Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jessica 20240704

Our speaker roosevelt. Montas roosevelt is senior lecturer in american studies and english at Columbia University and director of the and citizenship program, which introduces low Income High School Students to. The western political tradition through the study of original texts from 2008 to 2018, he served as director of columbias center for the core curriculum, and hes the author of rescuing how the great books changed my life and why they matter for a new generation. From Princeton University press 2021, a wonderful book i highly recommend to you and that please join me in welcoming roosevelt. Montas and ill get this over to thank you to to. Thank you everyone for being here. Um, i cant tell you what an honor it is for me to be here to meet some people for the first time with whom. I have been circling or who have been circling have been circling me and nice things about each other on twitter etc. And i literally just had like butterflies in my stomach coming to this event tonight because i was going to meet these people that for a long time felt my tribe and whom hadnt met. I want to say a few words to andrew before introducing our panelists today and hearing from them. Um, theres a line i wanted to use that i couldnt work into my remarks. Im just going to start with it sort of out of context just put it out there, which is that reports of the death of the liberal arts are greatly exaggerated and our being here is, is a testament to that. Um, last night i had pleasure of attending new york philharmonics opening concert for the season. Now im not a musician and have shallowest of musical educations, so going the philharmonic was a treat on many levels, not least of which was the sheer novelty of it. People were dressed up very fancy. Its fun to watch. I recognized the pieces. Beethoven and jacobs great that the orchestra performed but dvoraks cello concerto concerto in b minus was entirely new to me. It was yoyo ma on the cello. It was very nice. Um, and i had really good seats at the new David Geffen Hall on a balcony overlooking the. So in addition to hearing the gorgeous music. I had a perfect view of the physical motions by which the musicians produced that and a view of the communication between the conductor and the orchestra. It was an almost overwhelming experience. A feast of the senses so intense that it reminded me of sin to two violent two dozen violins, a dozen violas, nine cellos, seven basis for flutes, four oboes, multiple clarinets bassoons, horns, trumpet cymbals, drums, all playing the same time, but not in a cacophony but in symphony my god. I was struck by the magnitude of the civilization achievement that this thing i was witnessing represents. It hit me that this thing before my eyes was a pinnacle of humanity. Each of those a master, each note rehearsed thousands of times, each instrument, the product of a deep of craftsmanship, and the compositions. I kept wondering how the world do you produce, a composer for orchestra music . How do you grow the knowledge and imagination and to sit down and write music for 50 musicians to say here will come six violins and do this while the oboe is over there continue to what they were doing except in a different tempo. While the flutes come in with an entirely motif and the drums start a low murmur that grows into a loud rumble over a dozen bars. How do you produce a person who can hear that in their head and put it down on paper . There is a whole social and civilizational infrastructure culture that has to be in place many generations for Something Like a symphony to appear in this world. It is a kind of efflorescence the same, the same, kind of scant excess of beauty. Sometimes you see in a flower. And whats the point of all the effort, the skill, the cost, dedication that into producing that concert last night it was just that to play that concert it was to express a sublimity whose value is all in the expression itself in the experience of it, no one could gorge those craftsmen those musicians, the composers to produce such a thing. It could only be produced under conditions of freedom, both freedom from compulsion, but also freedom from want and freedom from utility. Earlier in the day yesterday, i had been teaching ethics to undergraduates. Hes got this idea aristotle that the good life for a human being involves precisely sort of activity. This kind, non utilitarian of human excellence, of what he calls virtue. This is the kind of thing that would humans in all cultures and all times when we find ourselves under conditions that allow for the maximal expression of our freedom and that kind of craft activity, the non utilitarian expression of our highest capacities is what we call the liberal arts and that category of human is not going to stop the liberal arts. Were not going to fade away, nor is liberal education as long as human beings carry the spark that makes human, they will practice the liberal arts. But we do rightly fret about the future of this practice in an institution that for more than a thousand years has served as vehicle of preservation and dissemination of the liberal arts that is we worry that such institutions, universities are abandoned and mass that a function of preserving and liberal education. We worry that liberal education will retreat again into the bastions of privilege exclusivity where they were incubated and nourished for much of our history, we not let that happen. We wont let it happen. The Academy Project the odyssey, the clemente course the humanities. Calvin universitys prison initiative. Another Prisoner Education programs. Then the the classical community, the new lyceum movement. These are just a few of the ways in which individuals across the have put their shoulders to the cause of bringing liberal to all and making it alive. Were letting the liberal arts return to a den of exclusivity and privilege. The book that were here to celebrate tonight marks a signal moment, a moment when a groundswell is coming into its own publication of this book signals not just that some people still care about liberal education. It signals the coalesce ends of a movement to recuperate liberal education as a way of life and make it accessible to all. Liberal education is not for people who are trying to become academics, but for anyone who is engaged in the project of self and authentic living living in her. A very sensible review of deliberating, deliberating, liberating arts in the wall street journal, Jennifer Frey reminds us that while its all well and good that the liberal arts can thrive and are thriving outside the university, we must not acquiesce to its abandonment within the university. I hardly need to say that i agree. Our political culture is fracturing and it is faltering precisely along the lines that a liberal education is meant to address and at the same time, colleges and universities are walking away from liberal education it and shunting it from to the side. The moral deformation that we see in our politics is of a piece with the universities neglect of its mission to educate free citizens. What is wrong. With our universities . We all know that college are focusing earlier and earlier career oriented majors and that they wont necessarily out the kind of broad education that best prepares, prepares them for lives of meaning and depth. But the is that most College Curricula do not offer such an education. This is the crisis of liberal education in our universities the crisis is the decline in the number of students majoring in the liberal arts. A liberal education has nothing to do with majoring in the liberal arts. A liberal education is no less important for the chemist. The scientist and the banker than it is for the historian. The critic and the humanities professor. They all need it the same. They all should get it the same at the heart of undergraduate liberal education are courses that grapple with the core questions of politics, religion and philosophy that have shaped our our world and shape our lives for faculty, liberal education means that they have step out of their disciplinary comfort and engage in a project that is quite removed. The reproduction of their professional expertise, a project that is concerned with cultivating human beings, the fullest expression of the innate capacities that make them free agents. In my experience, when people are given a taste of what a liberal education is and, what it does, they want it for themselves and for their children, people have an innate towards freedom and self determination, a hunger for truth and selftranscendence that makes liberal education immediate compelling. Its not true that. All students want from a college is a good job. They come to us with needs and that can only be fulfilled by noneconomic goods