Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers the 190th Landon Lecture Series speech on “In Defense of the American Rights Tradition” at Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas.
Transcript
Well, good morning everybody, and welcome to the 2020 academic year here at Kansas State University. I’m Dick Myers, and I have the privilege of being the President of Kansas State University. Classes started last week, and we are pleased to be able to kick off our Landon Lecture Series so early in the semester. What better way to start the semester than opening minds and stretching our thinking through the experience and insight of our speaker today. Before we get started, let me offer a little history on the Landon Lecture Series for those not familiar with it. This series was inaugurated in 1966 as a tribute to Alfred Landon, who was the 26th governor of Kansas, and a prominent political figure in our country, including the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in 1936. Although Franklin Roosevelt won that reelection as you all remember, Alf Landon, or have read, Alf Landon remained (laughs) hopefully have read. (audience laughs) Alf Landon remained a prominent leader for our country and our state. He was a champion for society by proposing programs that dealt with women’s suffrage, and I trust, legislation, prohibition of child labor, and many other important issues of the day. It was December 13th, 1966, when he delivered the first Landon Lecture address entitled, “New Challenges in International Relations.” Throughout his life, he was not only prepared, but inspired to address challenging issues just as we continue to be here at K-State. Our mission, with the Landon Lecture Series, is to bring prominent thought leaders to campus to discuss pressing issues and topics that stimulate thought and provoke discussion, and that’s what we plan to do today. Before I introduce our speaker, I would like to recognize a few individuals in attendance from K-State as well as our distinguished guest. Would you please stand as I call your name, and give a quick wave to the audience. First, Dr. Chuck Taber, our Provost and Executive Vice President. (audience applauding) Mrs. Linda Cook, Chair of the Landon Lecture Series and Chief of Staff in the Office of the President. (audience applauding) Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh, Chair of the Landon Patrons. (audience applauding) Dr. Tanya Gonzalez, President of the Faculty Senate. (audience applauding) Ms. Sam Reyer, President of the University Support Center. (audience applauding) Mr. Jansen Penny, K-State Student Body President and senior in industrial engineering. (audience applauding) Mr. Ali Karamali, Kansas State Student Body Vice President and a senior in chemical engineering. (audience applauding) And we’re so honored to have with us today the honorable Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, former U.S. Senator of Kansas and daughter of Governor Landon and a previous Landon lecturer. (audience applauding) Jim Denning, Kansas Senator and Senate Majority Leader. (audience applauding) Mike Beam, Kansas Secretary of Agriculture and K-State alumnus. (audience applauding) Derek Schmidt, Kansas Attorney General. (audience applauding) And now three of my bosses, Mark Hutton, Kansas Board of Regents and K-State alumnus. (audience applauding) Cheryl Harrison-Lee, Kansas Board of Regents. (audience applauding) And Helen Van Etten, Kansas Board of Regents. (audience applauding) Blake Flanders, President and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents and K-State alumnus. (audience applauding) Tom Phillips, Kansas Representative and K-State alumnus. (audience applauding) And although our federal staff and delegation members could not be here, we have a number of their staff who are present. So with thanks to you and all our members of our audience for being here, everyone is important in the critical conversations impacting our world. We certainly appreciate your interest and time today and as a reminder, at the conclusion of the lecture, we will have about 15 minutes for questions from the audience. Now for our speaker. I am very pleased to welcome U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a fellow Kansan, as the 190th Landon Lecturer. Secretary Pompeo was sworn in as the 70th Secretary of State on April 26th, 2018, traveling the world to meet with foreign governmental leaders and carrying out the president’s foreign policy. The State Department includes the Foreign Service, of course, the Civil Service, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He is the fourth Secretary of State to deliver a Landon Lecture, following Henry Kissinger in 1996, George Shultz in 1986, and Edmund Muskie in 1980. Secretary Pompeo served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from January 27 to April 2018. And prior to the joining the Trump administration, he was serving his fourth term as a congressman from Kansas’s fourth district. He served on the House Intelligence Committee, as well as the Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Select Benghazi Committee. Before his service in Congress, he was a leader in business founding Thayer Aerospace, where he served as C.E.O. for more than a decade. He later became president of Century International, an oil field equipment manufacturing, distribution, and service company based in Wichita, Kansas. Secretary Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point in 1986, and served as a cavalry officer, patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He also served for the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry in the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division. After leaving active duty, Secretary Pompeo graduated from Harvard Law School, having been an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Orange, California. He is married to Susan Pompeo and has one son, Nick. Please help me welcome U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the podium. (audience applauding)
Thank you so much.
