Will welcome once more to the Frank Batten School at University of Virginia. Today is going to bring closure to a semester-long voyage through the public policy challenges ahead. We've had two goals on this journey. First, to map the territory ahead. Second, to help equip you with the key tools to shape public policy. Now remember, your first cut at the 2030 agenda was dominated by domestic issues. About 90 days ago you said the agenda would be dominated by five primarily domestic issues. These included, budget deficits, immigration, gun control, economic growth, along with energy and climate policy. We discussed then the National Intelligence Council's key conclusions. These included an accelerating rise of Asian economies, especially China and India, the rapid pace of urbanization, the growth of the global middle class and the role of new so-called disruptive technologies and what role they will play in challenging existing public policy norms. Now we asked you last week to reassess this agenda. We did some top hat polling, and your answers after some 48 class meetings were decidedly more transnational in outlook. Your recent responses for example, place much more emphasis on managing US China relations, a nuclear nonproliferation from Iran and North Korea as well as global energy and climate change policy. Now a key theme throughout the semester in this course has been stressed overall, and that is the change that technologies will bring will have a profound impact on the menu of public policy options you'll have. So in this sense, Heraclitus was right. The ancient Greek sage warned us that quote, the only constant is change. Your future promises accelerating change. Hyper change, Al Gore calls it. Change on steroids, Warbird calls it. Your generation will have to redefine citizen rights to privacy, under the onslaught of invasive new technologies. Worldwide, you'll be pressed by technology, you'll be redefining medical ethics from the beginning and the end of life decisions. You'll address clean water challenges, energy, and climate change. And you'll start curbing some of the free riders who extrude externalities without paying the real cost. Here in the United States you'll like re-legislate war powers and issues we discussed a lot in this room. You'll reset limits on presidential power in an age of drones and cyber war. You'll tackle debt and investment policy, and in this sense I'm heartened, you'll probably achieve the grand bargain, and it's clear there's a consensus approach there when we've got the political will. You'll also likely reform elections and campaign finance. You'll redefine how federalism operates, recognizing the distinction between local and global approaches is blurred in an era when so many challenges are transnational in scope. Now another major theme of this course has been that heightened suspicion of federal power creates alternative policy making options. Thus, it seems clear that millennials here in America will likely expand the experimentation we've seen among our 50 states on the new frontiers of social policy, whether it's law in Georgia that essentially permits guns everywhere, to California's cap and trade. Whether it's Massachusett's Romneycare, or Colorado's redefinition of Rocky Mountain High with their new tax windfall from cannabis commerce. So your policy-making future will force a remarkable transformation of both the international environment, and I personally believe, of our national politics. The recent Pew Center poll, offers some really fascinating data. Among millennials, amongst your cohort, respect for major social institutions, surprise, has gone markedly down, whether you're talking about Congress or Wall Street, down to historic lows. Now, there's a great danger. This kind of data might invite slacktivism, a kind of why bother checking out of public affairs that can disenfranchise an entire generation. This might abdicate power, leave it leave the policy making field to professional politicians and entrenched incumbent party bosses who have narrow self interested agendas. Well I like to repeat the old phrase that they're lies, damn lies and statistics. Therefore, let me give you some more optimistic stats to balance these bleak numbers. Let's start with the fact that 70% of millennials, surveys confirm, see public service as noble. And think about AmeriCorps, 600,000 people applied last year for less than 60,000 jobs. Similar numbers, 60,000 applicants for just over 7,000 AmeriCorps jobs. Now you know here at UVA, where so many of you are already engaged in community service that we send the largest corp in the country to the Peace Corps. And we see similar activism overseas from millennials. Whether it's the courage of young activists we heard about in this room from the Arab Spring, where the systematic efforts of democracy activists from Caracas to Hong Kong. And I would submit that these brave young people are not exactly slackers. Now when I think about the public policy challenges ahead and how big they are, I keep coming back to the same clumsy metaphor. I think of the New York city firemen and the women on 9/11. I think of last year's Boston Marathon volunteers. They were faced with a perilous challenge, a threat to their fellow citizens, and what do they do? They ran towards the danger. It's a bit dramatic, but if you'll permit me, the image is out. We baby mooers, boomers are exhorting you millennials to run towards the challenges. Get yourself to the state capital. Get yourself to Washington. Get yourself to the UN, or get yourself to local town council. Use these tools wisely, please. Now, the Batten School does not train armchair analysts. And speaking very personally, I have zero interest in standing before you and training a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks. We have enough of those sideline hecklers. Those smug voices on the partisan daytime television show that feature infotainment, and what I call tragiporn, but no real news.