that want education, that not only teaches them things, but which them. An education that addresses their entire selves, not just bank account, an education that teaches them not just how to make a better living, but how to live a better life. We have the goods. We have the vision. As this book demonstrates, we also have the wherewithal to make liberal education a vital force in the lives of our students, in the lives of our communities and in the life of our nation. Id like now try to i will now proceed to introduce our distinguished panel each of them will speak for some 10 minutes, and then were going to have little bit of conversation among us and then conversation with the audience. Zena hitz immediately to my left is a tutor, is in Johns College and, the author of two of my favorite books, the whole world lost in thought. Lost in thought was 2020. And more recently. Earlier this year, a philosopher at the religious life, xena, as also founder of the katherine. And she has given me permission to disclose to you this is actually a princess. She has a tiara to demonstrate this, that she left at her dresser. She told me she was going to let me wear it. Very generous, princess Jonathan Tran is associate professor of theology and ethics in the honors at Baylor University, where he also serves as associate dean of faculty. He is author of asianamericans the spirit of racial capitalism thousand and two and coedited the oxford University Press series reflection theory in the story in the study of religion. Jessica hood and wilson holds the Fletcher Jones chair of great books at Pepperdine University and is the author and editor of nine books on topics ranging from Flannery Oconnor to lucifer. Yes, that lucifer lucifer. She is also deeply involved in k through 12 classical education and is the mother of a very fine creature that has graced our planet for just three and a half months. Thank you so much for being here jessica, and leaving behind your beautiful baby. Okay, xena. Hello and thank you for the introduction. Roosevelt its a its truly a pleasure to be here among a group that i consider to be sort of the fellow travelers. The fellow travelers, my brother and jessica, who this is actually first time weve actually met in person, having talked on the phone and on zoom many hours the past few years, and my new fellow traveler, jonathan, who i just met this evening and to have it all happened under the auspices of plough who have offered me so support and hospitality over the last little while and have just just been the best people to work with on all levels. And theyre also a special supporters of the catherine project they hosted our faculty retreat theyve just thrown the doors open and its its it means a lot to us at catherine project ive come here with a bit of a guilty conscience because this is plough especially and i feel my particular call in this conversation is to be to express hope and at the moment im going to try to communicate it but im not quite feeling it as so i was quite disturbed in the news last little while to hear about, especially the at West Virginia university, a public flagship in one of the poorest states in the country where both there their Foreign Language programs were cut almost completely and their Mathematics Department will no longer offer degrees. And i saw in a way, for the first time what roosevelt mentioned in his remarks, the sense which the liberal arts are involved, a complex cultural inheritance that is lived out in many institutions in many ways, in many too many different elements. The complexity of is almost overwhelming. It has a kind of ecology to it is the language ive started to use where a state flagship plays a certain role, especially educating teachers, educating other professors, passing down these habits of mind and forms of excellence to other members of the state. A State University system, of course, is the place last resort for residents of the state, the place where its freest and cheapest to go. So for me, it it unsettled me quite deeply, even im actually, despite my positive notes in my writing, im actually a bit of a gloomy character, secretly, secretly. So this affected me quite deeply. And then i also started to be more affected by just the of universities at every level from the, the most elite down to the poorest, covered with elaborate construction projects, usually connected to some sort of job preparation, engineering or biotechnology, something which is important, valuable, but not necessarily. Li the liberal arts. The arts that make us free. So i thats in my the background and the main substance of my remarks is i, i intend to express hope, although it is from one of the darkest moments of the 20th century. So have to be prepared for that. But in a way, course, if you can find one of things ive always. Found reassurance and encouragement, renewal of my faith in is to find hope in the darkest so. Its so anyway, im going to share that story with you. And i. And also just to say that we do we need to to think as clearly as we can at about how maintain these features of humanity, the types of freedom that the arts cultivate. Roosevelt mentioned from utility freedom from just being a cog it in a moneymaking machine, freedom from being a mere vehicle of status, prestige. There are many other ways in which the arts free us. Heres one part of freedom that i think ive started to think more about. More recently, and thats the kind of freedom that shows itself in the in in the ability to control, to be consoled, and to console others in the worst circumstances. So heres my story. I was started talking about a dinner and then i realized it should be the thing i talked about. Sorry to have these things always work out. I dont know why im so i recently i reread the diaries of a woman named. Edie hilsum. This was a dutch woman who was murdered at the age of 29 in auschwitz. She was a jewish woman who lived in the netherlands and she left us before she died, about two years of diaries and letters from the transport in westerbork and diaries are absolutely extraordinary. I recommend the most highly to anyone interested in anything human not that they have a a christian flavor, although i dont know whether hilsum actually underwent a full conversion christianity or not. Shes interested in christianity. Shes using christianity, but shes definitely approaching whats happening to her at a very profound spiritual level. And as a person who part of what i find so affecting it is shes a person who clearly loves life. Shes at the beginning of her diaries. But you would barely know that the nazis either occupying or preparing to occupy netherlands because shes living the fullest life. She has a very intense, romantic friendship with someone whos teaching her psychology. She has shes studying russian literature. The highest level. Shes has these conversations with and family that are rich and passionate, devoted. So theres this this intense this person whos living very intensely at each moment and. She tells her story, sort of creeps in bit by bit over the course of the diaries. Whats going on that is that the the the the situation of the in the netherlands is getting more and more desperate and serious she volunteers for the Jewish Council at westerbork. So this is people helped negotiate with the nazi authorities for better conditions the people who are being sent east to the and she says to herself well you know i if i dont do it else will do it. You know, if i get sent, someone else will be sent. She has a kind of clarity about and humility about role in in this whole picture. She doesnt she loves life, but she doesnt she cling to it and fight it in a way thats that excludes others its evident from a very early time in the diaries that she wants to her life pouring out love and compassion for neighbors. Now part of what i love particularly about this story of eddie hilsum is that eddie hilsum is quite evidently liberally educated. Shes liberated person. She is in love with books. Shes talking in her diaries. One of my favorite passages i wish i had it to read to you whenever paradise shes talking about packing for westerbork, so she has to take like one backpack to the to the transport camp where shes volunteering and shes like, yeah, you know, i would happily go with it. You i know ive got to take a blanket, but id happily less food if i could fit more books in it. Yeah. So shes ordered her special edition of railcar to take with her shes got her french dictionary, shes got her dostoyevsky and her novels. Shes stuffing her bag books. And then just the the tone of her writing becomes more and beautiful, more and more lyrical as she gets closer and closer to the end and to me, thats a sign of the incredible in her richness that a education can provide us. We talk a lot, and this is something ive said