>> good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome back to our conference on a worthy life, finding meaning in america. the class of 82 annual conference of james madison institution here at princeton university. the final panel for the day addresses issues having to do with liberal arts education and the search for truth. we have a very distinguished group of panelists who will answer the question. i want to begin though with the personal testimony of my own and really an expression of gratitude. we will be discussing topologies, undeniable topologies 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 by labeling other people as haters or what have you. those pathologies as i say our undeniable. they exists. they are very widespread. many people in the academy across the political spectrum not only recognize them but recognize that they present an urgent problem and truly a threat. provost at stanford university recently in a public letter called the threat the threat from within the university saying that no threat to higher education coming from outside of universities is the equal of the threat inside the universities stemming from a certain kind of ill liberalism, a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty and students a tendency to group think and an unwillingness to question established orthodoxies or even to permit discussions of key issues to go forward. some of you perhaps read the piece in "the wall street journal" by the self-described left-wing president of wesleyan 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 the need to have viewpoints across the spectrum representative for learning to take place. i said i wanted to begin with an expression of her attitude and i had a wonderful opportunity in this conference to do it and that's gratitude to my home university princeton university who is sponsoring our conference here today. james monessen program of princeton university. this program is flourished in princeton for 17 years now and i'm enormous lake ray full to my colleagues and to successive presidents of university who have not only permitted are programmed 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 will cheer but i'd like to think that some would. i entered this 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 in a questioner of the established campus orthodoxies on clinical and moral questions from the very beginning but princeton did not deny me a position at the university because of that. in fact i was hired. i was granted tenure. i was promoted. i was installed in jurisprudence and establish the james madison program american ideals and institutions so whatever is to be said about the pathologists afflicting american higher education, whatever we will say and without claiming that my university is near perfection i do feel a profound sense of gratitude especially in view of what i know, people who are far superior to me in their scholarship and ability and achievements have suffered at other institutions around the country. i think we'll be hearing a bit about that in the presentations. to discuss these vital issues we have assembled an outstanding panel and i went to deuce them all right now in the order in which they will speak. aurelian craiutu a former fellow india situation here at princeton and a ph.d. graduate of this university a professor of political science at indiana where he hosts a policy analysis. one of formation's most distinguished authority allen guelzo director of civil war era studies and professor of history at gettysburg college in pennsylvania. his work on lincoln and the civil war is simply unsurpassed and has been ignored for its excellence with prize after prize after price. lincoln prize after lincoln prize. we are delighted to have allen back. allen has been a fellow professor in the madison program here at princeton. zena hitz also ph.d. graduate of her university as a tutor at st. johns college and teaches liberal arts as all tutors at st. johns college do. she writes in defense of intellectual activities the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as against the defense of the intent cruel -- intellectual life for political reasons than she was in 2010 and 11 a fellow at the james madison program. and then finally the distinguished scholar in his honor we have convened this conference, leon kass who is a scholar at the american enterprise institute and professor emeritus in the committee on social thoughts at the university of chicago. leon will bat cleanup and i will first recognize professor aurelian craiutu. >> i'm very honored to be on this panel so thank you for joining me to join the other panelists and since it's late in the day and we have gone through several i thought i should entertain you with a nice story which has the theoretical part ended juicier part which is the second part. every spring semester like many in the audience i teach a book that defends as you know vigorously for freedom of thought and freedom of speech against public opinion and undue government interference. this is one of the books on the mandatory reading lists for all those who care about deeper education and can still read i should have the conflicts 19th century sentences were 19th century leaders. our students today i'm not so sure can master the art. in this wonderful book a reminds us we should listen to those who disagree with us and gives us in the 21st century a few compelling reasons for doing so. first our opponents are invaluable because they can sharpen our arguments and can point out possible flaws in our own arguments claims or beliefs. second it reminds us of the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of any appearance. by doing so we throw out the existing generation of the opportunity to test their beliefs and correct them if necessary. this is what he writes. they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. if wrong they lose the pure perception of truth produced by deletion with the error. however he reminded us we can never be really sure that the opinions that we are endeavoring to stifle our a false opinion. .. liberty as you well know is widely taught in our universities today and hurt princeton university as well. many of our colleagues seem to like the ideas of the book in theory. [laughing] but what about in practice i would ask. do they still guide themselves by recommendations? do they live up to the recommendation? i do want to imply anything and they do not pretend that this our rhetorical questions. i do not pretend that the what i would like to do is add to them by telling you a small story, hopefully a relevant one for the panel. it is not the recent lecture given by charles murray from the american enterprise institute on april 11 in bloomington one month after the now unfortunately famous lecture he had previously tried to give and had successfully given at middlebury college where the person who invited murray was bitten and suffered a concussion. the middlebury event is well known and has been widely discussed in the media. the bloomington lecture is less known but i think it can teach us something important about liberal education today. in particular about free speech and pluralism and disagreement. i think it also, it also might is taking free speech disagreement and pluralism seriously is not such an easy task. quite the contrary i'm afraid. marie was invited so there are few details about the strict marie was about to speak in bloomington about the 2016 elections as the author of coming apart, book he published in 2012. the invitation was extended by a small group of students, two students to be precise. [laughing] that formed a very small american enterprise institute chapter on campus and informal group not registered to university on the bloomington campus. the main sponsor of the talk was the american enterprise institute, and the smalltalk program by the honor of electing at indiana chose to cosponsor it without offering a monetary compensation. the reason for doing so is this past semester, like anyone else in the country, we have struggled to be honest to come to terms and understand the results of the 2016 elections. to this effect in collaboration with the provost office and the scent of representative government led by the former representative lee hamilton, we have organized a series lectures and roundtables that sought to shed light on increasing ideological polarization and intransigence in our society and on our campus would begin in february with bill kristol who was here earlier spoke about american politics in the age of trump and yes, he did mention that name during his talk. [laughing] next