Glad that you’re here. Good to meet you, that’ll be fine.
That’ll be fine. So nice to meet you. (audience applauding) Good morning, good morning. Good morning, everyone, how y’all doing?
Very good.
Good, good. It’s great to be back here in Kansas and to quote the famous phrase, “There is literally no place like home.” Before I get started, I noticed that the Student Body President and Vice President are both engineers. You should know that was my undergraduate degree, so you may, who knows, right? (audience laughing) Before I get started too, President Myers went through many of the distinguished guests. I wanna let you know how much I appreciate the opportunity to be here, to have the high privilege to give a speech as part of the Landon Lecture Series is something that I will always cherish. I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you, President Myers, and your team for making this happen today. And I also wanna make sure and recognize the Landon Lecture Series supporters, perhaps most importantly, former Senator, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, you have demonstrated your commitment to public service in ways that are important and noble, and continuing, and thank you for that. (audience applauding) I know too we have many other distinguished guests. As Myers mentioned, a whole group of folks, I think Susan Estes, her husband Ron couldn’t be here, serving the same constituents I did back in south central Kansas. Thank you for being today. Thanks to all the state-elected officials. I understand that the Mayor Pro Tem Usha Reddi is here and that Mike Dodson, the Mayor of the city of Manhattan is here as well, as well as Wynn Butler, city of Manhattan Commissioner. I can tell you I know how tough it is to lead in those local levels, bless you all for taking on that important service (laughs) to America. I have tough days, I know you do too. (audience applauding) Now I know, ’cause I spent a little bit of time at the United Nations, I know that that other Manhattan thinks it’s the center of America (laughs) but I am confident that this place has a much better claim to that than that other city on the East Coast. This is really the true Heartland, it’s great to be back here. And this university, K-State itself, has such a noble history as the first land grant university. You can tie your roots directly back to the statute that Abraham Lincoln performed, he signed into law back in 1862, this law that created this university. Even as the Civil War was raging. You know, I’ll talk about this a little bit more today but that effort says something about America, doesn’t it? That even as our nation’s leaders were trying to figure out how to keep this great nation together, they were creating opportunities for citizens to study and to learn, and this is the legacy that you here at K-State carry on today. You know it’s just one of the things that makes America so great and so special, so unique in human history. I was a few weeks back in Indianapolis speaking to the American Legion in Indianapolis, and I said, “America, and Americanism, “is something that we’ve got to be proud of.” I think sometimes some of us take things for granted. Our glorious history shouldn’t be revised, it should be revered, and the truest expression of that reverence is to safeguard and live by the principles by which this country was founded and those people who forged this unique place. It’s why I’m here today. I want to talk about how proud of the American tradition I am every time I travel around the world. Why we must recover a proper understanding of that history and America’s special place in the world. That tradition, that American tradition begins with a set of unalienable rights. Our nation’s founding created them, they’re the beating heart of who we are as an American body today and as Americans. The Declaration of Independence laid it out pretty clearly. It said, and you will all know this, I know all of you have studied it multiple times, especially you young people sitting way in the back. It says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident “that all men are created equal, “that they are endowed by their creator “with certain unalienable rights, “and that among these are life, liberty, “and the pursuit of happiness. “And that to secure these rights, “governments were instituted among men. “Deriving their just powers “from the consent of the government.” In other words, these are rights that were endowed upon us by our Creator. They’re part of our nation, and they’re part of who we are as Americans, as human beings. They are independent of anything our government does and the purpose of government, indeed, is to protect those unalienable rights. And I must say, as I travel the world, there can be no nobler cause. Just as profoundly, that declaration says that, “All men” and it meant all human beings, “Are created equal.” These rights weren’t unique to us as Americans. We were simply the first nation with the vision to organize around them, with a national mission that was to honor those very rights, these fundamental rights, and of course we all know fight we have. We fought the Revolutionary War against our good friends now, the United Kingdom, who are having a great time. (laughs) We fought a civil war to hold our nation together. Indeed in the decade before K-State’s founding, in the 1850s, Bleeding Kansas had just been established