before about education for thats something you hear every day if youre in educational circles you know were educating leaders were educating for success want our students to succeed and of course we do what students to succeed no one wants them to fail but we forget that failure and violence and oppression, all kinds of. Sorry, im looking phrases that i find out with coming up with things are too belittling like negative events. There are so many negative events, there are so many catastrophes that a human person, a human being, faces and we one of the things that i think the liberal arts is especially precious for is the facing of catastrophe, the facing of failure. And thats true whether its this large scale catastrophe of the holocaust, which edie hilsum, which, of course, for her a way was quite small scale riots. Its her and her friends and her family. It doesnt look to her like the holocaust. It looks to her like something different, something smaller something that belongs to her in a special way. But we all undergo holocausts catastrophes of one kind or another. And what do we have in us when that happens . You know, do we break like matchsticks. Or do we find in ourselves resources to to love, to think to ponder, to praise, to gratitude. And this is my hope my deepest hope for liberal arts. And its what continues to drive me in in participating in this work that we share. Thank you so much. Im a theologian. And if you do not know what a theologian is, theologians, to quote the great philosopher wilfred sellers, are folks who sit around wondering how things in the broadest sense hang together in broadest sense, not exactly the kind of material that lends to ten minute talks. Its so let me just say a couple provocative things about the liberal arts, the humanities, as a way to get into the conversation, which im really looking forward to. And theyll be framed by the two stanleys that are framed to my education. The first is the great theologian Stanley Holloway us, and the other is the great stanley cavell. The first has to do with my administrative role. I spent nearly decades at Baylor University in the religion department, mostly working on philosophical theology. In the last year, ive joined the dark side and become an administrator. My title is a dean. I breathe it by calling myself an esteemed. I even had some friend aides give me a placard to that effect. My real aspiration action is to become an associate provost so that i can become an asp pro. First set of reflections will have to do with more formation and my role as an administrator and asking the question can universities afford a liberal arts and Humanities Program . The second will be about democracy. And what cavell calls the education of grown ups. So the first begins with a story former student of mine currently a medical student, a phd student at an elite university, was an undergrad. He had turned a football scholarship to come and study at Baylor University. And jake was one of these kids that when walks in the classroom, scares everyone in the classroom, including the he just had this kind of big brain. He sailed through our Honors College which in his first years he studied escalates agustin in our great tex or great books program. He aced the cat, graduated at the top of his class in his fourth year. During interviews, he was at harvard and he was doing a interview he talked about how in question and answer time with the various professors say the various and Admissions Committee members there were lots of questions about things like biochemistry or what kinds internships you had done. But in the midst of the conversation came up that jacob spent most of his time reading skills. Aristotle and agustin, and that this form of character and the reflection on character and the imagination of as a form of contemplation of good truths and beauties. That map onto the good, the true and the beautiful demonstrate itself in the type of human being that would imagine being. He got into almost every medical school he applied to. But the upshot of the liberal arts of studying aristotle and augustine wasnt that being able to mention them them got jacob into medical its rather the story i was libyan at the time as a faculty in residence meant i was generally available to students and a lot of times in the later evenings since i lived on campus, i got a text from jacob that said dr. Tran, can we talk . He was in his senior year and he had cleared all the major hurdles for getting into medical school. As i had mentioned, i went to jacobs room. I sound his bed and i said, jacob, its late. What . Whats on your mind . And he said, dr. John, ive been thinking a lot lately. Ive worked tail off to get where i want to be. I have all these options in terms of medicine in front of me. But ive spent so of my life trying to enable getting to this spot so much of my life has been given to the task of getting into whether i can get into medical school, whether i can practice medicine, that all these can questions never amounted to this question. This is something i can do. Is this something i do the capacity of asking that question funded . I imagine by the reading an ethical sclass and aristotle and augustine that it culminates not simply about to get into medical school, but the character of the physician. In a world like ours about how the practice of medicine go, that it isnt simply the goods of a society that pays lot of respect and literally pays a lot of cash for you to be a physician, but rather what kind of physician would you be once youve been labeled those types of tools. I discussed earlier that i made this transition rank and file faculty to administration. And in this the question i have about the liberal arts and the within universities is Something Like this. Over the last couple of years, ive spent a lot of time traveling to different christian colleges, universities and almost a school. Soon after i left that school. Im trying not to take this personally. The school announced very significant cuts, especially in the humanities and liberal arts 10 faculty reduction 12 . Staff cuts, 15 cuts to face certain kinds of enrollment cliffs in those in those places. The standard the narrative is the standard one that enrollment cliffs and the high cost of education cant quite keep up with the aspiration of the humanities or the liberal arts and. So traveling from school to school and seeing how christians and religious people try to put this together. Well dealing with the real world political economies of say, University Budgets was frankly like fox go through the buzzsaw of modern day late capitalism. All the while my institution could be read almost as a photo of same scenario in the same time. These schools are cutting faculty staff in significant numbers, in extraordinarily painful ways. My university was raising money hand over fist. We ever. We entered into the echelons our one research. We are winning championships in midst of the pandemic. Were bringing in students in the hundred above what we had brought in the year. But in that context, right, the question isnt in the normal inflection can universities afford to have liberal and humanities. The question, the same question, but in a different inflection with a different accent that is can universities afford in this day and age with the kind of late capitalist political economy afford to have around afford to read texts like sclass aristotle on august ten. That would put extra pressures on the way universities are run in the kinds of inhome manages and the cultivation of inhumanity across university in the same place that we supposed to as a very count and accounts of our vocation read these texts think about the question jacob asked just because i can just change the pronoun just because we can should we how does that question and the cultivation of that as a baseline vocation as the imagining of knowledge, as the contemplation of the good the true in the beautiful, survive the bustle of the modern day university. And i mean that i try to say that with best possible faith to the university aspires to be in this moment an administrator. Im a person for whom for who knows simply how the sausage made but takes place takes part in the making of sausage. And i have a great appreciate passion for what has to go into that but it is still the case that this produces extraordinary forms of digging processes. So how do you cultivate the question like the one jacob asked marsh. The resources to do that, while also come to terms with the powers of late capitalism . Thats the first provocation. The second one comes from stanley capernaum. You dont know stanley cavell. Cavell just died in the last few years. He taught for of his life at Harvard University in the philosophy department. Cavell in the early parts of his career was not taken