Professor west has written many books including race matters and brother west. Professor george books include making men moral and conscience and the enemies. Host Robert George, when did you first meet the man sitting next to you . Mustve been in the 1990s, a little while after brother cornel came to princeton, and we were together in faculty, seminars a think under the auspices of the center for human values that we didnt know each other very well. We would just say hello. We interacted a a bit in the seminars. We began teaching together in 2007 and is a whole story behind that. I dont know if you want me to go into that kind of detail but thats what our Teaching Partnership and friendship really began to how did that Teaching Partnership began . Guest there was a brother named andrew. [talking over each other] he set up a a magazine i think called green here to his teaching my course on public election. He was taking a course from you, Civil Liberties, and asked me who i would like to have dialogue with, who was a conservative. I said theres someone i would love to have had a chance to engage in dialogue with, and its Robert George. So we got together. We had about a 45 minute dialogue based on the recording. The recording was over. Brother and to let their we to talk for at least two or three hours, walk back to the car and continue to talk and said weve got to continue this conversation. Weve been going now for 11, 12 years all about the country teaching at princeton, primarily adventures of ideas. But we had a a wonderful time. Ive learned so much from rutherford robbie and vice versa and his family, just magnificent hes been so good to me. My family. We just love to engage the subject matter pic we know the truth is bigger than others. And beauty certainly bigger than us but we quest for the we aspire to it. Guest ill tell you more about our meeting, our meeting to begin the Teaching Partnership. The green light magazine,. [talking over each other] f scott fitzgerald. Guest they wanted to have feature in each issue an interview of one professor by another professor. Andrew was a religious major, so for the very first issue they contacted brother cornel and said we would like you to do the interview. The would you like to interview . He kind of city life to interview me. So technically what that was was not a a conversation. It was an interview. It up almost being a very deep conversation. So andrew came to me then and said professor george, were starting a magazine. Would like to have an interview feature in each issue. Would like the first interview to feature cornel west as the interviewer. We told them they could interview anybody who wanted and he said he would like to interview you. Would you be willing . And i said andrew, let me get this straight. He said he could interview anybody he wanted and he said he would like to interview me . He said that right. I want you to send a message back to professor west. I want you to tell professor west that professor george says that it is isaac should be seeking baptism from you. [laughing] and a partially brother and it was a brilliant did not catch that reference. John the baptist, baptism of jesus in the jordan river. The he responded by saying what . I said just tell them that. Hell understand when talking about. He said okay, but we do it . Of course i will do it. We had that wonderful dialogue which was reported and then we went on and on and on after that all the way down to the car and im holding my hand on the car ledge for about half hour. And then just a couple of weeks after that we got the senior members of the faculty got a letter from the dean of the college, nancy, saying we want to encourage more of our senior faculty members to teach freshman seminars. We want more interaction between our top more established scholars and the freshman. So when i saw that letter and a request that we teach at the seminars, it occurred to me that what we should do is have that conversation that cornel and i were having with 16 wonderful, bright, enthusiastic princeton freshman. Host why only 16 . Guest thats princeton smolder there is a story behind that as well because once the word got out were going to be teaching this together, there was a big demand and had to read all the essays to see which particular 60 we would choose. Guest we decide we would not do that, just let the Registrars Office choose randomly. And in the Registrars Office decide that they would do it on a firstcome firstserved basis and students were supposed to sign up or they could start signing up at 7 00 by particular morning and, of course, at 7 00 that morning they crash the computer system. Thats true. Thats a beautiful thing about princeton. I think princeton [talking over each other] undergraduate education in terms of hands on 16 students, each senior bites a senior thesis, still focused very much on the undergrad, harvard, yale, berkeley, chicago, Howard University and other wonderful places but when it comes to highquality undergraduate education, princeton is number one i must say. Wider to come back . I love the others, too but i believe in the truth. Speaking the truth. Host weve invited you on to talk about your books but why havent you written a book together . Guest we talked about a lot and we have Harvard University press and princeton University Press are interested in having as do that for them. We both very much would like to do it. The trouble is you to really busy guys, a lot of responsibilities and obligations. Weve traveled around the country doing public dialogues in conversations and so forth. So we will get to it but we havent yet. Weve done some interviews together the we recently had one in, was at the Washington Times and the washington examiner, quite a lengthy one. Absolutely. Also in the princeton magazine trying one of the things you do in your book, professor george, the clash orthodoxies is you let other scholars to rebut you in your views. Guest thats how philosophy works. Thats a education works. Thats how learning works. Thats all scholarship proceeds. Especially not exclusively in the humanities and social sciences. We learn by giving an argument, providing reasons, producing evidence then letting a critic respond to that. This is how intellectual life in the western tradition, certainly the field of philosophy began with socrates engaging critics, subjecting their views to criticism and permitting them to subject his views to criticism. Cornel and i are old fashion socratic scholars. We both believe in that kind of education. Host and you both spent a lot of time talking up socrates and aristotle. Guest absolutely. Very much so. Harassments used to say think socrates, pray for me. He was christian. We understand the riches of the socratic legacy of athens tied to the prophetic legacy of jerusalem which is to say that self interrogation, self questioning of what the greeks called deep education, not cheap schooling that can transformative dialogue that makes is us examine our basic