Cornel West and Robert George discuss: What does civility on campus look like?

ladies and gentlemen please welcome the executive director of the Xin centre William Spencer Reilly evening good evening good evening to you and to all the many people watching us tonight on television before we get started I should mention that we have lots coming up here in the spring in the Xin Center in particular the centerpiece of our spring season will be the American premiere of a hit show from London call all our children it's a an extraordinary piece that we're so lucky to give the off Broadway premiere to it's set in Nazi Germany in 1941 and a bit about yet a terrible crime is taking place in a clinic for disabled children the perpetrators argue that it will help struggling parents and lift the financial burden of the mighty German state one brave voice is raised in objection but will anyone listen Stephen on Huan's riveting drama or memorializes the 200,000 children and young people who died as part of this overlooked chapter of the Holocaust and the brave few who fought against this injustice enter Bishop Clem's von Galan that's all I'm gonna tell you the show runs from April the 6th to May the 12th I can't recommend this enough what was a hit in London I'm certain will be a great hit in New York City and I'm particularly pleased to announce tonight that starring in this production is Tony Award winner and TV star John Glover so come to all our children and our spring brochure they'll be coming out very soon in early January there'll be over a hundred events here at the sheen Center in the spring alone and if you want to know more about that and information just send an email to info at Sheen Center org and I'm particularly pleased tonight to announce that in the fall we'll be launching another new series somewhat similar to civility in America called virtue in America moderated by Catherine Lopez the editor-at-large of National Review magazine tonight is actually a dark night in the Theater although with a sold-out house it hardly seems so you're actually on the set of all is calm the Christmas truce of 1914 a hit play that's now running at the sheen Center through December the 30th which I've never been involved with a show that every single review was a rave including including from the all-powerful New York Times and just yesterday TDF held it on its cover as a Christmas show that makes you think and speaking of making you think that's at the core what we do at the sheen Center and what we're here specifically to do tonight so tonight civility in America round two I think now more than ever civility in America is not only needed but it's something which is on everybody's mind last year when we started civility in America we did it on religion and we had father Jim Martin and Ross Douthat of the New York Times come together but tonight's subject moves from religion to higher education and since last year I believe the timeliness of this subject is even more needed obviously not just with what's going on in our country but what's going on in our culture in our church and on our campuses the vast majority of you in the audience are well past your undergraduate years but the future of higher education in America is also in this audience tonight there are teachers and students from Xavier High School Regis high schoolers Loyola Iona prep Cathedral High School and Ursuline Academy they're all with us as well and I hope you students and teachers leave here tonight more inclined to want to debate the big issues of the day but do so civilly when I first had this idea last year to launch civility in America the very first person I reached out to and called was father Matt Malone I said he's the guy who can make this happen in an extraordinarily powerful way and I thought who better to partner with for the sheen Center then father Malone in America media and before I bring father Malone out to put the entire series in context I'd like to show you a very short video clip of the first episode of civility in America which dealt with Catholicism when I learned that Ross Douthat and father Jim Martin had been aging an internet battle I'll be at a civil one over major issues in in the church and in Catholicism I called father Mallone and said let's bring these men together live on stage and you can be the referee I would come out with some conclusions and really what happened is I got more food for thought my motivation on Twitter and Facebook and an America magazine and other articles is not to get people to vote Democrat period that is not my goal my motivation is really to get them to encounter Jesus it would be the same kinds of things that I consider it the same way that I consider a homily and that a homily might have certain political implications or overtones but it is about the gospel just as the stuff that Jesus said in his times had certain political implications that he was okay with there are very important questions up for debate that have I think implications in many cases that go well beyond sort of the particular you know divorce and remarriage and Communion question to what extent should Roman Catholicism imitate the trajectory of the Episcopal Church in the United States and to what extent should it not as a Catholic and as a Christian I think it's very important to be charitable to people in terms of your discourse and part of being a good Christian is being loving and also listening to people you might disagree with I think that being able to not just have a sort of respectful dialogue but have an actual respectful argument over these issues and to figure out what are the actual divisions within the church and what they mean for our common life as Catholics is an incredibly useful if often difficult project a real tonic your spirit in this particular period that we're living through right now that country beautifully balanced talk and very valuable that was refreshing to hear them speak about distinctive points of view progressive and more thoughtfully conservative and have both those positions jockey for understanding and belief in today's American Catholicism ladies and Joan please welcome Machine Center board member and the editor-in-chief of America magazine father Matt Malone good evening my brothers and sisters and welcome to the Schoen center and to the second part of civility in America sponsored by American media thank you to Bill Riley for the warm welcome and I would also like to thank those who are tuning in via livestream throughout the United States American media is really proud to partner with the sheen Center on this occasion and to lead the conversation on civility and the public discourse in the United States so just over a year ago America and Machine Center launched this civility in America series with the aim of helping to restore civility to the mainstream American public discourse by bringing individuals to gather on this stage who may be on accustomed to sharing space together or may vigorously disagree about political social or theological issues leaders in media religion the Academy public life those who are helping to lead the public discourse as Arthur Brooks the president of the American Enterprise Institute said on this very stage three months ago when we hosted him for the John Courtney Murray lecture people may disagree with you but they're not stupid and they're not evil and it is only in bringing voices together that we can continue to build a better certainly a better Church but a better public discourse I am delighted to welcome our two guests here this evening Robert P George is the McCormack professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison program in American ideals and institutions of Princeton University he is also frequently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in addition to his academic work professor George has served as chairman of the u.s. Commission on International Religious Freedom and he has served on the President's Council on bioethics as the presidential appointee du United States Commission on civil rights and as the US member of UNESCO swirled commission on the ethics of Science and Technology professor Cornel West is a professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of professor emeritus at Princeton University he's also taught in Union Theological Seminary Yale Harvard the University of Paris professor West graduated magna laude from Harvard and obtained his MA and PhD in philosophy at Princeton is written 20 books and has edited 13 and it is my great pleasure to introduce to you professor Cornel West and professor Robert George so where to begin I suppose to be we might begin at the beginning so how did two men who have different philosophies or perhaps even different theologies different worldviews come to co-teach a course together at Princeton University well first I know I speak for Cornell as well as myself and saying how honored we are and grateful to have the opportunity to be here at the Sheen's Center it was wonderful to learn about the work that the center is doing it's obviously very important work anyone knows anything about what Cornell and I do together we regard it as the Lord's own work so congratulations and thanks to you fathering the entire team at the Machine Center for the work that you are doing I very much like this rug if it disappears tonight don't send the police well back to the beginning Cornell mm-hmm so brother Westin I knew each other as colleagues at Princeton but not well we'd been in some faculty seminars together we could say hello to each other when we passed each other on the street we had some students in Commons and wonderful students and that becomes a element of the story in a moment so one day in 2006 one of our students a brilliant young man religion major and when I was in the religion department religion major named Andrew Perlmutter Andrew who had studied with Cornell had studied with me knocked on the door of my office and said professor George can I have a word with you and I said certainly he said now some of us have raised some money and Princeton University is very good at raising money and and I now know why it's because it admits students who were really good at raising money