we organized a roundtable on of all things stability in moderation with the group of philosophers, sociologists and political theorists your we thought the discussion of charles murray's ideas from coming apart would be a good fit for our series since his 2012 analysis highlighted several trends that subsequently led to the victory of donald trump in november 2016. november 2016. murray as you well know, indeed earn on a spirit of the age that others seem to have missed and that has since been exploited relentlessly by our media. this year he has been invited to speak on major campuses middlebury and villanova to duke, and columbia and we are happy to work with students again the two very pretty students to join our efforts in bringing him to bloomington for free. we had no doubt the controversial nature of his previous work, the bell curve, described by his critics as races, fugitives and misogynist would trigger strong protest. that book made a few controversial claims linking success to cognitive intelligence or suggesting a possible link between race and genetics. psalm judged this claim to be possible. it is still controversial. others accuse it of racism. but few if any of the serious academic critics treated it as hate speech. worthy of being censored. maybe it was worthy of being discarded, but certainly worthy of being discussed and discarded. it was seen as a claim based on data, perhaps true, perhaps falls which must be taken into account and verified for their accuracy. yet we invited murray to speak not about the bell curve but about the "coming apart" because this is what really interested us. what wilkinson got all that we are also aware that major scholars on the left such as cornell west, i intended to say brother cornell but that's not appropriate. cornell west and others and harvard had been teaching this semester "coming apart." the book that interest us at harvard university this semester, this was one of the only five books on their required reading for the course on american democracy. i checked. there were only five pick along with the moxie in america, the next american nation, democracy matters, the left alternative and the future of american progressivism. and "coming apart" by charles murray. we thought if harvard people can digest charles murray's "coming apart" from social people in the middle of the country. they can do it. furthermore only a couple of weeks before his talk at indiana in the same room where he spoke in the beautifully furnished president hall, "washington post" columnist a.j. dion urged our sins to try to understand and listen to those values they do not share generally. he called on the left to try to develop empathy for causes that might motivate people to vote for donald trump. on the right. there's too much elitism he suggested that divides the country into baubles, thick or thin evidence understand the dialogue and debate. it is time he concluded to in this elitism and treat the middle america something other than the flyover country between the two coasts, between new york and l.a. and now follow the juicy details you've been waiting for. [laughing] denouncements of the lectures was met with strong criticism and this may buy mostly faculty members and, of course, greater students. a good number of them were in humana's, and i should add in the english department. the critics implied that merely listening to a controversial speaker like murray would amount to endorsing his views. that, according to them, racist views and misogynist views that can have no place on any discussion on campus. an open letter, always an open letter so that more people can sign it, was drafted at the initiatives of two students from a department that challenged,, exercise the right to free speech, which is wonderful and challenge the universities decision to offer a platform to an allegedly racist writer and promote up white nationalism. the signatories of the letter was in 100 the the last time i checked perhaps 200 by now believe providing a platform to charles murray was unwise. here are their words and faq to pay attention to that. i quote, we have strong blues and academic freedom and speech. we do not advocate for blanket censorship of controversial views by state institutions nor by private actors. for that reason we respect the right of charles murray's sponsors, i.e. myself and others can to extend you an invitation to speak at indiana university. at the same time, public universities and institutions within them also their responsibility to act judiciously, one providing famous for speakers particularly in the present climate of racial tension. in this case we believe providing a platform to charles murray is highly irresponsible and judgmental to our university community. in a perfect logic after declaring its commitment to free speech, the open letter asked the universities disinvited charles murray. [laughing] it was followed by questions about the legality of the invitations which i had to answer at the request of the chairman of the bloomington faculty council, and the complaint was indeed launch to my knowledge. a few wondered about the format of the lecture, claiming that it was inappropriate since it did not allow for debate a question and answers. it did have a question and answer time frame as you will see tomorrow. others claim charles murray's scholarship was shabby, reprehensible and, frankly, loath some. and he was a charlatan, something like ann coulter. the implication was his place was not an academic setting, a respectable one like bloomington. in spite of the fact that marie tedford his degree from mit and is authored more than ten books to date to be precise, 12 if i'm not mistaken. some of which were published by major press. even his latest work "coming apart" they claim builds upon the same discredited evidence discussed and use in the bell curve. if you others spoke with indignation about the damaging decision strings to invite to campus and author who promoted hate speech or even incited all buy it vicariously hate crimes and he would discredit my own department. his despicable ideas did not deserve to be debated because they are racist, sexist, demeaning to women and threatening in general. so if you think i'm exaggerating let's listen to what they actually said, and i'm going to quote twice. murray's views are not just one side of interesting debate, they are vile and wrong someone wrote. they are also being disseminated in some form from the highest office in the country right now and fo from many members of the congress. it is an intimidating and frightening environment for many of us in this speaker brings that children affect home. a student actually said this, i am for free speech but i'm against giving people platforms to speak whose work isn't up to the academic expectation of indiana university. it's hate speech, she said. in the end of the lecture was not canceled as the signatories of the open letters as the provost to be in the provost back to us and we went on with a massive police protection offered by the police department of my university. they worked very hard to make sure the violence that it proves good at middlebury would not be repeated at indiana, it was not. the venue was carefully selected at the number free tickets distributed with limited to 1500 which did not prevent the protesters to acquire about 80 tickets and burned them so the room was only two-thirds full. the protesters mobilized and have the right to do so to spread their disagreement. they encouraged students to get their tickets and as i said burned them afterward so that the room would be close to empty. so of the 150 we filled about 80 seats. outside the lecture hall mobilized by the english graduate solidarity coalition, students exercise the right to free speech. they shouted slogans like charles murray go away, and there was an even better one, forgive me for the obscenity, charles murray. what we need to do is to make charles murray irrelevant again like he's always been come someone said, get a student. another claimed that she wasn't interested in listening to someone who would normalize white supremacy. iu shouldn't give them a a platform and it will not listen. one man debate on the metal pot outside the lecture and eight big noise. the noise was audible inside the room distracting to speaker at times. while the protesters were forcing their opposition outside exercising the right to free speech inside we discussed some of the reasons why white america in the middle of the country voted for trump. murray broke up a few issues such as inequality among them that should've been of interest to his critics on the left. he