seriously as a philosopher so he cut his teeth large in what we would more normally call the standard kind of humanities not analytic philosophy but in the world. Wright, walden, shakespeare, thoreau. Film one of his earliest books was the comedies of remarriage, pursuits of happiness and the comedies of remarriage about hollywood comedies in this cavell stage, the story of democracy not as many of us would imagine and his harvard colleague john rawls, the great theorist of political liberalism, would imagine democracy for cavell, too, entering into a blank tableau. Rosa space in which were all equal. So he likened this he analogized it to say how, we think about romance, comedy, and he took the romantic of the film genre. He looked at. He said, for these films, the drama does not hang on whether the couple will make it past the threshold to get married. The drama of marriage isnt the drama getting in the drama is remaining of discovering the scene of, discovering whats on the table and making the decision as an actor to decide to stay or to leave. He thought that this is this told a true story of what democracy was then the political liberalism of a john rawls. Right. John rawls, youll remember, imagined the beginning of democracy as a kind of, blinks a blank state blank slate, thought experiment instead began where were at, and this means not pretending that those who we are citizens with in a democracy dont come with histories, dont come with stories where the stories and histories are of the wounding and the wounded. And the question cavell asked is if this is what democracy is, then are great too great temptations politically for us. One temptation is to give. Consistently entertaining the temptation that you can go someplace without, the harms and the history, or simply to remove those who bring the history of the harms. Rather, democracy is the drama of this romantic comedy age where youre in it and you have to decide. And for cavell what the role of texts like a walden right like august in an article is like an aristotle is the question of how you form what he called philosophy as an education and for adults that would cultivate it staying when all the temptations that are about leaving. I think that this is the humanities brings us the possibility of the cultivation of character necessary to remain in democracy when democracy is in a reduced state that if anything of what democracy is is the capacity to remain exactly in that state. I look forward to the conversation. Well, i think that was a really good setup i am ecstatic to be here. This is really the culmination of three years for of us in the room of trying do something about a problem that we were experience when it comes to institutions and the ways that theyre responding to liberal. So theres lots of things that we could talk about, i hope we do during the panel, but what i would like to do is actually give you an image or a story as, a literature professor. Thats my go to and i think its helpful to kind of wrap up some of the conversation or starting points that weve already heard. When i was a child, i painted, i thought i was going to be a painter and a writer. I knew i knew writing was in there, but i was also going to illustrate my own story. And so i wanted to develop the talents so when i got into college, i focused more on the writing and painting was kind of sidelined. It was a hobby something i occasionally did stress relief and i continued to develop craft of writing. I went to graduate school, poured myself more into understanding writing and how to do it, and getting more proficient it and more and more writing took over and painting dwindled to the point. Now my third grader said that i needed to draw my dad for his biography of, his grandpa project and it was rough. It was more of a cartoon tune than anything else. The point when you have an art, you have to practice it to be able to use it when you need it. And we dont practice arts. We all know they go away and this is not just about music or or poetry, not just the fine arts, but this is also about the liberal arts. The arts, as were defining them tonight, those arts that make you free, that you towards wins wisdom. If were not studying the things that make us human and make us free, we going to lose them. We have to have places to train and cultivate literature, languages, history. Those are some of the places where we get to practice the liberal arts. And for we understood this, that in order to be a free person, those were the arts. Instead you end up being slaves, as we talked about, you become slaves to capitalism, to desires. Maybe you didnt even think you wanted just to what the markets telling you to want or what other people are telling you to want. The reason that we think arts are in trouble has a lot to do. The messages that are getting around with the ways that people are talking and over. I could give you examples of anti democratic regimes that kind of throw out the liberal arts. You know, i study solzhenitsyn and dostoyevsky but i actually want to go to a Childrens Book i want to talk about c. S. Lewis is the last, because when i hear about all of these programs being cut, it institutions its the image that keeps coming back to me. And so let me tell you what that image is. And why, if youre not familiar with the narnia series, you know, im going to quote my dissertation director ralph would get thee to a bookstore. But if you remember the series well, the creation narnia occurs when aslan who is the lion, the god of that world is going to sing creation into existence. And as he sings it into existence, he creates these creatures beast that look like animals in our world. But as he stares at them, they grow larger and then he breathes on them the way. God breathes on human in genesis. And he says to awake love, think, speak be talking. And they respond, we are awake, we love, we think we know and. Its like a marriage ceremony in which the animals are repeating the words the priest. Theyre making this commitment to love and think and, speak and know. And aslan responds, creatures, i give you yourselves. He connects those activities of loving, seeking speaking, knowing to freedom of self faith. He warns them. Do not go back to the way of dumb beasts, lest you ceased to be beasts. Four out of them you were taken and into them can return now. Lewis insists that he doesnt write allegory, but hes wrong these talking beasts are allegorical. This is analogous to human beings the powers to love, to think, to speak, to know a companies are freedom. It is the gift of ourselves. It is the subjective eye that in our world animals do not have, but in their world they have and when you read through the stories by the time you get to the adventure in the silver chair is right before the last battle. Theres already a disappearance of beasts theyve chosen not to practice talking, and thus theyve the ability to love, to think, to know its a deprivation, that which is actually quite scary. And by the time the last book begins, theres very few talking beasts in narnia anymore. One of them is named shift again. I think its funny that lewis says he doesnt write allegory shift is a shifty character who is an ape so think parody of a human being and he controls narnia. He controls the talking beast who have lost some of abilities to think and to know with his lies and deception by dressing up a donkey an just apparently thats the theme word of the night. Just going to say ocelot dresses and into aslan clothes and convinces everyone that this is a god when its actually an idol, you dont have to stretch. That allegory very far that the things that are shifting deceptive in our world have convinced to love things that are idols rather than the true goods and beauties and under shifts dictatorship. Theres a talking bear who protests like we want to be free. I wish i had a really good bear voice. But schiff responds, you think freedom is doing what you like, but youre wrong. True freedom means doing. I say now i think the world is a lot more subtle, its villainy. But its the same problem. Want again what the market convinces you to assume that usefulness is the primary rubric . Im so tired of hearing people say, is that useful . This utilitarian an idol that we have that weve lifted up especially in education. So this is the image that haunts me. This is the image that im hoping haunting you when you see headlines. West virginia cuts Foreign Languages, maths. I want you to think about the talking beasts that lose ability to talk, to love, to think to know when you are tempted to employ different mediums like gpt. For all of your writing. Lost, what have you lost the power to do yourself when you think of reading is just a silly instead of a spiritual discipline. What have we lost . Or when your kid says, im never going to use that