>> now back to princeton universities finding meaning in america conference with a discussion on the liberal arts education and freedom of speech on college campuses. this is about two hours. >> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to our conference on "a worthy life: finding meaning in america."

the final panel for the day addresses issues having to do with liberal arts education and the search for truth. we have a distinguished group of panelists to address the question. i want to begin though with a bit of personal testimony of my own and then really an expression of gratitude. we will be discussing pathologies, undeniable pathologies that exist in american higher education these days. compromising of academic freedom violations of core principles of freedom of speech, the lack of viewpoint diversity, the phenomenon of trying to win debates labeling other people as bigots or haters or what have you. those pathologies as i say are

undeniable. they exist. they are very widespread. many people in the capital across the political spectrum not only recognize them but recognize that the present an urgent problem and truly a threat. a provost from stanford university recently the public letter called that threat the threat from within the university saying that no threat to higher education coming from outside the universities is the equal of the threat inside the universities stemming from a certain kind of illiberalism, a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty and students, a tendency to groupthink, and in willingness to question established orthodoxies or even to permit discussions of key issues to go forward. summa you perhaps read the op-ed piece in the "wall street journal" by the self-described

left-wing president of wesley and university in connecticut, calling for of all things not something i personally favor but interesting that he would make the proposal, affirmative action for conservatives in american higher education. and his reason is they need to have viewpoints across the spectrum represented for learning to take place. i said it once again with an expression of gratitude and have wonderful opportunity in this conference to do it and that's gratitude to my home university, princeton university which is sponsoring our conference here today. the james madison program is a program of princeton university. this program has flourished at princeton for 17 years now and i'm enormously grateful to my colleagues and the successive presidents of princeton university who have not only permitted our program to live but indeed to flourish.

i am now completing my 31st very happy year at princeton university. [applause] >> thank you. perhaps not all my colleagues which you but i would like to thank that some would. [laughing] i entered the university fresh out of graduate school in the fall of 1985, and i was out of the closet as a questioner, a denier of the local gods, a question of the established orthodoxies on political and moral questions from the very beginning that princeton did not deny me a position at the university because of that. ..

i think we will be hearing a bit about that in the presentations. to discuss the vital issues we have assembled an outstanding panel and i will introduce them all right now in the order in which they will speak. the fellow of the james madison fellow. and at the phd graduate of this university. he also directs the program

associated with the workshop in political theory and policy analysis. one of our nation's most distinguished historians is director of civil war era studies at gettysburg college in pennsylvania. it is simply surpassed and has been acknowledged for the excellence with prize after prize indeed the lincoln prize. we are delighted to have alan back. he has been a visiting professor. in the madison program here medicine program here at princeton. also a phd graduate. i tutor at st. john's college. has all tutors do.

she writes in defense of intellectual activity the pursuit of truth the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as against the defense of intellectual lice -- life on political reasons. and she was in 2010 in 2011 was also a visiting fellow at the james madison program. and then finally the distinguished scholar in whose honor we have convened this conference leon kass. the professor americas. on the committee on social thought. at the university of chicago. leon will bat cleanup and i will recognize our professor.

>> thank you for inviting me to join the other families. since we have gone through several i thought i should entertain you with a nice story. it has a theoretical part in the juicier part. every spring semester like many in the audience i teach that on liberty. the tyranny of public opinion and undue government here is this is one of the books that should be on the mandatory reading list for all of those who care about liberal education and can still read the complex 19 sensory sentences. i'm not sure that they can master that art. in this wonderful book we are reminded that we should listen to those who disagree with us and gives us that in the 21st

century and the reasons for doing so. first they tell us that the opponents are valuable because they can sharpen our arguments. in our own arguments. second, they remind us of the peculiar evil of the silencing of opinion of any the existing generation of the opportunity to test their beliefs and correct them if necessary. and this is what neil writes. if the opinion is right. they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging era for truth. they needed the clear perception and the impression of truth produced by that. moreover neil reminded us that we can never really be sure that the opinion that we are

endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion. and even if we were sure of that he said stifling it would be an evil spirit. all these and the leveraging views is in fact arrogant assumption on our part and a failure to take any precautions against our own views. a failure to take precautions. the liberty as you will know is widely taught in our universities today and here at princeton university as well. many of our colleagues seem to like the ideas of the book. in theory. but what about a applying them into practice i would ask. do they still guide themselves by the recommendations. do they live up to the recommendation. i don't want to imply anything

and i do not pretend that this is rhetorical questions. what i would like to do is enter them right telling you a small story and hopefully a relative one on the education. it's about the recent lecture given by charles murray from the american enterprise institute. a month after the famous lecture he have previously tried to give and have get and have successfully given in the end. what the person who invited him was victim and separate the concussion. the event is well known and has been widely discussed in the media. is less known however but i think it can teach us something important about liberal education today. in particular about free speech in the disagreement. i think it can also remind us that taking free speech seriously is not such an easy

task as nero and others would want us to believe. quite the contrary i believe. here are the few details about this. he was invited to speak about the 2016 election. a book he published in 2012. the invitation was extended by a small group of students to students that formed a very small american enterprise institute and informal group not rescued -- registered with the university. university. the main sponsor was the american enterprise institute and the small talk that i have the honor of directing indiana chose to cosponsor it. without offering a monetary compensation. like everyone else in the country we had struggled to come to terms and to understand the results of the 2016 election.

to this effect with that center on representative government led by the former representative we had organized a series of lectures and roundtables that should shed light on the polarization. in our society and it now came to seth. we began in february with a built crystal was here earlier this morning. and yes he did mention that name . next we organized a roundtable on of all things civility and organization. and we thought that discussion of the idea was coming apart would be a good fit for our series since his 2012 highlighted several twin -- trends that led to the entry of of donald trump in november 2016. as you will know.

he caught indeed early on a spirit of age the others seem to have missed and that has since been exploited relentlessly by our media. this year he has been invited to speak on the major campuses and we are happy to work with the students again the two very brave students to join our efforts and bring him to bloomington for free. we've no doubt that the controversial nature of the previous work described by his critics as misogynist would feature strong progress. it made a few controversial claims linking them to intelligence or a possible link between them and race in genetics. they judged this claim to be probable. others accused of racism.

if any treated it as hate speech. worthy of being censored. certainly worthy of being discussed and discovered. it was seen as a claim based on data. it must be taken into account for the accuracy yet we invited murray to speak about the bell curve but the coming apart. this is not really interested us. we were concerned about all of that. we were and where the major scholars at harvard have been teaching this semester coming apart. the book that interest us at harvard university this was one of the only five bucks on the required reading for their course on american democracy. along with the fierce

democracy in america. in the future of american progressivism. we thought if they can digest charles murray coming apart show should people in the middle of the country. furthermore only a couple of weeks before he spoke in vienna in the same room where he spoke in the presidents hall washington post columnist urged our students to try to understand and listen to whose values they do not share generally. especially his friends on the left to try to develop empathy for causes that might have marketed people to vote for donald trump. thick or thin.

