Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Bill McGurn on Journalism, Faith, and Freedom
Join Roger in this week's Liberty + Leadership Podcast as he speaks with Bill McGurn, who sits on The Wall Street Journal editorial board and writes the weekly "Main Street" column for the Journal. In this week's episode, they explore Bill's career at The Wall Street Journal, his deep connection with Hong Kong political prisoner Jimmy Lai, and the intertwined themes of faith and imprisonment. They also discuss ways in which ordinary people can help support press freedom and combat the rise of imprisoned journalists including Jimmy Lai, WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and countless others who are wrongfully imprisoned worldwide.
Bill McGurn is an author and journalist. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and previously served as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He was the chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, and for more than a decade, Bill reported from overseas: in Brussels with The Wall Street Journal/Europe and in Hong Kong with both the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Bill is author of "Terrorist or Freedom Fighter" and a book on Hong Kong entitled "Perfidious Albion." He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame and a master's degree in communications from Boston University. In 2022, TFAS honored Bill with the Thomas L. Phillips Career Achievement Award for producing work that is emblematic of the type of courageous journalism and dedication to the truth that we strive to teach at TFAS.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by kglobal. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Hello and welcome. I'm Roger Reem, and this is the Liberty and Leadership Podcast a conversation with T-FASS alumni, supporters, faculty and friends who are making a real impact in public policy, business, philanthropy, law and journalism. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Bill McGurn. Bill is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and author of the Main Street column that appears every Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal. He was formerly the chief speech writer in the Bush administration. Bill has dedicated his career to journalism and spent more than a decade reporting overseas, including an extended period in Hong Kong. He was the recipient of our 2022 Thomas L Phillips Career Achievement Award. Bill, thanks for joining me today. I'm looking forward to our conversation, especially because I have such respect for you as a journalist and a person of great character.
Speaker 2:Thank you, roger, very kind.
Speaker 1:Well, Bill, I'd like to begin by asking you what led you into a career as a journalist.
Speaker 2:I never really thought about it because it was something I always wanted. I always worked in my school papers, and that was true in college, so I never really considered anything else, and it's a very difficult career at some points, but it's very fulfilling.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, your career has been very, very successful. It's taken you to assignments both in Europe and Asia, as well as here in the United States. What led to those overseas assignments?
Speaker 2:Well, they were job offers and I needed a job, so my first offer was to go to Europe. I did not want to go to Europe, but that was a way to get to the Wall Street Journal. At the time we had a European edition and so I got to Brussels, where we were located, and I had a good time. I traveled around on the company's dime and saw all sorts of things. At the time we also had an Asian edition, which was older than the European edition. Many of the people that I worked with on Europe had come from the Asian edition to help start up the European venture, and I remember getting to Asia and think I'm getting to Europe and thinking this is as far as I go.
Speaker 2:Hong Kong seemed on the other side of the world. Paul Jago was then in Hong Kong for the Journal. It just seemed well, it was on the other side of the earth and I but two, three years later I decided to give it a try and I loved it. I loved Asia and of course, I lived there twice, and the second time I was married. My kids are adopted from Asia, so it's been very good to me.
Speaker 1:When you were in Hong Kong, you came to know Jimmy Lai. You know extremely successful entrepreneur and founder of a very successful newspaper, apple Daily. He came to Hong Kong from China as a young man and built a large, successful clothing chain and then went into the news business. How did your relationship with him come about?
Speaker 2:Well, it came about my second time in Asia, when I was married. First time I lived in Hong Kong. I was single and all I wanted to do was travel the region right, and I did. The second time I was married and we grew more roots in Hong Kong just by having, you know, having a wife and friends more rooted. Jimmy came into our orbit. I was then working at the Far Eastern Economic Review. Paul Jago also worked there earlier in his career. Down Jones owned it. It was kind of like an economist for Asia. It no longer exists English language weekly magazine.
