with violence against women. The Federal government has really never spoken to domestic violence or sexual violence against women, because as all of you know, these are crimes that are traditionally prosecuted at the local level. You may have noticed that the Supreme Court the other day struck down a civil provision in our laws asking in a different way the same question that you asked: What's the Federal government doing in this province, which is traditionally and typically local? I do think, that the other parts of our legislation will not be reversed by the Supreme Court. One never knows, but that's my hope. I think it took that long because of the fact that it was traditionally not an issues that Congress had to deal with. In the mid-80's, Senator Biden who authored the Violence Against Women Act, made pretty much the same discovery that I was making at about that same time. He discovered was that there are an awful lot of people out there who don't have very much confidence in our Justice system and they are disproportionately women. So he thought maybe we could and should be good partners with the states. That is my view at least, of how it has unfolded. I don't think it's because members of Congress don't care about women - I think that would be a ridiculous assumption - I think it has more to do with a view, a traditional view, of who in our complicated legal system is supposed to do what. Katiy Fayram: So what impact do you think the Supreme Court ruling on the Violence Against Women Act will have on your work? Bonnie Campbell: Well, it was only on one part, one provision of our very long and complicated Act. So I don't think it will have a profound influence, but it certainly was disappointing for us. I should make a point that when the Violence Against Women Act passed, there had been rather extensive hearings about how violence against women changes the way women live their lives. A huge part of the emphasis was on the economic impact because we were relying upon the Commerce clause in the Constitution to give Federal jurisdiction. So Senator Biden held hearings and people talked about the impact on health care costs when women are beaten. For example, we heard about the repercussions when young women decide not to go to college in a certain place because there is a high crime rate, or they don't work late because they know that it's dangerous to leave your office late at night and go into a parking lot or into a Metro system. So we made this record about the economic burden to our society of violence against women. But after the law passed and was signed in 1994, the Supreme Court in "95, handed down a case basically saying that using the Commerce clause in that way really was not acceptable. So I think when Congress passed the law, they had every reason to think they were in compliance with the Supreme Court's precedence but then the Supreme Court handed down a different decision and we are in the process of assessing what it means. I think our first thought might be that states would want to consider enacting such legislation themselves and in that way get around the need for federal legislation. But I don't think it will have any impact on the rest of our statute Jesse Bazarnick: What do you see as the highest priority right now in furthering the efforts to reduce violence against women? Bonnie Campbell: I honestly believe that the first priority has to be changing the way we think about these crimes. When we talk about it in the abstract, everybody says "Oh my gosh, that's terrible, who wouldn't support these initiatives?" But police officers don't get them in the abstract. Prosecutors don't get them in the abstract. They get them usually as very difficult cases. Just one quick example from when I was doing training for judges in New Hampshire. There is a provision in our Act that says if you are the subject of a protective order, you can not possess a firearm. This of course makes perfect sense; that the combination of a batterer and a gun is a very dangerous combination, but one of the judges said to me, "Well what about when hunting season comes around?" Of course my brain is scrambling to say, "What about when hunting season comes around" because there is no exception in the law for that? And he just said point-blank, " I'm not going to take the right to hunt away from a man, I don't care what the Federal Government says" . So in the abstract, that judge would agree that violence against women wreaks a terrible havoc upon our society. But in that specific case, he really wasn't going to comply with the law. He said to me "what are you going to do about it?" and of course my answer was "nothing" . You know the law, I guess you'll have to make your own choice." It seems to me that our most genuine and difficult challenge is getting people to think about the implications of family violence as they ripple through our larger society. For example, if we are worried about school violence, I wonder how many of these incidents involve children who come from violent homes. I don't know the answer, but I wonder and I suspect that it would be a very interesting and enlightening answer. We are talking about kids involved with drugs and gang activity and gun activity. My guess is these are kids who come, often, from