and prevents understanding and debate. it is time to end this elite is a. between new york and la. and now for the juicy details even waiting for. the announcement was met with strong criticism and was made by most faculty members. a good number of them were in humanities and i should add in the english department. it implied that merely listening to the controversial speaker would amount to endorsing his views. that is according to them racist views and misogynist views that can have no place on any discussion on campus. so that more people can sign it. they are challenged.

it is wonderful and challenged the university's decision to offer a platform to a racist writer. the place of the letter. perhaps 200 by now. they believed that providing a platform to trust murray was on wise wise and hear those words. i beg you to pay attention to those. we have with strong believers in academic freedom and speech we do not advocate for controversial views by state institutions nor by private actors. for that reason we respect the right of the sponsors to extend it to him an invitation to speak at indiana university. at the same time public universities and institutions all have a responsibility to act judiciously. particularly in the present climate of racial tension. in this case we believed that

believe that providing a platform is highly responsible and judgmental to our university and community. and in a perfect logic after declaring its commitment to free speech the letter ask them to dissipate charles murray. it was followed by questions about the legality of the invitation which i have to answer at the request of the chairman. in the complaint was indeed launched. if you wondered about the format of the lecture claiming that it was inappropriate since it did not allow for a debate or question and answer it did have a question and answer as you do see in a moment. others see that the scholarship was shabby reprehensible. and that he was something like

that like and culture. the implication was that his place was not in an academic setting or respective a one like lymington in spite of the fact that he have earned his phd from mit and has authored more than ten books today. on some of which were published by major presses. even the latest work coming apart. it builds along the same evidence discussed and used in the bell curve. they spoke with indignation about the damaging decisions to campus and also promoted hate speech. and who would discredit those in my own apartment. the speaker ideas they do not deserve to be debated because they are racist, sexist and threatening in general. if you think that i'm exaggerating let's listen to

what they actually said i will quote twice. here the views are not just one side of an interesting debate they are vile and wrong someone wrote. they are also being endorsed in some form from the highest office in the country right now and for many members of the congress it is an intimidating and frightening environment for many of us in the speaker brings that home. student actually said this for free speech and i am against giving people platforms to speak whose work isn't his work isn't up to the academic expectations of the university. it's classified as hate speech she said. the lecture was not canceled as they asked them to do. we went on with the massive police protection offered by the police department. they worked very hard to make sure that the violence that have previously occurred it would not be repeated at indiana and it was not. the venue was carefully selected.

it was limited to 150. they have the right to do that in the disagreement. they encourage students to get those and burn them afterwards so that the room would be close to empty. we felt about 80 seats. outside electoral hall they exercise their right to free speech. they shouted slogans like charles murray go away and there was an even better one. what we really need to do is to make him relevant again. he's always been a great student. another claimed that she was not interested in listening to someone who would normalize white supremacy.

one them banked on that. outside the lecture room and made a big noise was audible inside the room distracting the speaker at times. they were voicing their opposition outside. exercising their right to free speech we discussed some of the reasons why they voted for trump. it should've been of interest to those on the left. he invited the audience to take his famous' bubble quiz. i did take it. i have to confess that my number is very low. how they contribute to the fragment of america.

one of the two. each of them was given a pen and paper was invited to ask a question there was no censorship only an uninhibited conversation. everyone agreed with marie of course and i must say not necessarily an agreement but the questions and answers were constructive. they turned out to a spouse. they were demonstrated by that. the conservatives must have been surprised by his democracy for example. the basic income. no fewer than 12 police cars were packed behind the building.

they have to be removed off the ground. there was no significant violence. the officer was vandalized. they painted an anti- racist message on the door. they deleted it. include the lack lock which is a new technique. they also posted a post online that claimed the authorship of the event. we can all know who they are. it was anonymous however. i also received calls on my office phone. at which my police signed it.

and some of my colleagues who criticized me for my role in cosponsoring that. i stood for free speech. i did nothing heroic. just applied common sense. i thought that i could stand up for free speech. with the views simply because along with others i was instrumentally and organizing. they only read a single page. we even brought that.

we brought other people to join. the interesting thing was attested the commitment to free speech. they are ready to censor views for which they disagree. they find jean juris and threatened the safe bubbles. and they are ready to discuss civility and engage in witchhunts against those whose views they find disagreeable. one of my colleagues proposed that i would be denies pay raise. if they fail the test. that is the reason of hope for us today.

some of them are starting law and public policy. i can't create effective policy. with the culture and virgins. in the professors and perhaps anti- intellectual chance. the members of the outside community also passed the free speech test when ask whether by the local paper whether they were right to invite murray. they all agreed yes it was right to do so. but his lecture did much more than test our commitment to free speech on campus. it reminded us that one disagreement is normal and inevitable. it must be accompanied by the real facts and balance

moderation and civility. we should never think our sales --dash itself is infallible. we are never allowed to pigeonhole people are called names. we should avoid seeing the world in black and white. we should never make any pronouncements before we get the facts. listen to different interpretations. that's why i think as neil put it the study habit of correcting in completing our own pinions should be a habit that we should cultivate in our liberal arts education. everything that could be brought against our position. it's only way that they can be could be sure that our positions are right. if they follow that important truth and they do not exist is indefensible and supply them with the sharpest arguments

anything it is the advocate procedure. i think we should apply the in our universities as well. this was written 150 years ago and what would he say if he was alive today. he would've said about this. he would encourage our administrators to make chapter two and mandatory. that is beyond doubt. it would've been skeptical of recent calls. such spaces do not exist and cannot exist and we should not try to create them officially. we become less able to defend freedom and civilize our own views. the democracy should not allow us to pick and choose which viewpoint and ideas we have been allowed to hear.

academic community depends on that vibrant condition. for better or worse are wrong, flawed or dangerous. it merely my this at the very heart of liberal education we should honor it if we should profess to serve liberal education. thank you very much. [applause]. i also want to offer my thanks to the medicine staff. for organizing this wonderful conference. i'm deeply honored to be a part of this panel especially happy to be celebrating leon cast models in similar ways what it means to be a teacher of liberal arts.

