Dr. Cornel West & Dr. Robert P. George at Southern Methodist University - April 4th, 2023

well good evening and welcome to the Willis M Tate distinguished lecture series I'm Brad Chiefs and I'm privileged to serve as smu's vice president for development and external Affairs and work with a really wonderful team in the production of the Tate lecture series and we're honored to have you here with us this evening tonight's lecture is sponsored by Jones Day we are very grateful for Jones day and their long time support of SMU and the Tate lecture series working to ensure SMU is a place that attracts the nation's best and brightest students and gives them the opportunities to be shaped into World Changers and with us tonight from Jones day is a partner in charge of their Dallas office our good friend Hilda Galvan her husband Mike Hilda Mike and all of your colleagues from Jones day would you please stand that we might say thank you for tonight and all these years of support thank you so much joining us this evening as well are representatives from sponsors of the Turner Construction Amazon Student Forum which took place earlier today and these forums provide a platform for the SMU community and surrounding Dallas area high school students to access the minds of our Speakers by participating in an informal question and answer session at this time join me in thanking and recognizing Turner Construction and Amazon annual proceeds from the Tate lecture series are returned to academic programs at SMU and the most notable of which is the president Scholars Program it covers full tuition and fees for the unit some of University's most gifted students the scholars are given the chance to interact with our Tate speakers and we are happy to host them at many of the Tate events and as a sponsor of the Tate lecture series Jones day is a supporter of the president Scholars Program as are you a tape Patron and we are grateful for the seasoned patrons and your part in perpetuating this this important scholarship program you can learn more more about the president Scholars Program in your lecture program that you were given this evening I'd like to invite you to tweet your questions if times time allows after the conversation these questions would be given to our our speakers and you can do that at smutate using the hashtag hashtag talk Tate that's at smutate all one word using the hashtag talk take all one word your question could be used at that time also we kindly ask that you refrain from taking photos recording or live streaming tonight's lecture the Tate series is produced by SMU and presented by the Dallas Morning News sponsors include Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek WFAA Channel 8 and Weitzman and now to introduce tonight's speaker 's please welcome the president of SMU Dr R Gerald Turner [Applause] thank you Brad and we're glad to have all of you with us and I know we have about 40 students from Texas A M Commerce here with us and we're delighted to have you with us here welcome to SMU Dr Robert P George is a professor at Princeton University who has also served as chairman of the U.S Commission on International religious freedom he's also served as a presidential appointee to the U.S Commission on civil rights he's a recipient of the U.S presidential citizens award and the honorific medal for the defense of human rights of the Republic of Poland he's also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations it's also the author of multiple books including his most recent conscience and its enemies Dr Cornell West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary where he teaches courses about America African-American critical thought the philosophy of religion the classics politics cultural Theory and many other topics he's a frequent guest on the bill Mayer show CNN C-SPAN and democracy Now Dr West has also written 20 books and edited 13 more including his Classics Race Matters and democracy matters moderating their conversation today is William McKenzie bill is senior editor advisor at the George W bush Institute where he is working on editorial projects on Democracy freedom and education reform so please join me in welcoming to the Tate series lecture of the Jones Day lecture series The Willis M Tate distinguished lecture series guests Robert P George and Dr Cornell West with William McKenzie [Music] thank you Mr President you're welcome all right well thank you Dr Turner very much it is my honor to be here well with the two of you and I'm going to let you all run with the show but I want to start with this question what I think is the most obvious one is how did you all get started on this road show on civil dialogue I was thinking about you're like The Odd Couple of Civility you're kind of like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison so how did this get started well first let me thank president Turner and Hilda and our friends at Jones uh day and thank you Mr McKenzie for this opportunity to get together it's always such a pleasure to be with my beloved friend uh Cornell West especially down here at SMU what a treat I know I speak for Cornell as well as myself in saying how keenly aware we are that we are speaking this evening on a stage where Martin Luther King spoke and we're speaking on the anniversary of Dr King's assassination Dr King has been a great inspiration for both Cornell and me and in our teaching together we always include his great letter from Birmingham Jail where he raises the question what justifies law breaking given the importance which Dr King himself rightly ascribed to law and law abidingness and of course his answer is that there are two types of law just an unjust law just law is a law that's in line with what Dr King called we're calling the great tradition the natural law natural Justice and the law of God unjust law is out of line with the higher law to get to your specific question about how brother Cornell and I got together I arrived in Princeton in the fall of 1985. that's the Middle Ages for these SMU students Cornell was at that time teaching at Union Theological Seminary but was already a major figure it established himself as a major figure in American philosophy and Theology and then Princeton had the Good Fortune of luring him to our faculty so in the 1990s brother West and I were together in a number of Faculty seminars discussing the kinds of issues that both he and I are interested in like those issues raised by Dr King the difference between just and unjust law basic questions of human meaning and value the human good human nature human dignity human rights human destiny and in those seminars although we didn't know each other very well personally just really to say hello we would interact in the seminars it jumped out at me immediately that here was a man who was asking exactly the right questions and I