invited his audience to take his famous bible quiz which also like to take a good you can google bobble quiz news hour and you can take it. to see how thick within your bobble is. i did take it and i have to shamefully confess that my number is very low, 12, so my bobble is a favorite talk about exclusive zip codes in which people live and how they contribute to the fragmentation of america. his 3 30 minute lectures followd by a 30 minute discussion moderated by every undergraduate at one of the two who had the courage to invite murray. each was given up in a paper and was invited to ask the question. there was no censorship, only an uninhibited conversation civil and free punctuated by touches of humor and the banging on the metal tent outside of the room. [laughing] that it would agreed with murray of course and must say i am not necessary in agreement with the other but the questions and answers were civil and constructive. murray turned out -- middle of the road as it was demonstrated by an article published in the "new york times." the conservatives in the audience most of them surprise by his -- guaranteed universal basic income. one tense moment occurred at the conclusion of the election when it was time for murray to exit the building. no fewer than 12 police cars were parked behind the building but even with that it wasn't easy for the police to escort murray out of the lecture building. protesters had been moved off the ground but in the end no one was arrested and there was no significant violence. indiana did battle than middleburg revealed unpleasant thing wathings at election offio present allies by a group entitled, on the kidding, students against violence. [laughing] they painted an antiracist message on the door that said no complicity with racism that my daughter has been breaking to see but they did it quickly. they cleaned it. and glued the lot which is new technique. include the lock with super glue. they also posted a post-olympic claim the authorship of it was very nice to look at although they are. it was anonymous, however. [laughing] i also received threat calls on the office so after which the police disconnected it in my department assignment and you and disclose temporary office picked the fact i published two on moderation of all things counted for nothing in the eyes of the professions and send my colleagues who criticize me for my role in cosponsoring the lecture. i was declared guilty by the because i stood for free speech and pluralism ideas. i did nothing wrong. i just apply common sense. i have lived in communist romania for 20 some use of my life so i thought i could stand for free speech in a free country. i was accused of complicity with his views so good because along with others i was incidental in organizing a public lecture at disguise and ten -- proposed remedies for our social problems i was declared guilty of tarnishing the reputation by colin should never read a single page of murray and would never attended a single event organized by the program. we brought it from both the left and the right to weave and brought -- if you know who that is to bloomington a few to go before he was a minister in the greek government. we brought of the people from -- bill kristol and many others. here's the interesting thing for our panel. murray's lectures tested our commitment to free speech and show many of us believe in free speech but only as long as you agree with their positions. they are ready to censor views with which they disagree in which they find deplorable, dangerous or demeaning. they are ready to sign his ideas that they find dangerous and that threaten their safe bubble. >> they're ready to discuss civility and engage in witchhunts against those whose views they find disagreeable. one of my colleagues in university propose i be denied pay raise for ten years. [laughing] for the fact of having invited murray. if some of my colleagues failed the free speech test, i was pleased to discover that by undergraduates passed it with flying colors and that the recent of hope for us today. someone starting law and public policy from whatever of her classes said this, i can't create effective policy if i refuse to read and listen to opinions of people i disagree with. another student remarked it was an interesting contrast. his nuanced analysis versus the protesters uncivil, uninformed and perhaps at the intellectual chance reverberating outside. the members of the outside community also passed the free speech test when asked by the local paper whether iu was right to invite murray. they all agreed yes, it was right to do so. but the lecture did much more than test our commitment to free speech on campus. it reminded us one of the lessons taught while disagreement is normal and inevitable in her open societies that must be accompanied i reliance on real facts, balance moderation and civility. it reminded us we should never think ourselves as infallible. more authorities, entitled to exclude those who disagree with us that we are never allowed to pigeonhole people, called names. and we should avoid seeing the world in black and white contrast. that we should never make any announcement before we get all our fax available once right come examine them critically and listen to different interpretation. that's why the steady habit of correcting and completing our own opinions by collecting them with all others should be a habit that we should cultivate in our liberal arts education. we should listen to everything that could be brought against opposition, this is the only way in which you can be sure our positions are right. if opponents of all-important truth do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine and supply them with the strongest argument which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up. as you will know any canonization of a new state in the catholic church is a devil's advocate procedure. i think we should apply the inter-university as well. this wise words were written 150 years ago. i'm pretty sure he would encourage our administrators to make chapter two of our liberty medical reading for all incoming students and for all existing faculty. that's beyond doubt. he would've been skeptical of recent calls for trigger warning and safe spaces. such spaces do not exist and cannot exist and we should not try to correct them artificially on our campuses. when we suppress speech we disagree with, we become less able to defend freedom. our democracy and liberty education should not allow us to pick and choose which viewpoints and ideas we are allowed to hear. we should not merely tolerate views with which we find yourself in this agreement. our academic committee depends on engagement with ideas and ideas and viewpoints which we think for better or for worse are wrong, flawed or dangerous. that free engagement lies reminders at the very heart of education we should honor it if we profess to serve liberal education. thank you very much. [applause] >> zena hitz? >> so i also want to offer my thanks to the madison staff, to robbie, brad, betsy for organizing this wonderful conference. i'm deeply honored to be part of this panel and especially happy to be celebrating leon kass of models in so many ways what it means to be a teacher of liberal arts. so i want to admit that since i returned to teach at st. john's college a couple of years ago, it's also where i was an undergraduate, that's what i say returned, i was sometimes overwhelmed by a sense of my own inadequacy to follow in the work of my teachers. this might seem like awkward over sharing but i think it's interesting to a couple of reasons and that's what i bring it up. on the one hand, i think the sense of inadequacy of sort of outgrowth of my enormous gratitude for the education and to all of the teachers who made it possible, and leon was one weekly as a graduate student and others are present, and i can formulate this gratitude in the following way. i arrived at st. john's as a 17-year-old, 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. so that's the source of my gratitude. now, st. john's like many colleges operates in a kind of tradition of democratic liberal arts to the great books, and one of the benefits is about 100 years old draws an older traditions, specific democratic grateful space part of it is but one of years old, so one of the benefits of a tradition is that an individuals not need to rely on his or her own talents to sort of reinvent the wheel in each classroom or speaking at each conference, but can rely on the habits and structures that are passed on from those who have taught and learned before us here in these brief remarks, 