i wanted to admit that since i returned to teach at st. john's college couple of years ago it's also where i was an undergraduate i had been overwhelmed by essence a sense of my own inadequacy to fall in the work of my teachers and this might seem like awkward over sharing but i think it's interesting for a couple of reasons and that's why i bring in it. on the one hand the sense of inadequacy is an outgrowth of my enormous gratitude from education into all of the teachers who made it possible and leon was one briefly. and i can formulate this gratitude in the following way. i arrived at st. john's. and i was met where i was with all of my moral intellectual and personal defects and offered really on a kind of

trust the awesome responsibility for a serious and free inquiry. and for a life of that kind. as a source of my gratitude. now st. john's like many colleges operate in a kind of tradition of a democratic liberal arts through the great books and one of the benefits about a hundred years old draws on older traditions. one of the benefits of the tradition is that an individual does not need to rely on his or her talents to reinvent the wheel in each classroom were speaking at each conference. but to rely on the habits and structures that are passed on from those who have taught and learned before us.

in these brief foot marks and i will be pretty brief i want to try to articulate as best i can the type of learning that i think is currently threatened with something like extinction. and to be clear i think there is a general way in which liberal education is being shunted into corners and pushed into the margins and trunk in various ways i think the streaking movement is the contraction of it. threatens to dear to my heart aspects of it. i will refer to as the breath of liberal arts education. that they would be extended to anyone and everyone. in the depth of that. it goes to the deepest part of what it means to be a human being. so first some account that the breath of liberal arts education. the education i received as an

undergraduate which i now treat a try to pass on to my students assumes the student as an adult capable of taking responsibility for his or her own learning and also they were soon --dash legacy of assume the response ability. on the other hand that is naturally motivated or even driven from within to pursue fundamental questions. that is by contrast the consumer who is experiencing it. other images of the student that are implicit in some of our educational practices. they know by contrast assume this responsibility and this motivation and this motivation and responsibility that are assumed or aunt -- offered on -- offered on trust. they are not rooted in intellectual aptitude they are

not rooted in being achievement oriented or a future leader. they are not rooted in being male or white or conservative orchids christian. it is a human responsibility. in the human motivation. it is on the grounds of our comment in our humanity that we gather in our little classrooms to discuss the solid -- philosophy. or other math and science in fundamental ways. it is on the grounds of our common humanity that we are able to have real conversation regardless of our ethnic or national backgrounds regardless of our political outlook. education and the common pursuit as the shared and collaborative pursuit of fundamental questions is something a human being needs , desires and flourishes under.

it prepares more people for that. between desperate groups. it reveals common ground. especially others different than us. it breaks through our shatters are superiority to others. as my account of the breath of liberal arts education. as is currently threatened. to see what i mean by the depth of it i think it will help to look at some of the things that are threatening liberal education. i will just focus on a couple of things.

it is threatened by a shortsighted concern with immediate economic payoff. this relies on two false assumptions one contributing to the economy is the point of human life the point. and secondly that broader forms of human excellence in mind and imagination had no economic value as is a second false assumption. liberal education is also threatened by the politicizing of everything the desperate attempts to feel that somehow that they can produce social and political results but otherwise it is useless. both of these threats that is both economic in the political totalizing results from seeing the value of human beings exclusively as a matter of social and economic worth.

on the one hand that we diminish or ignore the dignity of the human being a sense that they had value beyond any social or economic purpose. on the other hand in this point is in honor of leon without the liberal arts we are abandoned to the realm of fantasy where human beings operate without limitation. that is to say i think we overvalue social and political goods in part because we imagine that we are capable of a total transformation of political and social life. we imagine that we have the fantasy that true economic we can overcome that. of human life with others. as i have indicated i don't believe that they are justified by their contribution. i think they are justified by

what they do for human beings as such. nonetheless i do believe that the loss of the liberal arts as i had described them in their depth and breadth will hasten the ability of our political community that is in part because healthy politics allows that there are things beyond politics. it is also because without common ground in common culture and common activities in which we acknowledge other members of the committee community and work with them our fellow citizens and our neighbors and so on without all of these things we are eaten alive by our differences i don't think anyone can doubt that some such movement of being eaten alive by our differences is already underway and it manifests in our common life. so if all of this is right is a matter of enormous urgency to fight to preserve and promote the liberal arts.

in their depth in in their brett. it is i think an urgency at the moment beyond other political and social urgencies. if my remarks are on the right track it also suggest something as to how we might fight for the liberal art. fighting from common ground the common ground that is revealed by this type of study. we must reach out to people that are different from us especially who valued that mode of education and there are many such people. and we should fight i think for the mixed institutions they are mixed our secular institutions especially. because in these institutions that the human character of

this kind of education is revealed in a special way. his general character. and it is only in such institutions were anyone and anyone might turn up and be met where they were that the bonds might be forged. those are my remarks. i think you. [applause]. it was concrete mason in the neighborhood was well-known for his love of children on

one occasion he was out doing some repairs to the front sidewalk until they came along and began playing in it. he lost it completely. yelling at them. you kids get off my concrete. people were puzzled by this. we thought you loved children so much. in the abstract. not the concrete. i just want to talk for a few minutes about the concrete. these are not as our first two speakers have indicated happy times in liberal -- liberal arts education. but let me draw your attention to a few aspects of that which

belongs more in the concrete then the abstract. one is management of finances. the income figures on american colleges and universities previous financial year were down 2% this while the market rose 13%. out of the 40 biggest endowments of american colleges and universities 35 of them declined. four and ten private colleges and three and ten public colleges or universities missed their enrollment intuition goals. last year. the investors expects that the

closure rate will triple by the end of this year. these problems are entirely aside from the abysmal press that has the student and faculty behavior in many minds of americans the face of american higher education has become that of patricia. at the university of missouri. the face contorted with anger calling for force to silence inquiry. but it is a pattern that has been repeated at yale and most recently. it reinforces the perception that these institutions inhabit a kind of cuckoo land

that these colleges and universities have become in which all boundaries between reality and fantasy have disappeared. tuitions continue to spiral upward as do fees and room and board. there is a continued pressure. to the very same institutions. the only remaining ticket to middle-class success and comfort. and there is a diminishing

sense of accountability diminishing because for one thing the colleges are increasingly managed by professional bureaucracies who answer to no one. i guess there are faculty meetings and committees or their are faculty consultations. they amount in many contexts to little more than a high school student council. these bureaucracies when they are themselves unwilling to challenge faculty or students because they are in large measure composed of careerists. his chief goal in life is to keep their noses clean. lastly faculty also shared can

ability as faculty departments go into self-sealing tanks of critical theory in which especially in liberal arts departments the acting out of her rage rage at their own cultural unimportance becomes the most significant public activity. the liberal arts might be the key to renewal. in the liberal arts historically considered we possess a treasury of wisdom and virtue which reaches back to the classical -- classical

path back in fact to the law codes. to the indictment of the 18th century. there are deep wells of reflection available for renewal. when the answer to that departure and that that breakdown is to recur to first principles. that is a source of renewal. and it is in the liberal arts that we find that deep bank of

first principles. but these have not been working for us, they have not been performing the work of renewal. one is because of the dominance of the evolutionary trip which is in fact the fundamental troop that defines our culture today. what i mean by that is in and within the evolutionary troop there are no first principles to refer to. there is only ceaseless change without point, direction and change which we are obliged to adapt to or perish.