as a territory. Fueled by the promise of popular sovereignty, pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers alike were flooding in, often violently clashing. This brewing fight over slavery was in essence a fight over unalienable rights. And the people of Kansas knew this deeply. In 1858, George Washington Brown, an abolitionist newspaper editor from Lawrence said, “No party of men can be guilty of greater inconsistency “or absurdity than those who deny the axiomatic truths, “asserted in the equality “and unalienable rights of all men.” John Spear a bit later, the abolitionist editor of the Kansas Pioneer, said that, “The American government was originally based “upon the principle of the universality of freedom, “and the Declaration of Independence was an emphatic “and succinct declaration, “that all men are indeed created equal “and entitled to certain unalienable rights “as a result of their human dignity.” And then in commenting on the declaration’s affirmation of unalienable rights, Lincoln said that, “The founders meant to set up a standard, “a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar “to all and revered by all.” That fight has continued. We are an imperfect nation, to be sure, but we’re lucky. We have unalienable rights as our foundation, as our North Star. So I now serve as America’s 70th Secretary of State. I know our tradition and respect for unalienable rights hasn’t just shaped us a nation. It’s shaped how we think about America’s place in the world as well, and it sets our foreign policy. Unalienable rights are at the core of who we are as Americans. We abhor violations of these rights whenever and wherever they’re encountered. That’s why I always speak out on behalf of the people of Iran, of Venezuela, of China, and of people of all other nationalities who do not have the benefit that we have. They deserve their God-given freedoms just as much as we do. American diplomats have always had this as one of their core causes. The stories are long, but I’ll tell just a couple. After World War II, the world looked to America to take the tradition of unalienable rights, which came to be called human rights, beyond our shores. In 1948, thanks to our leadership, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document inspired by our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. And we need to remember this was the first time ever, it was the first time ever that America led nations to set a standard for how government should treat their people. We even fought to protect unalienable rights of the people inhabiting nations we had just defeated. We’ve done this repeatedly. This wasn’t American imperialism, but rather was American mercy and grace. We knew it was right for them as well and right for us. Since then we’ve achieved great victories. The fall of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid, the founding of democracies that also cherish and protect people’s unalienable rights in many parts of the world. I lead an organization that’s some 70,000 people. Our mission is to promote and foster these unalienable rights so that they will abound, that they’ll be everywhere. We have an entire bureau devoted to no task other than that one. Every year, I’d ask you to go take a look at this, every year we prepare a compendium, our diplomats produce an exhaustive report of every human rights violation around the world. It becomes the encyclopedia for all other governments to see, and you should know we spare no one. We call them like we see them. No other country does that. And just like we did decades after World War II and then in the Cold War, American diplomats still helped set the standard for unalienable rights all around the world, we demonstrate our leadership. This is an effort where I’m enormously proud of the team I am so privileged to lead. But today I wanted to share with you that we sometimes take things for granted here in America. Don’t become complacent, we can’t. We owe it to all Americans to uphold this noble tradition of American leadership to secure rights here at home and abroad. There are many places where this is an uphill battle. Today, frankly, our children aren’t taught about the central role of unalienable rights in our schools in the way that they must be. I’ve seen the media try and rewrite our history as an unrelenting tale of racism and misogyny, not as a bold but imperfect nation, an experiment in freedom. We need to do that. Our politicians too from time to time have framed pet causes as rights to bypass the normal process by which political ends are achieved. And we’ve blurred the distinction between fundamental universal rights and mere political preferences or priorities. International institutions have moved away from these core tenets as well. One reason, excuse me, one research group found that between the United Nations and the Council of Europe, there are combined 64 human rights-related agreements and 1,377 provisions. But this is an imperfect analogy, but the 13th ice cream cone isn’t as good as the first one was. (audience laughing) And with respect to unalienable rights, we need to know that more per se is not always better. We have to protect those things that are at the core, at the center, that are foundational, because when rights proliferate, we risk losing focus on those core unalienable rights, the ones that we would give everything for, and many of our brothers