math, right . What have we lost if by the end of our college and i am focusing mostly on institute actions and we can open it up, but if by the end of our College Degrees you dont have the liberal arts, are we anything more than cart horses able to do tasks assigned to us. Weve repeated several times that the liberal arts are what freed the human soul. If we go back to socrates, he says, the purpose of education is to what is beautiful and you cannot do that in a world in which you are enslaved to your appetites or your gut. You will lose your heart. You will lose your head. You will lose the ability to love, to to know. And im afraid we are not speaking up right now about these losses. Might we lose the ability to speak at all . Thank you. Thank you. Senior jonathan, jessica. So many provocations and insights and questions come up from the combined. Remark that the three of you offered. I like to open this kind of practical line of thinking most directly raised by by jonathan. But i think we we all agree on this in tragedy of liberal education. We all agree that there is something about our that is neglected. Perhaps abused when we educate young people merely as if they were going to be laborers as if they were going to be producers yet we have this problem where there is sort of a. Cliff we dont have the numbers of students in the United States numbers of young people anymore anymore to sustain the same level of enrollment that that we did five, ten years ago. Not only that have just less interest, fewer people are going to college even apart from the from the population decline of young people. So this rate is of practical questions about whether university is can sustain themselves, they can pay the bills, whether they can pay obligations in salaries etc. , whether they can provide student services, keep them competitive. So i guess the question. Not like your thoughts on, it what do we say to administrators or to deans, to president s who find their institutions in financially. Positions and say, we have to cut and we cut the things that will. That will be most paddle palatable in the marketplace that we are competing against for students. So what we say what do we do i, i, i really feel like this is jonathans so we shouldnt pick the point of issue, but i, its not a question that i have a lot of experience with mostly talked to pretty sympathetic like this one fellow travelers fellow. Or learners lovers of learning. I do have this to say as a relatively new founder of nonprofit. Which is that if if it katherine project, what we decided to do is to focus exclusively on the mission, the simplest possible sense. So what needs to happen for liberal learning books. People who want to read, are willing to read and to help them and guide them. Okay, we have this new horrible technology thats. Good for some things. Zoom online video conferencing. It turns out that this can facilitate aid groups this kind can be quite small intimate where you form real friendships and can connect people to this type of who may not have had opportunities before. Now, how is it we dont charge any tuition we dont offer any credits. We dont give any degrees. So just absolute minimum meal. Whats whats liberal learning . You know at the at the minimum and we able last year to sustain ourselves on donations we you know we have a very barebones staff paid staff and people love what we do people are in it love what theyre doing. They want to support it. They want to be a part of it. So thats not a scalable model for the whole of Higher Education. We need degrees, need credits, we need people to find their way out of you. We need Something Like social mobility. Um, but to me it is a sign that in some way weve changed the subject from whats financially sustainable. That is what what do we break even . What can we raise enough money, what activities can we raise enough money to support which a different question from what kind things generate revenue and the universities and as i it im happy to be corrected by those you know more universities are looking to generate revenue and theyre looking you know West Virginia was looking at what programs oc Foreign Languages is already generating some revenue but not as much Something Else with so we could spend that money elsewhere we could pull in more revenue and will help cover to keep the whole operation running. I suspect theres something about that model that is off i dont know how to fix it. Its out of my out of my understanding. But i do think that that humanities are sustainable in terms of what people are willing to pay. You know, people are grateful for them. Theyre willing to pay pay for them. It seems conceivable to me that we could have institutions support them that are selfsupporting that provide high quality. He made his education. What one can say that if the humanities generate a lot of revenue, they dont consume a lot of revenue. Exactly. Exactly. We dont need elaborate labs and super colliders and, complex Engineering Materials and latest software, you know. So i would love you to be the grand finale on this so kind of jump into the middle and i can keep track of all my thoughts because im really passionate about this and im afraid that passion is just going to send me on like five different directions. So ill try to just keep them small. I have history. Ive taught since 2007, so i dont know how many years, that is. And ive been at seven institutions and three of which underwent core revisions while i was there cutting the programs. Id been hired to teach. So this is something that ive seen inside out and i understand that any of those schools know. He was not the catalyst im going to be invited to very few universities after tonight. But it is something happening everywhere. So i have experience it and i think its happening in one sense because people misunderstanding the problem i mean if you look wvu one example of misunderstanding the problem cutting one of their biggest revenue generators because of a false idea that liberal drain money and offer any resources. So one is just a misconception of what it is that the university is supposed to be doing and where that money is coming from. I think the second misconception then is what liberal arts faculty are supposed to be doing. And i say this as a liberal arts faculty member, my job is not to the most majors and, every department ive ever been a part of all talk about more majors because the administration puts pressure on them to see that as the revenue generator to have the most majors when in fact, if i have out of 500 students thrown, all of them took multiple classes for me, not for a minor, not a major, but because they loved literature. Or then i succeeded in my job, which was to get them to love the thing that im a professional in and i think. So we misunderstand roles at the university. Well to try to make special ist out of all of our students when the liberal arts are not meant to be, everyones becoming a specialist in that area. When it comes to revenue generation, i also think we need to think further back about creating the supply. So because right now, like youre saying, not enough of them are going to college, not enough students are wanting the liberal arts. Well, k through 12 if we start them in kindergarten and theyre hearing the story, odysseus, guess they want to do when theyre 18, they want to read it in greek because we that in them. So one of the reasons that im in the k through 12 movement is because i see it as a k through 20 story. And if were going to solve this part of the story, which for most us is that 12 to 16, we have to look back the beginning and say what kind of students are we creating that theyre going to demand that us and theyre not going to take it when the Administration Cuts it. So let me speak from, say, both sides of my since im both an associate dean and an associate professor. So the associate dean side of my , i suppose. Whats faculty to become bilingual in both the language and the concepts and the grammar of the humanities are things like theology, philosophy, literature, that the way they about their world would be. In fact informed by a milton a confucius, a dubois, while also learning to speak fluent lee the language of late capitalism so that when people like me ask questions enrollment. They whats being asked without simply throwing up the retort that demonizes the processes of these questions there are demonized evil aspects to the work. To be sure, but there are also traceable ways in which those modes of thinking create jobs. Save jobs, create spaces for students who could not afford those spaces on their own. And i want my colleagues on the side to remember this constantly. That doesnt mean dialing their commitments as humanist, but to apply those those excellences of mind to think rigorously of what it means