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's a general way which liberal education is being shoved into corners, pushed into the margins and shrunk in various ways. i think this shrinking movement, this contraction of it, threatens to special and dear to my heart aspects of it. i'm going to refer to these as the best of liberal arts education, that they be extended to anyone and everyone, and the depth of liberal arts education, that is, that he goes to the deepest part of what it means to be a human being. so first some accounts of the breadth of liberal arts education. the education i received as an undergraduate and which are now try to pass on to my students assumes that a student is an adult capable of taking responsibility for his or her own learning. and also on the one hand, that the state is naturally motivated or even driven from within to pursue fundamental questions in a serious way. that's my contrast with viewing the student as the potential subject of correct opinions or a consumer whose experience must be constantly managed, either images of the student that think are implicit in some of our educational practices. by contrast we assume this responsibility and this motivation. this motivation and responsibilities that are assumed or offered on trust, they are not necessarily rooted in intellectual aptitude. they are not rooted in the achievement oriented or a future leader. they are not rooted in being male or white or a conservative or christian or american. it is a human responsibility and a human motivation. it is on the ground of our common humanity that we gather in our little classrooms at st. john's and elsewhere to discuss philosophy, literature, history and math and science in fundamental ways. it is on the grounds of our common humanity that we are able to have real conversations regardless of her ethnic or national backgrounds, regardless of our sex or art and identity, regardless of our political outlook, religious background or a lack of one. an education in the common pursuit that is that should a collaborative pursuit of fundamental questions is something a human being needs, desires and flourishes under. it prepares liberal education like this prepares many people for lucrative and prestigious careers. it prepares more people for thoughtful and imaginative modes of reflection and ways of being even in the midst of disappointment and abject failure. it does not build bridges in an artificial way between disparate groups. it reveals common ground. like all serious work with others, especially others different from us, it breaks to or shatters our imagined superiority to others. so that's my account of the breadth of liberalized education as it is currently threatened. to see something that what you mean by the depth of that i think will help to look at some of the things that are threatening liberal education. liberal education is threatened i meet among 10 million things you take him i'm going to focus on a couple, liberal education is threatened by a shortsighted concern with immediate economic payoff. this relies on to false assumptions. one, contribute to the economy is the point of human life, the point. and secondly that broader forms of human excellence of mind and imagination have no economic value. that's the second false assumption. liberal education is also threatened by the politicizing of everything. the desperate attempt to feel that somehow our intellectual work to reduce social and political results that otherwise is useless or pointless or self-indulgent. both of these threats, both economic and the political totalizing result from seeing the value of human beings exclusively as a matter of social and economic worth. this means on the one hand, that we diminish or ignore the dignity of the human being, the sense that a human being has value beyond any social or economic or political purpose. .. >> >> the loss of the of liberal arts as i a describe them will hasten the eroding of our political community in part because selfie politics allows set there are things beyond politics. it is also because without common ground common culture , common activities we acknowledge members of the community and work with them our fellow citizens and neighbors without these period by our differences and i don't think anybody can doubt that movement is already under way so of all this is right given the enormous urgency to promote the of liberal arts and it is an urgency beyond other political and social urgency's but if my remarks are on the right track it suggests something that we could fight for the liberal arts that is not fighting for them as conservatives nor christians but common ground for field studies we must reach out to people that our different from us who value the mode of education and fight for those mixed institutions and the secular institutions that that human character of this type of education is revealed in a special way with the general and human character. but the bond of common culture baby forged that those communities so desperately need. those are my remarks. [applause] >> there was a concrete mason in the neighborhood who was well known and he was doing repairs and his front sidewalk and did a fine job and to all children began yelling and he lost a yelling at them get off my concrete. people were puzzled in the said the guy you love children and he said i'd do but in the abstract. [laughter] not the concrete. [laughter] so i want to talk about the concrete because these are not these first two speakers as indicated, happy times in liberal arts education so let me draw your attention to a few aspects of that it is more concrete to the and the aspect with management. with those income figures american colleges and universities were down 2%. in the market rose 13%. out of those for the biggest endowments of those that declined for aventine private colleges and three aventine public colleges and universities and though those investor services expects that those closure rate will triple by the end of this year these problems are entirely aside from the abysmal press generated by student and faculty behavior's such as what we heard about today. in many minds the face of higher education on the university of missouri of face contorted with anchor and with the silence inquiry but it has been repeated at clair and berkeley and most recently noted dame. with the perception that these institutions and have it a cuckoo land that these colleges and universities are lands of hope as in the example most recently where all boundaries between reality and fantasy bin yet almost nothing happens and traditions continue to spiral with ruth and board with a continued pressure for access to the very same institutions generated by the perception colleges still the only perhaps the remaining ticket to middle-class success and comfort and a diminishing sense of accountability. diminishing because for one thing from the colleges are increasingly managed by in solar professional bureaucracy is. who answered to no one. is there are faculty meetings and committees and consultations. they amount in any context with these bureaucracies are unwilling to challenge the back of your students as a large part of part the composer whose chief goal in life is to keep their noses clean. and leslie to share responsibility for the diminishing of accountability and acting now to the rage of their own cultural and importance becomes the most significant public activity and up was the key to read space of these institutions in those liberal arts historically considered we possess a treasury of wisdom and virtue. which reaches back to the classical pastback to the of law codes of moses the literature and read is on san the conviction of the reformation to the indictment -- a enlightenment with deep wells of reflection available for renewal. when cultures the part or break down the answer to that departure occur from first principles. ltd. is in those liberal arts that deep vein of first principles. but these have not been working for us. in with 150 years. why? one is because of the revolutionary trope that is the fundamental trope that defines our culture today. and there are no first principles and there is a change without point direction that change that we can adapt to. it is no wonder of the decline of the influence of liberal arts education and of the evolutionary trope. demonstrating at harvard the decade after the civil war. and the reason of liberal arts have failed to act as a source of renewal with the adoption of higher education of the germanic model and in mass institutions to the service to the state by a professional vocational educational goals. a