and sisters have done just that. And frankly, there’s far too little agreement anymore on what an unalienable right truly is. Just because a treaty or a law or some writing says it’s a right, it doesn’t make it an unalienable right, remember where these rights came from. This confusion, this confusion has opened the door for countless countries that don’t share our respect for human rights to use corrupt understandings of this notion to achieve their evil ends. Let me give you just one example. Over the past two years in Xinjiang, China, it’s a province in the western part of China, China has tried to brainwash coming on one million Uyghur Muslims in internment camps, has tried to get them to renounce their culture and their faith. The Chinese Communist Party claims that the camps are meant to educate and to save. People that have been influenced by religious extremism and thus they make the claim that they’re trying to protect those individuals’ human rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council at Beijing’s urging adopted a resolution that called for nations to work together to promote mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of human rights. It emphasized genuine dialogue and cooperation based on mutual respect. This was sadly, coded language for repressive regimes to establish a code of silence about their massive human rights violations. Those that rival the worst human rights violations from our past century. Only one country, only one country on the Human Rights Council voted against China’s resolution. Proudly that was the United States of America. Clearly, we must reclaim this tradition. We must reclaim the tradition of unalienable rights from deliberate misunderstanding and indeed from cynical abuse. It’s a task that’s complex and difficult and time-consuming and I do not claim to have all the answers, but we gotta get it right. This past May, I impaneled a group that I’ve entitled the Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department. Its aim is to achieve a couple of ends. The commission includes human rights experts, philosophers, activists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, independents, people of all varied backgrounds and walks of life and from varied religious beliefs. The commission’s work? The commission’s work will be deeply grounded, deeply grounded in our founding principles. It must always be so. We know this. We know that if we don’t get the understanding of rights as our founders understood them correct, these set of inviolable freedoms rooted in our nature, given by God for people at all times, we will wander away from them and America, American security and America’s place in the world will be diminished. So the commission’s mission is to uphold America’s noble tradition of unalienable rights in this world that often violates them. This is how we encourage, too, growth in societies. Societies that honor their people and their promise to them. This is how we foster liberty that leads to sustainable prosperities and opportunities for Americans, individuals, businesses, so that we can level the playing field around the world. This too is how we build ties. It’s how we build ties with countries that cooperate with us on our important national security objectives. These kind of efforts too, they’re the efforts that build on what made America great. They build on Americanism. I hope you will stay tuned as this commission does its important work. As I conclude today, it would be a betrayal of the American founding and our character to declare a government panel our nation’s authoritative voice on human rights. Remember too the universal declaration was spearheaded by an American woman, Eleanor Roosevelt. She once said, quote, “Where after all do human rights begin? “They begin in small places. “Places close to home.” All Americans have a responsibility to make sure that their rights are honored in our places of worship, in our workplaces, and yes, on our college campuses too. If we do that, we’ll be doing what we’ve done since our founding. Let me take you back to Bleeding Kansas, July 4th, 1855. The anti-slavery newspaper, the “New York Tribune,” noticed the conflict happening here, called for an end to slavery, the systemic denigration of unalienable rights, that was spurning violence. It wrote, “We hope and pray that every citizen “who hears the Declaration of Independence read this day “will resolve that the 4th of July of 1856 “shall find the policy of the nation restored “to the immortal principles with which it set out “on the 4th of July back in 1776.” You know, today we take a lot for granted here in America, but we are the heirs to an immortal principle. We inherit a tradition of unalienable rights that has made our nation the greatest in recorded history and has blessed many other nations and many other peoples too. We have a responsibility. We have a responsibility to protect that, a duty and to promote it and get it right here at home and to get it right abroad as well. It’s what I’m trying to do as President Trump’s Secretary of State. I hope you all will join me in this important and noble cause. Thank you, may God bless you, may God bless Kansas, and I look forward to taking questions on almost any topic today. (audience laughing) (audience applauding)
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Well done.
Thank you.
You got a few minutes here?
You bet.