to be citizens of both kinds of places. Thats the city inside of me. The other side of me wants to say that the universal like places like the or the hospital need to both in their origins but also in their contemporary practice. This, this event, for example is sponsored by a model of church, a model of community that very much does this what spaces need to do or maybe i should restate that what we need to allow those spaces do is to expand our imagination for what political economy names. It is certainly the case that we live in the age of not simply late capitalism, but aggressively late capitalism. How we offer models and. You can imagine a student like, a jacob choosing into a practice of medicine that does this that capacitate imagination, not simply for his patients, but for his former teachers and administrators, a model of medicine a model of education that offers a different picture idiom of economy that is driven by commodification is it simply asking folks to be laborers, producers . I think whats amazing about this and what is tragic about the way we often dont reach this is that thats what university initially was the idea of the university a gift economy, a sharing of goods in common right enabled by a community that comes together that agrees already that you cant put a price tag on this stuff thats why were here. You think about the the adage that in our day students pay for classes but they dont go and the flip story augustine of students in his classes that didnt pay but would come because they knew that what they were getting in that class wasnt say a ticket to medical school but the ticket to the questioning of a question of the kind that jacob which is different than can i which is genuinely an important question but that question tied to the ends of should i. I think that the education the university least as i say a war refugee who dreamed about the university as a kid who grew up with massive of poverty and racism around me. The university was this dream of this economy, the exchange, the gift of of ideas that cultivated character. Thats what i wanted it to be. And no matter that the the dark clouds on, the horizon and there are many, there are still hints of that promise all around us in the university, how do we both name dark clouds that give voice as much as we can for as long as people will listen to . These remaining elements, these of why were here in the first place. So that seems to be key right . We have to ask when we think the question of cost, what is the university for and what is that that it is for worth somehow . We have fallen into the logic that education should be Cost Effective and selfsupport gaining. That is that that its a zero sum game and therefore have ended up in this ridiculous situation where tuition we charge exorbitant amounts to those who can pay in order to subsidize those who cant pay and then nobody knows how much it really costs. One other question that id love to open for to the audience is but two ideas come up in the remarks. One was, we tend to look at the university as providing a humanizing function in the student. I would like ask you to what extent you see universities as cultivating inhumanity. You sort of brought this up to some extent and to what extent are are we are university is on Higher Education becoming a place of deformation human deformation rather than human formation. Id like to just invite you to reflect on that. Youre both looking at me. Yeah. I think this is a troubling this is this is the reason ive left jobs. I have not been fired from anywhere, but i refuse to be the kind of faculty member that gives up the actual job of being a faculty member. If that makes sense. And i think that some of the ways the university asks you to give up the of wisdom to up forming my students in character to focus instead how theyre going to evaluate me, how i can recruit and how i can i mean ive even heard of College President say like i cant recruit for wisdom that that be part of what im doing there and those are the kinds of misunderstood of what the universitys for that i didnt want to continue being part of. One of the ways that that happens is the practical way is grades. I feel like grades really makes future capitalists it does not youre telling the student that youre forming towards wisdom, that youre having a relationship with them, that they can be an in process person, that these ideas that can be hard will be grappled with their whole lives, that they are never going to stop becoming. And then you say at the end of the semester you did a at that or b at that. And i, i think the problem both how we grade faculty members, how we grade students, how were constantly ranking everyone is not how universities were meant to be. Its the humanizing somehow violates the dignity of the of the student. Yeah, it leads the whole idea of what a liberal art is. If youre this art, then we should be allowing our students to fail and were there with them as they fail through this process. And the reason you turn to Something Like gpt for is when youve focused so much on product and not on the freeing exercise that is writing and those kind of misconceptions have led to a lot of the problems of where we are. Yeah. Was also i mean its its a bit its something thats been said by many people, not just by me, but that said, gpt is, is so in a way because weve already to it that is were already for assignments that are kind of automated and so part of so part of me wants to well thats a feature of something that we we surrendered many ways in many places a long time ago, a mass education. So the idea youre going to teach 60 people shakespeare at once, its not going to thats i think one of the decisions many years ago that ended up really diminishing the humanities because youre essentially communicating to the students that this person who however wise in a harvard good is smart and however good their graduate program was. They still have something to learn about shakespeare. Thats one of the reasons why we love shakespeare much. So instead of treating this as a human being who has learned something and is a good guide and has a traveling the the path and the students have who can learn along with students. We treat them as some kind of source of of learning in a way that they actually. So thats actually dehumanizing to the teacher as as to the to the students. And that, i think gets the main thing i would want to say this, which is for me, the thing that is that guides me in my own life as a teacher is i want my students to replace or become better than. I dont want to manage. I dont have the right or, the proper perspective to manage them and think about what kind of outcome or what kind of world that they should fit into. They are free agents in a world just like i am and my job is to bring them along as you know, somewhat younger versions myself who need help and guidance and encouragement, discouragement and some discipline, maybe. But they, i, they and i not different in kind and lot of what i hear from the more newfangled type of university is something which which doesnt respect the students as as future as future citizens as future agents, the world who decide for themselves what counts as a career, decide for themselves, what counts as work. You know, and one of the things i love so much about the better half and plough is, you know, this is obviously the fruit of thinking about, well, how do we want to live, what does count as work, what does work really mean . How can reimagine works that it serves one another instead of just ourselves . These are the kinds of questions our students should be asking, and we have to leave them. The to do that by by writing ourselves that were on a footing with them and having our educational structures reflect that. Yeah, the example of dehumanizing our, our legion, and we need to look no further than the explosive growth of adjunct professor and contingent faculty. The United States often literally funded by Research Cultures and and these are terrifying realities for our Friends Family who live in these under these conditions that i have to with the reality as a full time tenured faculty member that a lot of my life is made possible. In other words, i dont know how to answer your first question in terms of how we how we square these theyre are not square realities. I take it i did want to say Something Else and this might be a little bit controversial. What is one of the ways you see dehumanizing and this is practically a way the humanities a liberal liberal arts often will shoot themselves on University Campus is is that rather than cuts evading imaginations for what is possible the liberal arts simply the capacity to to be ever more clever critics. The work of rita belsky. The university of virginia, has done shes done extraordinary work on