didn't think he was always getting quite the right answers but boy was he asking the right questions and very few people were Cornell wanted to get to the Deep questions those questions of meaning of value nature and Destiny the questions about what it means to live a human life what it means to be a human being what our most fundamental obligations are is there are more than merely human source of meaning and value a lot of questions which at least in those days in academic life were considered to be sort of off limits they weren't the questions that intellectually sophisticated people worried about but brother Cornell did worry about my worried about them and seeing him address those questions especially with such integrity was inspiring to me frankly but then one day I got a knock on my door a student who had been a student both in my classes and in brother West classes a very good student knocked on my door to to say that he and some other students were starting a new campus magazine called the green light and the magazine was going to be a campus magazine of arts and culture and literature and politics as he described at our own Princeton version of The New Yorker so I said well that sounds great and he said well we'd like you to do something for us with each issue of the magazine we're going to feature an interview of one Professor by another professor and we've asked Professor Cornell West to be the interviewer for the first issue and he's agreed to do that and we asked him who he would like to interview for the interview and he said he'd like to interview you well I was profoundly flattered that the great Cornell West wanted to interview me I I thought at least that indicated that he thought I was odd peculiar enough to be worth interview different uh so the I said I'd be happy to do it uh the appointed day came and here came the student with his cassette tape recorder with an hour's worth of tape and had a photographer with him snapping pictures and snapping pictures and man we got started and man we were into everything all the controversial moral and political questions of the day the Deep religious questions questions the nature of Education what our responsibilities were as teachers basic questions of right and wrong good and bad just then unjust and we exhausted that our tape and we just couldn't stop and so we kept going until I look at my watch and I've realized we've been going four hours so I said well brother Cornell this has been wonderful and it's so good to get to know you better you know this is a shame that we haven't gotten to know each other over these past several years we need to get together more often and really get acquainted and work these issues over and he said over about brother Robbie I'd love to do that and I said well walk me down to my car I'm just park down the street here walking down to my car so we walked down we continued going at it as we walked and then I stood there for 45 minutes with my hand on the car latch can we continue to go in well only a few days just coincidentally a few days after that we got a message from the dean of the college saying that she was looking for some of our senior most better known faculty to teach freshman Seminars the Freshman seminar is very important part of the Princeton undergraduate experience and we don't have enough of our senior people uh teaching these seminars well a light bulb went off over my head and I said gosh wouldn't it be great if Cornell and I could continue that conversation with 16 brilliant Princeton freshmen and just pick out books that are meaningful and important in our own spiritual and intellectual Odysseys and work it over and got in touch with Cornell and proposed it and he said absolutely let's go for it and honestly from the from the opening seconds of our very first seminar I could just tell the magic was there and we just kept at it until he abandoned me to go to Harvard and then we decided we take the show on the road there we go Dr West how do you answer that question what do you have to add today I first want to say that I am deeply blessed to be here salute each and every one of you for being here and I hope that we say something that thoroughly unsettles you on nerves I'm pushing you but we also want to uh to touch touch your souls I want to begin by saluting the captain of the ship my dear brother R and Gerald Turner first lady Gail let's give it up for both of them 20. 28 years of service I mean the ordinary University Professor lasts about 5.2 years these days so that I think it's very important that when we think of what we try to do it's a blessing to have you by the way blessing to have Jeff Lockhart in his leadership but we try to enact a certain kind of vocation which is to say a real calling what I love about this brother and he is my brother he's more than a friend he's my brother I love this brother you see his family and my family alike one but he goes to the hospital I'm there when I go to jail he wants to pay the bill it's true [Laughter] Humanity without reducing each other to just a political line or a public policy there's something very rich and deep about learning how to embrace one's humanity and still tell him you're wrong his two left shoes on this issue brother Wes you're wrong is two left shoes on this and Well Chad you know what I'm talking but let's just be very honest we live in a moment of such overwhelming spiritual decay lack of empathy lack of imagination of what it's like to be in the shoes of somebody else to walk a mile in those shoes get inside of somebody else's skin get out of your egocentric predicament but get beyond your Silo get beyond your little narrow truncated community and get a sense of what the world is actually like there's a whole lot of different people out there and you're never going to get full agreement and of course this is true evidence Thanksgiving dinner all you gotta do is look around the table and see all your your relatives you don't have political agreement and if you do you've got a strange family true that's true so that this is a vocation but I want to start with vocabulous briefly because you see when you think of what happened 55 years ago I was 14 years old I just hit the tape because I was going to be the next great athlete James Brown Willie Mays that's where I was headed but it hit me what kind of Life do I really want to live what kind of human being do I choose to be what's my real calling and vocation and Mission and purpose in life in the short move from my mama's womb to tomb that's what Martin's death did to me at 14. and I decided I want to be part of the wave in the great ocean because Martin Luther King Jr you see he's a wave in an ocean of a great black people who have been chronically hated and yet try to teach America and the world something about love and that's what it is to be a Love Warrior in the