Well thank you Secretary Pompeo for your leadership in this very important area and for your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments today. We have a few minutes for Q&A, so there are microphones on each side of the room, and as we call upon you, please tell us your name, whether you’re faculty, staff, or students, and then ask your question. And we’ll alternate sides, and Mr. Secretary you can do that or I’ll help whatever to—
It’s all up to you.
Okay, so. On the left over here, my left, your right.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for taking so much of your valuable time to share your insights today. My name is Brett DePaola, I’m in the Department of Physics here at Kansas State University. As you know, there’ve been an exodus of scientists across many of the federal agencies. This exodus has been driven largely because the results of their work has been suppressed. Indeed recently, a well-regarded physicist/chemist, Dr. Ron Shoonover left the U.S. Department of State due to the suppression of even a security-cleared version of his assessment on the impact of climate change on national security. I add parenthetically that in my opinion, the Department of State can ill afford the loss of any good scientists. My question is do you support the suppression of scientific reports from within the U.S. Department of State? If not, how did this happen, and if so, why? Thank you very much.
Well it won’t shock you that I disagree with most of what you just said. (audience laughing) Of course, no one supports the absence of science. I would argue that this State Department and indeed this administration has relied on science far more than the previous administration, and I would argue more than administration in history. I can tell you that, I can’t tell you the data that scientist came from some other agency, I don’t know the numbers there, but I can tell you the data at the State Department. We don’t have higher turnover than we had in the previous administration. In fact just the opposite. By the end of this year, there will be more foreign service officers working for me than at any time in American history. And we turn to scientists and fact-based approaches to every single difficult challenge we face every day. And the stack of paper I read comes from career professionals, comes from political appointees, comes from people who have been steeped in American history, and they deliver to me their best analysis. Sometimes I agree with it, sometimes I don’t agree with it. I then work with my colleagues, the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of them who are working on these important national security projects, and we do our best to sift and sort, to deliver the President of the United States the best fact-based analysis that we can. Indeed, I’d say this too. My first job in this administration was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Our singular mission there wasn’t to do policy. Indeed just the antithesis of that. It was to do facts and data, to provide answers, to get assets to the right part of the world, to get resources in the right place so that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America had the singular best data set upon which to make his decisions. I was proud of the work I did there. We didn’t always get it right. But we worked diligently to make sure that we were true keepers of the facts and the analysis so that it came out straight. I think we’ve done that, I’m very proud of that work.
[Dick] Mr. Secretary, we have a question here on the north side.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My name is Paul Katherm, I’m a graduate student and alum of K-State. Also had the pleasure of serving Ronald Reagan in a very minor role in the Reagan administration 100 years ago. (audience laughing) Your comments about unalienable rights struck home. And at the core of those rights is the ability of citizens to express their displeasure with their government. And as you were coming in this morning, you may have observed outside this building under the little covered bench, there was a sole middle-aged woman holding a sign. And while I recognize the threat that high officials face in serving their country, a threat to your person is real wherever you travel. This was a lone woman holding a sign expressing displeasure with her government, and your security detail, really what they did was they harassed her and they were surrounding her and trying to figure out her intentions this morning. And they were concerned that she was going to even stand up and hold her sign. They were insistent that she sit there and that she not speak. And I’m curious about your perspective on whether or not that was appropriate, and frankly from my perspective, and I may not agree with her positions—
[Mike] Of course.
If she wanted to stand up, holding her sign saying I hate the policies of this government or of the Department of State, she should have had the right to do so, and she could’ve shouted and screamed at the top of her lungs, but when citizens cannot speak and express their concerns with the actions of their government, then all of those rights are in danger.