and promoted in the name of efficiency. and with those state bureaucracies but also of the american context of progressives in the name of political or social game? is that assertion with the function of that bureaucracy. and the smallest aspects of college life. so talk about those intervention and title ix letters that is the most sensational aspect in to much more small-scale points i remember a particular 2011 where we were notified by means of a colleague letter from the department of education we were obliged with the idea with a college-age and curriculum offered as three credit hours however the department does of education had grown anxious without any kind of academic efforts that we should be obliged to document a fourth hour. when i was first apprised of this at our college i have to read met perhaps he was suffering from over anxiety. and the mandate was sent out. but with that idea of a single bureaucratic letter admitted from the department of education could complete the rewrites the nature of the courses in requirements and expectations because of large measure whether we call ourselves public for private and to survive with public funding and that threats and not just the reality and with the direction of faculty. so the result is the liberal arts have been made into the appendage to college and university curriculum is. still a history major and other majors that need be defined but they are there on suffrage and they are the entertainment and to to cooperate with their own humiliation and then to be kong defacto educational exercises themselves. english to province seek suze the illiterate graduating body and the english professors. getting ready for greta school but does trading history department professionals in these liberalization departments will go do exactly the same thing. and with those self perpetuating societies period sad our own self marginal as asian and to tweak the noses of the college a large. can this change? kim liberal arts college teachers and departments and programs renew their programs of cultural renewal ? perhaps. we must separate liberal arts education from vocational studies. and that was made in the 19th century. those that are not separated out by those willing applicants that is the price we have to pay for. and transferring those back of the department's i am not entirely sure that this is an alternative to provide a happy result with those administrative bureaucrats but i do know what we have now was the present regime of hiring tends to self perpetuation. and the third thing is newly configured liberal arts programs and institutions must link themselves to existing agencies to ensure accountability. so of course, will this happen? for it to happen we must overcome that is not what customers of public colleges want today. that is not where they come to colleges and universities to tell them with there being educated for is cultural renewal. to draw in the stairs. so there will be professional resistance because this arrangement of liberal arch -- liberal arts education is not what they'd expect even by their own training. and third the as a barrier with this type of reconfiguration and those outside agencies are prepared to pay for to their shame. and what would happen? i expect at least three things one is we shall see over the next several years the continued trend of mergers and closures and there are more significant examples coming. and government intrusion designed to reverse the course of previous intrusions' operating on the basis and assumption is justified and a legitimate. i expect will happen will be lower in the nation nation, vocationalism, do we believe in this thing called the liberal arts? do we believe facts we lived by more than bread alone? do we believe that the stories we have told ourselves from the days of troy are we really great spirits year ending -- churning from human thought. only if we are will be see such renewal and the title of ill consequences be reversed. and if we can move into broader and sunnier of millions of truth and wisdom [applause] i will join the panel now within a prepared remarks but in the entrance -- interest to have a full discussion. i don't want to join the of party of dismay and pick up on the evils that we are facing i think the first presentation actually the first and last presented i became a diagnosis that was very a powerful and my own spirit is more aligned with the first one but i do have an insight on the current crisis about speech. the university of chicago where i spend most of my teaching career has been a pretty good place the president had a very fine statements with freedom of speech but could not quite bring himself to say it is the ultimate justification it was necessary to pursue the truth the university of chicago is in the business of knowledge creation and why you need freedom of speech but still a climate is better than in most places the usual suspects the faculty protested the dean of students with a lot of push back from those students who thinks certain opinions are beyond pay all. if faculty committee was appointed to establish principles and procedures for disruptions of discourse . and the faculty senate was debating these recommendations. so there was that obligatory paragraph about respect on a the way to defend the presence of the popular opinion and there was the sentence that went something like this. a restrictive than half style on welcoming environment is bad for the community. and whereas the of rich, opposite of restrictive, friendly posture aisle so what do you thank you found in places on welcoming? inclusive. instead of welcoming we're you would say all opinions are welcome, the current thinking is it is because they belong to groups and had to have opinions. and if you believe that is the basis of people's opinions the mitt is perfectly clear where you cannot attack somebody's opinion because it is to be understood as an attack on their identity. and this is the wave of legacy of a kind of tribal list from the university and the student body is part of the culture and the intrusions but it would be very hard to produce a climate and university that sees the group of truth seekers if in fact, we adopt that post murder view that truth is a social creation and each is entitled to live by their own and god forbid you should attack somebody's truth because that is disrespectful of their person and being. meeting that is worth calling attention to. the second point i would it make is the of politicalization of the university is over subscribed to have one cause among the students in that is nothing going on for those students that feed their souls in in north -- and nurture to give their passions and therefore into the void come all of the controversies of the day to take over. if one had as a campus of was going on in the classroom was a meaningful over the things that mattered to them their rugby match last seduction into these controversies and the faculty department could do that or they could read the books that mattered to them. this is on the way to the third point so we can complain about the politicalization of the university but what are we offering? but that is a very depressing analysis why we're in that circumstance. here are obliged to take small difference. i not sure the of way to describe at least today with a liberal education should be put in terms of renewal of the culture or the handing down of the treasures of our heritage. given where we are to data starting point should increasingly be the questions of the young people starting often life. to find out where they are rather than try to hand them something to begin with that we don't know if they need or want, and common not necessarily those but the initiation to the college experience where even if the us small collection of faculty members have an introductory course for freshmen and take it if you like and what is a good human being or a good citizen? you don't simply ask their opinions bayou put before them a series of text that they could see the competing alternatives by the end of the year with a collection of exemplary individuals to soccer the store moses were jesus and the you present readings which could be altered or looking at those folks from the outside because you know, that they are interested. they just left home joining of big world and filled with nonsense the opinions that they have far superficial but if you treat them if they care about the things they ought to care about and ask the questions you suspect there were like to have asked and those books to pursue the new treat them not as much as the heirs of the of tradition that the spirit