violent homes. We don't know that, and we certainly don't suggest that all kids who grow up in violent homes will have difficulty in their lives. But there is no question, and the data shows that children who grow up in violent homes are truncated in many ways in terms of the opportunities available for them. As a general rule, the boys who grow up in those families act out, become disruptive, often become batterers themselves. The girls tend to be more inward. They become depressed, suicidal, very withdrawn and often grow up to think that being victimized is normal. Put in another way, children learn from their first and most important teachers that violence is normal. I've learned that in my marriage to my husband of 25 plus years that I tend to argue just the way my mother argued! And why is that? Because I heard it and I learned it, and I suspect that the fact that my husband doesn't argue back, he learned from his parents as well. He just sort of says, "well, I'll see you later" . We learn how to cope, we learn how to behave in our interpersonal relationships from our family. Maybe if I'd grown up in a violent home, maybe I'd pick up things and throw things at him. But I didn't grow up in a violent home, and I don't do that, and I don't think it's normal. One's definition of normal is pretty much what you are accustomed to and I think many people believe violence is normal. So our big challenge is to get the word out that it is not, and you don't have to live like that. That is a huge, huge job. It really is. Jesse Bazarnick: How does media play a role in that? Bonnie Campbell: The data are not clear. I have always intuitively thought that if we learn violence as a behavior, then violence on television and so forth must be a bad thing. Yet as I said, the data are not clear. Some data we've seen very recently suggests that kids who grow up in violent homes and then see violence on television, for them it reinforces what they already know. But for people who didn't grow up in a violent home, they watch the violence and they know that it is a movie or it's a television program and they don't internalize it in the same way. In other words, some things resonate with some people, and some things don't based upon a life's experience. I don't think we can build a very good case that violence on television can be regulated because clearly, our constitution does not permit for much of that. The President and Congress have taken the tack of encouraging people who produce television programs to think about the violence, and really ask the question, "Can we convey this same kind of entertainment without sending that violent message?" I wouldn't say that that has been very successful. My personal plea is, if you are going to show and glamorize me shooting several people, then at least take the next step and show the consequences. The pain, possibly the death of innocent people, the suffering of their family, what happens to me…maybe I'll be executed, at least show the consequences of that violent behavior. As it is now, when you see a TV. program, I kill all these people and the show ends and I seem to be doing just fine. That isn't the way real life is. So I worry about the culture of violence that seems to exist in this country and perhaps in many other countries, and I do think our television is much more violent. We've talked to many Congress people on both sides of the aisle that really support the Violence Against Women Act and they've all expressed their support. I was wondering if there is any active opposition in your work? Bonnie Campbell: It is very minimal and I've been incredibly grateful for the bipartisan support. You are absolutely right. Often when appropriation time rolls around, my program will be the only one in the whole department where we get more that we asked for! It's a really, really rewarding thing. I hope that in some measure it's because we've spent it wisely; we've spent it as Congress has told us to do. The only opposition has come, and I don't necessarily understand it, from some men's groups who are frustrated that the decision was made to call this the Violence Against Women Act. Also there are some conservative women who don't like our work, or at least don't like our verbiage if you will, for some sense that we paint all women as victims. I actually take some of their comments quite seriously because I think the words we use do matter and I don't like to paint anyone as victims. But I'll say something on the earlier point, why the decision was made to call this the Violence Against Women Act. I think it's worth saying, even though nobody here has asked that question. For me it's analogous to the fight against breast cancer. Men do get breast cancer and men, many men actually, die of breast cancer just as women do. But as we formulate our message and try to target, we of course want to target an anti-breast cancer message to the group that is most at risk, which is certain to be women. So it is with this particular kind of violence. Men are battered. There are women who batter. There are women who murder and women who are just plain criminals. But statistically, most of the time, the victims of the violence are women and the perpetrators are men and even when the victims are men, the perpetrators tend to be men as well. So those two small groups of criticisms are the only words of criticism that I have heard. I think that is pretty remarkable. Really. But, it's also hard work and the real hard part of the work is getting people to think about these crimes and who experiences them in a very different way. Laura Johnson: In a Time Magazine article, you were said to be "the force behind a grass- roots shift in the way Americans view the victims ---and perhaps more importantly, the perpetrators---of crimes against women." Can you say something about that shift in view? Bonnie Campbell: Well I think that is just another way of saying what I've been saying in response to that very fine question, "What's the biggest challenge?" 