Friedman on Education

NORMAN (5:18 p.m.)

Audience Question: Our school standing in the world has fallen. What have you seen in your travels that would allow us to rise back to first. And what was the one thing you would recommend all of us get while still in school?

Friedman: "For those of you graduating, you are totally screwed. Stay in school."

Married to a teacher.

"Education is actually the biggest foreign policy issue. And in every country, it is the biggest issue."

"You come to America, and Billy and Suzy can't read in the 8th grade, but Johnny with a ring in his nose has just created 18 new iPhone apps."

Would rather have our problem because we have creativity. Creativity is more useful than straight rigor.

We need better citizens.

"If we really wanted health care, we'd be on the ball. If we wanted a real carbon bill, we'd be on the ball."

"We can not bail our way out of this problem. We cannot stimulate our way out of this problem. We have to innovate our way out of this problem."

Friedman: Constitutional Conference Might be Needed

NORMAN (5:17 p.m.)

Audience Question: "What is one policy change you would encourage to help us better ourselves as a nation?"

Friedman: (Paraphrased) Maybe a constitutional conference. Not sure the constitution the founding fathers have bequeathed us can handle the complex problems we face:

* Lobbyists are "legalized bribery"

* Google Maps and other technology allows politicians to choose their voters. Voters don't choose their politicians. Creates polarization.

* 24/7 cable news culture encourages extreme voices because "that's how you stay on tv"

* Permanent presidential campaign: "Sarah Palin is already running for president"

* The Internet: Can pave way for new voices and at worst can allow people to drop out of society and belong to whatever group they want to. Can also create digital fires. "You wouldn't want to be Tiger Woods right now. You put Tiger Woods into Google, and it's like a freak show."

Friedman Speaks to Students

NORMAN (4:35 p.m.) -- Thomas L. Friedman participated in an informal discussion with OU students Monday afternoon at the Sandy Bell Gallery at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

Friedman on Global Warming: "A lot of the people who have been ready to take action, who have been ready to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan on the basis of a one in a hundred chance that Al Qaeda had nuclear weapons...those very same people will tell you that on climate change...will tell you not at all."

"I was very troubled by the e-mails I read, frankly. I was very troubled because I don't think serious scientists should be using words like tricks. "I don't think serious scientists should be discussing how we should keep someone's research out. I was very disturbed, and I thought it was very shameful, really. That said, the evidence that human beings through the burning of fossil fuels are building up CO2 in the atmosphere...doesn't just rely on the research of those scientists or one university. ...

"It really for me isn't that complicated. We know that there is a greenhouse affect around the planet earth... Where there is enormous uncertainty, and where some of the climate advocates have been remiss is that the climate system is so complex. What we don't know is how the climate system will compensate for that."

"There is a lot of uncertainty, and we should be humble about that uncertainty."

"Whether I'm looking at Al Qaeda or the climate, when i'm looking at something that is irreversible or potentially catastrophic, I buy insurance. ... It's a question of odds; it's a question of relative uncertainties."

"Even if it's a hoax and I get myself ready for it... I'll be fitter, healthier and I'll live a longer life. If it is a hoax, it's a bad biological experiment."

Friedman: Imagination Matters

NORMAN (3:16 p.m.) -- Thomas L. Friedman's thesis in his book, "The World is Flat," was wrong, he said.

"The world is so much flatter than I thought," Friedman said.

Friedman, the winner of the second Gaylord Prize, was honored Monday at the Hilton-Skirvin in Oklahoma City. Dozens of Gaylord faculty, students, alumni and distinguished guests were in attendance.

Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and is the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes.

Imagination: The Most Important Thing

More and more aspects of life and business are being outsourced now than ever before, Friedman said.

"More and more things are becoming commodities," he said. "They are becoming automated, digitized and ourtsourced."

But the one thing that is not and cannot become a commodity is imagination, Friedman said.

"The future belongs to the dream machine," Friedman said. "It's all about who sparks the idea. Everything else is available online."

