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- [Stewart] You've been an educator for most of your career, but there have been some very interesting stints in government as well. One thing I'd love to hear about is your experience with German reunification.

- [President Young] I was teaching at Columbia at the time, and loved what I was doing, loved my students, loved teaching, but then got a call from the legal advisor in the State Department, Abe Sofaer, whom I'd sort of known in another incarnation. And Abe said that the Secretary, who was then James Baker, was concerned about the fact that the State Department didn't have enough expertise in trade law. Abe asked if I would come to Washington for a couple of years, because I had been teaching trade law, and I'd been kind of involved in that, and knew quite a bit about it. About three weeks after I got to the department, the Berlin Wall came down. It was a hugely important foreign policy issue. Most of those foreign policy issues, the lawyers were kinda marginal. But this was a really legalistic issue. So it put me right in the center of it. It was a fascinating experience, and felt in some ways coming full-circle. My parents had fought in the war, my dad had been in the Battle of the Bulge. Now we were sort of really officially ending that war. It was an amazing experience.

- [Stewart] I also remember you getting very involved in religious freedom. Tell me a little bit about why that was important to you, how that came about, and some of the experiences that you had working on religious freedom activities.

- [President Young] They had just passed the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. And so, it became both a kind of an ethical and moral passion, because that is, at the end of the day, what four or five, maybe of the six billion people on this planet, their notion of religion, however they define it, is often what defines their own identity, who they are, why they're here, what the good life means, what it means to be ethical and moral, what you should teach your kids. People should be free to do that. The 1998 Religious Freedom Act had established, in addition to an ambassadorial position in the State Department, it has also established a commission. And I was appointed to the commission. Rabbi David Saperstein and I were the first two appointees, so we actually set it up, and figured out the structure, and kind of how we would operate.

- [Stewart] With your work on the commission, I wanna call them listening tours, or something to that effect, and how profoundly some of those affected you. Are there any of those kind of experiences you'd be willing to share with us? I remember those affecting me when you talked about them.

- [President Young] We did start to go around speaking with different religious groups, different human rights advocates, and different governments about what was going on in their countries. We'd do an annual report. And we would testify in front of Congress, we'd meet with the president on a regular basis to talk about this. One that I will never forget. I was in South Korea and there were a number of people from North Korea who would cross into China. Periodically, the North Koreans come in and sweep them up. And this young man was a refugee from North Korea. He had escaped over the Yalu River, and he and his family had crossed in to China. And they were not Christians, but at the refugee camp in China, a priest had given the young man's little sister, who was like six or seven, a cross, a little necklace with a cross on it. She didn't know what it meant. And so she was wearing it when they swept them up. They saw the cross, the North Korean military, and put the family in a truck to take them to one of these execution camps. And the young man was able to jump off the truck and escape, and I asked him, what happened to your family. And he said, oh, they got the short haircut. Short haircut, what do you mean by that? He said, they cut their hair at their neck. So they were all executed. I mean, for something as simple as having a little piece of jewelry that reflects something a government doesn't like? You can't imagine the barbarity of that.

- [Stewart] Wow, that's amazing. You've been here at Texas A&M now for, I wanna say about two-and-a-half, almost three years now? What brought you here?

- [President Young] I asked while I was interviewing here, I said I'd like to meet some students. I'm fundamentally just a teacher. I wanted to see what the education was like. So they picked three students, not randomly, to be sure. It was the Student Body President, and the Vice President, and the head yell leader. They all recited the values, first off. And I thought well, you know, that's kinda cute. And then they talked about their experiences here. And every one of those experiences wrapped into those values, somehow. Those values of respect, leadership, loyalty, integrity, selfless service, excellence. And how the professors treated them, how they treated each other, how they intended to use their education. They're going out to get a job, not to make money, but to really do something to be citizens of substance. And at about 45 minutes into this conversation, I'm blown away, and Marti taps me on the knee, and she says, we're coming here, aren't we? It's been amazing. I've never seen a place like this that thinks about creating an environment in which people can become people who have impact, citizens of substance. And we've loved it.