right and the students had raised money for a magazine new magazine they were going to call it the green light yeah that's right Gary Princetonian so only last of the year drink too much we'll go right ahead that's right so he said well the magazine is going to feature in each issue including the inaugural issue which I'm here to talk with you about an interview by one professor of another professor so I said well that sounds interesting and he said well for our first issue we've invited professor Cornel West to be the interviewer and we asked them I would like the interview and he said he would like to interview you would you be willing to be interviewed for our magazine by professor West and I said well no let me just get this straight Andrew religion major net brilliant I said you're gonna have an interview of one professor by another professor and you've asked professor West to be the interview and said he could interview anybody in this entire University wanted to interview any faculty member and he wanted to interview me and Andrew says yes and I said will you send a message for me to Professor West I want you to tell professor West the professor George says that it is I who should be seeking baptism from you to which and replies huh but and I said you just tell professor West that he'll know what I mean and he said well okay I'll tell him that but will you do it and I said of course also to be honored to be interviewed by professor West so the day came we fixed the date and the day came and here came Andrew with his old fashioned cassette tape recorders the technology has moved on since they had a tape recorder and he had a photographer with him and we were off at my office and we're supposed to go for an hour you know he had the cassette tape that he'd flip in the middle so we went for an hour and that was the the amount of tape we had but by this point the two of us were into it so we went on for three more hours so we had four hours and then I said I looked at my watch and it was at six o'clock and I said well brother Cornell I'm gonna have to go home for dinner now it's been wonderful talking you know it's Shamy we've had been here four years together really not gotten to know each other but we need to get together and get to know each other better this has really been wonderful in Cornell said oh yes we absolutely have to do that and I said well let's walk down I'm parked down here did walk down to my car so we walk down to my car where I put my hand on the door latch and held it there for a half-hour while we continued they argue the talk but uh and finally I force myself because I was enjoying it so much to to go home well then about a week later we got some of the senior faculty members got a note from the Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel saying we have this Freshman Seminar program it's very important part of our program here at Princeton we want freshmen to be exposed to our senior faculty in small groups so people get to know each other but we don't have enough senior professors signing up to teach these seminars right we'd really want to encourage you to do this this is very important to the university well then the light bulb went off and I thought to myself what a wonderful thing it would be if Cornell and I could get together with 16 or 18 of these brilliant Princeton freshmen and choose some texts interesting texts that were important to both of us and just keep this discussion dialogue going so I got in touch with Cornell and proposed the idea and he immediately said let's do it and so we got back in touch with the Dean of the college and she seemed to be very happy with the idea and so um we went forward and in Cornell chose six texts and I chose six great texts from the tradition plato's core Geass was one of them yeah st. Augustine's Confessions Cornell introduced me to he's a Baptist Cornell it introduced me to Martin Luther's Babylonian captivity of the church which I had never read near being Catholic I had it's probably on the index so I hadn't read that before but it it showed me for the first time how the Reformation happened the power of Luther's polemic taught me I was a learner in that seminar learn from a lot of what Cornell said that was also a learner from reading some of these some of these texts and it was just a tremendous experience teaching with Cornell I mean you think the guy's good as a lecturer you should see him in the in the classroom and it was fantastic just a fantastic experience and so based on that we just continued doing it until he abandoned me and left for Union Theological Seminary I despite my best efforts to try to talk about it but then he came back and taught with me again actually as visiting as a visiting professor back at Princeton so that's how it happened absolutely so what why of all of the faculty at Princeton why did you want to interview professor George I just thought it would be a wonderful thing to get to know to brother because I could see that he has then and now a profound commitment to the life of the mind and so uh there would be an intellectual joy in engaging someone who won not only disagrees with but one can learn from right I've always thought that one of the most beautiful things about relating to each other is giving us the benefit of being wrong as well as right sometimes he's wrong sometimes he's right if sometimes I'm wrong sometimes I'm right now we both talk we more ripen but we're fallible we fall in it and in addition though he just his philosophical active acumen was just so intense and so we had such a great time with 12 years now teaching courses together traveling all around the country we've been on the chocolate side of Dallas with black students engaging in Paideia which is to say this deep education engaging and critical engagement but with text we've been in Texas with the well-to-do we've been what if they Air Force or Force Academy you know that's not the place I'm used to being I've got a martial spirit like they do but I've got a different kind of battlefield the students they're appreciated having corner we really had a wonderful then and I learned I mean the important thing is that we just learned from one one another and in addition to that to what has happened is that we form such a genuine friendship I've always known that that love is not reducible to politics and we need to hear this over and over again these days given the levels of polarization given the levels of balkanization in the country and I salute the sheen Center for thought we ought to underline that thought there because we live an anti-intellectual culture and so those who willing to must have the courage to think critically for yourself and land where you land just like a jazz musician find their voice not imitate and not fit in conformity find your voice that's what that thought is and of course you know the Catholic tradition and some of my favorite Catholics Pascal and Montaigne and Dorothy day these are serious love warriors and thinkers yeah and that's exactly what we've been able to do together for these for these twelve years and then our families became very close and so you end up with not just a friendship but a coming together of families and traditions and and an across the color line too yeah that's important we don't really have to worry about that too much in our own friendship but when people look at us and say what are these two brothers doing they gather a little like Felix and Oscar yeah he's on the left he's on there where we're also Christians too that makes a difference you know you never want to reduce the specificity of the good news to just a political orientation you've got to have some sense of what that love really means on that cross sure and as the Baptist I've got a less sacramental conception of the world so I learned from his sacramental Sensibility not enough yet but you know I'm working on it I'm working on saluté and he learns from my tradition which is tradition of a people who have been hated chronically for 400 years but talked the world so much about how to love right and what love is really about we can just put on john coltrane love supreme together and take it in we do some listening oh and he plays those serious guitar and banjo we sing together in class yeah sometimes into sometimes out of to you always into and I'm trying to catch up with her button over that tradition of Aretha Franklin and the Stevie Wonder and well you don't when when when arth Brooks was here at giving the Maura lecture he said that this series is in aptly named that it's not civility that we really lack in our public discourse it's it's love that's what's really like he said you know if you ask somebody you know how was your marriage and they replied well we're civil right but that's not a definition of success right so there's something to that isn't there but I mean the great Hannah Arendt - who taught right down the street here at the new school this magnificent new school she was very suspicious of any talk about love in the public square precisely because of the variety and heterogeneity of viewpoints so as Christians we can enter in with our love baggage on the Love Train but we've got some magnificent secular and agnostic and atheistic brothers and sisters they don't want to hear that love talk yeah because it's been a cover so much domination it's been a cover for so much exploitation you see so we say okay justice is what love looks like in public let's talk about justice yeah but from a Christian point of view we're connecting it to the cross the witness of a Palestinian Jew named Jesus for them they're connecting it to this course of benevolence or a whole host of other ways and that's fine because as citizens we entered at public square without a million trying to respect people who we disagree with and so if you come in talking about love to prematurely the important thing for Christians it's not to talk about it but exemplified you see you only want to talk about it tell my love own I don't know but I'm trying to love you watch this year after year after year then finally 15 years ladies say now let's talk about love so you got something concrete that's already been flesh a fide in front of their