is no wonder it is no wonder that the decline of the influence of liberal arts education begins with the rise of the evolution. is demonstrated most signally at harvard in the decade after the civil war. which then from there set the pattern for higher education. the pattern and this is the second reason why they have failed to act as a source of renewal is because of the adoption across american higher education of a model of mass institutions and in service of the state. mass institutions dominated by professional vocational education goals. in instruction. and promoted in the name of

efficiency. first, by the state bureaucracies of the 19th century but also for whom efficiency it was the name of the social and political gain. the third reason why they have not been successful in producing referral is the assertion in the name of that efficiency and as a function of those bureaucracies of a governmental oversight. in the smallest aspects of college life. we are most likely today to think of that kind of invention in the term of title ix letters that at least has been the most sensational aspect. but they really extend much earlier into much more

small-scale points. i remember particularly in 2011 when we were notified by means of a dear colleague from the department of education. that we were not a blast to offer a fourth hour the idea of course have been that in a college curriculum courses are offered as three credit hours. however the department of education had grown anxious that the three credit hours were not entailing any other kind of academic efforts. they went forth that we should document a fourth hour composed of who knows what. when i was first apprised of this by the provost at our cup i have to admit a little uncharitably on my part that i thought he was suffering from

over anxiety. when i corresponded with the president of the american association of professors he assured me that yes in fact this mandate was being sent out quite broadly. i don't know that it has been enforced quite vigorously but the idea that a single bureaucratic letter admitted from the department of education could completely rewrite the nature of everybody's with the expectations it was simply staggering. and yet there it is in large measure whether we call ourselves public or private institutions none of us could survive without public funding and it can be removed quite easily. that threat not to reality of it just the threat alone is sufficient to send administrators fleeing in the

direction of faculty with memos and directives. the result has been that the liberal arts had been made into an entertainment appendage to college and university curriculums. there is still an english major. there is still other majors that we define as a liberal arts. but they are there on suffrage rather than because there is a recognition that they provide a significant aspect of our cultural life. they are the entertainment that is provided to a college education. the faculties themselves cooperate in their own humiliation by imitating

that. and thus become de facto vocational expos themselves. the departments cease to see those mission. the training of english professors. getting ready for graduate school. history departments. as a training future history department professionals. we deplore on the one hand the vocational is asian of education but then liberal arts departments turn around and go the same thing and imitation. and the result is also that we

become collections of self perpetuating societies. at our own self marginalization's and happy to seek ways of tweaking the noses of the culture at large. can this change. can liberal arts teachers, departments and programs resume their role of cultural renewal. here are some of the things that i think must happen. we must separate liberal arts education from vocational studies. we must admit that that was a mistake and institutional mistake made. this is not mean that liberal

arts institutions thus separated out would be deceived by cords of willing applicants but that is a price that the price that we will have to pay. we need to transfer the hiring of faculty members at other hands of faculty departments i am not entirely sure. i'm not sure it will produce a happy result. i do know that what we have now is the present regime of hiring the navel gazing. the third thing is that new or newly configured liberal arts programs and institutions must

link themselves to existing agencies outside there to ensure accountability. the great -- the great question is will this happen for it to happen we must overcome three major obstacles. one is public incredulity renewal of a culture is not what customers private universities want today. that's not why they come to college and university. to tell them that what they are being educated for his cultural renewal it will draw in most cases the blankets of the stairs.

secondly, there will be professional resistance. because this arrangement of liberal arts education is not what faculties are acculturated to expect. either by their own training or by the lives within their guilds. thirdly, as a barrier we must admit that this kind of reconfiguration is not what outside agencies are prepared to pay for. to their shame. what will happen then? i expect at least three things. one is that we will see over the next several years the continued trend of mergers and closures this of course is

already begun. we've seen some very significant examples of this more significant examples are coming. we will seek secondly, further government intrusions. it will be intrusion designed to reverse the course of previous intrusions. but it still will be operating on the basis in the assumption that intrusion is justified and legitimate. and i expect what will happen will be more alienation more vocational is him do we believe in this thing called the liberal arts called the liberal arts that we live by more than bread alone do we believe that the stories we

have told ourselves from the days of the ringing planes in detroit are we really gray spirits yearning to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the upmost barrier of human thoughts. only if we are will we see such renewal will the tide of ill consequences be reversed and will we be able to move into broader sunnier uplands. if truth and wisdom. in wisdom. thank you very much [applause]. [applause].

>> what wonderful presentations. at a very long say yesterday and i would join this panel not with any prepared remarks but to offer some comments and then in the interest of having a full discussion back and forth. i don't want to join the party of dismay and pick up on the evils that we are facing i think the first presentation the first in the last presentation presented a diagnosis. .. ..

and why you need freedom of speech to create knowledge, i'm not quite sure. but climate is better than in most places so i have to say the usual suspects in the faculty protested. a letter the dean of students to the students and there's been a lot of pushback on the faculty and from a lot of the students who also think certain opinions are beyond the pale.

the faculty committee was appointed to establish principles and procedures for disruptions of discourse on campus. and the committee has recently reported in fact as of tuesday, i think the senate is debating today these recommendations. the statement was quite good. quite good. there was the obligatory paragraph about the importance of civility and respect, etc. this on the way of being able to defend the president's unpopular opinions and then there was a sentence, i should have written it down. it went something like this. a respective hostile and unwelcoming environment is bad for learning or bad for the community and the parallel. whereas a rich, opposite of

restrictive in the sense of that, friendly, opposite to hostile and what do you think you found in place of unwelcoming? inclusive. instead of welcoming, to which you would say all opinions are welcome. the current thinking is the opinions belong to people because they belong to groups and the groups have their opinions included.and the consequence of this, i had a kind of illumination here. if that's what you think is the basis of people's opinions, then it's perfectly clear why you cannot attack somebody's opinion because

the attack on their opinion is to be understood as an attack on their identity. in this is in a way a legacy of a kind of tribalist taking about the university and its student body. which, it's partly the culture. it's partly the government intrusions here but it would be very hard to induce a kind of climate in the university which sees itself as a group of truth seekers if in fact we've adopted the kind of postmortem view that truth is a social creation and each group is entitled to live by their own, god for bid you should attack somebody's truth because it's by definition disrespectful of their person. and that, that i think is worth calling attention to and paying some thought into. >>.