Let’s see, let me make sure I understand your question. Your first question was what do I make of that? I didn’t see the particular situation, so I’ll reserve comment, but I’ll say this. I have not been sheltered from protests. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what people think about our policies. (audience laughing) And good and bad, both. I’ve been surrounded, the last time I spoke at a university there was a young protester sitting right about where this young lady was sitting, screamed and hollered things that I wouldn’t have wanted my young child to hear. It’s all good. It’s America. It’s what I was talking about, that first freedom. And I didn’t see that, I saw protesters out there, they were actually behaving fine, actually I think I know where they were from, seen them in my time in south-central Kansas. (audience laughing) These are people who I find abhorrent. I find their views abhorrent. And yet they’re welcome, they’re welcome to speak loudly. And I hope we do that every place we go. You should know that I not only encourage our government to do that, but I encourage governments all across the world to do the same thing, and we’re very blessed. We’re very blessed that you can stand up here and speak to the Secretary of State and speak your mind. I’m not sure that gentleman agreed with much of what I said, I’m confident some others don’t, but you get to say whatever you want to me. By the way, my team told me if I took questions from the audience, I was a fool today. (audience laughing) They may have been right about the fool part. I’ll leave that to you all. But this is from my perspective, Secretaries of State don’t often do this, but from my perspective, I wanna hear it, if you don’t like what I’m doing, I wanna know. I wanna make sure we get it, we don’t get everything right every day in anything any of us do as individuals. I certainly don’t, and so to hear those voices, the multiplicity of voices, is at the bedrock of the unalienable rights that we have as Americans. I hope we’re doing it right. If my team got it wrong, I regret that. I wanna make sure everybody’s get a chance to do this, and we’ll do it in a way that I’m adequately protected. As I walked past, I know everybody doesn’t agree but I saw the metal detectors out there, I am confident that not everybody in here agrees with me today. (laughs) (audience laughing)
[Dick] Mr. Secretary we have on your left a question.
Mr. Secretary, I appreciate your comments, especially about human rights and inalienable rights. I’m Jonathan Hupp, I work with Cul De Granos, which is a campus ministry here. And I thought I might have the first controversial question but I guess not. (audience laughing)
[Mike] Yeah, you’re third.
I guess, yeah. Three for three, here. I really appreciated the comment, the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt about human rights starting in small places. And along with many Americans, I would hold that the group of people both in the U.S. and around the world whose rights are most violated are the unborn, and would like to ask what your perspective is about that issue and how we should approach that.
So this administration’s been unambiguous on this issue. We believe that every human being should be protected from conception through end of life, natural end of life. We’ve worked on that. My role is to do this around the world. It most importantly falls, it most importantly falls on how we spend money. The State Department spends about $70 billion a year, thank you (laughs), (audience laughing) for the resources, some of which was going to organizations that were promoting abortion. We’ve done our level best to prevent that from happening, to make sure that tax-payer dollars didn’t go to that. It’s called the Mexico City policy, I’ve personally worked to expand pieces of that to make sure that we’ve got it right. We wanna make sure, we still wanna support women’s health issues around the world, all of those things that are important, values, things that we all hold dear. But we’ve been diligent in trying to protecting the unborn in every dimension of American foreign policy. And we’ll continue to be.
[Dick] Mr. Secretary, on your right.
Hi, Mr. Secretary.
Hello.
Thank you so much for coming today, we are all excited to see you, my name’s Olivia Rogers, I’m a senior in political science here at K-State. And my question for you, is you’re speaking to a room full of young people, what’s your best advice going forward for how we can live out the American values that you spoke of?
I always say three simple things, three simple things. First, know the history, right? If you’re ungrounded, you’re just out wandering around. You have to understand America’s history, America’s place in the world, so there’s histories that long predate our couple hundred years as a nation. Spend time thinking and learning about the political philosophies that underlay these different outcomes that have been achieved. Second, and if my son Nick were here today, he would know exactly what I’m gonna say, but that’s his problem, not mine. (audience laughing) I’ve never seen anyone be successful in life who didn’t work their tail off. It can happen, I suppose. But the people I see, the senior people at the State Department that I work with today, have always just, they’ve done a couple simple things. They tell the truth to anyone they encounter. Their colleague, someone who works for them, for me, it’s the president, tell them the truth. Tell them as best you know it, it’s not that you’re not gonna be wrong from time to time, but you gotta tell the truth and you gotta work hard. If you do those two things, not every day but over a lifetime, there’ll be real success. And then the last piece is make sure you define it for yourself. Everyone here would choose a different path and define success in a different way. I value my Christian faith, I love the job that I have, trying to deliver security for the American people every day, I’ve got officers, every morning I wake up and the first thing I get is the security report from around the world. We’ve got officers serving in dangerous places, in Baghdad. Today we’ve got officers in Hong Kong who are under threat from the Chinese government. We’ve got people all around the world, and we have to make hard decisions about who to put there and how to get them there. But they’ve defined success for themselves as taking on a life of public service. And I hope some of you will. It’s career.state.gov. (audience laughing) We need great Kansans serving in America. I love the East Coast, I was born on the West Coast. But we need folks from the Heartland serving America as well. There’s my thoughts for you, thank you, ma’am.