20 years ago, certainly 25 years ago, it was the stated policy of most policing agencies not to arrest if they went to the scene of a domestic dispute. Now why did have that policy? It was because that's how most of us felt about it. Go there, cool things down, take Joe around the block and have him just relax and take a deep breath and then everything will be fine. We didn't want to arrest him; it would disrupt their family, what would the kids think, it would hurt his good name and all that goes along with public disclosure. But then the new thinking became, "wait a minute - these are criminals. If he assaulted a stranger, he'd go to jail. Why isn't he going to jail for hurting someone he's supposed to love? In fact, victim's advocates in New York sued the New York Police Department for failure to protect in cases where the victims had obtained a protective order that was never enforced, as they rarely were. In court basically the plaintive argued that women did not get equal protection of the law because most of the time women are in danger not from strangers on the street but from people close to them in their own homes. If those people are never punished and prosecuted, how do we ever guarantee to women, just the right to be safe? The fundamental right to be free of violence? Of course the court agreed with that assertion and the New York Police Department was held liable, and there have been other similar court actions. I think now our main goal is to make the point that there will be consequences for this behavior. I suspect that we will have to fine-tune what those consequences are, but right now it includes jail in most places. This is a means of conveying how wrong, how criminal, we view this behavior to be. I'd like to share an interesting story. I'm not sure what I think of it myself other than being appalled. I was on a program where we were talking to the people who write soap operas and it was called "A Soap Summit." I don't watch soap operas and never have, but I do remember this conversation concerning All Our Children, or All the Days of Our Lives. Luke and Laura met because Luke raped Laura, and then she fell in love with him. Well if you know anyone who has been raped, you know the likelihood that love would arise out of that relationship is pretty remote. So we were trying to get the people who write these soap operas to think about what they are doing. So I did my little spiel and lo and behold later on the program, they had two batterers. I was very interested to hear what they had to say. And they both were there because they had been violent-free for awhile. One of them was a man about my age. He has a PHD in Humanities and is Dean of a college in California and I'm thinking, "that doesn't quite resonate with me." He told his story of raping and violently beating his partner, and why he made the decision to stop and go into this program. But he never did get arrested or any thing like that, never lost his job. So needless to say, someone in the audience said, "Well, why do you batter, why do you do that?" His answer was completely shocking to me. He said, and he was very passionate, and I felt, sincere about it, "I could never get you to understand this, never. But at that moment when I was choking her or slapping her, it was so powerful. It's more powerful than drugs or sex. It's so addictive." He was getting into it, right in that room! You could just see that there was something not wired right in his mind. So I asked the next question, which was, "Okay, then what made you stop?" He said, "Consequences. It was clear to me that I was going to kill her and clearly face the consequences. That it was going to get out, I'd lose my job, I knew that I was this close to experiencing consequences." For me, that was a powerful moment because it affirmed my own belief that the reason men batter is because they can, and we let them, and they have never had to experience the consequences. If you play professional football and you do drugs and you get caught, you are off the team, you are off the team, period. Am I right? There are definite consequences, but if you beat your wife almost to death, you will play the next game and there won't be much conversation about it. That's beginning to change. There are very few consequences, very few consequences. There are beginning to be and that I think is what will ultimately change our culture. We must overcome the victim-blaming mentality that we all have, including myself so when I say this I'm not preaching. We all have been raised in the