homes very eyes something else that we have in common relates to that point and and that is we do believe that eventually the conversation does have to come around to love it does you have to bear witness to truth in love and the truth about love and the promisee of love and we don't think you can permanently lay aside the question of the ultimate source and ground of our humanity and of the possibility of love so we're not among those we're willing to engage our secular brothers and sisters on fair terms in a spirit of brotherhood in a spirit of love we want to try to exemplify we try we fail but we try again absolutely but we are not of the school that says keep religion in the closet keep God in the closet don't talk about that stuff we're both bearing witness to our faith we we're not of the mind that says keep faith out of the public square keep faith out of the public dialogue only talk in a language that is common ground the trouble there is you reduce to the point where you're not talking to each other at all the common language is not capable of reaching the fundamental issues that have to be address the deep existential issues of meaning and value because at the end of the day that people do want to know why should I love somebody else especially if I disagree with them and I find their views or something about them disgusting or appalling because there are this or there are that and so we have to be willing to engage that and take it on and it's hard it's not easy at all the temptation is to run away from it - just get peace and just get peace not not engage but I think the Christian faith is the ground of the possibility in our case others have a different faith but in our case the possibility of mustering the courage to have somewhat uncomfortable conversations about deep issues really deep issues that people don't always want to talk about hmm absolutely I think we do have to draw a distinction though between religion and politics there is no religion that doesn't have political consequences and effects but you can have a nation state that treats fellow citizens equally so that Christians Muslims Jews Buddhists Hindus agnostics atheists and latitudinarian so ever other categories we have in place they can still enter the public square and have exactly the same status but as Christians I think you know we and I don't speak on behalf of all the time and I think we want to say that when we enter we have our own assumptions of presuppositions that we're bringing we're having lens through which we look at the world and look at the world through the lens of the cross it's a very different way of looking at the world then through the lens of the stock market but I think the lens of just the laboratory or scientific Authority all of these might have a place but the primary lens is through that cross that signifies that unarmed truth and unconditional love across the board and the willingness to live and die in light of a witness of a Palestinian Jew who was crushed by the Roman Empire but somehow bounced back with some love drops at the bottom of that cross that precious fountain that the church had been trying to come to terms and now we know the church is founded on Peter that's not too encouraging three times it denied [Laughter] you have relatively low expectation of institutional religion but somehow even the institutional religion provides the means for that love to be available now of course Chesterton used to say what Peter denied him but he also acknowledged the denial he didn't deny that he denied that's part of Peters bounce-back so he is bones-- it at the foundation of this flawed infallible institution called the church is of course in terms of his plurality now there's a I would imagine that one of the reasons why you're also a popular to some on the circuit is because I think we're all whether we know it or not desperate for a different kind of discourse than what we see in cable news and certainly in the Twitter and social media and all the rest but I mean how unusual is this in the Academy because I think that's probably another reason why why you two are popular because I to a general audience because it people's perception anyway is that either everyone in the Academy thinks alike or subscribes to the same sort of worldview political worldview especially and that these kinds of dialogues don't really take place this is a serious issue there the president of my university has been very firm about the need to take it on so has president Zimmer at the University of Chicago and some other leading figures in higher education the serious issue is the black of viewpoint diversity in the mainstream academic world too often it is an intellectual or political monoculture orthodoxies form and sometimes those orthodoxies harden and that creates a kind of groupthink which is possible even among the most brilliant people any of us can fall into groupthink if there isn't a socrates around if there's not a gadfly so it's not someone poking and raising questions so I think that has to be addressed I mean if if these partnerships that I've been blessed to have with Cornell are to be more common then you're going to need people to be Cornell's conversation partner and if they're not there in your institution because there aren't more conservative voices represented those conversations can't take place and everybody loses in that I mean groupthink doesn't benefit anybody doesn't advance the cause of learning the cause of knowledge the cause of scholarship it certainly doesn't cause a benefit the benefit the students so there's a real issue there and it does have to be addressed beyond that I think it's important to lead by example once again Cornell was right when he says we have to exemplify our Christian faith faith more than preach it I think we have to practice this kind of dialogical engagement more than we have to preach it I think on the Princeton campus to the extent that we've been able to benefit the institution it's just been in the doing not in out there talking about what we're doing it's the actual doing of it that has that has made a difference one good thing about it is that it's shown that it really is possible and it has benefits and I can't stress enough that this is not just about being polite to each other despite disagreeing I mean if that's the best we could do I'd settle for it but I'd be very disappointed it's certainly better than than than going to war with each other but we can do so much better than that we can engage each other we can try to learn from each other we can acknowledge our own fallible than the possibility that we might be wrong whatever our view is about religion about politics about morality whatever it is and be open to learning from the engagement with the other person it's it's not just being nice for the sake of being nice we can do so much better than that we can advance the cost of learning and to go beyond we're here this evening to talk about higher education but if I can just step beyond it for a moment if we do this will not only benefit the cause of learning will benefit the cause of democracy you can't run a democratic republic if people are not willing seriously to engage each other and learn from each other and treat each other respectfully not just out of poly test but out of a desire to advance the common good you're not gonna be able to run up Republican democracy if people are not willing to do that James Madison and the tenth Federalist paper warns that what brings down democracies has always brought down when he uses the he favors the term Republic what is brought down Republic's historically has been faction and you have to find a way to deal with faction he has a proposal for it in Federalist 10 the Constitution is meant in part to to come up with a way of dealing with that but it's not just formal structures of government constitutional structures that are needed to do the work you need a certain kind of citizen with a certain kind of virtue citizens who despite this agreement are willing to recognize each other as fellow citizens as reasonable people of goodwill to engage with each other be willing to learn from each other be willing occasionally believe it or not I know it sounds radical to change your mind right and not just be dogmatic right absolutely you agree with that characterization of the problem professor West rather oddly is right there 120 percent he's that's not always the case but he's right did you know the great Dubois says and souls of black folk that honors criticism as the soul of democracy and what what he means by that is is that what the Greeks called Paideia which is that formation of attention at cultivation of a critical self in the maturation of a loving soul willing to raise ones voice and that's the the anthem of black people right as well lift every voice which is already symbolic Democratic action just like a jazz orchestra you got to lift every voice not an echo but a voice that is distinctly uniquely your own conclusions you reach on to your own rustling with what's inside and outside of you but in addition and it's here well I think John do is great text 1927 the public and its problems he says if in fact there's no longer a civic virtue that facilitates critical reflection mature maturation of a self things public will be degraded and trashed public conversation public education public health care all the things that sit at the center of a democratic project and you lose your democracy now one of the things about brother Ravi and I and the university and you tell me whether you agree with this that that helps us go against the grain is that neither one of us are liberals and forms of liberalism are hegemonic in the university he is a conservative Christian I am a revolutionary Christian so when we look at liberalism we say oh there's some wonderful elements there we're against monarchy - we're for rights - we're for liberties - rifra Marcus under certain kind of regulations - but it seems to be so spiritually empty it can be colonized by the market even as Abba narcissism and greed in the name of liberalism so a more rock begins to set in and you don't have any counter voices that have religious and non-religious sources