[Dick] On your left, Mr. Secretary.
Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. My name is Mohaned Al-Hamdi, I’m from the Economics Department, I am originally from Iraq. So I’m very concerned with what’s happening with escalation of the tension between Iran and Israel in the Middle East. And the report says that the war is going on between the countries, but it is (coughs) operated on the lands of other countries, Iraq is one of them, Syria and Lebanon. Is the United States of America able and willing to protects its allies in the region, including Iraq, the Gulf states, and to save the world and the world economy from this Iranian aberration?
Back to first principles. When the Trump administration came in, we stared at the larger puzzle in the Middle East and had two primary critiques of the previous administration and policies that we’ve changed dramatically. The first is we’ve undertaken a significant effort trying to unlock the riddle of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. More to follow, a difficult problem, one that ultimately those two peoples will have to resolve for themselves, but we’ve worked hard on that, we’ve been consulting broadly throughout the region for 2 1/2 years now, and I think in the coming weeks, we’ll announce our vision and hopefully the world, Gulf States, will see that as a building block, a basis on which to move forward. The second one was fundamentally identifying the revolutionary regime in Iran as the central problem inside Middle East causing instability. That has certainly proven true in my year and change as the CIA Director and now in my year and change as the Secretary of State. If you look at the conflicts, whether it’s the difficulty that Iraq has in standing up its own sovereign independence, the problem is the Islamic Republic of Iran. If you look at Israel security along its northern border, it’s Hezbollah, underwritten by Iran. If you stare at Syria today, it was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that drove Assad’s regime to successfully cause six million persons to be displaced from Syria. Today, Houthis, in a country called Yemen, are launching missiles into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Some of you will travel, you’ll take internships to Riyadh and you’ll study there, and today you’re at risk of being killed by an Iranian missile flying out of Yemen, all because of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its leadership. The people of Iran are amazing people, and the Persian history is staggeringly beautiful and gorgeous. Our mission set has been twofold. First, to create a coalition, Gulf States, the Israelis, European partners, countries from Asia to take the tension down, to create de-escalatory defense systems. You see what we’re doing in the Strait of Hormuz today, trying to create a situation where there’s less risk that there’ll be conflict. And then the second mission has been to deny the Irananian regime the wealth and resources to inflict their terror campaigns around the world. They are in fact the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. They have an active assassination campaign, taking place in European capitals even as we speak. They’re underwriting Hezbollah and Argentina and Brazil. This is a regime that has a revolutionary flavor and our mission set is to create the conditions where their behavior will change. I laid out 12 requirements. President Trump has said he’s happy to meet with the Iranian leadership. Happy might overstate it a bit. (audience laughing) But willing for sure to meet with them, because in the end, we want to resolve this through diplomacy. We would love nothing more than for Iran to come back into the community of nations, to cease its efforts to proliferate nuclear weapon systems, to cease building out a missile systems that threaten not only the Middle East but soon Europe as well, and to convince them that conducting terror campaigns in more than a dozen countries is not in their national security interests, it’s been our mission, it’s still a project where there’s a lot of work to do. Does that answer your question, at least in part, sir?
Sure.
Yeah, thank you. (audience laughing)
[Dick] So Mr. Secretary– (audience applauding)
I could, I could go on, yes sir.
[Dick] Mr. Secretary, I think we have time for two questions if they can be succinct and—
And I’ll do my best to be succinct as well.
Good morning, Mr. Secretary. My name’s Cora Farley, I’m a second-year veterinary student at the College of Veterinary Medicine here, and I’m a transplant from Pennsylvania, so I’m originally from the East Coast.
[Dick] Welcome to Kansas.