face of chronic hatred or a freedom fighter in the face of massive Terror or a joy spreader in the face of un overwhelming sorrow a wounded healer rather than a wounded hurt her that's Martin he didn't do it by himself he had a vocation he had friends Abraham Joshua hassle Dorothy Day Dorothy Dave vanilla Catholic sister Martin is chocolate Baptist like myself but they came together at a human level they believed in spiritual and moral greatness it goes beyond skin pigmentation goes beyond sexual orientation it goes beyond one's national identity he's concerned about human beings all around the world that's who Martin was not a god not a deity he's a particular free black man who was shaped by this great tradition of these black people that said we are going to hold on to a Beloved Community no matter what you do with that's why he had that meeting with brother Jerry right in this place in 1966. and brother Jerry was who my dear brother Jerry levias absolutely and he was the first uh African-American to play in the Southwest Conference and attended here at SMU and later played for the Houston Oilers and he probably told brother Jerry you could just give it up but the important thing especially for the young people he probably told Brother Jeff we were told he dismissed all of his assistants is that right that's what I I read in the Dallas Morning News since I worked there I think it's true and so Brad can correct me if I'm wrong but I think that they met backstage right in his room back there invited Jerry levias to come meet with him and dismissed his age and they would had they had a one-on-one conversation 101 you can imagine with Brother Martin said I know I can imagine young brother I know what it's like to be hated I know what it's like to be demeaned and degraded but you come out of a family and a tradition of churches and associations and peoples going all the way back to the slave ships and the slave auctions and they produce Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and Ida B Wells and a Phillip Randolph Fannie Lou Hammond Ella Baker you come from a great people at their best now we're not talking about the black gangsters and the thugs every every Community got gangsters and Thugs and I got a whole lot of gangster in me but we're not going to talk about that but the important thing is this sense of calling in relation to a tradition that you attempt to keep alive because every people's every nation has the best and the worst right and the Traditions are available to us the question is especially the young folk do you have enough imagination and courage to build on the best of your Traditions that has been passed on to you by those who loved you because each and every one of us are who we are because somebody loved us somebody cared for us somebody sacrificed for us wish you could meet this brother's parents West Virginia could God am I in 19 something something something going right 97 and 90. still going wow and he just had a grandson absolutely so it goes on but the passing on is something that's done by discipline by labor you got to make choices and commitment you got to be consistent you got to persevere you got to hold on you got to keep keep it on as Curtis Mayfield was sick so let me let me ask you each this you're both men of Christian faith uh and yet you have very different political views so explain that in a way how your your faith has informed your politics in very different ways I'll let you flip a coin who goes first would you like to start off you sure not sure well and you got a better story then maybe I should just very briefly see in many ways we have profound uh overlap we take very seriously Imago day that's it each and every human being unique distinctive have a dignity and sanctity made in the image and likeness of a mighty God and that dignity and sanctity can never be erased or eliminated no matter how they're treated by others and then there's a connection to our precious Jewish brothers and sisters in Hebrew scripture spreading that hesit we got a photographer whose name is Hesse and he's from western Africa what do you remember what kind I don't know yeah but but means loving it loving loving kindness that fast love that you spread to the orphan and the Widow and the fatherless and the motherless and the weak and the vulnerable and the oppressed and the persecuted and the subjugated that's the lesson of the great story of Hebrew scripture at its best now you got some things in Hebrew scripture that very difficult the canaanized kid wiped out and so forth and so on we know we're not we're not going to highlight that tonight we're talking about the prophetic tradition that flows out of Hebrew scripture and then you get to a Palestinian Jew named Jesus and another Jewish brother named Paul and he get a building on that that flows through brother Robbie that flows through me so that for example he is deeply concerned about poverty I'm an abolitionist about poverty just like Martin King was I want to abolish it everywhere it exists he wants to eliminate and attenuate he believes Market strategies do it I believe that the role of government and Market becomes very important he's concerned about wealth inequality but he's very suspicious of centralized authority of government because he's seeing governments do highly repressive things of people undermining their rights and Liberties he's right about that so I have to be able to walk that balance and that tightrope but at the same time he knows he's got to come to terms with poverty and wealth inequality in any form of ideology that loses sight of humanity and so forth so we've got a lot in common right it's just that in our analysis brother Robbie is what we would call a conservative brother all right so let me let me ask brother Robbie here brother Rob I feel like we you know what's great about this you can really tell these two people really like each other our secrets that's the crucial thing brother so brother Robbie how would you answer this question about how your faith informs you and you uh and brother Cornell have entered and and ended up in different places well well faith is what one of the key things that unites us it unites us um we happen to share the same Faith the Christian he's the Protestant version of the Baptist version of it I'm the Catholic version of it but it's faith in Jesus Christ which means that ultimately as truth pursuers we believe that the ultimate truth is not a proposition or set of propositions rather it is a person but we also find ourselves with great commonality with people of other faiths who are faithful we work so closely with our Jewish friends with our Muslim friends with our friends of other traditions of Faith Cornell's work closely with some people in the Eastern traditions of Faith now one of the things that being a believer in God makes clear to someone who