There are two rules of business that matter to Friedman.

The first is that "Whatever can be done will be done," he said. "If you have a good idea, pursue it."

In a global community, there are too many people with instant access to the rest of the world for good ideas to not be thought of by someone else, Friedman said.

The second rule is that the most important competition in the world is not between businesses or even between countries. It is between people and their imaginations.

There are two kinds of countries, Friedman said. There are "high-imagination-enabling countries," and there are "low-imagination-enabling countries."

Because of this, the there is still hope for the United States in the future, Friedman said.

"America still is the greatest dream machine in the world," Friedman said. "I will not cede the 21st century to China, to a country that censors its Internet and has political prisoners.

Or, as Friedman's grandmother once told him, "Never cede a country to a country that censors Google."

Friedman Describes Long Career

NORMAN (3:02 p.m.) -- A tenth grade high school journalism class outside Minneapolis is the only formal journalism class Thomas L. Friedman has ever taken, he said Monday.

"We were taught that all journalists start their day by reading the New York Times," Friedman said.

Friedman's first interview for his high school newspaper was with a visiting Israeli general who was visiting the University of Minnesota: Ariel Sharon. Friedman would interview the Israeli prime minister him many times in the future.

While in high school, during the winter break of 1968, a 15-year-old Friedman joined his parents on a trip to Israel. It was his first trip on an airplane and his first trip outside of Minnesota except for a few trips to Wisconsin.

"Maybe it was the shock of the new, but it had an indelible impression on me," Friedman said of the trip.

Friedman spent the next three summers of high school in Jerusalem.

In college, Friedman started taking Arabic as a freshman and studied abroad in Jerusalem and Cairo. Once he graduated from Brandeis University, he won a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.

While walking through the streets in England in the summer of 1975, Friedman and his "then girlfriend, now wife" saw a blaring headline on the London Evening Standard: (Jimmy) "Carter to Jews: If Elected, I Promise to Fire Dr. K."

The headline referred to Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish secretary of state. Friedman, confused about the irony since Carter wanted to win Jewish votes in that presidential election against Gerald Ford, went to his dorm room and wrote a column about it.

His girlfriend took the column back to Des Moines, where she was from, and submitted it to the Des Moines Register, where it ran as a half-page column next to an Alf cartoon. Friedman was paid $50.

"I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole world," Friedman said. "I was walking down the street, I had an opinion, I wrote it down, and someone paid me $50. And I've been hooked ever since."

Friedman has since worked for United Press International in London and Beirut and for the New York Times in Israel, Lebanon, Washington and dozens of other places.

"I get to be a tourist with an attitude," Friedman said. "It really is the best job in the world. Someone has to have it, and I've got it, and you don't."

Friedman has to have an attitude twice a week for his column twice a week.

"You really have to have strong opinions about a lot of things," he said.

Friedman Calls Boren 'Salmon'

NORMAN (3:01 p.m.) -- Thomas L. Friedman gets about 500 speaking requests a year and lives on the "salmon living in a stream theory," he said.

Whichever salmon keeps swimming upstream gets his attention.

"Your president is very persistent," Friedman said about OU President David L. Boren. "He is quite a salmon."

Thomas L. Friedman to Visit OU Monday

NORMAN, Okla. (10:16 p.m.) -- Thomas L. Friedman, author and foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, will be awarded the Gaylord Prize for Excellence in Journalism and Mass Communication on Monday, Dec. 7 at the Sheraton Oklahoma City Hotel in the Century Ballroom.

Friedman will be the second person awarded the Gaylord Prize, which honors nationally-recognized journalist or mass communication professionals. Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor for PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” received the inaugural prize in 2008.

Friedman, who has written five books, has been writing the foreign affairs column for theNew York Times since 1995. Friedman is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

Monday's award ceremony and luncheon will begin at 11:30 a.m. Friedman will have a discussion with OU students at 4:30 p.m. in the Sandy Bell Gallery in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.