Speaker 2:So in Hong Kong I noticed there were no stores for the middle class. When I was first there there were. You could get all the designers Gucci, whatever design, ralph Lauren at great prices. So Europeans and Americans came over to get these expensive things at great prices and all the hotels had these big name brand shops. And then for everyone else there were great bargains, like you could get the sports coat you're wearing. You could go out and get that for five bucks, maybe in the streets. The problem is you couldn't go out looking for a blue sports coat. It's kind of hit or miss what they have. So no one had come up with a way to tap the middle class which wanted value and style at a reasonable price.
Speaker 2:And then entered Jimmy Lai. He started a shop called Giordano. He named it after a pizza parlor in New York. When he was working in New York he went to it. He thought that an Italian name on a fashion item would be much better than Chinese name, than Jimmy Lai, and so he named this thing and it's sold. I don't like kind of like the gap or something. It's sold polo shirts, brightly colored shorts, very good quality, very inexpensive so. And there were branches all over so you could go in and you know someone who's a secretary or housewife or a young worker could get some good clothes, stylish, at a very reasonable price. It was one of the first things to tap into Hong Kong's middle class.
Speaker 2:So at the review I urged Gordon Krobith, my boss, then why don't we do a story on Jimmy Lai in this angle? And so they did. And then Gordon had lunch with him after Gordon's. Like us, he believes all things we do and very free market. So Gordon came back from lunch I didn't go, and he said you know, jimmy Lai claims to be the only man in Hong Kong who has read every word of Hayek, and so my actually he sent me a note that said that.
Speaker 2:But I couldn't read Gordon's handwriting and I thought Hayek was Engels and I thought, well, that's an achievement. Yeah, that's an achievement, but it's kind of like those things you see in Chinese curiosity shops, like someone translated the Iliad into Chinese and wrote it on a piece of ivory the size of a thumbnail. It's an achievement, but you're kind of like, to what purpose? Then I found out it was Hayek and I went to Jimmy's house. We went on a boat trip. We obviously had very sympathical feelings and my wife became very good friends with his wife and that's how our friendship kind of grew.
Speaker 1:Well, I certainly believe that story, not just because you told it, but in the film that the Acton Institute produced probably a dozen years ago, the call of the entrepreneur, they featured Jimmy amongst two other entrepreneurs and he tells the story of coming to New York, his first trip, I think, out of Asia, and someone he was with at dinner giving him a copy of the Road to Surftom by FA Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning economist. And when he tells that story about getting Hayek and how it changes life, he's choked up. Telling the story no he takes this.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm a huge fan of Hayek too, and so is Gordon. But and in fact, before I left Hong Kong my second time, I was in Beijing and our Beijing bureau chief told me there's a conference going on and it's about a book written by this guy. I never heard of some Austrian guy named Hayek and I said really. And I went and I got a copy of Hayek's Road to Surftom. No, not Road to Surftom. Constitution and Liberty have been translated into Chinese and normally, like the communists would translate things for the party leaders and say this is poisonous stuff, we gotta keep out. It's really interesting because I don't think Hayek ever wrote a word about China per se. He was really concerned with socialism in Britain and how that led to a decline in freedom, wrote a little about the Soviet Union, but the people living in a place like China under communist rule understood immediately the implications.
Speaker 1:Of course, jimmy's now in prison and has been for about three years. I think he was sentenced to 69 months on. You know who knows what kind of bogus charge is a lease violation or something but he's more seriously, I guess, waiting trial for national security law violations and you've been not just a friend but a vocal advocate for him. Are you able to communicate with him at all or get reports on how he's doing?
Speaker 2:You know, in my family our families are like we're related. Oh, you should talk about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should talk about that.
Speaker 2:I'm a Scott father, my wife is his daughter's godmother and his wife is my middle daughter's godmother, so we're very entwined. Jimmy converted, became a Catholic a week after Hong Kong was handed over to China and so anyway, that began the relationship. We're very close. I am able to write to him. I avoid all political topics. We write really about family and faith. It's rather amazing.