left see if we were having a dialogue in the 1930s it would be religious folk and communist and socialism because they were the ones who are willing to live and die for something bigger than them they just found out they were living - living to die for a gangster name style I all wrong judgment but they were willing to do what they were willing to fight wealth inequality white supremacy male supremacy homophobia I believe those are worthy of fighting against they're worthy of fighting is what Dorothy day understood they call her a communist no I'm a Christian I'm going to Mass this morning but some of those communists accenting certain issues are something that the mainstream needs to come to terms with so when brother Ravi and I come together in university we really are going against the grain and socratic in that sense refusing to conform to the hegemony of the day is that a fair characterization you think well the only thing I would say is the only thing I would change is that I'm a revolutionary conservative Christian I've got conservative elements I like to call them preservatives I believe traditions are inescapable and we must preserve certain elements of tradition the problem with conservative is when it comes to order in hierarchy they get too excited I'm a radical Democrat I want accountability from below of anybody who's at the top the a corporate elite political elite culturally religiously I want accountability in the name of ordinary people so when it comes to order and hierarchy yes under certain conditions is that a fair characterization when you say conservative revolution I like that I like that ability bottom-up but I don't like that big government up here well no I don't want none I want to bigger government I don't want to make sure we don't have poverty and all these other folk living like kings and queens I'm for that but I do want subsidiarity I want almond I want to civil society when civil society has Church doubt whether as government or captive you know it can come from economic plutocracy you know that's right that's right so I don't care where it's coming from I want flourishing institutions of civil society that play the primary role in health education and Welfare that doesn't mean government doesn't have a subsidiary role that doesn't mean that that that that we want a libertarian utopia I'm against that as much as you will absolutely but I do want flourishing institution as a civil society and I worry when government usurps the authority and undermines the integrity of those institutions being family church and so I'm a totally I mean I don't know if you count Tocqueville as a conservative or radical well how would you Alexis doesn't fit well there he doesn't so that's good I mean we're a topple unclassifiable unsuitable that's what they used to go Socrates he's the topples he doesn't fit yeah now Jesus who weep Socrates never cries the very important no tears of Socrates yeah right Jesus weeps he is also a topples he doesn't fit under one particular school of thought one ideology one politics because the love that he exemplifies is too rich in too deep to be contained by any human construction having to do with ideology and politics but he tilts toward the weak and these are our Jewish brothers and sisters this is the great revolution in the species the Hebrew Scripture that says to be human is to spread Hesed steadfast love and loving kindness to the stranger and the motherless the fatherless the weak the persecuted the oppressed the exploited and Jesus comes directly out of that prophetic Judaic tradition you see so in that sense the lens again through which one looks at the world begins with those catching hell and language of Malcolm X yeah see that's a very different way of looking at the world when it comes to not just America but every nation that's why every flag is under the cross including the American flag you can get in trouble saying that I say at all times you know our own no idolatry with me when it comes in e-flat our old friend Richard John Newhouse the late Rajah Richard yeah yeah Newhouse always made the point that to be a nation under God is to be a nation under judgment we should aspire to be as our motto says a nation under God when when Lincoln inserted those words into the Gettysburg Address he was doing it for a reason one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all but that should trigger in all of us the recognition that we are a nation under judgment we answer to a higher power this is the great central point of Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail yeah yeah we teach where he said we wanted the tip is that yeah the king is at pains to point out that no one is firmer than he in his belief in law without law the weak the vulnerable the despised would be defenseless against the powerful we need law human law is good but human law can go bad and that means we have to recognize that there is a higher law a natural law or a law of God that is the reference point the standard by which we judge the justice or injustice of the human law so while our ordinary obligation is to obey the human law where the human law is not in sync with the higher law we not only are not under an obligation necessarily to obey it often we would be under an obligation to break it right but that's only true if there is in fact a higher law if there's nothing higher than the human nothing higher than the human law then King is really taking us down the wrong road the road as his critics claimed at the time to anarchy and so it would seem to me that the it in as much as God or faith or the religious tradition retreats from the public square our or it is not welcome in the public square our politics actually becomes more moralistic doesn't it in a sense because it is it's where we are focused almost entirely on the here and now and so our if if we're cut off from the transcendent as Charles Taylor says right in the world in which we're living today then what is only here and now becomes all that much more important doesn't it right right but I'm not sure though brother it would be moralistic I think it would be more like Thrasymachus and Plato's Republic it might makes right its power dictates morality because even in a world without God you still have some moral sensitivity sensitive sensibilities of people you still have higher ideals mm-hmm you know like democracy like love a family I mean secular brothers and sisters they can be as transcendent as they want without God but what they're transcending is the greed and the hatred and the envy and the resentment and the obsession with power you see that's the symbolism that Socrates is opposition to threesome because you see and in that sense what happens is unfortunately when you have a highly marketized culture where the obsession is pecuniary gain and the preoccupation is the eleventh commandment thou shalt not get caught this survival of the slickest as Wall Street there's white house that's too much church too many synagogues too many mosques too many universities we are experiencing a spiritual blackout of white out whatever you want to call it precisely because the obsession with power and greed have pushed out moral sensibilities be they secular or religious that's a very very dangerous moment that's an opening the neo-fascism because neo fashiona will teach you what life is like and what a society is like when it's only about power and there's no countervailing forces whatsoever with those dissenting voices either incarcerated or it's completely called into question indeed legitimated you see and that's the real fear and we're seeing in Poland we see it in Hungary we see it in Brazil we see it in the White House we see it in Austria more and more as the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said nihilism is the major ecumenical moment of the time that's Hefner 1965 and no religion is an island at great lecture of here that he gave right across the street from Jewish Theological Seminary what happens when the most powerful movement is the movement of power and greed and hatred and envy and resentment that's kind of moment we live in it and it's very much of the other agree when it comes in all colors all genders all stations all national identities all the way down can be of the left or of the right oh it's a human or to human thought of apologizing for Cuba and you know what went on Oh Lord if you by and you stood up against it and a lot of people on the Left wouldn't join you in doing that what along with radical Democrat elites need to rotate yeah that's democracy that's what democracy is and the point about Stalin is a good one that you made earlier about Stalin is a good one I mean the trouble the danger for me the danger is when religion is pushed out of the public so I don't want it to be given special privilege right right that I want it to be able to compete on fair terms with secular ideologies but when it's pushed to the margins when it is privatized and we go down the path of lie you see Ted it's not that people will go without a religion or that religion will not play a role in the public square a religion will enter that vacuum but it will be a political religion but it might be of the right and it might be of the left but whether it's of the right of the left the corpses will begin to pile high whether it is communism on which the record is clear or fascism and the corpses will begin to pile high so there needs to be something better than that no I agree with for now that I mean we everybody in this room knows wonderful atheists morally upright unbelievers some of you maybe this is not a claim that you can't be moral if you're an atheist that's right my worry is that when we push our religious traditions out of the public square and not let them compete on their terms what you will end up doing is living for as long as it lasts on the capital of our religious heritage and you can deplete that capital to the point where people no longer see what the point is or why we would conceivably have an obligation to worry about the welfare of others sheer benevolence uninformed by conviction is not enough to keep us given our passions given the negative side of human you Baptists are good on that