>> secondly, i would make is i think the politicization of the university and its causes are oversubscribed. as the cause at least among the students that is not sufficiently counted on, and that is there's nothing going on for those students that see their souls and their truth to which they can give their passions. therefore, intothat void , all of the controversies of the day and they take over. if one had a campus where what was going on in the classroom was in fact meaningful to the students, about the things that matter. it would be much less seduction into these kinds of controversies and the english department and faculty would want what the students would go to the places where they

can read the books that matter. i think that this is on the way to the third point which is to say yes, we do complain about the politicization of the university. but the problem is with what we are offering.and professor russell has given a really , well, wonderful but depressing analysis of why it is we are in that circumstance. >> but, here i like to take small difference within. >> i'm not sure that the way to describe what one wants at least today in a liberal education, should be in terms of a renewal of the culture or be heading down of the treasures of our heritage. >> i think given where we are today, the starting points should increasingly be the enduring questions of young

people starting out in life. to find them where they are, rather than to try to hand them something to begin with that they don't know that they need or want. to begin really with, and i mean really begin. i'm not talking necessarily about the granting programs, i'm talking about initiation to a college experience which even if a small faculty members in someplace or another say we designed the following introductory course for freshmen, take it if you'd like it. and the question of the course might be for openers, who's a good human being at what's a good citizen? and you don't simply ask their opinions but you but before those series of texts

that agitate that question and they see the competing alternatives. and by the end of the year, they will admit to the literature kind of a collection of exemplary individuals from achilles and odysseus to socrates, to moses, to huck finn. you go through, your present readings but you put the alternatives before then. and you raise, then you proceed not so much to know about thesebooks from the outside . you use these books to think with, the questions that you legitimate from the students because you know in the way they really are interested. >> they just left home. they're joining the big old world. >> filled with all kinds of nonsense and opinions that

they earned. superficial and skimpy but if you treat them as if they really care about the things that ought to care about, and you ask them questions that you suspect they would like to have and you discuss the books in the spirit in which you would like those questions pursued. then you're treating them not so much as excuse me, as heirs of a tradition but you're treating them in the spirit in which hitz spoke in which you are guessing that as a young adult, with a lifetime before then and probably not very far away from the big questions about love and marriage, including questions about the nature of citizenship and freedom, about justice and these sorts of things about war and peace , i think creates the kinds of courses by totally ignoring what's going on around you, don't argue with

them, present the alternatives and certainly in our experience in chicago, you build it and they will come. and we even produced the kind of undergraduate major that was built, we used the great books but the fundamental thing was a question and the question understood not as a verbal interrogative but as a species of desire. >> who wants to know what one does not know and is willing to invest the effort to pursue that question. >> and i think this is i think, it might have been a time with a different way was appropriate. >> i think now if one is going to catch these young people before they're in a late cover-up, corrupted by the vocational is a of the university, show them that this can be a safe place in

the true sense, namely a place where the things that are dearest to their hearts can be discussed openly in a climate of respect. of searching. and with a kind of sense that all of us, even if we're going to disagree, then fundamentally interested in something called a truer and better understanding of the things indispensable to our humanity. >> and it seems to me, and we tried it. i don't know whether we can start itup again . you build up these programs and then you leave and it turns out that lifetimes rushing everything to waste, you build it up and turn it down but i think for people who care about these things, find fight the battles and public. make sure thatpeople who come to your campuses can see . the real worry is to find a

couple numbers where you're located on the campus and try to ask yourself how could we enlist these young people at the start. and what would be a lifetime of learning in a deep and broad sense that what ever they wind up doing of their careers, we would be vastly enriching to their life. >> how much of a change one can bring it up this way i'm not that hopeful. i don't really see given the grip that the current way of teaching these things has on the curriculum. i don't see any other way unless one lines up at st. john's for university of dallas or thomas aquinas or pills down or some of these other places. >> the faculty at himself question to say nobody asks the question at the university. do we think the young people need to know to enter into the workplace.

and i can't get the institution to do that. find a couple colleagues and do it. do a few things. >> and i suspect that these things will be popular. they will begin to make a stir and a ripple in the surroundings. [applause] >> we will now move to q and a. leah and i want to say that your epiphany is indeed an epiphany. in the statement that cornell west and i put out in the lake of middleberry fiasco, entitled freedom of expression,democracy and truth seeking , there was a sentence in which we said

before liberal lines take place. people need to be willing to expose themselves to the challenge. to have challenged their deepest, most cherished and we added the words identity forming beliefs. >> and i think your epiphany is that unless people are willing to do that, unless they know that is of the essence of liberal learning. they will experience criticism of their ideas or opinions or beliefs as personal attacks on them. >> and then that blocks the enterprise of education right at the beginning. you never get the horse out of the starting place. it cannot proceed unless students and faculty members,

unless there's an ethic in the institution that communicates to everyone concerned the understanding that part of the exercise, central to the exercise is challenging even our deepest most cherished identity forming beliefs and that actually comes out of the concrete experience, it wasn't just an idea that cornell and i came up with. it came up with our experience of doing what you recommended. the two of us deciding we're going to teach a course together. in which we asked the great questions. and enlist the assistance of the great writers from sophocles and plato and saint augustine up to i and dewey and boomer and cs lewis and martin luther king. but ask the great questions enlist the assistance of the great thinkers in the enterprise which will be an

enterprise in which we subject each other's opinions and arguments to scrutiny. >> we subject our students arguments to scrutiny. the encourage our students to subject our arguments to scrutiny. within the end the goal of each of this becoming its own best critic. by internalizing the process to the point at which we can do better than any interlocutor. >> the job of interrogating our own beliefs. and our experience here has been that the effects of that go far beyond the particular classroom in which we have 18 students. in order to make it a seminar we had to limit it to 18. you had to exclude a vast number of students who want to begin and yes our willingness to do that in a very public way sent the very message that i think is at the core of your tiffany.