same culture. To this day, people ask me more than any other question, "Well why don't those women leave?" as if it is their obligation to control the violence by leaving. Well how many of you think that leaving stops the violence? It escalates it. That's when women who are killed get killed. They are always, always in that process of extricating themselves and their children from that relationship. So we have this rather cavalier, "Well, some man would hit me once and I'd be out of there attitude." In truth, leaving is not an easy thing to do, but even if it were, why are we blaming her for the violence? Why are we assuming that she can control the behavior of someone else? We do it with rape as well. I actually think rape is even more intractable. This is a common scenario: Imagine, I have eaten too much lunch and I haven't exercised so I decide even though it's a little bit dark, I'm going to out on the jogging path right by my house. I do and someone grabs me off the path and rapes me. You know what the first thing out of people's mouths will be: What was she doing out after dark anyway? Not: What the heck is the rapist doing out raping people, but why was I out after dark? I am a cantankerous contrarian and my answer is, I'm a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen. Why shouldn't I be out after dark, enjoying my freedom? But the reality is that violence against women is more limiting of our freedom than the lack of any civil right. Now, I don't know where all of you live, but if you live anywhere near an urban center, the odds are great that the women in this room give some thought every single day to their own safety, whereas, as a general rule, the men do not. Is that right? What do you do each day to assure your physical safety? Karl Koltznecht: I don't do anything. Mira Vissel: I don't like to go out alone at night. Bonnie Campbell: I used to not go to the law library after dark because I couldn't get back to my car across campus. That's just a small matter, and I didn't flunk out of law school, but I used to feel that it was quite annoying that my ability to go the law library, based on my availability, just wasn't there. So I really think the need to quit blaming the victims of these particular crimes and recognize culturally that little stuff that we do is important. I always compare it to a bank robbery. You know the FBI always investigates bank robberies and U.S. Attorneys prosecute them because they come under Federal jurisdiction. Well, imagine that a bank is robbed and the FBI agent shows up and says, "Well, Madam Bank President, what did you expect when you've put all your money in one place? You should have known that they'd rob you!" Well, that's victim-blaming in an another arena. That is absurd! I then always take it one step further: If we prosecuted the bank robber and then sentenced him to bank-robber's treatment programs, I assure you that the U.S. Attorney would get a stern talking to by the Attorney General, but that is what we do with violent batterers often enough. We just send them to treatment, and they nod and agree and get out, go right back home and beat her up. The point I'm trying to make is that it is a lot of work, in changing the way we have always thought about these crimes: that they're private, they're personal, they are none of my business. Unfortunately, we've learned now they are my business. If one of my employees is living with a batterer and tries to leave and he comes in here with his automatic weapon to get her, it's suddenly my business. Unfortunately, those stories you read about every single day. Jahmin Lerum: Do you see the media as a willing ally in your work? Bonnie Campbell: Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. They still report domestic violence cases in a very peculiar way often enough. They are getting better. They certainly do, now, at least report these cases. That suggests that they understand that this is a problem, but it is subtle. I just ask each of you the next time you see a story, to think about it. It'll be something like, "George Jones allegedly shot and killed his wife and three kids." Then there will be a little paragraph blaming her. "They were estranged, she had moved out of the family house right? She was trying to leave the state to get away from him!" What they don't tell you is that she "moved into a shelter." They make it sound like she abandoned him. So they have all these facts that are sort of half right without conveying that he is the reason she was leaving. So they are kind of half-way there. They are at least understanding that these are treacherous cases, that there are no winners in them. But they haven't quite got it right about who's at fault. They still are writing stories that usually suggest that he was heartbroken, she's this wench who is just so mean to him, that she's taking their kids and she's leaving. Then in a moment of heart-broken passion, he goes and kills them all. This just happened out here in Maryland. It made him seem very sympathetic. Now in reality, he was a vicious batterer, always had been. She had every rational reason in the world to leave, but by the time I got through the story, it was clearly her fault and maybe she halfway deserved to be killed. It was very frustrating that