this. But if the of say stem of Computer Science engineering is say positive features no matter how much we might critique those features or how people get there and what they do with them, it cant possibly the case that students graduating literature degrees political science, theology come out as just ever more critics of our society society. As belsky says, there has to more to literary than critique. There has to be the allowance willingness to say, i love this text, i love this author, this is what i found so courageous about your book. You took figure like augustine, who is not without controversy, and you said with the controversy, we and people like me have some extraordinary to learn from this person precisely solely because he did not come without blemish. Its that capacity of the humanities to name these imaginative possibilities and the ways in which we should ourselves in the foot if, say the upshot of our life withstood, its our life with one another, right is simply to give us more reasons for, hopelessness and. This is this is a this is a moment i think where the humanists need to ask themselves the question, what are we here for . There are, as you as we all know, ever more reasons for critique as a person who has suffered all kinds systemic realities and as a person who studies that i, like many of you in this room, know these realities. There are theres no of reasons for critique, but how do we capacitate the ability to imagine a world beyond critique . Thats one of the questions. Thats one of the most dehumanizing things i see in the university. I see this, and ill be frank, oftentimes times, for example, going back to the labor, oftentimes in the way that say my white male students are imagined. Conflated, reduced to not simply a laborer but a labor who carries the burden of a certain identity. And as a person of color, i totally get the need for diversification for diversity. But is possible to be people who carry who are carriers of the cause of justice, while not also dehumanizing others on the way that seems like a simple question at the heart of what we do. And so often give up one for the other as if we cant both in our breaths at the same time. Thank you. Its our view comments or questions from the audience. I think you, um, this was wonderful. Im a fan of each and every one of you, so this is sort of like attending a beatles concert or something . Yeah. What a great night. Uh, but i, uh, i want to ask about, um, the connection. The liberal arts and leisure. Um, it seems that those two things are inseparable. And perhaps you need the one for the other. Um and of course, you know the history of who gets study. The liberal arts are, those who can afford to, those can afford to have leisure. Um, and im wondering if theres something to the study of liberal arts which does not for them to become available every person in this sense, um, its like, it seems theyve always sequestered away for the lucky. Um, i would love for them to be accessible all um. But how that be possible. I, i feel like this is really, is partly roosevelts question, but maybe you dont have to question. It was the word leisure. I know, i know. Thats why the microphone is. I, i think. One of the things ive tried to do my work is to do, um, its in a way small thing and ive always hoped someone else would, would take it up and do more with it. But there is kind of forgotten history of what arts were in, in the 20th century until relatively recently and something i think each of us in some sense other reaps the fruits of um, so its true that for most in you know for most of european history or the history of the mediterranean or any where there was a that where literacy was central it was also rare it was this small group of people who were literate, um, and that meant also turn that fewer people are educated, fewer people read, fewer people study. And thats this is really where i mean, i think there are i dont want to rule out that there are significant kinds of leisure and contemplate and study and in oral cultures, cultures that dont have writing, but just thinking about cultures of writing for right now. So its its limited to a few, um, and, um, so this thing classical education, which is in some sense or other, is what all of us here are supporting great books, education. Its something i belong to the very rich. Um, until Something Like 18th, late 18th century, especially more and more of the 19th century. And then this huge explosion and of 19th, early 20th century, it coincided with the labor movement, the International Labor movement and all, you know, you have these beautiful stories. Theyre actually from all over the world. The the jonathan, whos the local historian. These things i studied, especially the uk. Um, the labor working people got together and, they formed groups to study and to think and to read the books and, and that also the growth of industry the mass market paperback the so in a way part of what were seeing now the coming to an end of an era kind of extraordinary mass access to liberal arts and liberal education and and and maybe, you know, in some way we can see we can look back with gratitude at how extraordinary it was. But i also like to think that its recent enough that we still have that in our memory. And thats why, you know, i was so happy to read roosevelts when it came out. And heres its like, oh, yeah, this is the kind of story that really happens. Its not a fairy story. And it, its, it, its still happens. We, you know, i, i, you know, i coming from a more middle class background to me when i started writing it, it was a kind of sentimental dream, honestly. It was like, oh, wouldnt it be beautiful if this is really for everybody. And now that i become a public spokesman, person for it, i hear stories all the time all the time of people from every walk of life who, love to learn for its own sake and in fact, its my impression that the love of liberal arts is much intense. Further down, um, the further you get from elite circles in a way, the for the future is is not the elite circles, but coming from working people, from ordinary people who are fighting for their own dignity and their own humanity. Um, so ill just say that and leave rest to oh, i didnt look leisure. So i think that. For me the fundamental thing that leisure is its not having a lot of free time. Its not not having to do labor. We all do manual labor now, apart from the very, very rich and you know, probably some they might watch edition of it. Um, so its, its having an activity in which your life culminates right so is that contemplate, is that study is that um being with your, is that being a nature, uh, is it prayer or worship its something in which life culminates and Touching Base with it just touch touching it is, is enough to keep humanity and your dignity alive. Obviously, the more i think something that people have a right to i mean part of what we part of what makes a dignified life is enough time to pursue things that matter most to you. So if were if were setting structures where people cant do that, thats bad. Thats wrong. But its not it doesnt it doesnt have be the country. Gentlemen you know, with with the book bookcases it can be done ordinary people and there are so many stories like that. Um that you just open your eyes and youll start to hear them all the time. Incidentally, the book celebrating today has a fantasy chapter on leisure and time barred by our own xena warrior princess. So. Leisure is at the heart of the issue for me. Imagine two different stories of leisure. One is achieved by having achieved so much because youve youve gathered enough wealth power that the sum total of that is you get to leave live a leisurely life, and maybe that leisurely life is spent reading the great. Theres another story of leisure that is at the heart of theology, of christian theology that says leisure is not something you accomplish leisure is the very beginning of creation. It flows out of the excess of the love between, father, son and the holy spirit, such that all is in fact a statement of abundance, of generous, of plentitude. This is not a leisure that you have to gain. This is this is a leisure you work towards. Say the weekend. This is a leisure that begins the week right in in judaism and christianity. The sabbath begins week. It orients us in a life. Now imagine taking that basic metaphysical story as story in which you you live your life and. Then imagine leisure. Say education in the humanities. Aeschylus imagine enabling others to sit that leisure. And this is about so lets we spend a lot of time pooh poohing on capitalism wealth. But this is way capitalists wealthy People Like Us like me certainly can share our money as gift to create possibilities of leisure for other people, and especially who do not. Because of the systemic realities of