i want to reinforce what you said to everybody. there's no need to wait around for some external force to act on the universities. we can just decide we are going to do this. and in our own small lake begin the process of doing it. and a sermon. we've got hands up and i first have the pressure pleasure of recognizing sarah kass. >> as some of you may know at the whims of the family business, but in a different way. many years ago i was struck by the notion that public schools were in effect designed to prevent education. i joined a revolution called charter schools and opened the first charter public high school in america in boston

at a time when anybody in the public vocational establishment who saw me or heard of this would saw me cross the street and certainly, we were against the tide and now i'm happy to say 20 some odd years later, charter schools are not only mainstream but they have not only performed a revolution for young people but have been really singularly responsible for attracting talent into the teaching of young people. and i have to say in listening to this panel, i must say that while i agree with you robbie and dad that there are things one can do within existing institutions, listening to this panel it strikes me that when call for the kind of disruption and that just as what we know that is severe in the early 90s with a kind of monopoly of public education prevention education of young people and we assume that there was a market for a

different kind of education. just as you encounter the young people, you see their appetite for the kind of real questions and on thoughtfulness that these institutions of higher learning seem to be categories presenting. i wonder if there would be away given the kind of technologies we have today that don't have to confine learning to illustrious places of higher learning or to walls at all. whether there might be a kind of discussion that could bring those most thoughtful educators to reach that market of desirous young people and i think only the last thing i would add as a point of evidence perhaps is that so many of the most talented graduate students end up not going to professors but to join backpacks. it was one such think tank that sponsored his talk at your university so perhaps there are institutions out there that are not necessarily a higher learning have principles that could

affect all such instructions but i'd be curious to know what you thought about that. >> i certainly am with you in the spirit of those remarks and i thinkthere are probably a lot of things that can and should be done . >> in a university setting it could be that contemporary technology is all it takes, that in ways that people who are much more tech tech savvy, people like adam here will know about that are still very opaque to me but i do know again from my own personal theory what a difference within the university the creation of programs and institutes that really are based on the model of liberal learning that our panelists are promoting. just what impact they can have and there are people here today who are the founders anddirectors of programs around the country , and former is one but my guess is that there are

probably 15 or 20 people here who are leaders of the operation here with arizona state university. >> and i think those are very, is a very important within the university. i'll give it over to the panelists to see if they have any reflections about what may be done outside the university, what sort of disruptive work could be done. >>. >> clarify, i wasn't in the discussion in the hall ... [inaudible] >> know, okay. >> the fact that in institute of higher learning making liberal education has to be with other communities. >> point taken and i agree. one thing that i hope supporters of higher education including financial supporters of higher education, one point that i

hope they will take the heart is that it's very important not to write off the universities. when you see the kinds of things that happen at missouri that claremont mckenna and and berkeley and at yale and at bill mary and the other places are really spoke of, people can become disgusted and just give up on the project. and while i'm all for the think tanks. i think think tanks are doing marvelous work. we can't give up on our students and our students are not in the think tank, there in the university so what supporters of american higher education seems to need to do is to support initiatives that will live up to the highest ideals of liberal learning in the universities while at thesame time also supporting think tanks and other initiatives outside the universities. >> any comments ? dad, do you have a comment? >> this might be a generational thing. >> i spoke partly a

generational sense that i really imaginative about real innovation in education of the sort of thing that we're terrified it seems to me. you could probably design things, the outrageous expense of getting an education and the precious little that lots of people get from this expense, i don't think we've begun to see the pushback is going to be coming. we can see some closures and that will be the first time but i'm not sure that this can continue indefinitely without there being a call for something very different. >> but, one can learn a lot from interactive things online but the experience of

living together, learning together and talking half the night about the things you really talk about during the day and a kind of one-on-one possibilities faced with these possibilities that virtual learning, just at least as far as i can see it we don't have, that makes me think you could find things to do that will help people get more than what they're now getting. >> but the ideals that i'm speaking for, i think the whole panel is speaking for. might still be disposes face-to-face human contact area people knowing their students. not only knowing the subject but being able to read a phase and to encourage a silence and to produce a conversation not just with the professor whose 24 hours a day online but with the

person. what do you think of what so-and-so just said? >> professor gregory. >> icon i gregory, i teach in the religion department at the university and a director of our counsel on humanities, the council here which i in lieu of what robbie said i will say our great books undergraduate sequence is oversubscribed and there's a lot of faculty who share this non-instrumental vision of the liberal arts here. we have our challenges and i'm deeply sympathetic to the vision presented here but i thought i'd ask that question. i think it's related to get and brett and maybe a question of privilege an institution that has the financial resources to do this but one of the buzzwords around now is global and in light of yesterday's conversation of attitude sensible patriotism and

liberal education i just wonder if any of you have thoughts on how a global humanities curriculum might work in the american university, not just at jerusalem and gettysburg but in beijing, baghdad. is this an ally for a non-instrumental version of the humanities? is this curricular chaos? is this been? does it all depend on how it's done, i guess that the answer but if any of you have thoughts on global humanities given the comments and references that have been made toward european drive models. >> let me first of all say one thing. i was talking with bill kristol during the break this morning that we've had an influx as most college universities of students all over the world especially in other parts of asia, or at least africa, those students have brought in a tremendous vitality and enthusiasm and brilliance to this kind of

study. that sometimes the americans need so i think in that sense, global humanities makes a lot of sense to me. that is, it seems to me there are a lot of people in different parts of the world who are really interested in this type of study, the study of fundamental questions and looking at the foundations of things. so in that sense, it sounds great. in terms of running out the curriculum, i think the worry , it's as you said i'd say is how it's going to be done. so there is all kinds of wonderful rich material from non-western cultures that raises the same fundamental questions and that only of course is implicit in what i was saying that these are human questions and not just hours here and now. but i think there is a real

danger of a tokenism and superficiality and having people teach things about knowing the languages of the cultures and the background or the nuances. so we have a established way of doing things with these particular set of books. we had a faculty that knows how the language and knows the background, knows the concepts in history and even the, even and especially the things which end up getting lost for one reason or another and i think you would want to have circumstances where that's the case, my suspicion is that have that you would actually want to have these institutions in these other countries to have liberal arts colleges in nepal and in china and the middle east and in parts of africa in where you can draw in people from the culture who are going to have the linguistic and historical background to do this with some kind of seriousness without just, without i think

the danger would be that you end up disavowing the human character of the book if you somehow think that you have to include a laundry list as many different cultures on your curriculum. so i hope that's helpful. >> it's certainly helpful to me.>> i the answer is obviously that you have to have something valuable to be gained to broaden our horizons. as long as we avoid the temptations, the tokenism and superficiality and especially to making mascots out of non-western thinkers or non-western traditions, those of us as you know who taught in political theory have been teaching islamic media able islamic scholars for years to the great benefit of ourselves and our students so i think that is a small

example in one particular field of how this can be done and done well without superficiality and tokenism and so forth. and as far as eastern traditions are concerned, i personally get something of a kick, i must admit out of imposing my students to the thought of mahatma gandhi on a contraception, abortion and sexual morality. >>

the power i think i shifted decisively in favor of administrations. i'm not sure, but i don't think there's any more reason for confidence in that group. i understand the problems that these two groups is, but i'm not sure why you think that shift would help would be the first question. the second question is i think you are too harsh on american vocation listen. look, the desire to make a living is a totally legitimate american desire. i agree with you that we need to remember that the liberal arts are in the first place free from the immediate need to make a living. but we also have to say something to that the site on the of our students because it's real and it's not going anywhere.