they did not present a more complete picture, or none at all. It would be better just to say this couple was estranged and the consequence of that was that she's now dead as are their two children. It is very frustrating, but at the same time, they are beginning to understand that they need to talk about it. There is much more coverage of these kinds of cases. Allison Alderdice: You mentioned the effects of movies, TV and news coverage, but I'm wondering how other popular culture, such as jokes or music comes into play. Some people think that it effects it a lot, some people think it doesn't effect at all. How much do you think those kinds of little things effect the way people think about women? Bonnie Campbell: I think that they both affect the way we think about women and reflect the way we think about women. You can't always change what's in someone's heart and that is just a fact. If only we could! But as a society we can suggest that certain kinds of behavior is simply not acceptable. The jokes about women, the putting-down of women, clearly help to create an environment where women are debased, dehumanized and therefore it's okay to hit and hurt them. I don't think there could be that kind of violence without the psychological abuse that comes first. You could call it whatever you want; I call it a sense of male privilege, which is not the fault of any male in this room. That's the culture that we have grown up in, most of us. Now I do think that you young people are growing in a very different culture. You can tell me whether you think the sense of male privilege is gone or not. It might be, but it certainly was there when I grew up. I think that sense, that everyone's world revolves around the men in it, and they are privileged to do whatever they want, was very much alive and well in my young life. I loved the men in my life, don't get me wrong, but they clearly ran the house. That's just the way it was. Without that sense of male privilege and the imbalance of power, that battering would not have happened. It is about power and control. Therefore batterers must believe that they have the right to control another human being, and I would argue that no one really ever has that right. For some part of your lives, certainly your parents do have the right to tell you what to do to a point. But adults, in mature, intimate relationships are quite another story. If I went home and said to my husband, "I demand that you fly to Iowa tomorrow and do the following five things for me", he would look at me like I was crazy! That's not the way I like to think normal people relate to each other. Now I could go home and ask him to do that and he'd probably do it because he's a good person. But that isn't what batterers are about. They isolate, and chip away at one's self esteem and ego and convince you that you are the reason that they are battering. "I wouldn't do it if you were a decent person, if you'd cook my meals and do my laundry and greet me at the door with a smile on your face. If you do all those things." But the women who are battered report trying to do all those things, "Walking on eggshells" is how they all describe it. It doesn't matter how good they try to be, if he comes home looking for a fight, there is going to be a fight. He didn't attack the clerk in the grocery store or the gas station attendant. He attacked her. So he didn't just lose his temper. He didn't do it because he lost control, he did it to gain control. That is absolutely universally true of batterers. They want to control the other person. Many of them will do so even if it means killing her and himself. A lot of these incidents are murder/suicide so we are not talking necessarily about rational people. Have you ever heard the expression, "Death by a thousand cuts"? That's how I feel about the words that are hurtful, the depictions of women in disgusting ways. It's all a part of the dehumanizing process, because if you esteem someone as an equal you wouldn't be inclined to hurt them. Jenny Johnston: When there is physical abuse, there is very physical evidence. But when there is emotional abuse there is really no such evidence. So what I want to know is how you combat psychological abuse when you don't have any tangible evidence to work with. Bonnie Campbell: I think it's very difficult, and of course our law doesn't deal with psychological abuse for that very reason. There is no way. It's hard enough when there is actual physical evidence of abuse. There is no way, I think, that we are ever going to permit someone to go to court and say, "Well, he said I was fat and that hurt my feelings." That is, by the way, what all batterers say. It's like they have a script. So it's very, very difficult. What we try to do in all of the programs around the country; rape, crisis and prevention programs, and domestic violence shelter and services programs, is educate people about signs that you should look for in determining a controlling person. Especially among young women right now, there is this sort of culturally acceptable belief that if he is really jealous and really possessive, that means he loves me. So if sometimes he hits me it's just because he gets jealous and it just means that he loves me so much. So we try to educate people that that may seem