Speaker 2:I know this isn't about faith, but when he converted it happens so fast. First I asked his wife encouraged me to ask him if he wanted to become a Catholic because he spoke so highly of it. She was a lot of people in the movement were and he said no, turn me down. So you know, you have to respect the man's wishes. But a week later he changed his mind, said I want Christ in my life and he called the cardinal and he had to give him stuff to read. And about two weeks later, a week after the handover, he converted. Now I confess to a bad thought.
Speaker 2:While it was happening I wondered how much Jimmy really believed when he converted, because there were a lot of social reasons for him to become a Catholic. He would make his wife happy. A lot of the democracy movement was led by people he admired who were Catholic. He had great respect for the church, for religion in general, for what it contributes to society, and he saw how China really lacked that. You know, private religious institutions making life more civilized and fair and so forth. So I had all these feelings like how much does he really believe? I have to say I'm ashamed of them now, because Jimmy's letters to me reveal a deep faith and he's reading all the time. Cardinal Zen once complained now when I go to Jimmy Lai in prison. He always visited in prison but he said now when I go I have to read up on Athanasius and Augustine and Aquinas because Jimmy has some question about it. So yes, I am able to not talk, obviously, but we do write.
Speaker 1:That must mean he does have access to books in prison.
Speaker 2:He does.
Speaker 1:Good, I don't know how it's.
Speaker 2:he spends his free time drawing, drawing, and he draws religious pictures, primarily the crucifixion. He thinks that's his calling now to be a religious painter. He's always had, he's always been involved in art, even before. I have a couple of things that he drew, but now he has drawn these religious things, so he's very interested.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what people who may be not as familiar with his predicament in prison need to know is you know he is an extremely wealthy individual because of his successful entrepreneurship over the years. He no doubt could have gotten out of Hong Kong, but he decided to stay Really because so many of the young people who took great risks to protest for China to uphold their agreement, their treaties, who supported democracy, were being punished for it, and Jimmy didn't want to abandon them. Isn't that right that?
Speaker 2:That's absolutely right, roger, you put your finger on. It is something I should clear up too. A lot of people think, a lot of people know Jimmy's faith. They think he's in prison Because of his religion, that he's a religious prisoner Not really, but it is fair to say, he voluntarily Went to prison Because of his faith. You know he, he, he believes in suffering, has a redemptive value and he believes. Without a willingness to suffer, the stance he took would just be virtue signaling. So he had plenty of opportunities. He has a place in Tokyo, a place in Taiwan, place in London, a place in Paris. He had plenty places he could go to.
Speaker 1:But he, he staked everything on going to prison because of his faith well, I'm mindful of Something I once read of Solzhenitsyn, serving in prison and in the Gulag and the Soviet Union, saying at Writing at some point Thank God for prison. Yes, his prison made him focus on really what was important in life. I.
Speaker 2:Think Jimmy would say that too. Before he went to prison he did a podcast with Nathan Jarranski.
Speaker 2:Oh and it was really Illuminated that because he he was very interested in how Sharranski survived in prison. And Sharranski made clear, you know, his faith. He at one point shared a sale with the Russian Orthodox priests and they Different beliefs but each would carry out readings and the other would listen and the two things were his faith and that Sharranski said. You know, having his wife be loyal to him, like Jimmy's wife. Because, sharranski said, when the Soviets Would try to demoralize them, they say the world has forgotten about you, no one knows about you, no one cares what's happening to you. And he knew it was a lie because he knew his wife Was out there Caring for him, loving him and making the case for him. And Jimmy picked up on that point. And when, when he went to jail, sharranski kind of said he think he got the sense. Jimmy was preparing himself For prison even when he was making this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, a colleague of yours at the Wall Street Journal, evan Gersh Gershkovits, is in prison awaiting trial in Russia. His trial date, I know, had been recently delayed. It seems like threats to journalists from authoritarian regimes, while they've always been a problem, seem particularly bad right now. There's some journalists in Iran that have been sentenced to prison for reporting. There's a report by reporters without borders that the number of countries with serious violations of press freedoms has increased in the past year. My first question, I guess, is what can people listening to this podcast, for instance, do to Help people like Jimmy and Evan know that they do care and that they, you know I, I credit you what you. You spoke at an event of ours in October and and you asked our audience to show their support For Jimmy with you know, a very loud round of not only applause but shouting yeah and Evan right, and I did the same at our journalism dinner in November in New York for Evan and Jimmy. But what, what more can we do? I?