is a believer in God is that I'm not God we're not God we're not ultimate we are fallible and that I think is the most overlooked fact as a practical matter the most overlooked fact in our culture today and it's at the root of so many of our problems I say practical because at the theoretical level everybody acknowledges that he or she is fallible if I ask who in this room is infallible No Hands would go up who in this room believes that everything in your head right now every everything you believe is true no hands would go up because we are all aware that we believe some things right now that are false now why do we believe them why do we why do we move forward with false views in our head because we don't know which ones are false and the only way we're going to figure out which ones are false is by allowing our views to be challenged by recognizing not just theoretically but practically our own fallibility but if we're so dogmatic and so ideological we find this across the Spectrum now if we're so self-righteous so darn certain that we're right about everything so certain that we couldn't possibly be wrong at least about the big important things in life then we are headed off the cliff and I'm worried that we are headed off the creek you want to talk about polarization that's where the polarization comes in we can end this polarization tomorrow with the Practical serious recognition of our own fallibility because that would mean we'd have to listen to people on the other side allow ourselves to be challenged so how do we create conditions for listening in our society how do we create conditions for this kind of civil dialogue to occur we obviously see lots of places where it's not occurring but how do we create the conditions for that to happen how do human beings learn they learn in two ways by precept and example I think both of those are important I think it's very important for us to preach genuine civility now genuine civility Is Not Mere polytest it's not I'll sit quietly and let you spew your nonsense until it's my turn then you'll sit quietly and let me view my knots from your point of view that's not civility that's the dumb down watered down diluted version of quote civility unquote genuine civility is listening to another person in a truth-speaking truth-seeking spirit willing to learn willing to consider the possibility that I might be wrong or at least partially wrong or that I have something to learn from the other person even if it turns out that I am right about that it's that Spirit of humility now why should we honor our fellow human beings from a Christian point of view all human beings because we're made in the image and likeness of God but why should we recognize our own limits and our own fallibility and that we're not God because we're made from the mere dust of the earth Genesis 1 basically he's got the solution to our problems we've got to recognize two things one we human beings are made from your dust of the Earth We're nothing but two we are made in the very image and likeness of the Divine Creator and ruler of all that is that's why we should honor Humanity in ourselves and in others but not put ourselves in the position of God not pretend to an infallibility that we don't have now it's critical that we recognize that we can be wrong not only about the minor trivial superficial things in life but that we could be wrong even about big important things and if you don't if you don't believe me on that just look at the historical record look at the greatest people in history the people who are truly most admirable and you will find they were wrong about some things they had flaws and failings because they are fallible to their mere dust of the Earth right and we think we're better than them we think we're going to be right about the big important things there's a part of the Jewish Yom Kippur liturgy in the Jewish tradition Yom Kippur is the great day of atonement when the people repent from our from our sins uh and it's done corporately not in the Christian tradition it tends to be done more individually the Jewish tradition is done corporately on Yom Kippur the day of the day of atonement and if you've ever been to a Yom Kippur ceremony if you're Jewish or have been a guest at the at the Liturgy on Yom Kippur uh there comes a point in the Liturgy very dramatic point in solemn point in the Liturgy where the congregation beats its breast and it goes through the sins again corporately we have lied We Have Cheated we have committed adultery we have borne false witness against our neighbor then comes a really insightful one we beat our breasts and we say we have been zealots for bad causes now you might say no wait a minute nobody steals inadvertently nobody commits adultery by accident but when it comes to being a zealot for a cause nobody is deliberately a zealot for a bad cause the result for a cause because they think it's a good cause what that ancient wise Jewish tradition recalls and remembers and and stresses is we could be wrong about that no matter how deeply we cherish the cause hold the cause treat it as part of our very identity we could be wrong about it so we need humility humility that crucial virtue and we need courage because if we don't have courage we're never going to be able to admit a mistake especially in a polarized situation where admitting a mistake or admitting that I'm not with my tribe on this or that issue makes you an outcast pretty fast in our tribal circumstances you're expected to go along 100 with the tribe 100 with the team Cornell and I can tell you some experiences with what happens to you when you step off and you're no longer completely 100 in line with your tribe or group or Clan it can be really rough and it takes courage to stand up so so one we teach by precept but even more importantly we teach by example we need examples of people and I don't mean just prominent people but them too prominent people too we need people prominent in public life but ordinary moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and teachers and coaches and pastors who model and exemplify the intellectual humility and the courage that alone will overcome enable us to overcome what Cornell rightly calls our spiritual Decay and depravity Dr West how would you answer that question about how we uh what conditions are necessary for civil dialogue to take place I think we need to just sit for a little bit and saturate the wisdom that we did here there's a whole lot there there's a whole lot there because when you talk about humility humility one could argue is The Benchmark of spiritual maturity and spiritual formation is never reducible to skin pigmentation sexual orientation gender identity or national status it's a human process it's Socratic in terms of being self-examining learning how to die in order to learn how to live that's what Plato says