kind of quaint and charming but it is indicative of a very violent, potentially violent personality or at a minimum, a controlling personality. But you know when you are in love with someone and dating, it's kind of cute if he gets jealous. If you've been married to twenty years and he's still quizzing you about every minute of every day, that's not funny. Life is way too short. So we try to educate people about what are the personality traits that should tip you off; maybe isn't the kind of person you want to get too involved with. Kyle Felder: Earlier in the week, we were talking with Teresa Lore (Director of the President's Interagency Council on Women) and Alyse Nelson who is the Deputy Director of Vital Voices for the President's Interagency Council, about the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women. They both felt that this was an incredible, unique and inspiring event. I was wondering how, as a US delegate to that conference, was that experience like for you? Bonnie Campbell: It was really a remarkable experience. I came here in March and that conference was in September, so I felt like I barely had my feet on the ground to say the very least, when off I went to Beijing. I have to tell you, because I was from the United States and running this new program, I was like a Rock Star or something! People kept looking for me all over. 24 hours a day practically, I was telling people about how we got this statute passed or at least what I knew about it. I come from a political background, and I have enormous respect for the rule of law, for processes and institutions and at this particular conference I think the coming together of the women of the world was very much focused on the violence issues. In my arena we are talking about domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking by and large. We don't deal with sexual harassment. That is someone else's bailiwick. But the violence issues of women around the world were really so much more profound. It was quite overwhelming. It is very hard to say what I was feeling. In political science there is an expression that the wonderful thing about an idea is that you can't kill it with a bullet, you can't lock it up inside some state or national boundary, you can't throw it in a box and put the top on and detain it. An idea lives way past, maybe, the person who even conceived it. I got the impression at that conference that the idea emerged that women would no longer be burned because their dowry wasn't adequate, mutilated so that their husband's don't have to worry about their sexual fidelity, or raped as strategies of war. All of these things that happen to women around the world, that they were not going to take it anymore. It was very empowering. So I'm over there with these issues that I think are critically important and affect women all over the world, but on top of those issues, these other women are dealing with being sold into sex slavery, which is now a huge issue. So huge that Madeline Albright has put it on the radar screen. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries has escalated that problem. In some countries for example, a man can divorce his wife without any notice to her at all. So, she's in her home, because often they are forbidden to leave, and he just goes off with someone else and one day she realizes he's not there, there is no food, and she has absolutely nothing she can do. So the bottom line is, it was an overwhelming experience for me. I thought I knew a lot about the world and I discovered then that I didn't know very much about it at all. I was proud of our country for addressing these issues which are extremely difficult. I made contacts with women that I am still appreciating and maintaining to this day. It is really quite remarkable. On the trafficking issue in particular, we are hoping Congress will strengthen our laws this year so that we can have more impact. It was an amazing thing. I had never been to the any of the previous World Women's Conferences and so it is something that I will remember as very meaningful. Derrick Diaz: The historian Barbara Tuchman, defines a hero as someone with nobility of purpose; who do you think a hero in our society would be? Bonnie Campbell: Oh my gosh. I actually have a lot of heroes. Joe Biden is a hero to me for conceiving this Violence Against Women Act. I think both President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton along with my boss, Janet Reno and Madeline Albright, for keeping the drum beat going on these issues. Because there are other issues that come pressing down on those decision makers every single day, but we've never asked Janet Reno to do something that she was too busy to do. She always has said yes, she's always behind us on these issues. These are real heroes in my mind because it wasn't always the case that these were particularly popular issues. They're also the kinds of issues that will go away if someone isn't there every day reminding us how important they are. There are a lot of heroes and heroines in this country today, I really do believe. I get quite perplexed when people laugh, if you will, about the honorable characteristics of public servants or the honorable-ness of public servants. I'll tell you one that really hit me the