Speaker 2:Think the hope is that our political leaders Will bring up their names all the time, for example, jimmy. If a Chinese airline wants landing rights in Seattle, the answer should be what about Jimmy Lai? Actually, that's more for the British government, since he's a full British citizen with Evan, the same thing. We have to press the government to make the case for them, because the problem is and it's bipartisan In individuals case always seems secondary to national interests. You know you have a trade deal, an arms deal, a security arrangement, and then to risk it for someone but I think that's the promise of citizenship. You know when you're in trouble and the only thing you got going for you is your government overseas. They got to really be there for you.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you, we went to Jimmy's son's wedding in Taiwan a year ago, me, my wife and my oldest daughter. I came back to the US because I can't visit Hong Kong. I know that Might be arrested, so it's not safe for me to go. I never considered that my wife and daughter couldn't go. Remember, we used to live there for many years and they went to spend some time with Teresa Lai and I had just got home at midnight and I got texts from my daughter saying they're at the Hong Kong airport and they've been detained by the authorities. So I was scared out of my wits. It's midnight, I just got in, I didn't know what to do. Fortunately they weren't officially detained, they were investigating, and it was about six hours and I alerted the consulate and they called the authorities just to say we're watching this, you know. And anyway after six hours they said you could go in. But my wife recognized that if she tried to see Cardinal Zen or Jimmy old family friends we've seen many times over the years it would be a trap probably and they get in trouble. So they left. But that's the kind of harassment today.
Speaker 2:And poor Evan, he's a little different from Jimmy. Jimmy, the authorities regard him as the mastermind of all the pro-democracy agitation and the authorities really dislike him. So no doubt he's going to be convicted. His trial starts December 18th, no doubt about the outcome. Evan, I think, is just a pawn. He's in jail, he's just doing his job. He's not a spy, nothing he's accused of is true. And he's just a pawn in Putin's cold-blooded policies. You know, having an American hostage might be handy for him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I saw there was an offer, I guess put on the table by the US very recently that the Russians just rejected, for his release and for some sort of exchange. But you know, the work of a journalist is vital and I admire what you do and have done in your career. This year we gave our Kenneth Y Tomlin set award for courage in journalism to Benjamin Hall at News Corp Fox News rather who was badly injured and covering the weight of his brain.
Speaker 2:He had a heavy price for his work.
Speaker 1:Yes, and his book saved as just a superb account of the ordeal he had trying to get, not only in Ukraine but about his whole career, of what journalists go through to cover conflict and to get information to the rest of us that we need to hear about what's going on in the world. Yet of course, you know, authoritarians never want that information to get out if it's in any way critical to them. Do you see? I mean, you've seen journalism change a lot in this country over the years, but where do you think we are in terms of, you know, the state of journalism, either in the US or globally?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's always changing. Today, a lot of changes are technological the fact that we're doing this podcast, that wouldn't exist 20 years ago, so and the digital aspect means that whatever you do in whatever format, can be transferred in seconds around the world. But I think a lot of it's still the old-fashioned find out what's happening, collect the news and so forth. I have to say, at your dinner so many people came up to me and said, just wanting to know. My wife and I are praying for Jimmy Lai. I'll tell you, he's very humble. He's got thousands of people that he's never met, probably never will, who are praying for, and I hear that all the time. I'm amazed at how many people do know about him, and that's largely because of the medium, social media and so forth. So you know, like the Hong Kong government has all these stories On social media, though they can be rebutted, you know, and that's getting around. So his name is pretty wide and so your group, jimmy, covers several categories. There are people they overlap, but they're all separate. There are some people like you, the anti-communist, pro-freedom, you know, pro-democracy. That's one segment. You were at the Cato dinner. Because of Hayek and his personal friendship with Milton Friedman. He took Friedman into China on one of his trips. That's another sliver of people.