of which you are guessing as young adults with a lifetime before them and probably not very far away from the big questions of love and marriage including questions of the nature of the citizenship about freedom and justice anwr and peace to create those collins of courses ignoring what is going on around you but then present the alternative and certainly in our experience in chicago if you build it they will come. and reproduced an undergraduate major but the fundamental thing was a question that was understood not as the of verbal interrogative but a species of desire when one wants to know what it doesn't know it will invest the effort to pursue that question. it might have been the time when a different way it was appropriate but if we catch the show people in that there would be a safe place mainly a place those of are the dearest to their heart can be discussed openly in a climate of respect searching and with that sense all of us that we wind up disagreeing are fundamentally interested in nature or better understanding of things indispensable for our humanity at north we can start it up again to build up these programs that looks like time is rushed you build up in and day care it down but for people who'd care fight the battles in public to make sure people who come to your campus can speak but to find where you're on the campus and try to ask yourself how could reenlisted these young people from the start and what is a lifetime of learning with deep and broad sense of whenever they end up doing for the rest of their careers?. >> i don't really see the current way of teaching these things unless she's ends up passing or hillsdale where the faculty have asked themselves the question that nobody asked the question so what really do people need to know to enter the world? if you cannot get the institutions to do it then find some colleagues than to a few things and i suspect these things will be popular and begin to vacate a stir with their surroundings. [applause] >> now we will move to do q&a and i want to say i think your technique is in dan -- and a tiffany so in that statement cornell west and i put out in the middle of the fiasco entitled freedom of expression with democracy and truth seeking seeking, there is a sense in which we said that before liberal learning can take place, people need to be willing to expose themselves to challenge their deepest and most cherished with their identity forming believes. and uri tiffany is that unless people are willing to do that knowing batting is the of the essence they will experience criticism of their ideas or opinions or beliefs as personal attacks on them. then that blocks the enterprise of education read at the beginning and you never get the horse out of the starting gate and it cannot proceed unless students and faculty members in the institution that communicates to everyone concerned the understanding that part of the exercise what is central is challenging our most deepest identity forming believes. and that comes out of the concrete experience of doing exactly where you have recommended. the two of us deciding we will teach a course together in which we ask the great questions and with the assistance of the great writers of sophocles and intestine and louis and am okay. which will be an enterprise in which we subject each other's opinions and arguments to scrutiny and we encourage our students to subject our arguments to scrutiny with the goal of each of this becoming his own best credit by a internalizing the process to the point at which we can do better than any interloper -- interlocutor and the experience has been the effects of that go far beyond the particular classroom 18 students to make it a seminar we had to limit at 18 and exclude the vast number that wanted to be there by yet our willingness to do that in a very public way send the message that i think is that the core of your e epiphany. so to enforce what you said to everybody, there is no need to wait around for the external force to act on the university's. we can just decide we will do this and in our own small way begin up process. and the sermon. we have hands up. >> as some of you may know i went into the family business in a different way many years ago struck by the nation that public schools were ineffective and by joining a revolution called charter schools opening the first public charter school in america in boston with anybody in the educational establishment who saw me or heard of this then suddenly we were against the tide now i'm happy to say 20 years later charter schools are not only mean stream that performed a revolution for young people but also singularly responsible for attracting talent into teaching the young people and i have to say listening to this panel, while i agree that what they can do within the existing institution but listening to the panel is strikes me it calls for the interruption in what we know from the early '90s of the monopoly of public education preventing the education of young people we assume there was a market for a different type of education and suspect if you encounter those young people without the headlines with their real question and the thoughtfulness these institutions of higher learning would be prevented and i wonder if there is a way given the of technology we have today if they can confine learning to those illustrious places that all or if there is a disruption to bring those educators to reach that market of young people? and as a point of the evidence some of the most talented graduate students join the of think tanks and there was one such think tank bad was sponsored so perhaps there are institutions out there not necessarily of higher learning but i'll be curious to know what you thought about that. >> i am with you in the spirit of those remarks and that should be done outside the formal university setting and contemporary technology facilitates that in ways they are much more attacks savvy but is still very opaque to me but i do know from my personal experience was a difference within the university of the creation of programs that really are based on the of model that our panel is promoting. there are people here today who are the founders and directors of programs around the country. but my guess is there are 15 or 20 people here from arizona state university. those are very important within the university i will give it over to the panel to see if they have a reflection. >>. >> damn those institutions of higher learning. >> and i think it truly is. and those supporters of higher education it is very important not to write off universities when you see the kinds of things that happened at misery and claremont and the others then people can become disgusted and give up on the project i am all for the think tanks that are doing marvelous work we cannot give up on our students there in the university not the think tanks so what those people need to do is support those initiatives that will live up to those highest ideals while at the same time also supporting think tanks and other initiatives. >> any comments?. >> dad? [laughter] >> this may be generational. and generational that i.m. ignorant about innovation with education of the sort that you can design things with that experience of getting the education and to see that pushed back. and to see some closures. and that will not continue indefinitely something different from what we have. and one can learn a lot to but learning together about the things with the of one on one possibilities for the face-to-face possibilities that virtual learning doesn't have that you could find things doo-doo. so those ideals and that those whole panel speaks for. and not only knowing the subject and to encourage the of silence and the conversation with a professor 24 hours a day on-line what do you think of what so and so just said?. >> professor gregory?. >> teaching in the religion department and share of the humanities council the under graduate sequencer is under subscribed to share this vision in the of liberal arts and i.m. deeply sympathetic but to the depth them brat the of a question of privilege from those that have those financial resources to do this with those global humanities and of those sensible patriotism do you have thoughts of that curriculum might work in the american university? like baghdad and is this an ally version of these communities? so if you have any thoughts on global humanities given the of commons and references to those achievements. >> i will tell you one thing that we have had influx of those international students from china and other parts of asia to those students have brought in a tremendous vitality and