other day was Bruce Babbitt. He walked into a very angry crowd, and was saying, "yeah, we screwed up." He clearly identified what went wrong and when. I think that is very heroic. He might have made up some interesting words that didn't say much, but he walked right into it and told the truth. I think that is heroic. There are lots of people who do that. Aaron Jacob-Smith: Storytelling is one of the main ways that culture transmits values. How do we need to alter the story of America to further your goals in ending violence against women? Bonnie Campbell: Well, I think that the stories of victims, survivors if you will, are the stories that have changed our attitudes about these particular crimes. Let me back up because maybe I need to provide a little context for your really good question. The reason these bad behaviors have been permitted to thrive and continue is because as victims, one of the things that women always did was never tell. It was embarrassing. You didn't tell someone if you were raped or sexually abused as a child and usually it was because somehow the perpetrator had convinced you that it was really your fault after all. That is true even with incest which is very prevalent in our society. It is a real barrier to bad behavior to know that the person you are about to abuse just might tell. I'm thinking of the very high profile case of Claudia Kennedy who is the Three-Star Army General, right? I happen to know her; she is also on the President's Interagency Council. Most women in her position would not have probably told, certainly wouldn't have told ten years ago, absolutely wouldn't have told twenty years ago because your career would be dead as a doornail if you did something like that. I think, she is a hero to me. That had to be the hardest decision she has ever made and she would not have done it if the man who allegedly harassed her, hadn't been promoted to a position where he would be making judgments about claims of sexual harassment. She would probably have never told another living soul. And it is so unfair that she would either put her own career on hold or be expected to keep her mouth shut while he went on to be promoted and revered and so forth. So I think the telling of the stories in that sense is a critical part of helping us all to understand the damage that is done. Because if you don't, if nobody knows you're injured, they are not likely to want to do very much about it. But if you tell what it is like to be a battered woman and how much it hurts, not just the broken bones and the scars and the black eyes, but how much is hurts your soul when someone you love hurts you, even has the desire to hurt you, that is a really powerful story. It is the telling of those stories that has changed the way we look at these crimes to the extent that we even call them crimes. Dov Rohan: Drawing on your experience, what's the most important advice that you can give to our generation? Bonnie Campbell: Well, I think the best advice I can give to your generation is one that I sense is happening anyway. To respect all people. For their lives, for who they are. In every culture there is something like the Golden Rule; Do Unto Others. Little sayings like, "What goes around, comes around", all these things, "It's a long road that doesn't have a turn." Well it finally dawned on me one day that those are all just different ways of saying that "he matters as much as I matter. She matters as much as I matter. And we are all here on this very complicated earth and wouldn't it be nice if we all respected each other and treated each other the way that we would like to be treated?" I do lament the lack of civility in our society today. I think that we would be so much better off if we just simply remembered the fundamental rule that you should treat everyone as you want yourself to be treated. That assumes an egalitarianism that must be there if men and women are to be on equal footing. There are no classes of people who are better or worse. We are all here inhabiting this same space and there is nothing inherently better about anybody. I really do sense that young people are less racist, less sexist, more interested in diversity and more appreciative of our differences. Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone on Earth thought exactly like I think? I mean who would I have to argue with? Whose food could I go eat that was new and different? The phrase came along a few years ago, "Celebrate Diversity" because to me, that's our great strength that we are different, and it makes life interesting. It just wouldn't be very interesting if we were all alike. Mr. Mailliard: That is the point that the political philosopher, Michael Sandel raises, along with a number of other people, that we shouldn't just tolerate diversity, we have to embrace diversity especially in a pluralistic system like ours. Bonnie Campbell: I think, coming from Iowa which is largely white, it was really thrilling to come to D.C. where every other person may or may not speak English but somehow we all communicate. I think that is an interesting distinction too, not just tolerate diversity but really embrace it. It does seem so simple to me, but apparently it's not. Mr. Mailliard: You've been incredibly generous with your time. Thank you.