side of you know knowing that that unless there's conviction behind emotion then pretty soon we're going to turn to each other and turn on each other and we're gonna be very vicious toward each other and and it won't matter whether that ideology is of the writer of the left that viciousness will and it seems to me that this is a crucially important point because if you are well to what you were saying earlier professor as if you are as Christians we enter the public square with certain presuppositions and ideas and one of them of course is that we live in a fallen world and you got enough so we live in a fallen world primarily and not perhaps and then not not an imperfect society but a fallen world and that is that's a those are very different ways of looking at the same reality aren't they you know and then and and the prescriptions that then come from that world view those world views will differ I think that's a profoundly important point we as Christians or as Jews and I believe the true the same is true for Islam I don't know it as well but certainly for people of biblical faith we know there is no perfecting of human nature human nature is going to be in the future what it has been in the past we're not going to be able to change things to create the perfect communist man society can't be perfected we're not going to build a master race all those ideas are not only crazy but deeply deeply dangerous we've already seen the record of people who think that by the exercise of pulley power making the right political choices putting the right people in office they'll perfect society a perfect man or change human nature the biblical faiths keep us grounded in the belief that we're working with flawed materials here and we can't expect more than those materials can in the end deliver and that the struggle for justice for decency for right will be permanent our if there if there is a if there are another million generations they will be struggling with these fundamental issues and the fundamental flaws in human nature and trying to overcome sinfulness in the same way we do we cannot do things now that will make it the case that we've got the future perfect person or the future perfect society or the future perfect person because society is what perfects persons and the perfect society will create perfect persons Oh indeed you know the greatest American play ever written it's about a bar right around the corner here Iceman Cometh mmm well the great Eugene O'Neill remember that line in that place you can't make a marble temple out of a mixture of mud and manure yeah but we can't allow imperfection to be used as an excuse not to fight for justice you have to be able to come to terms with the fallenness and the fal ability of we crack mortals and still muster the courage to follow and be lured by something greater than us some of us call it the kingdom of God and coming out of my black Baptist tradition where I was told every week if the kingdom of God is within you then everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind what kind of witness are you leaving in such a grim world in which that we find ourselves in happening not in order to create this marble temple and not in order to overlook the flaws and foibles of who we are as human beings but to be also willing to serve and sacrifice in order to bear witness - something inside of you a fire inside of you that won't allow you to hold your peace that's not a matter of somehow being on automatic when it comes to perfection or progress you see and it's a it's it comes down to what WH Auden saying they say well how do we learn how to love our crooked neighbor with our crooked hearts yeah so you get the self-criticism built in but you also have the aspiration to make that love connection but the love connection itself is going to be flawed so when it comes to white supremacy how do you really learn how to love or hated people how have I hated people learn how to love the people who hate them well spend a little time with Martin Luther King jr. it's been a little time with some of those voices the James Baldwin's and the others you see now that's not to say that we haven't had you know black thugs and black black gangsters because every community has had gangsters and thugs and how's a gangster for I met Jesus I'm just a redeemed center with gangster proclivities right now the only thing keeping me going is some connection to this kingdom because the civil war taking place on my own soul every day against the gangster proclivities that's why when I called Donald Trump a gangster on television people said oh you shouldn't use that lames I said no I'm on intimate terms of what it is to be a gangster and I can tell a gangster when I see one but that's not a subjective expression that's an objective condition you know grab what was woman's private parts and not be gangsta like it's not just wrong that's gangster life but he has the possibility of being changed he is made in the image and likeness of God too which makes him my brother he's just my political foe he's after me I'm after him but I'm after him in a different spirit then he's after me because I'm still loving him even though he's having trouble loving himself and he's not loving me too well that's all right he has a capacity you can change I'm just not making my project my program on his change so in that way the specificity of the Christian witness must always be center stage and that's what we have fun doing at a place like for instance Oh many of the other places that we've gone - yeah because you you you actually have a great deal more in common than one would think at first glance right that's true beginning with the deep Christian faith but is that or do you - guys I like these black suits yeah black was very slimming they tell me but is that is this kind of discourse the kind of discourse we've just been having you know that it's filled with this kind of religious symbolism language is that welcome on our university and college campuses we've never really asked for permission but clearly it's the case that many people on the more conservative side of these issues do not feel that they can safely state their opinions that there will be retaliation if I write this on an examination or in a term paper my professor will give me a bad grade or give me a less good grade than I would have otherwise I'll be completely marginalized I will not get a recommendation for Law School these are real fears that people have they're not unreasonable again my my president the president of our university Chris Heisler before whom I have enormous respect noticing this problem of a lack of viewpoint diversity has even put some emphasis on the idea of needing to recruit students not just faculty that's another issue it's very important to get more viewpoint diversity on our faculty but to recruit students from parts of the country where for example Donald Trump is popular yeah Appalachia the West some of the working white working-class areas of the industrial states and and so forth and he wants a situation and I want a situation where as it happens I am a conservative Trump critic but I agree with Chris ice Gruber who was more on Cornel side than on my side I agree with him that I think it would be good for the university for people who do support Donald Trump to feel free to engage with people who were opposed to Donald Trump and are highly critical of Donald Trump in a robust civil dialogue these people are not fools they're not idiots and it's wrong to dismiss them as as bigots many of them are highly intelligent people I know people and left don't like to acknowledge that but it's true and they've got something to say and I want to engage with them now I'm on the other side and I get a lot of heat for you you know my tweeter what I do I get a lot of heat from the Trump people especially being a conservative who's a critic of of Trump but I myself have engaged with some of those people and some have some powerful things to say there are reasons that they went in the direction of Donald Trump even acknowledging many of his personal flaws so I want to engage with them and I think it's important that we engage with them and there were a range of other types of viewpoints there were a range of other viewpoints that are not well represented on college campuses that need a better representation if education is to prosper I want to make clear this is not just a matter of let's be fair to the Conservatives that's not the it's nice to be fair to everybody including the Conservatives but that's not what I'm fundamentally concerned about what I'm fundament about is truth-seeking education learning knowledge you cannot have that unless there is some sort of robust engagement and dialogue what I want is what port Cornell described as idea that great Greek term for the concept of a deep education in education is not just about conveying information or imparting skills a deep education that wrestles with the fundamental questions with the basic questions of meaning and value which engages with the best that's been thought and said on competing sides all the sides of the of the of the various questions and you can't have that when there's a monologue when everybody is thinking too much alike right absolutely and we've seen this though with brother Marc Lamont Hill yep and the speech that he gave here at the United Nations where it's very very difficult to have a candid and critical dialogue on the israeli-palestinian conflict in the Academy outside in public discourse on television you see and if we're going to have a robust discourse in which all of us are accountable brother Marc he's got to be accountable there's no doubt about that but he's also got to be able to raise his voice without being so thoroughly demonized that people can't keep track of what he's also trying to say which is that a Palestinian baby has the same value as a Jewish baby and a Jewish baby has the same value as a Palestinian baby and therefore when we talk about the situation we got to have a double love perspective we got to love our Jewish brothers and sisters got to love our Palestinian brothers and sisters and how do you do that in such a way that you come up with an