philosophy is a meditation and preparation for death because when you learn how to die you're critical of yourself so that your fears and anxieties are attenuated and pushed back so a stronger self can emerge that's what education is so that the narrowness the parochialism the provincialism that you come to this Grand institution of SMU and we've got some other students too and by the time you graduate on May 13th you have learned how to die so courageously that you emerge a more powerful stronger Visionary and compassionate human being and if you don't do that you wasted somebody's money [Laughter] it's true now we know it and only 35 percent of our precious fellow citizens even go to college so you got over 59 60 up never set foot and some of the greatest citizens the James bald ones under Curtis Mayfields and others they didn't go to college but the college went through them because they still learned how to die Dorothy Day wrote the unity from Martin Luther King Jr and the Catholic Worker April 5th 1968 exactly 55 days in a day what did she say Martin Luther King Jr learned how to Die daily dropped the mic she was gone and of course that comes right out of New Testament for we Christians Christians must learn how to Die daily in order to what emerge in new being new Energy new courage new humility humility is the child of Mercy and we don't have enough older people who are targeting loving and caring young people enough so that the young folk are shaped by market forces commodification narrow careerism trying to find out what they bring they come up to me and Robin we working on our brand what's your brand we ain't got no brand we got a call we got a cause in life fighting for freedom is not a bland the kingdom of God is not a brand the Beloved Community is not a brand that's a cause a brand is a market strategy so you can find your Niche and live well I'll just I want to add the rest of it because I'm trying to be Christian up here where as a cause it's something yourself you are serving others by emptying yourself the kenosis that's just at the very center of what it is to be spiritually mature secular folk can have it atheistic folk can have it agnostic folk in heaven Christians Jews Muslims Buddhists but those of us who are Christian are so tied to the cross and that cross signifies that self-emptying that love that flows out of oneself for others such that one is able to have impact on others Souls well that's very much what brother brother Robin and I do each time we come we said a prayer we said a prayer today right then all of us why because we crack vessels we're just trying to love our crooked neighbor with our crooked Hearts basically and at the same time though we have an analysis and part of the challenge these days is that the spiritual Decay that people are talking about has something to do with the professional managerial class that has become so preoccupied with power and wealth and status and spectacle that has turned his back on those who don't have access to resources and those who don't have access to resources come in all call us and they feel as if they're being looked down on they're being condescended to they feel as if they have less status part of the social base of brother Trump because some of them voted for brother Barney and that was my sign now meet the same brothers and sisters most of them vanilla and say how'd you vote for Bernie and Trump at the same time not the most consistent argument I can follow but what they say is that in both contexts I feel as if I'm recognized I feel as if somebody sees me so you can get a right-wing populism and with Trump he even moves into a neo-fascist trump he's my brother but he's a gangster you know so so I just want to be honest about think about it I mean he's in trouble now I pray for his family because gangsters could have loved ones too but the point is you're not trashing him as a human being you're keeping track of his activity that leads one to characterize it as gangster activity all of us have gangster activity in some sense but he's engage in a little bit more excessively than most of them but at the same but he's a human being like anybody else right like anybody we're losing that so part of the polarization is you got professional managerial class who has been doing very well in the last 40 50 years the educated class and then you got working people devastated then you got poor people disproportionately chocolate black and brown and Indigenous but many many precious poor white brothers and sisters to catching hell but hardly anything in watching all of this professional managerial activity on television and they're looking for somebody to lead them and here comes Trump whoever it is now this Santa is going to be a lot of different candidates and so forth and so on now I'm not saying this just to trash all my Republican brothers and sisters good I'm saying this too be honest about some of those elements in the Republican party because the Democratic party is just milk toast hypocritical neoliberals anyway so fresh self-righteous self-righteous no it's true I mean Hypocrites I told me we're trying to be honest across the world and I can talk about my own leftist Camp because I'm critical of both parties and we got our own gangsters and thugs too they just have a fascinating analysis of the critique of structures and institutions human character is never intimately connected to a correct analysis of society you can have people who have a correct analysis of society who are very smart who treat other people as if they are less than human and you can have other folks who are not that educated like maybe many of our grandmothers and grandsters who taught us to be decent human beings who taught us to be persons of integrity and honesty and try to treat people right but they didn't understand Wall Street and Pentagon and Hollywood and all of that so the world is a complicated place we want to let our young people know that they're in that complexity hold on to your integrity honesty and decency in whatever tradition you become part of and become courageous that's the crucial thing thank you because there's a lot of cowardliness can Conformity and complacency among the professional class and they still think highly of themselves all right whatever and being courageous does not mean being self-righteous it does not mean being so dead certain that you're right about everything that you feel you can shut another person down not let them speak hold their values in in contempt refuse to listen to them that's not courage that's faux courage that's just performing don't perform don't perform for other people don't perform for yourself on the great existential questions you gotta think and thinking always means allowing yourself to be challenged challenging yourself being self-critical always asking the question should I consider