Glenn Loury raises many "unspeakable truths" in his talk. His conclusion:
As a black American intellectual who loves his country, I can say without equivocation in the year 2021 that the Fourth of July-- like Shakespeare like Balzac, like Einstein--is ours. It belongs to me every bit as much as it does to you.
The question confronting we black Americans today then is not whether we are included within the body politic of the United States of America. What a ridiculous question! We most emphatically and obviously are. Today's question is not how to end our oppression. Rather, it is "What shall we do with our freedom?" What will we make of the enormous inheritance that is our birthright: citizenship in history's greatest republic?
What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!
There’s one exception to this, however. Even while today’s students have not been taught knowledge, they have also been taught not to bully a person on the basis of their race, class, gender, or any other trait.
The production of knowledge thrives when universities value open inquiry, but recent trends in conformist thinking pose new threats to research, writing, and teaching. How do we combat conformist culture in our classrooms and research, while encouraging inquiry into unorthodox ideas? How can our epistemic institutions continue to seek and know truth? We were joined by HxA co-founder and Board Chair Jonathan Haidt for an in-depth discussion with Jonathan Rauch, author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.
As Rauch states in the teaser, the system doesn't work by magic. It requires all of us to participate in good faith:
I like to create video interviews of interesting people. One of the most compelling interviews I have made was that of Ben Fainer, a holocaust survivor. He spent six tortured years in several camps. I loved Ben's attitude. He was patient and forgiving in spite of all that he had been through. And he was a wise man too. Many other people have been moved by Bens words too. More than 100,000 people have viewed his video. He died a few years after we created his video, so I was especially glad that his words were preserved.
I had another friend who almost died in WWII. Like Ben, she was Jewish. Susan was in her late 80s when she mentioned that she had escaped from Europe to the U.S. through Japan. It sounded like an amazing story. She agreed to tell me all about her escape. We agreed to meet the following week on a Tuesday. She died that weekend, so we will never know her story. Her death has served as a reminder to me that once I recognize something to be important I need to schedule it and do it promptly. Or else.
And I know that life isn't always that simple. There are conflicting platitudes that remind us that it's not that simple: A) "He who hesitates is lost." And B) "Look before you leap."
When I conclude that something is important, however, I try to jump at it. You see, I'm in my 60s. I hope to be around for decades, but I might get the horrible diagnosis tomorrow. Or that car might swerve into my lane next week.
We are all traveling along a Life Arc and there is nothing you can do to slow it down. Your only option is to fill it up with quality experiences. Schedule it and make it happen, Laura Vanderkam reminds us over and over. Do that, or don't do that, thereby allowing the sands of time to slip through your fingers. Those are your only options. Live your life or fail to live your life.
Here comes the next hour. What are you going to do with it?
At a time when increasing numbers of Democrats are cozying up to George W. Bush in public, THIS is what needed to be said face-to-face to GWB. Thank, you, Iraq War veteran, Mike Prysner. The best 36 seconds of video I've seen in a long time.
[Added Sept 24]
Mike Prysner explains why he confronted George W. Bush. An instructive conversation. Essentially, sociopathic war criminals should not be normalized. They have no remorse and Bush and his friends can't wait to lie us into the next war to profit their rich defense -industry friends.
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