enthusiasm and brilliance that sometimes the americans do so in that since the global humanities' make a lot of sense and it seems there are people and the different parts of the world that are interested of the of fundamental questions and looking at those foundations it sounds great but in truth it is just does you said so there are all kinds of wonderful enriched material babbitt is implicit that our human questions but i think there is is a real danger of tokenism in superficiality in teaching things without knowing the culture or the background to establish the way of doing things we have the of faculty that knows the language in those cross sections and especially of the things that are left dauphin and i think you would have the circumstances that is the case but you actually want to have them a liberal or college in middle east and china and africa us to bring in people from the culture who will allow that linguistic background with the danger to disavow the character to include on a laundry list i hope that is helpful. >> it is to me. yes there is something bible to be gained from the students new horizons as long as we avoid tokenism is in making mascots but no if you teach him political very for years to the great benefit that is a small example of one particular field how this can be done well so as far as these traditions are concerned personally i get a kick of exposing my students bonbon the hand of sexuality and abortion so they learn what western people especially great thinkers have to say about that. [laughter] >> first of all, i have no idea where you're more confident of the administrative cost and the faculty that mr. delaware the faculty that the power has shifted in the favor of the administration's sole i don't think there is any more reason that these two groups seem to be all there is. but i am not sure what you think that would help in the second question is they think you're too harsh on american vocationalism with the desire to make a living is legitimate and i agree that remember though liberal arts are free from the immediate need to make a living but we also have to say to that desire of those students because it is real. >> i am not at all optimistic of a administrative class but i am simply reflecting on what we are dealing with as the product of the current way to do things i don't know if moving away from that will move into a new area of improvement but i do know there is a problem of self perpetuation and exclusion and i have seen this operate in many places with reference to many individuals i have seen many a search committee make its decision on the basis of the kind of decisions we would prefer to see made about academic potential and day dedication based on political considerations usually it's not so much someone who has these political convictions as much as was made sure we do not hire someone who has these convictions. as long as there is no recourse that prevents that from happening and that is what motivates me to say should be looked at another way in terms of how we populate faculties? i have no guarantee to offer but 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 to a very prominent by the league institution that a candidate was excluded because prior to the undergraduate education with the in italy as a child of ministries taught sunday school and had the unspeakable act to put that on his resume a i was part of the committee that people being considered for a fellowship program and the applicant under discussion noted on the resonate he was the recipient of a branch from the bradley foundation and immediately protest was registered that we could not have someone like that participating in this fellowship program. i only say those two as at of many more to say we have a dysfunctional system how we populate our departments i would consider the floor to be open for suggestions but what we do have this dysfunctional. >> i very much like the idea to study alternative programs and letting students vote with their feet but i do wonder if that is a long-term winning strategy so here is my specific question can real liberal education take place as long as it has captured those modern notions of identity politics? don't we have to fight that fight directly? because these are the students that are segregated those that are left out of these alternative programs typically are deprived of the liberal education that we try to offer to them. so i wonder fave more direct confrontation really is pervasive don't we have to confront that head-on? . . >> public spirited practice, or public spirited impulse to make it possible for members of the latin 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, here in chicago when i was a student there, there was of course on the history of western civilization which was the capstone course, one of the two capstone courses of the hutchins college, i 14 course curriculum. i came back to teach 14 years later, there were alternatives civilization courses, russian civilization, chinese civilization, south asian civilization. and during the early time there there was a proposal computer 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 is egypt a part of, and it was denied 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 that does not come with the study of the foundational thinks of a 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 are doing this to show solidarity to our black students. we don't expect anybody to take it. that's almost 30 years ago. and lots of mistakes had been made by the question is how now under the present circumstances when you've got every administrator scared to death of being called a racist, sexist, or a homophobe, to somehow lean against the classification of the people by these groups, especially when they're still this huge pressure to make sure that we have diversity of every sort but intellectual diversity. so i'm open to fighting back. you can call attention to it, but it seems to me the weight around, if you can figure out a way to do it, fine, but the alternative is to look at the students as it 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 pusher integration in the beginning was all about. it's the whole idea of what america as -- is all about. i've got suggestions it somehow suggestions, we should have them, but i think it's speakers i think implicit in question was to do it right. you could have civilization program in which african civilizations whether egyptian or ethiopian or what have you were studied but they were studied properly with the languages, with a series attention to history, without the superficiality and the tokenism in 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. >> for the reason, look, it's very important to understand that there are lots of different ways in the world to negotiate being a human being. that we do not have a monopoly on humanity, and the introduction of these non-western sources and programs was a way to fix our condition. i 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, i mean, why call it a global course? you got a good book that you think people could be helped to understand, put in the course that addresses the question 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. >> yeah. >> zena, did you want -- >> i thought he heard a note in a question but maybe i was wrong. one of my concerns about this type of discussion is that we think so hard about the various physical these facing a university communities, difficulties with students and with faculty that we forget a sort of basic principle of any kind of community is a chip to meet people where they are. i think i just want to say that because i think, you know, our students, politicized any particular way and if they don't come that way i can get that way pretty quickly even in places like st. john's where it is not being offered by the instruction of the institution. person by person, student by student we have to meet these people where they are and offer them something better, rather than coming at them in a spirit of confrontation. that's all they wanted to say. that may been in the substance of the question i wanted to put that out there. >> can ask with the other two people comment on this question if it's not in position? >> 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 benefit option that has to be considered as well? i think what springs to my mind is one example of this, in bread berries their night 451 -- bread berries in a culture that burns books because they are threatening. but often swamped far, far away that are little bans the people who summarize because they can't trust to the page they can be incinerated