what the other guy has to say about this is it possible that he's right now I'm wrong or he's at least partially writing and I'm wrong now often when Cornell and I preach this Gospel of intellectual humility that the need to be non-dogmatic to avoid becoming an idiolog avoid becoming tyrannical shutting other people down people say Professor West Professor George if I'm open-minded they always put it in those terms we never put it that way but that's fine open open we're talking about not being self-righteous ideological uh dogmatic but Professor George Professor West if we're open-minded we won't be people of conviction how can we be people of conviction shouldn't we be people of conviction well that's a false set of Alternatives you can be a person of conviction without imagining your infallible you can be a person of conviction who's willing to entertain criticism who doesn't immunize his views or her views from critique and challenge Cornell and I are people conviction we're willing to act on our convictions but we don't want to shut anybody we've joined together in founding the academic freedom Alliance because we want anybody on campus to speak anything that's truly in their minds and on their hearts without fear that they're going to be punished for that so that the truth can be gotten at we know that the way to get to truth is the serious engagement of ideas in a truth-seeking Spirit by people who are not so sure they are right about everything so let me let me [Music] let me ask you each this I think we all know we live in this era of polarization we know what doesn't work we see it all the time so where do you all see some of what you're talking about moving beyond self-righteousness being open to other dialogues hearing other people where do you see that happening in our country today is that at the University level is that in our churches is that someplace else where where do you see that happening I think we could all use some hope um [Music] not everybody jumps right at the end no hope is the verb as well as a virtue and so therefore again it's going to be by ex by example and we can't keep track of all the examples one you got a corporate media that is so narrow and truncated that it's going to make its money not by highlighting high quality conversations of people coming together and in solidarity transcending their differences you don't make money on that on television you gotta lead and bleed you got to sensationalize same as true with the candidates and politics and so forth and so on right so that there's got to be some ways even social media and social media has already been colonized by a number of forces that are not not highly uh salutary but there's got to be ways in which people raise their voices with a sincerity tied to the genuine solidarity in local communities see the history of America is really the history of a very very fragile Democratic experiment that's founded on Imperial expansion of indigenous people's land and ordinary indigenous peoples lives crushed and slavery 244 years and almost 100 years under the U.S Constitution so how was it that the best of America has been able to come to terms with polar as a Civil War was not polarization Civil War was barbaric 720 000 people dead right and the south is fighting for a regime that wants black people to be in slavery in perpetuity and if it wasn't for the 200 000 black soldiers who joined the Union Army and broke the back of the Confederacy we'd be having a very different kind of conversation that's courage coming together and it's not just allies I don't like this language of allies I want to be your ally hey I thought your human being the one to be a decent person who wants to be part of solidarity that's like saying Bill Evans who's a white brother and Miles Davis's band is on the piano and he and Miles Davis are allies no he's in the band he's actually in the band oh Greg and Jerry and slying the Family Stone his two white brothers oh Greg and Jerry are allies to Sly no it's not he's in the Damn Band y'all and when you in the band you're a human being that come with different colors and genders and sexual orientations but you're trying to be a moral force in the world people who were with Martin King the Jewish brothers and sisters the white brothers sisters they weren't owies they died that's a human choice but you can see the way our language itself is already alienating it's you know what I mean and so the question becomes that example that brother Robbie is talking about individual Collective on the local level but in the end and this is the best of history of America a spiritual and moral Awakening that has political consequences that tries to build on the best of the democratic dimensions of the U.S experience that's the ways in which we get out of these deep moments of profound crisis and catastrophe and whether we have what it takes and that is always an open question if we don't have what it takes we lose the democracy and moments of Crisis the thing to do is always to repair to First principles repaired to First principles and for all the sins and faults of our history and there have been many our principles are excellent we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness it's hard to improve on that principle it's hard to live up to it often we haven't lived up to it often we'd have to struggle to live up to it and then we backslide you know and when we think we're living up to it sometimes we're not living up to it but it's an excellent principle or set of principles we can't do better than that and and of course in the background civilizationally is the teaching of the Bible that human beings though made from the mere dust of the Earth are nevertheless made in the image and likeness of God and therefore Bears a profound inherent and equal dignity there's nothing wrong with those principles there's something wrong if we don't Embrace those principles so we need to remind ourselves what does King do he reminds the country of the principles he doesn't repudiate the principle he doesn't say oh just a bunch of it's a myth that all men are created equal he says no the Declaration of Independence wrote a check and we got to make good on the check of equal dignity the profound inherent and equal Dignity of each and every member of the of the Human family Lincoln Lincoln in Saving the country he's constantly going back to First principles nobody quoted the Declaration as often as Lincoln there was a reason for that we were in crisis and when you're in crisis you got to go back to the first principles if they are good first principles and ours are the very best in my opinion so we need to remind ourselves our leaders need to remind us of those principles and we need to model what it means to live live up to those principles and again it's just not just our leaders not I can't stress this strongly