analysis of vision and a narrative no one has an answer that a latter question but if we can't raise our voices and say suffering among the Palestinians has a significance and status so that a Palestinian life lost is not something to dismiss and a Jew Israeli life loss is a catastrophe it's a catastrophe across the board especially when it's innocent especially when it's children now we can disagree specially the last line that he says associated with Hamas you know Hamas of gangsters but there's always gangsters and resistance against oppression you got to separate the gangsters from the legitimate voices our core concern morally and spiritually with not just Palestinians but also Jews we've got that in the United States was there a urban guerrilla movement in the United States the whole nation founded on that movement it's called the American Revolution were they in love with the British a few were most work but they're just as wrong as a Jewish terrorist move a cargo that was killing Arab children and women and men the loss of an innocent life is wrong across the board across the board now how do you enter into a dialogue that allows these kind of sensibilities and yet rendering each one of us answerable and so in that situation that brother Robbie and I disagree about the Middle East but he was willing to say as a person committed to rights and liberties here now not to be dismissed at Temple University he ought not be demonized in that way and that took a lot of courage and he's he's still receiving all kinds of I can imagine I'm yeah I mean just one second I know we have time for some questions and so you're going to take comments if so we have I believe there's a microphone here and so if you want to queue up we'll get to you in just a second I'm sorry you wanted to say something well yeah I think Cornell's made some very important points there I spoke up for Mark Lamont Hills rights for the same reason I would speak up for anyone's rights to freedom of speech and academic freedom not because I agree with what he said right we're agree with his position but because I think he had a right to state his view and should not be retaliated against especially by his University which is a direct violation of academic freedom for expressing that view III know if he were asking me about the terms in which he should express that view I would have given him some advice and probably the same advice Cornell would have given him and he would have believed it from Cornell and maybe taken you know that maybe you shouldn't use expressions that are associated with Hamas and with terrorism against Jewish Israelis and others Jews around the world but I'm willing to stand up for the free speech rights of anybody who's being who's free speech is being violated whether I would agree with it or not that's because I believe that freedom of speech is absolutely crucial to truth seeking which is what universities are about and to democracy which is what we should be all about now at Princeton on this question of divestment from businesses doing business in Israel BDS Cornell and I were on opposite sides and a few years ago the two sides had their forums and Cornell was the main speaker at that the pro BDS forum and I was the main speaker at the anti BDS forum we have a disagreement about the politics of the Middle East but we agree on fundamental things like what he said Palestinian baby exactly equal to a Jewish baby Jewish baby exactly equal to a Palestinian baby now should there be a single state or should there be two states should should there be a Jewish homeland state or not you know those are points on which their disagreement and and argument but even Cornell is going to be the first to say we can understand the reason that the Jewish community believes that they need and should have a national homeland in Palestine of course we know what has happened to Jewish people throughout the world really we know what the what the what the basis of that aspiration is and we know a lot about the historical links between the Jewish people and that part of the world now none of that would justify oppression and none of that is to say whatever any Israeli government does we're going to approve of because his Rayleigh governments are just like American governments or Cuban government's or Hungarian governments or any governments they're made up of frail fallible people people many of whom have an agenda usually sometimes not such a good agenda and so they're gonna do things that are wrong and we can we can speak up against the wrongdoing regardless of whether we're on this side or that side of the more fundamental question right my question is on the issues ability there have been times when we tried as a nation to be civil and it hasn't worked because both of you have have been active in different areas in prominent civil rights movements for example professor wise in race relations present charge of the pro-life movement both these poses are to be pressing civil rights issues and my question is how do you love and not just in your heart but absolute love people who are who are choosing because the judeo-christian tradition yes we will to do people that's it I placed before you today I did a little how do you engage with people first for example I William Seward famously said there's an irrepressible conflict in the nation which led to four rules of blood and when the Dave of the project when we tried to be civil first George you posted about Sherman and Johnson they were there did to try to for bridge their differences we have 90 years of Jim Club husband Dave up we said let's be civil as a nation let's not fight anymore let's you know fiddle while Rome burns because we want to have civility so how do you not just in your heart you to love anyone to decide I recognize demand how do you engage people who promote and advocate for the jungle is to be evil you know you know and not without being of the elites for both leader from humble beginnings who are prominent men and young people who are suffering on whatever position you take you know again knowing about Johnston and Sherman they had the luxury of being civil because there weren't african-american or southern unionists or whatever whatever side you're on position that how do you love that which is evil or a person all right which promotes you thank you did you want to take down on it well let me give it out she'll start and then Daniel actually explained the truth of the matter because Toby my friend Toby Eisner has raised up it's just a powerful question and of course I'm gonna approach this through that lens of my Christian faith and I can understand someone doesn't have that Christian conviction it they give a different answer but here's here's my answer my faith tells me that there are people who do evil even grave grave horrible evil but the person himself never loses his fundamental human dignity which means my obligation is to love him now if I love him also speak truth we mean by speaking truth in love if I love him I might actually have to oppose him in fact if I love him might might we pray that it doesn't come to this think of Lincoln's first inaugural address dovey pleading with the South not to trigger a civil war we might have to fight him for the sake of protecting innocent people who were vulnerable but we do not give up on love you know my wonderful my great former student rabbi meir soloveitchik a fantastic scholar and teacher here in New York at yeshiva he wrote a very powerful critique of the Christian idea of loving enemies I believe it was in commentary magazine it might have been in first things magazine and he and he got a lot of he got a lot of pushback especially from Christians on it because he he titled the article the virtue of hate and Rabbi solavei chicks argument was there are some people who do things so bad who are so threw and threw themselves filled with hatred and ill will and they manifest that and actually murdering innocent people that they are not to be loved they are no longer to be loved it's not just the sin that is to be hated but the person as the as the sinner is to be hated now I can see if you're not looking at it from my Christian perspective that that's not a crazy view but I look at it from the Christian perspective and so I say something so radical that it it really scandalized rabbi solavei check and that is we have an obligation even to love Hitler even Christians have a lot of trouble with that one although in theory in theory they're all going to affirm it because no Christian who's serious about his faith is going to be willing to say that there's somebody who's so bad that their human dignity has been erased and we have no longer any obligation to love them no but I think I think that's real Christian witness no brother the the the flipside of genuine Christian love charitable Christian hatred where you hate the sin and still try to love the sinner you hate the injustice deep hate we're not talking about just something that nice little opposition while you're sipping tea at some restaurant reading in New York Times it's no longer we talk about something you wouldn't live and die for but you're not losing sight of the humanity of the person because their humanity is still on a continuum with you and you have the capacity without the good stuff inside of you of being gangster thug Hitler like white supremacist male supremacist homophobic transphobic anti-semitic anti-arab antipholus Tinian all that ugly stuff what you call an evil the that the reason why I think the Christian position is so powerful and this woman's King understood that when Jesus said love your enemies he said that precisely because if you really engage in a Christian witness you're gonna have so many of them and if you obsessed with them you never get to the point which is brand witness to the kingdom keeping the Love Train going keeping the Justice train going and in addition to that if you're hating the sinner you just add animal hate anyway so there's more hatred hatred Unleashed in the world much of the history of our species is the history of hatred and domination and exploitation there hasn't been one moment in the history of our species what God could look at history