but in their eyes they can't and shakespeare who introduce themselves, hello, i'm mathematica. and i look upon bradbury scale 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 benedict option? i'm not saying i'm advocating that but i am suggesting that are their multiplicity of strategies we can pursue? is that one of them? are the others such as erika has described? are the others such as st. john's represents? are there others such as what dr. kass has described? and how can we each in our own capacity to generate support for those endeavors? how can we resist those who would silence thought? how can we appeal to those who can arm and support what we do? what are the multiplicity of strategies? i think it would be a great mistake if we think there's one solution to this. how can we develop the multiplicity of solutions, whether it be think tanks or whether it be the heroic man of 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 getting the word of encouragement direction and thinking through for each of them. >> i wonder why do we call university and not multi-university if that's the case? the danger -- [inaudible] >> the danger in the question is we get to offer global education students would be lost into a variety of options that they don't understand. learning the language takes time. learning french takes time learning german, russian but little-known persian, mantra. those are difficult lessons. languages to teach. and it takes a lot of effort to acquire the abc little-known bring everything together. we are in a university because we want to bring a plurality under the guiding vision of something. it's very difficult. my fear is this is mostly a a fashion global. indian has global and international studies in case you're wondering. [laughing] however it is not enough. we need global and international, event the students of course, it's like a buffett. chinese buffett, very nice. you pick up a little bit there, although a bit of indian food and you think you are an expert in -- [inaudible] >> yes. [laughing] so my fear is we lose a sense of university and we have a multi-diversity were students are dazzled by the pride of option but it will not be able to bring it under the guiding vision of what is their essence. >> i very much enjoyed this conference, especially this panel. i, with leon, have been persuaded that it's important to begin with a student is, and the real problem is knowing where the student is and there are two things i want to say about that from my experience, from my university experience. i'm a university professor so i can teach the undergraduates, the school of medicine, the school of public health. and each one of these areas in the undergraduate arts in size, i was teaching in the writing seminar, the public health school i was teaching a course in mental disorders and mental health, and in the medical school i was teaching a regular 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's interesting, a 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 and its, verse kind of things and they were all, i did that they were all very surprised and very grateful that someone had taken the time to talk about their grammar, not simply the broad idea, which is pretty silly ideas most of the time. but in the school of medicine the issue is, i spoke about briefly yesterday, these young people, men, women have struggled very hard to get into the medical school that the hurdles are high and they are now tremendous intro competition with themselves and with, ultimately develop a true career as commitment in the process wanting to become a doctor. the important thing with them is to get them to stop saying, doctor, would you please to do with the answers going to be, with the question will be in the exam? i will memorize the answers and give them to you. to say the questions are big questions. think in terms of what kinds of research and openness would happen to make it possible to even, at an answer. i get many of hi them to go into research for this reason because they begin to realize it wasn't just a matter of getting a catechism right to get through the board exams. the school of public health as a told you yesterday, because they are working with victims and people standing in the way of public health problems as being the enemy and they being the champions, they can very much to ultimately fight about the west. the west isn't the enemy. they are progresses, leftists and all and you gradually begin to tell them there, no, no, hold on, this is 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 countries to make it possible for us to think in better terms of in public health. we've got to get everybody on the same wavelength, not by with everybody. now, that means with leon that i agree, start where they are. but a develope development perse will then make you realize that maybe the problem that we are working with because we are all university people begins to early and we should be with sarah working with the kids in grammar school and high school fighting the issues there. by the way, at johns hopkins i have to tell you, i think he's had a terrific record. supporting me. i'm very pleased -- [laughing] with the academic freedom that is been shown to me and the willingness to go far. so before i say anything more, there may be trouble in lots of places at johns hopkins is doing pretty good and i'm very pleased with it. >> are you suggesting that you done things that are controversial? [laughing] >> by the way, i do think in doing things, leon is right, but every now and then you have two punch back. >> not physically. >> not physically. >> we are the side that is against violence. >> even at johns hopkins they will occasionally say something that there will be a wave of something and you have to give them a punch back. >> the most important thing in university is respect. that's the first, that is the course of universe was respect. i was able, i thought it was true. the truth will set you free but they have been very good to me. what am i getting around to? and getting around to a development perspective. maybe we in universities should be attending some of our time, our part-time maybe to the high school education that our kids are getting. i believe our kids are coming to medical school and the college without the kind 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. niels father was another of the many of these people, else that you can have those high school teachers back together, you just have another depression. but those are great high school teachers. and those kinds of courses, my education in history, for example, in high school was a four-year course that begin for 13 year olds teaching committee can with ancient history with a sense of spectacle and the pageantry of history. but by the time we had gone through four years and by our 40 we saw history as process, ideas, motivations and themes and perhaps the toughest american history course taught in high school but it got you to be prepared for college. the kids now today we are trying to correct and teachers in high school and college are doing their job, maybe we should attend permit more of the high school teachers to talk about how we ought to be preparing, had out to be preparing them for us. but i wondered whether -- [applause] >> 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 have just about exhausted our time. leon, did you what is that the word? >> actually i do want to say one word not about this panel, but i want to sit word which i suspect is a word that will speak for everybody. this is an extraordinary institution here at princeton. the james madison program. and it has produced a climate for honest inquiry. for 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 that support, but they are the dream come the extension and the work of robbie george, and he is a national treasure and the experience we've had you today -- [applause] >> 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 at the top of that list, to thank above all for the inspiration. thank you all. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> more now from the recent conference at princeton university called a worthy life finding meaning in america. the next panel focuses on bioethics and the potential for technology to advance the physical and mental capabilities of human beings. this is about one hour 45 minutes. >> we turn rather abruptly from the prescientific to the scientific come from the human experience of a human to the scientific account of man, its implications and what we imagine to be its implications.

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