>> allen? >> perhaps i should say that i'm not at all optimistic with capacities of the administrative class. i am simply reflecting on what we have been living with as a product of the current way of doing things. i don't know that moving away from that is going to move into a new area of improvement. but i do know that there is a a problem of self perpetuation and exclusion. i have seen these operate in many places. and with reference to many individuals. i have seen many a search committee make its decision on the basis, not on the kinds of decisions we would prefer to be made about academic scholarship,

about academic potential, about a dedication to the life of the mind, but instead on political considerations. usually it's not so much let's hire someone who has these political convictions so much as let's make sure we do not hire someone who has these political convictions. and so long as there is no recourse that prevents that from happening, then that is what motivates me to say should we be looking in another way, in terms of how we populate faculties. again, please do not mistake me, i have no guarantee to offer. what i do have is a lifetime of unpleasant experiences watching this play out in search committee after search committee after search committee.

i offer only an example with reference to a very prominent ivy league institution in which a candidate for a position was excluded in terms bordering on or, -- whore, because prior to his undergraduate education, living in italy as the child of missionaries, he had taught sunday school and committed the unspeakable act of folly of putting that on his resume. i was part of another committee anin which people were being considered for a fellowship program. the applicant who was under discussion noted on the resume that he'd been the recipient of a grant from the bradley foundation. immediately protest was

registered that we could not have someone like that participating in this fellowship program. i only cite those two as one, as to out of many, many more. to say that we have a dysfunctional system for how we populate our departments. i would consider the floor to be open for suggestions about how we do it, but what we do that is dysfunctional. >> yes, professor? >> thank you very much. i'm at notre dame. i very much like the idea just setting up alternative programs and letting students vote with their feet. that's something we were trying to do at notre dame. i do wonder if that's a long-term winning strategy? so here's my specific question. can real liberal education take

place in the university as long as the university is captured by a modern notions of identity and identity politics that are pervasive? don't have to fight that fight directly? i'm especially word i suppose about minority students, because these are the students that get told there are certain identities and segregated in a certain majors and minors, and who are perhaps intentionally perhaps unintentionally very students who get left out of these alternative programs, typically deprived of the liberal education we are trying to offer to them. so i wonder if a more direct confrontation with these impoverished notions of identity that are really, really are pervasive and at least to my mind antithetical to general liberal education. don't we have to confront that head-on?

>> yes. [laughing] >> no. i mean, how do we propose to do this? how do you propose to do this? the impulse towards increased access is to begin with a public spirited practice, or public spirited impulse to make it possible for members of the american community who have not had the privileges of higher education. i suspect we might have gone off the road very early in affirmative action programs.

and we certainly i think have gone off the rail in a way accentuating those kinds of differences by starting special programs, special houses, special dormitories, those sorts of things. small anecdote, university of chicago when i was a student there, there was of course the history of western civilization which was the capstone course, one of the two capstone courses of hutchins college. when i came back to teach 14 years later, there were alternative civilization courses, russian civilization, chinese civilization, south

asian civilization. and during the early time there, there was a proposal, these were rigorous programs with required study of the languages, culture and so on. but there was a proposal very early in my time there to start an african and african-american studies program. with no language requirement. partly a question of each -- it was denied that this was a black studies program. this is not a black studies program. this was a civilization program. and the question is, what idea of civilization do you have that fits that description and does not come with the study of the foundational things of civilization? i went to complain to the dean, who was an old friend of mine. i said, why are we doing this?

he says, leon, don't worry. we're doing this to show solidarity to our black students. we don't expect anybody to take it. that's almost 30 years ago. lots of mistakes have been made, but the question is how now under the president circumstances when you've got -- present circumstances, when you every administrator scared to death th of being called a raci, sexist or a homophobe to somehow lean against the classification of people by these groups,, especially when there's still this huge pressure to make sure that we have diversity of every sort bnt so i'm open to fighting back, even call attention to it, but it seems to me if you can figure out a way to do it, fine.

the alternative is to look at the students as if they don't have the identities that the administrators see them as having, but see them as young human beings, which is what the whole idea of the push for integration in the beginning was all about. it's the whole idea of what america is all about. so if you have suggestions, if somebody has suggestions, we should have them, but i think it's hard. >> what was implicit, is to do it right. you could have a civilizations program in which african civilizations, whether egyptian or, were studied but study properly with the languages, with a serious attention to history, without the superficiality and the tokenism

on the same terms as russian civilization or chinese civilization. wouldn't that be how to proceed? >> yeah but see, i'm ambivalent about the civilization studies altogether. >> okay. >> but for the reason, look, it's very important to understand that you are lots of different ways in the world to negotiate being a human being. that we do not have a monopoly on humanity. the introduction of these non-western sources and programs was a way to fix our condition. it wasn't to begin with an attack on the west, but it was an expansion in the sense that nothing, nothing that human beings have seriously built is alien to us and that we should try to understand it. but that still seems right to me. i agree with that.

but then if we go back to ericsson comment, why call it a global literature course? you've got a good book that you think people could be helped to understand, put in the course that addresses the questions you like the course to talk about. >> like the islamic political philosophers in a standard political philosophy course. they are there like aristotle or thomas aquinas or luther. >> yet. >> zena, did you want -- >> i thought he heard a note in a question that wasn't dressed but maybe i'm wrong. i think what are my concerns about this type of discussion is that we think so hard about the various difficulties facing our university communities, difficult with students and with faculty that we forget a sort of basic principle of any kind of community, just a chip to meet people where they are. i think i just want to say that. i think our students,

politicized in a particular way and if they don't come that way they can get that way pretty quickly, even places like st. john's where it's not being offered by the institution. person by person, student by students, we have to beat these people where they are and offer them something better, rather than coming at them in a spirit of confrontation. that's all i wanted to say. that may have been misunderstood the question bu but i wanted tot that out there. >> could ask, with the other two people comment on this question, if it's not an imposition? >> i say this simply as raising a question to be discussed, how seriously should we think, among the various strategies that we

might deploy in defense and in justification of liberal education, how much do we want to suggest that there is a benedict option that has to be considered as well? i think what springs to my mind is one example of this, in bradbury's fahrenheit 451 in a culture which burns books because they are threatening. but often swapped far, far away that are the bands the people who memorize because they can't trust to the page that can be incinerated, but memorize descartes and shakespeare come to introduce themselves, hello, i'm mathematica.