enough it's not just our leaders it's mom and dad and uncle and auntie and Grandma and Grandpa and coach and pastor and teacher you know that's how kids learn that's where they pick up their principles and if you don't offer them good principles there are plenty of people out there going to offer them bad principles right there are plenty of uh there are plenty of people there are plenty of uh uh sources out there that will essentially tell them give the message to kids that what matters in life is wealth power influence status prestige things that are not bad in themselves you can do good things with them but they're only instrumentally valuable they're good if you can do good things with them but you can do bad things with them they're not what ultimately matter what ultimately matters is family friendship Faith Integrity honesty the things that are not merely instrumentally valuable the things that are good in themselves the things that make life worth living the things that give substance to a human life so are are you all thank you are you more bullish on the renewal that I think we all want to see occur are you more bullish on that happening at the citizen local level are you more bullish that is going to have that is going to happen at the national leadership level if he's I'm not bullish not not bullish not either or not bullish I think it's going to flow historically yeah Abraham Lincoln did not have a high school degree now I'm not encouraging the students here too drop out of high school he had Shakespeare and King Lear in one pot and he had King James version on another and he probably had John florio's translation of montane somewhere else he was self-educated his greatness came from his willingness to grow this is the same Lincoln who thought that he was going to actually have to compromise with the South and allow for the perpetuity of slavery and Frederick Douglass call him what the slave Hound from Illinois they ended up good friends because people changed their minds Lincoln changed his mind he grew the Robbie changing mind I'm changing his we growing together because that's what it is but I may say this though that it's always the and I don't want romanticized foreign working people but the best of the poor and working people and Lincoln was one of them Lincoln used to say God Must Love common folk God made so many of them he's talking about himself he wasn't talking about the Harvard Princeton's trained folk he didn't put them down but he was himself and I think it's going to come from below the level of corruption at the national level of leadership across both parties is so overwhelming at the moment that is very difficult to think that it's going to come from up there and most of the politicians are thermostats rather than thermometer I should say thermometers around the thermostat so they just took my deepest convictions are let's see what the poll says no what do you really believe well I'll let you know on Friday after we have the polls have a poll in Allison what's in your heart what are you going to live and die for how many politicians do we have like that one of the reasons why brother Trump was able to get as far as he could because he didn't fit the mold of the pre-packaged market-driven politician he just happened to be a gangster but he cut against that he shattered that that's very important that's very important because people are hungry and thirsty for something more than the pre-packaged Republican pre-packaged Democrat pre-practice MSNBC CNN Fox and all the other mainstream money making projects that have their own agendas and they're human beings who were there so we keep track of every Humanity but we know that's not where the robust conversations taking place not at all and let me add this footnote especially regard to Martin Luther King Jr because in Martin's case he knew that is not solely a question of speaking truth to power the condition of Truth is to allow suffering to speak but it's speaking truth to your own Community yes sir you've got to cut against the grain if I say something critical about Obama or any other black leader is because I believe it's true and they say ah you're going to be unpopular I'm not loving black people in order for black people to love me back I love it because I tell the truth and they're worthy of being loved and hearing the truth that is the kind of spirit that every Community needs you can be a Jewish brother and sister say we disagree in what's going on in Israel with the Palestinians I'm not less Jewish because I'm supporting the Palestinians I'm Jewish because Amos and Esther they let Justice roll down like Waters and righteousness like a mighty stream and that includes Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims and if you're Muslim and you're using Islam to justify the massive murders in Iraq right now you want to be shame on yourself because of Malcolm X comes along and says if you're really concerned about Islam and prophetic Islam then you're concerned about when mullers are shooting down young Muslim children in the name of Islam and when Martin told Black Folk was what we will never ever form a black version of the Ku Klux Klan because our moral and spiritual greatness would be completely shattered no matter how much they hate us we're going to take a Higher Ground what if they kill us come on you used to say I'd rather be a corpse than a coward rather be dead than afraid now that's a high standard none of us going to fundamentally meet that standard but at least we know what the standards are all right that's what the standard is right that's what the integrity and honesty and Justice and truth that brother Robbie is talking about and then that says Robin himself as a so-called conservative brother has a deep connection to Martin King is that a fair character absolutely it cuts very very deep and we should be able to work Jazz like improvisationally such that we overlap come together disagree when we disagree and that's a great lesson of black people to America that's what jazz is finding your voice and not just being an echo what's the anthem of black people Lift Every Voice it's not lift every Echo is it and you can't find your voice if you're a jazz man or a jazz woman and don't have a voice and just an echo you're not going to be part of the tradition you ain't gonna be Eric about dude you ain't gonna be a lightning Hopkins just stay in your neighborhood play your guitar in the garage you gotta find your voice that's Democratic symbolic action finding your voice with dignity in a context where you listen to the voices of the dead and the quick and those voices together constitute a way of accenting the best of who we are as human beings and black music is probably the greatest artistic breakthrough of the most barbaric Century recorded time which is the 20th century with the Nazism communism