Speaker 2:The press freedom, you know one of the things that's not appreciated. Jimmy had a newspaper, apple Daily, that was reporting on Hong Kong in all the problems, up till the very end. And the very end was when the government took it from him without a court order or something. So press freedom people are interested too. As I say, this overlaps between I mean, I consider myself part of the camp of everyone, but it's a pretty wide variety of people to whom he represents freedom. And I say this also not just as a friend of Jimmy Lolli, even if I never knew him. I lived in Hong Kong ten years. It's where I started my family, I had children. It was a great place. It reeked of opportunity for ordinary people and showed what ordinary Chinese could do if they were given the freedom. Now it looks like that was a brief experiment of you know, 150-200 years and it's vanishing. The Hong Kong today is not the Hong Kong I remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we ran a program, a summer school, in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong from 2002 until, I Say, the communists kicked us out but went tell, but what 2018 or so? And then it just became problematic Because of what was happening there and we've we've pulled out of Hong Kong. But I just I fell in love with the place just on my short trips. Yes, over there. You're right, it was. It was a land of opportunity and so many people in the old days escaped from the mainland to Hong Kong.
Speaker 2:By refugees you know, or children of refugees Coming from the turmoil of China. I knew a journalist there whose father, or A man whose father, was a journalist during China's civil war between the communists and the KMT, and he covered Shanghai Shacks moving of the gold from China to Taiwan and he once said Hong Kong is the only Chinese society that delivered something no Chinese society ever had before Freedom. From the midnight knock on the door. Hong Kong was so peaceful. People, you know, if you were out of business, the secretaries at lunch they're, they're. They're taking courses or planning to open their own shops.
Speaker 1:It was just amazing the the power of Of that place, you know, in the peaceful nature of it and all that's been thrown out the window you know millions of people living on this Place with no natural resources really, except they're human creativity and human Ingenuity and the desire for human flourishing, and they, they, they were remarkably Successful as the world's freest economy. Could you just I? I want you to tell a quick story that Comes out of your work as a speech writer for President George W Bush, but to do that I needed just to say something about the person who really was a mastermind at Hong Kong success that James Copperthwaite. Could you just briefly share his role in this?
Speaker 2:Yes, first of all, I should say that most of Jimmy's friends Paul Jago, I we all have a bust of James Copperthwaite with his glasses like this and everything Middle-aged guy, bald, and. And he was Hong Kong's financial secretary after World War two and through the 60s and Hong Kong wasn't a democracy, it was a colony. So he had immense power but unlike most people with the men's power, he used it to fight efforts to Intervene in the economy. He was brilliant. That helped them. But I remember having a lunch with him many years later and asked him why he was famous. He wouldn't even let the government keep GDP Statistics right. So I asked him why, why wouldn't you let them keep statistics? And he said if I let them keep them, they can only misuse them.
Speaker 2:So as a man after my heart and he described meaning Milton Friedman in the 50s I'm one of Milton's first trips to Hong Kong and Milton was so overcome by meeting a guy in authority who basically shared his beliefs about the economy. He described Milton almost right, rubbing his hands and glee having met Copperthwaite, and he had good reason to. So a lot of us who admire Hong Kong look at Um Copperthwaite. Remember at the time of Copperthwaite the interventionist model was a dominant model Japan, state capitalism, korea Same thing, even Taiwan, not quite as bad, the more entrepreneurial activity, but still the state model of Picking industries and favoring exports. And Hong Kong didn't have that and it flowered.
Speaker 1:And you, you took that bust of James Copperthwaite with you to the White House when you were speechwriter right.
Speaker 2:Yes, I did.
Speaker 1:That's a setup.