and say that is good not one moment the democracy that we know most of them have been imperial democracy that's indigenous peoples as the Africans visa big European democracies given their imperialism or Latin America they've been patriarchal democracies asked the vast majority of humankind women sisters of all colors they've been homophobic democracies but these democratic practices Marie understood this and you wrote a wonderful thesis on the great John Courtney Murray these democratic practices are very ow they're very precious because democracy itself and its highest level is the form of a witness to love of truth and love of goodness and love of beauty and those of us who also love God can play a role but we'll also have a whole host of folk who love with God who also in love with white supremacy male supremacy anti-jewish anti-arab anti-muslim sensibility so this issue of loving the sinner is not liking the sinner but simply saying that person is made in the image of God and no matter what their deeds are their humanity is not fully exhausted in how vicious they are that's true for trouble well that's true for Trump and people so otherwise you defend the trouble not defending that brother I'm keeping track of his humanity why because I was a black man in America for 65 years if I didn't keep track of humanity at most Vennela brothers and sisters yeah dot dot dot I had a Presbyterian minister who put it to me this way he said that in every person there are two atoms there is the atom was created in the image and likeness of God ooh and there is the atom who ate the fruit dovey the other point I would make is again from a Christian point of view I think though this is this is defensible on more than merely more than theological terms I don't want to say merely theological terms father more than theology of course the queen of the sciences I acknowledge that as a ploy we were about to turn off your mic people are capable of change even people who are deeply into the worst kinds of things are capable of change I think it was the man who wrote Amazing Grace it was a slave trader absolutely I think I have not the right guy the writer of one of the great hymns who was a slave trader and yet he had a change of heart he had a change of mine he had a transformation you've referenced the work I do and the witness I've tried to give in the pro-life movement standing up for the child in the womb the frail elderly person the cognitive leader physically disabled person and of course that's a very tough issue today and we're in a lot of conflict with each other and it can get very intense but I never think that my job is to defeat my opponents there on that if she was deeply as I care about the same that he volume in life my job I I don't actually see them as enemies I see them as future allies I want a conversion of heart and I've seen that in so many cases I was a great friend I think as you know Dovie of of Bernard Nathanson one of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League in that in those days was called the National Association for the repeal of abortion laws and he was somebody who had supervised 60,000 abortions had performed several thousand including one that took the life of his own unborn child and yet he ended up seeing differently coming around becoming a actually a pro-life activist himself there are those conversions of heart but whether or not we win an adversary over we need to respect as humanity as someone who has ended up where he or she is for now but could change has within them the resources to to get past whatever the impediment is that is blocking their seeing what is truly good as far as we can so you don't have to be open to the possibility that we might be the ones who are wrong which is why we should engage the person listen to that person's arguments there's no infallibility in any of us well hope but then within very oh we love France we love but you know it has to be a sincere engagement and not not not just advocacy all the time advic that's right yeah we mean that be we did we have no excuse for not fighting for justice for the victims no excuse for not doing that but always willing to listen and not just to preach well let's get one more question in we have it yes sir I'm sorry oh you're next don't answer as a former teacher and there's some students in the back a lot of times as a teacher the hardest thing that I had to do or try to do well was to make the content relatable to the students that I was teaching and not dumbing it down we're putting it in terms that they could understand best and one of the things that I'm curious about is how do you reconcile on campus the kind of language and terminology that's used in your conversations that you know well definitions philosophies ways of thinking that's pretty high level to some to to the masses let's say and reconciling that language with people who may not understand that language and engaging in that kind of dialogue and that's something to me that I'm always thinking about as I'm hearing this political discourse of the coastal elites or these people who are intellectual elites and like I'm I have a master's degree so I'm one of those people and so I keep thinking how how are we suppose or how can we or whether or the techniques that can reconcile just in the basis of language encountering somebody who who may not understand just the words that I'm speaking wonderful question salute the work that you're doing and it's just so wonderful to have the young brothers assistance' of all colors high schools right yes but now he works for me yeah oh that's one no but brother I mean the language we use of love integrity honesty generosity service to others greed envy hatred resentment that's not the jargon of the chattering classes that's very heavy clear language that still subject to multiple interpretations but it gets where young people are cuz young people are so hungry and thirsty for something that transcends the superficial culture of spectacle of image of money young people are told everyday you are to be the smartest in the room and the riches that's spiritually empty let the phones be smart you'd be wise love of wealth empty I know you don't want to be broke with the Ten Commandments financially but if you start loving well more than you love truth and justice you're gonna run up and get a stone wall and read your history and see it in every culture see that's what we tell our young folk I think most of us forget that it's just that they don't hear it enough they don't hear it enough because these monopolies and oligarchs these days they're so obsessed with money making and so obsessed with their peacock status want to be seen as the richest and the smartest with their trophy X's and their big mansions and you say my god how vacuous can you get and yet it's very seductive especially the young folk who haven't undergone a Paideia that gives them a strength to resist that and we find this even among our colleagues I mean be the neoliberal University has more and more colonized by big-money is it would you say that partly that's true well yeah I mean one of the things that I'm worried about and you and I have worked on this together is that we're losing liberal arts education absolutely education is becoming more and more careerist and professionally oriented and vocationally oriented and so people who really would enormous ly benefit from reading Plato st. Agustin the Reformation authors the Enlightenment authors just four at Shakespeare Chaucer just for the intrinsic enrichment see those as a luxury that can't be afforded because to get where I want to go I need to study economic which is fine computer science which is fine there's a place for that it's all fine but let's not neglect the liberal arts that's not neglect liberal arts education in the intrinsic enrichment that that brings let's not let's not miss the opportunity to lead an examined life now not everybody has the luxury of leading the examined life by by getting into dialogue with Plato or Saint Agustin but all of us can lead the examined life all of us can ask the great questions all of us can look for opportunities to engage people on great questions now on the question of the pursuit of wealth and there is an awful lot of the pursuit of wealth that has become a big thing but in my experience people who are obsessed with wealth are not obsessed with wealth just for its own sake it's not technically greed they're obsessed with wealth because in our society wealth attaches to status prestige social standing and that is what people want and underlying that is this whole idea that life is about gratification it's about me me me my generation I regret to say was called the Me Generation the motto of the me generation you'll remember this was if it feels good do it well we're now living with a lot of the fallout of if it feels good do it and it's not just people who have ended up where Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix have ended up poor people ended up with you know in a string of broken relationships and so forth it's even people who've made it but whose lives are impoverished and vacuous because they find out that the mansion and the Bentley and all that social status that comes with those things actually isn't worth very much you get it and you wonder what was it all about so I think we need to get people focused on the things that are really important the things of the Spirit not not and off of the mimimi stuff one more point of in response to your question one problem and this this may not be just our intellectual culture I don't know enough to know whether this is just endemic to intellectual cultures there is a an unlovely tendency in the intellectual culture to look down on people who are not as well educated or fancily educated who don't have degrees from the right places or don't have college degrees at all some of the finest many of the finest people in fact I don't think that the best educated are on the whole any better or worse than people who are less well educated from a moral point of view I think education is valuable I want as many people to have it that these days it's it's popular to say well not everybody should go to college