imperialism but what is about these people these black folk at their best not they're worse now nothing worse we got some lessons to learn so we have to be very careful about the labels we can't get along without labels and we need labels like liberal conservative Libertarians socialists Republican Democrats and so forth yeah uh we can't get along without them but we need to be careful not to be captured by them these these terms mean different things at different times they mean different things in different historical circumstances they mean different things for purposes of different sorts of analysis and it's tribalism that makes me think that if I'm a conservative I must believe X that's not how it should work you should believe what you believe because you think the reasons for believing it are best and then you'll see what that makes you in the parlance of the day notice how different that is from first choosing your box and then choosing your beliefs depending on what's In The Box you kind of look at history here you have to look at history you know uh you know Cornell and I were talking about this earlier today we're having tea together probably um you know there was a great tradition it may come back again of socially conservative progressivism today we think of progressives we think of just straight up Social liberalism and that's pretty much what we've got right now on the Progressive side of the agenda but people like Christopher lash Eugene Genovese uh you're talking about see right Mills you know don't you're allowed to think outside your tribe you know you could agree on some things but if you disagree on others you that's your right as a free human being with a free mind there's some things you've got to do for yourself and thinking is one of them you can't Outsource that not to a party not to a Thrive you can't Outsource it and falling in love is another it's very important you asking for somebody else's permission as to who you love you got to grow up all right well we've got just a couple minutes here so I want to uh kind of a lightning Round Here one way in which uh brother Cornell has changed your mind and one way in which brother Ravi has changed your mind well let me start there uh uh I have a much deeper appreciation of what we might call the Black American black or African-American tradition as a result of my engagement with Cornell by a tradition I mean a tradition that includes a a distinctive kind of literature art music those types of of things uh I think sort of prior to my engagement with Cornell reading his works on Race talking with him both privately and publicly I tended to think look race has been just such a deadly issue in our country racism has just been such a terrible thing the consequences just seem to ramify and ramify and ramify let's just stop thinking in racial terms let's just not talk about race maybe if we don't talk about it the problems will go away but Cornell's persuaded me that we can't just not talk about it we've got to face up to the we now we we have to be careful not to imagine that we're living in 1954. that there has been no progress but we also can't imagine that you know all our racial problems are solved and race is no longer or if we just stop talking about race racial issues or go away or that it doesn't make sense to consider the great achievements and traditions of African-American life which were produced no question about it in circumstances of repression but for which there wouldn't be these traditions so it's a complicated story how you get an Ellington a bald one an Ellison a Du Bois so that's a kind of enrichment of my own thinking which I think prior to engagement with Cornell was simply simplistic on the issue of race Dr West how would you answer that question how how is Dr George changed your mind wow I appreciate that question because I mean intellectually we've been fighting over Aquinas versus Kierkegaard for about 20 years yeah he's LED for the deeper appreciation of the greatest we'll save that for another election now I also want to acknowledge this in terms of the the ways in which to see brother Robbie with the precious kids at St Mark's as well as Saint Phillips in Dallas we've had some magnificent experiences there with the flowers and the crows and the ways in which they've been able to come together the flowers and the crows are people oh yeah exactly doctor doctor and Mrs Flowers the cats are dear friends of folk who are tied to uh it's not there's a woman's girls school too and so forth why is that important would be able to see such high quality into action with so-called conservatives in chocolate context in which the children are fundamentally impacted that's what you see with this brother here in terms of the issue we're wrestling with abortion for over 20 years I've always felt that there was a genuine moral passion behind a concern with the most vulnerable in terms of those who have a different position than myself on abortion and Robbie's been pushing me and pushing me and pushing me in terms of when does the baby become a human being at conscious that's in it at certain weeks and so forth and so on and at the same time I'm trying to push him in terms of I still convinced that if only men could have babies we'd have a different discourse so somehow I've got to be able to acknowledge that my conservative brothers and sisters are not monsters because they disagree with me on abortion and I try to get them to say that the feminists are not monstrous either because they're fundamentally concerned about control over their bodies and the question is how do you deal with that complexity and we wrestle with that and I've never wrestled like that before until I met this brother and that's one of the many ways in which I appreciate him politically now when it comes to existentially and spiritually then that's a whole different thing we could sing a song and he plays a serious banjo serious Banton I sing like Marvin Gaye in the shower in the shower but we say we do sing together all right terrific well I want to turn up Brad cheese but before I do I want to take a moderator's prerogative here and I I thank God for you all for what you're doing and I'm answering my own question what gives me hope this is what gives me hope the people who come from different perspectives thank you keep doing it thank you bill I don't think we could end on a better note than what Bill McKenzie said just now and let's end with that because you've given us great hope tonight professors George and West uh what a gift you've given us and may your tribe increase have a great night [Applause] foreign [Music]

Channel: The OBSV Group

Views: 3,196

Keywords: Cornel West, OBSV, The OBSV Group, Education, Public Speaking, Public Speaker

Id: iUSxkKSAbbs

Length: 65min 29sec (3929 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023