Speaker 2:I'm probably talking at a school, but you know, whenever you work for an administration, even if you love the guy you work for, there's always few things that you disagree with. And I love George Bush, I thought it was a great president. But I would occasionally have to write speeches defending Ethan all subsidies, and To my great shame. And you know, when you're a speechwriter you owe it not only to do it, but to do it To the best you can, because that's what your employer deserves. And I did.
Speaker 1:I tried to do it to the best I can, but with one difference I turn capricious faiths at wall when I was writing on Ethan all Well, we're getting short on time, but let me just ask you about more recent events related because you've written some really powerful Columns recently about the events of the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas and, in particular, the reaction on American college campuses to that which we've all seen in the news. Your calm just about a week ago was Harvard's Hamas confusion, which I thought was particularly good in terms of the moral clarity there. You know, what do you think led to this sad state of affairs? Obviously, as you touched on, we seem to lack university presidents with any kind of spine or courage to Take the kinds of actions that are needed. But what are your thoughts about that, some of which I know?
Speaker 2:you express. I think it's deeper than that. I Think the problem is like Harvard has as his motto very toss truth and a lot of Colleges had variation yell, I think, has truth in light and I think, if you went on and of course, the Declaration of Independence Starts out, we hold these truths to be self-evident. Today. I think You'd find on campus the professors who actually believe in truths and believe that they're self-evident or could be discovered is very rare and I think the fastest way to get a kid To no longer believe that there's an idea of truth that we can know it's to give them an elite Ivy education. And the other school started out.
Speaker 2:If you can't see a difference between people who get up in the morning and have planned to carry out killings of grandmas, mothers and babies and soldiers fighting them, you know? What distinction can you make? Can you trust their judgment on anything? And, like I, regard Hamas and the terrorists as a collection of war criminals. They planned this was not in the heat of battle where you might shoot up Innocent people. This is a planned war crime living by people whose strategy is war crimes, placing themselves in hospitals and Stuff so that civilians would have to be killed if anyone went after him, and that's horrific enough, but the way so many people feel they can't condemn them, including like President Obama did condemn them but he went on to say you know basically what's truth, is very complex.
Speaker 2:No, it isn't complex, and I think these protests on campus there are some areas where speech, some there might be a fine point, but there's not an area If they're interfering with the university's life. It's amazing to me. They're not allowed to Force Jewish students into a room, you know, while banging at the mouse sign. Not allowed to harass a Jewish kid like they did at Harvard and block his way. Those should be easy calls. You should not be allowed to interfere in the life of the community or the university and you should be dismissed if you are.
Speaker 1:And and I'm amazed and Appalled that the universities can't make these fundamental distinctions well, it's been encouraging that some of the large donors to these universities are waking up and Demanding some changes.
Speaker 2:if they're gonna, or they won't, continue supporting them, it's a long time coming, but yeah, I think it's gonna take a long time Because there's also the money from the Middle East, but I think to worse those donors you know they've. The Middle Eastern countries have realized, like China, go to the campus, you can have a lot of influence, and the faculty hires that have tenure. I mean, I also suspect Some of this, to paraphrase my old boss, is a soft bigotry of low standards. I Don't see many chemical engineers out there protesting. You know I I assume many of the degrees are easy courses and the professors teaching them. Again, I don't see the hard sciences Overrepresented in the these people.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much, bill, for joining me. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Roger.
Speaker 1:I appreciate all you do as a journalist, love your column every Tuesday and your appearances on the the Wall Street journals program on Saturday afternoons. Keep it going. We need people with your moral clarity speaking out on these issues and offering insights. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, very generous. We're big fans of the fun for American studies and Keep up your work too.
Speaker 1:We'll do and we'll do all we can to call attention to the plight of Jimmy Lai and Evan Gerstov.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you, bill. Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. Please don't forget to subscribe, download, like or share the show on Apple, spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast. If you like this episode, I ask you to rate and review it, and if you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email. At podcast at tfastorg. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at K Global Studios in Washington DC. I'm your host, roger Rehm, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