our world, have the ability to work toward leisure in the same the rest of us do. So what do we imagined leisure as a story, metaphysical story and . Then imagine deploying our money to using resources as gifts in this way in to say the gift structure of reality, of creation. And i imagine this would give enormous opportunities if we thought of our money and this way as creating the leisure of reading an sclass in certain neighborhoods, in certain communities otherwise abandoned, otherwise say on the underside of empire. What have we thought of things in those terms. And that was beautiful. I would just add a book recommendation. Yvonne, who is a priest, wrote the decoding society, and i think its great illustration of this because hes in latin america in the 1960s. And, you know, americans trying to come in and institutionalize schooling and he points out is theres already educate nation happening, but we dont see it as education because those who are coming in are saying you need these subjects at these times your have to raise their hand to go to the bathroom and hes like, what . What are we creating here . Were actually were taking away were dehumanize by what were institute analyzing as education. And its its not really education towards something thats meaningful the way that both of you have already talked about instead were teaching them to be, you know, as eliot says, distracted by distraction from where they dont even when they have moments that theyre by themselves, theyre in a car or they start day or they end their day, they dont know how to be in those spaces and they dont know how to think, to dwell, to rest. And so i do think liberal arts should be for everyone. Every human being should have that story where they have that and that rest and probably the only one who doesnt know greek up here. But told that the greek word for leisure is scholar right from from which we get a word for school. School is is a leisure activity its an activity of cultivation. My students think that school is work telling us sports. I love your sense zina of leisure as being. A category activity for the sake of which we do we do other things things are kind of culmination, a kind of thing that we an aspiration that orders are other activities. The the issue the question of creating a space of structuring our society in such a way that people have the opportunity to engage in leisure activities. That is, people have the opportunity to, in fact cultivate those values that are of inherent meaning to them apart from their not, not pursued instrumental. I think it is a is a is a question that gets to the heart of social justice liberal education is the heart of idea of social justice, of organizing a society that creates the opportunity for people. To have this this, to have access to, leisure pursuits. The idea of a Democratic Society i mean the simple the simpler story, which i think there are a lot of nuances, but the simpler story, i think holds up in case is simply stories that. The idea of democracy is the idea of mass liberal education that is ruled by the people, selfgovernance means equipping the people precisely for that capacity and selfgovernance. Governance is the exercise freedom. Thats what freedom actually means. Freedom. Autonomy. Freedom is selfgovernance. And liberal education is the precisely the thing that is implied right and it is required thats necessitated in the idea of democracy. So at some point in our democracy, we decided were going to abolish labor and were going to provide basic education, universal publicly funded, compulsory, basic for everyone. And then in the 19th century, we began to extend that to a to a 12th grade education. So today we have this remarkable commitment that we just take for granted and often dont pause, see the extraordinary thing that this is that we as a society that were going to establish universal, that is free, compulsory education from k through 12, 12 years of that that expresses. This idea of democracy. And i think one question that that that we must ask today is whether that that idea needs updating whether we should we should now be thinking about higher what we now call Higher Education as a good of a sort that deserves to be also universally accessible which means publicly funded in serious way whether its a social good that we value such we are willing to make a true a true universal experience. Thank you, everybody. My name is ahmad and i, an educator and, uh, grad student at columbia. Um, your job reminded me of a friend of mine. Uh, whos the whos student sent him, uh, an an email with that letter assignment. And just because she was so late, she wrote in that and the subject my. Yeah. Its just funny. Anyway, so my is, um. Christopher hitchens once that philosophy starts, where religion ends. So my question is, can we live to the ideals of liberal arts if we dont take religion seriously. Let me say. In one way, it depends what we mean by religion. But i do think that liberal education involves a question of ultimate values. And the question of the grounding commitments that give meaning to our lives. Religion also itself with those things. But there there are ways of engaging those questions that probably are obviously recognizable as religious. So i think what we need to do to kind define one of them as religion. But, but i do that it is, um, inherent in the idea of liberal education. Some notion of a transcendent good, some notion of a kind of life that is most living for each of us. And those questions and issues that are involved necessarily liberal education, i think can well be described as as touching on religious and religious. Yeah, it seems to me the the the question i come at this question from two different sides and i think i hadnt heard from that side in quite a while. So um, theres a question about whether religious people need liberal education because theyve already got, you know, the main thing, um, and then theres a question youre asking which is are we leaving something if, if our liberal education doesnt include religion in some sense and here i, i think i want to just i think would i agree with roosevelt said that religion as an existential commitment. Its its more than that though right its its an existential commitment in which many of our neighbors one way or another are engaged are actual neighbors, are our neighbors in other countries. I mean, religion is, a major force in human life. And its a feature of the past and a lot of what we havent said this, but the the connection to the past is crucial for liberal education. We dont just read really great books that were written yesterday. We read old books. Um, and why is i think can be hard to articulate not actually many people who think that the that these books necessarily how did make us who we are you know some way or other i dont know how but we can definitely see ourselves in them and learn from them and reimagine our present through them. And so i think to neglect religion is is its perverse and it happens at Secular Institutions. Um i feel very privileged to be in a Secular Institution where we read the bible, augustine and aquinas and had some of the the best moments of my life as a teacher teaching these mixed classrooms where some people are religious and some people arent talking about these texts are so resonant for so many people as human beings, its just theres nothing like it. So i, i guess. I, yes. Uh, religion is necessary. It doesnt have to be confession and navigating. Um, spaces where people talk despite having or despite being hostile to confessions or despite being hostile to religion altogether. Creating spaces where conversations is challenging, but it can done. And its, its crucially important. So our our time is unfortunately run out. But these conversations can continue. Thanks for the wonderful questions and please join me in thanking our wonderful panel here. Oh, i hope all of you feel more liberated as i do. And i just want to point one thing out as. Some of the contributors here will tell you this the liberating doesnt just talk the liberal arts for the university. It also speaks about the liberal arts and, prisons and Adult Education and in just popular culture. So these are all conversations we want to continue. We want to do this in an atmosphere of leisure that have just spoken about. And i believe that we can now to the reception. But as you do so, of course i wouldnt be doing my job if in flow this book a little more on that corner in the back and plough magazine is dedicated to the question of how do we live. Well what gives life meaning, purpose. Those are the questions that lie at the heart of the liberal arts. And we thank you all for coming here again. And we look forward to having more conversations. Please stick around. Thanks again and thanks again to our panel and speakers