that's probably true but I think an awful lot of people would benefit from college even if they go on to careers that didn't necessarily require a college degree but I think we should cut it out those those who are in fields like the ones we're in should cut it out with looking down on people who don't use the fancy terms that we use haven't read the books that that we've read there's too much conversation condescension and sense of superiority and entitlement in the elite sectors of the culture more generally but certainly in the intellectual college it's wrong it's just wrong absolutely and I'm at the top James Baldwin never went to college but to colleges went through him genius from from Harlem something about a commitment to Paideia which is different than just matriculating through some university or to gain access to a dog so the diplomas you can live high and large in some vanilla suburb not there's anything wrong there's anything wrong it depends on what you're doing if you're well adapted the indifference there you need to be unsettled unsettling is good but you'll be well a jack but what will adjusted the injustice right in the city right in the hood right in any working-class community but the pain and the suffering there will lead you to have a certain perspective toward the status quo whereas in F comfortable suburb whereas it's about convenience and status you've got to read a whole lot of check off and listen to some Sondheim do some of these artists will wet you up Oh indeed you know Neil will wake you up because you know it is an honorable aspiration yes you have people to have a decent life absolutely but and for some people the aspiration to work hard to build themselves up to come out of circumstances that are tough dangerous to live in a place that well like Princeton for example which is a brisbane board a submarine or a suburb yes the Tom booth you know isn't is an honorable thing now yes whether you were in the city or whether in the suburbs or whether in the countryside if you're not allowing yourself to be unsettled by asking the great question that's by being challenged by other people by being provoked by questioning your own political or moral convictions then we have a problem but it's not having to do with its being the suburbs or it's being vanilla that's true you got to take your integrity and courage wherever you wherever you go wherever you go it's gonna be a challenge where ever you go but the suburbs is a special kind I could be wrong with some I liked I liked this point about that that this this language being immediately intelligible to hearts and minds yes I mean idolatrous greed hate these are words people understand if we try to use that later so don't oh absolutely in that sense that is that is a relevant language right everybody if when when parents try to bring up their children to be honest to have integrity that's not on exams not to do drugs when when parents are doing that they're they're talking a universal common language chime and gentle and sweet and generous these are subversive notions and you don't you don't need a Harvard education to know that's one of the last things sometimes you can that reinforces the arrogance well the learning ignorance that needs to be shattered at these ruling class institutions like Harvard and Yale and Princeton because they end up thinking it because they're so smart which they often are that that's enough and that's the last thing they need to be told that's the last thing they need to think when they graduate and we try to remind them every semester I think yeah brother Cornell Joe Wilson Oh brother Joe how you doing good good good good first our distinguished scholar right here first quick comment appreciate the love thy enemy framework but I think that also holds open the possibility that you want some of these arch-criminals you wish them a special place in hell that's one thought but a little bit more mundane how do you with your moral perspective how do you handicap some of the potential Democratic candidates and/or Republican candidates from either side you know carrying this moral mantle that you see would really uplift the public dialogue you know the public public policy and so forth well for me well as you know I mean for me it has much to do was just trying to be true to the best of the legacy of brother Mark Martin Luther King jr. what are the test poverty militarism racism in all of its forms that includes homophobia and transphobia includes any anti-jewish anti-arab calling the question but also materialism so my question is do they have a critique of oligarchs and plutocrats beginning with Wall Street that's what I loved by brother Bernie he introduced that into the public sphere in a powerful way secular brothers Jewish brothers from Brooklyn mediated with Vermont comes with this critique boom then a Democratic Party has hardly had such a critique since FDR FDR's and aristocratic brother from Hyde Park who was willing to commit class suicide because he had a commitment to justice nobody's met that standard the people thought Obama would think again no no he all Street criminals went well I'm touched right they got bailed out homeowners didn't that's the first thing second ones Empire who's keeping track of the drones who's keeping track of invasions and occupations are we concerned about those who are killed in our name this is true in Yemen mediated with Saudi Arabia we can go on and on and on those are the two crucial issues that I begin now what does that mean that means it's hard for me to find a candidate in the truncated corporate dominated elect your political system but I still have to choose because not to choose is to choose right so I know what brother bird my god I like your critique of that monopolistic power at the top not because you hate brothers and sisters on Wall Street they are made me a bunch of God I know you and I pay for it didn't this cuz I don't I'm not planning for folk to go to hell I know that was metaphoric and a literal on your part but that we got a different sensibility that's alright we still comrade you're just wrong about that you think I'm wrong about that and we go to fighting together but those are two crucial criteria the third is going to be how do you deal with patriarchy homophobia and transphobia the weakest in our society are the precious trans folk they are the most trashed and dismissed so how the Christian concern with that cross the most vulnerable how do we acknowledge they are made in the image and likeness of God regardless of our policy disagreement there not to be trashed their dignity is not to be violated this is where our commitment the dignity comes in so those are the criteria I look when it comes to candidates but I'm much more concerned with movements and awakenings than I am with candidates because it's amazing in the history of this Empire that we have so many citizens of unbelievable creativity and imagination and intelligence and you look at the politicians we end up with and you say what kind of hemorrhaging is set in that all of that creativity gets diluted by the time we get to these politicians that's a sad statement in terms of the future of a democracy but we've got some new ones coming along we'll have to see well that's that's just a short quit do you want to say a word on that doorbell well maybe just a word which is is to quote the Bible that's always a good place not thy trust in Princes I mean there's an awful lot of 10 yes ii think that it's politicians who are gonna solve our problems yeah III wish that things were in such a condition that politicians could solve our problems that would mean things are not all that bad if politicians consulted but we had a Lincoln coming down the pike that would be a good there's a what would be useful but there's a deep problem as it was in Lincoln's day there's a deep cultural problem not only a cultural divide but in my opinion a very deep cultural problem a loss of the sense of what the foundations of human dignity are I think I'm illogical I'm a loss of an understanding of what it means to be a human being and it's it's it's it's not one that's going to be solved by politicians no I think about Roosevelt think about roses FDR not the FDR and the FDR so so Roosevelt this is gonna tell us something about political figures and Genesis princess Roosevelt is the guy who executed the plan to put the Japanese Americans and Japanese legal residents in concentration camps and he was do you know maybe folks in the audience know at whose request Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress took that step at the request of a Republican governor in California named Earl Warren Warren who wrote Brown versus Board that hero era Earl Warren he requested the internment of the Japanese that hero Franklin was up he carried it out that's true and when the thing went to the Supreme Court the deprive the depriving of these innocent people of their liberty and property their property was taken their homes were taking the business of taken without due process of law of any kind and it was upheld in the case of Korematsu against us who voted to uphold this policy the great civil libertarians all appointed by Roosevelt frankfurter mmm William O Douglas Hugo black and just to put the cherry on top of this Sunday and and I didn't know this until Steve Breyer Justice Breyer pointed it out to me who in American politics what American political figure opposed the internment of the Japanese J Edgar Hoover hmm even the clock is Right twice it will do exactly don't wanna leave it I want to write you know you don't want to write people that's right that's right you're evil water or good that's right Earl Warren Franklin Delano Roosevelt Felix Frankfurter Hugo black William O Douglas yeah well that's human fella buddy right there yeah I see now why this original interview went more than an hour please join me in thanking your [Applause] [Music]

Channel: America - The Jesuit Review

Views: 2,917

Rating: 4.6999998 out of 5

Keywords: civility, free speech, conservative, liberal, cornel west, robert george, campus, freedom of speech

Id: -aAGcs37KQo

Length: 97min 20sec (5840 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 24 2018