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, somet