and i look upon bradbury's tale as a cautionary one. and i sometimes wonder how far off we are from that. i hope a good distance. but is that not a kind of an addict option? i'm not saying i am advocating that audience adjusting that are there multiplicity of strategies we can pursue? is that one of them? are there other such as eric has described? are the others such as st. john's represents? are there other such as what professor cass has described? and how can we each and her own capacity to generate support for those endeavors? how can we resist those who would silence fought? how can we appeal to those who

can arm and support what we do? what are the multiplicity of strategies? i think we would make a great mistake if we think there is one solution to this. how can we develop the multiplicity of solutions, whether it be think tanks or whether it be the heroic band in the swamp, i don't know. it seems to me that we perhaps could take and intelligence step by identifying what the multiplicity of those possibilities are. and using a word of encouragement and directly thinking through for each of them. >> i wonder why do we call it university and not multi-diversity, if that's the case? [inaudible] >> the danger in professors question is we get to offer a

global education instance will be lost into a variety of options that could understand. i think language takes time. learning french or german russian political persian come, those are difficult lessons. language is to teach. it takes a lot of effort to acquire the abc let alone bring everything together. we are in a new university because we want to bring the plurality under the guiding vision something. it's difficult. my fear is that this is mostly a fashion global, indian is global and international studies in case you're wondering. [laughing] global is not enough, global and international. then the students of course it's like a buffett. a chinese buffett. very nice. you pick up of it there, there, a little bit of the indian food and you think that you are inexpert in this. [inaudible] >> yes.

so my fear is that we lose a sense of university and we have a multi-diversity where students are tousled by the bright of options but they will not be able to bring it under the guiding vision of what is their essence. >> professor? >> i very much enjoyed this conference, especially this panel. i, with the leon, have been persuaded that it's important to begin where the student is, and the real problem is knowing where the student is. [laughing] there are two things i want to say about that, from my experience. first of all my university experience. i'm a university professor so ii can teach and have taught the undergraduate, the school of medicine, the school of public health. and each one of these areas, in the undergraduate arts and

science i was teaching in the writing seminar. the public health school i was teaching a course in mental disorders and mental health. and then the medical school i was teaching a regular of psychiatry course throughout the four years. the real issue in helping them to be more broad was to find out why they were already narrowed by their purposefulness, the thing that brought them there. they were vocationally committed to begin with. and in the writing seminar, it was interesting, they were vocationally committed to writing and, therefore, they were very interested in ideas. the problem is they couldn't write. [laughing] and you had to teach them the difference between affect and effect, it's and its, and various kinds of things and they were all, i did that, they were all very surprise and very grateful to somebody had taken

the time to talk about their grammar, not simply the broad idea which is pretty silly ideas most of the time but you really find you hell. and in the school of medicine, the issue is, i spoke about briefly yesterday, these young people, men and women, have struggled very hard to get into the medical school that the hurdles are high. there's now a tremendous intro competition with themselves and with, -- develop a true career of commitment and in the process of wanting to become a doctor. the important thing then is to get them to stop saying, doctor, would you please and with the edges agreed to be, with questions will be on exam? memorize the answers and i will give them to you. the questions are big questions. think in terms of what kinds of

research and openness would happen to make it possible to even come at an answer. i've got many of them to go into research for this reason because they begin to realize it wasn't just a matter of getting the catechism right to get through the board exams. in the school of public health as i told you yesterday, because they're working with victims, and see people standing in a way of public health problems as being the enemy and they being the champions, they tend very much to ultimately fight about the west. the west is at the enemy. they are progresses, leftists at all and you gradually begin to tell them no, no, hold on, this is really a great country. we've got a great job to do, and start thinking about what it means to be supportive of our kinds of country that make it possible for us to think better terms in public health.

we got to get everybody on the same wavelength, not fight with everybody. now, that means with leon, that i agree, a developmental perspective who then will make you realize that may be the problem we are working with because we all university people begin to early and we should be working with kids in grammar school and high school, fighting the issues there. by the way, at johns hopkins i had to tell you, i think johns hopkins has had a terrific record supporting me. i'm very pleased -- [laughing] -- with the academic freedom that's been shown to me and a willingness to go forward. so before i say anything more, the first thing i want to say is there may be trouble in lots of places, but johns hopkins is doing pretty good. i'm very pleased with it.

>> have you said things that are controversial? [laughing] >> by the way, i do think in doing things, every now and then you have to punch them back. >> not physically. >> know when is abdicating -- >> we are the side that is against violent. >> even at johns hopkins the occasion will say something that the will be a wave of something, and you have to give them a punch back. the most important thing in the university is respect. that the first, that is the cornerstone of the university was respect. i was able to write that. i thought it was truth, after all hopkins says the truth will set you free that they have been very good to me. what in the getting ready to? i'm getting around to development of perspective. maybe we in the universities should be attending a sum of our time, some of our part-time baby

jude high school education thatt our kids are getting. i believe our kids are coming to medical school and the college without the can of high school education that we used to get. we had wonderful high school teachers back in the 30s and 40s. my father was one of them. many of these people, you can have those high school teachers back again if we just have another depression. but those were great high school teachers. those kinds of courses, my education in history, for example, in high school was a four-year course that began for 13-year-old teaching when you begin with h in history with a sense of spectacle and the pageantry of history. but by the time we had gone through four years, and cut into her fourth we saw history as

process, ideas, motivations and themes, and perhaps a toughest american history course at the time taught in high school but got you to be prepared for college. they kids now today we are trying to correct, teachers in high school in college are not doing their job. maybe we should attend and permit more of the high school teachers to talk to us about how we ought to be preparing, how they ought to be preparing them for us. but i wondered whether -- [applause] >> and by the way, paul, may i say on behalf of all of us, happy 86th birthday. [applause] >> any comments from the panel? i think we're just about exhausted our time. leon, did you want to say a

word? >> actually i do want to say one word. not about this panel but i want to say a word which i suspect from is a word that will speak for everybody. this is an extraordinary institution here at princeton, the james madison program. and it's produced a climate for honest inquiry, for collegiali collegiality, for taking serious things seriously, for fighting for the things that need to be fought for. and they are, there are wonderful people on the staff who support, but they are the extension and the work of robbie george, and he is a national treasure and the experience we have had here today --

[applause] >> well, thank you. >> i just paid you back. [laughing] >> well, i will get the final word then by saying leon, if any of what you just said is true, we have a small number of people, and you wer at the top f the list, to thank above all for the inspiration. thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> all this month of members of the house and senate are back in