Yes. (laughs) My question relates to how you talked so strongly about the unalienable rights that America wants to uphold not only here in the States but also throughout the entire world, and yet the Trump administration very strongly opposes people coming here in search of those rights and being able to pursue happiness in countries where they may not feel safe, or may not have those opportunities.
Yeah, look I’m glad you asked this question. That’s fundamentally not true. What we want, what we want– (audience applauding) I’ll give you, I said I’d be succinct, I’m gonna blow that right here. (audience laughing) I remember when I was a member of Congress, we’d get calls almost every day at our office from someone from Africa or Europe or Asia who said they wanted to come be an American and we’d send them the paperwork. And yet today we have a southern border where the proper advice might well have been no, just come on in. That’s not right. That’s not fair. That actually doesn’t respect the rule of law and human dignity and the unalienable rights about which I spoke. We have an obligation, we have an absolute obligation to protect American sovereignty for the American people who are here, and to conduct a migration policy that will be the most generous in the world, it always has been, but that has operated under a rule of law that is respectful of that dignity. I’ve been to El Salvador. I’ve been to Mexico multiple times. I was in Cucuta, Colombia, I watched those migrants flee. These people who are coming across our southern border are putting their own lives at risk, the lives of their children. We need a system that welcomes people to come to our country in a way that is lawful and respectful of their human dignity, and it’s what President Trump is aiming to achieve. And I will tell you we’re closer today than America was 2 1/2 years ago, and I’ve work closely with my counterpart, Marcelo Ebrard, he’s the Foreign Minister of Mexico, he’s a fantastic guy. He’s also a person of the Left. And so politically, we’re in different places. But we share a vision for what a secure southern border ought to look like, and how we’ll get that set of issues right, so that those people who do want to come here, who are in fact coming from places that, to your point, are more than economically challenged but rather present true threat and risk to life, that America will continue to be a place where they can be welcomed into our great country. We’re working hard at that. Thank you, thank you for your question. (audience applauding)
[Dick] And the last question here on the left.
All right, last one, lot of pressure.
Hello, I’m Richard, I’m studying mechanical engineering and am a member of the K.S.U. Debate Team. How is the U.S. promoting an end to the oppression of Uyghurs in China?
Insufficiently, because it’s still going on. And so the mission continues. We have used the diplomatic tools that we have which begin with identification of the problem set. Sounds like you know a fair amount about what’s transpiring. There’s been some great pieces written, some great pieces in “The New York Times” and other places where they’ve talked about the deprivation that’s taking place there in western China. I said before this may well end up being one of the worst stains on the world of this century. It’s of that magnitude. So our tool set is to identify the challenge and then to rally the world, and we’ve done so today with some success, but not nearly enough to call this out and then work with the Chinese government to convince them, to convince the Chinese Communist Party that this isn’t in their best interest either, that it’s not the right way to treat their fellow members of the country, it’s not the right way to treat other human beings. This is fundamentally not about national security for them. This isn’t about Islamic extremism in western China. This is about freedom and dignity for individuals, and so we have big teams working on this as part of our efforts towards making sure that there’s as much religious freedom around the world as we can possibly muster. We take that for granted here. If you wanna practice your faith or you choose not to practice any faith, you can do that here in America. We wanna make sure that’s true in as many places around the world as we can. We consider that sort of the first among our unalienable rights. If you can’t exhibit your beliefs, then some of these other things become far less relevant to your well being. It’s a difficult challenge. I hope that we can get, I hope we can get, we’re gonna have this U.N. General Assembly in the third week of September. We’ll do a number of gatherings where our efforts will be to get other countries to sign up to help us call out this activity that’s taking place. We just want to fix, we want freedom for those folks. We have lots of challenges with China. But this is about their fundamental unalienable rights for those particular individuals who are mostly Muslim Czechians, Uyghurs. We’re trying our best to do right by them. Thank you.
Great. (audience applauding)
Secretary Pompeo, thank you again for coming to Kansas State University. We appreciate your leadership in America and your leadership internationally, and just to remind everybody here, the next lecture will be September 27th, it’s the CEO of Fortune Magazine, Alan Murray, and he’s gonna talk about truth and facts in the 21st century, should be really interesting. So with that, thank you very much for attending, and thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Thank you, thank you. (audience applauding)