assumptions and presuppositions. Talk about this all the time. How do we learn how to die . You die when you give up a certain set of fixed assumptions and presuppositions and become more clear, more willing to grow and develop because youre learning how to live as you learn how to die, and education is very much a matter of trying to kill the prejudice can presupposition, the narrow dog, under ways in which you view the world and were to be expansive knowing you are still going to end up finite, fallible, endless progress, in this part of the building always in the name of which are after. Host would be fair to say your books are all about selfexamination and away . Guest but also the prophetic legacy of jerusalem because as a christian, its more than just selfexamination or its a matter of self surrendering, a matter of self empty, a matter of self givin. When jesus on that on the crost examining himself. Hes giving himself against emptying himself at the deepest level. Take this love and see what you can do with it because i love you so. So the what you actually get is socratic legacy of selfexamination but the legacies of jerusalem, judaism, christianity, mosul mizzen, islam and so forth is really one of self surrendering to something bigger than you so that you get that fusion of socratic selfexamination and prophetic witness here you cant love unless you take a risk. You cant love and lust your vulnerable. You cant love unless you do it, we try to do with what, given our disagreements we know as human beings, this person made in the image of god, that theres human so whatever the barriers are were going to find that overlook even as we honestly wrestle with the various issues that we fight over. Guest one of the point i make to our students is to render yourself capable of self surrender which as a christian i agree with cornel is our ultimate obligation and, indeed, fulfill it. Thats the great paradox of christianity that our fulfillment is in surrendering ourselves and being christlike. But i stress that to get there to the point where you are capable of that you need self mastery. You need to be able to control your own wayward desires, your own wants, your own passions, put them under the control of reason. Plato teaches us in a well ordered soul, reason is in charge, and appetite or passion is under the control of reason. When things are disordered, passion is in charge and reason is in specialized to the goal of creating rationalizations for activity that can only really harm us and others. How do we get to selfmastery . Heres were selfexamination, the examined life, liberal Arts Education comes in. We get to selfmastery by subjecting ourselves to criticism, interrogating our own assumptions, putting of the table even our most cherished, deepest, even identity forming beliefs. Thats the challenge because people dont want to do that. Its difficult for any of us to do that. We human beings being human, with ten to wrap our emotions about our convictions. Which is good in a way because if we didnt do that we would never be motivated to act for were the causes, for justice, for the common good, for human rights and dignity. And yet if we wrap our emotions to tightly around our convictions we become dogmatist dogmatists. We abandon any possibility of subjecting ourselves, our assumptions, our arguments to criticism. We become incapable of being what we should all aspire to be and that is interrogators of ourselves. Host in your book making men moral you write laws cannot make men moral, only men can do that and they can do that only by freely choosing to do the morally right thing for the right reason. Professor west, is that something you agree with . Guest absolutely, absolutely. I think what brother robbie is getting at is something so badly needed in our present day, because we live in this market of Society Obsessed with spectacle and image and position and money and status that you lose quality of character, quality of soul. We could call soul craft which have to do with the ways of being human you choose as relates to various virtues and as relates to various values. So in brother robby talks about moral character that something that the market cant teach. That something that being a professional cant teach you. Its something deeper going on. Its got to shape and mold you fundamentally about that self surrender. Its about love. Its about integrity, honesty, decency, generosity. We talk about selfmastery with regard to socrates. One of the Great Questions of western civilization is always why did socrates never cry . And jesus never laughed . Socrates never crying midhe put the primacy on selfmastery rightly so. But selfmastery is not the properly response to your mothers funeral. Tears proper response. Because you love them. Jesus wept because he loved. Socrates never cries. So theres a love for wisdom and thats important but you got to out soccer ties socrates and make a way to jerusalem. Jerusalem begins with just the two zepeda people, a persecuted people, that pictures of enslae people. Of jews these of the pharaoh and jesus weeps for jerusalem picky weeks precisely because he loves so the selfmastery as a role but its not enough. Self surrender, thats where the tears come because tears shatters the numbness inside of ones partner shatters calluses, indifference and lets window lo and behold, you are human being like everybody else. You are calling for help like everybody else. And as you know brother because you attend black churches and congratulatory phase of work in this magnificent place, but would you go to those black churches the best of those black churches is what . We are a people who have been hated for 400 years but we are teaching the world so much about how to love. John cole trained love supreme, Martin Luther king, that is highquality soul craft. Brother robbie, leaked in his own weight in his own tradition to that. I victim it on ways of them tradition even given our disagreements. Host . Guest trade try to any humn think ultimate faces a question whats the point of my life . Whats worth living . Whats worth doing x its worthwhile . Now, every human being is going to be in a certain culture, going to be formed by that, but how to act in the context of that culture, is going to have to react to what is coming at him or her in that culture. And for just about every human being there are going to be powerful temptations, because its easy to believe. In fact, we live in a culture that reinforces our beliefs that whats worth living for his status, prestige, social standing, well, power wealth. Those are not in themselves bad things and its a mistake to condemn those if they are bad in themselves. Well isnt that innocent. Power isnt bad in itself it depends on how you use those things. But to make them whats fundamental, to make them the ultimate goal is to fail to see what human life is really all about. And what is worthwhile in human life. This is our mission ourselves and for our students, to make people understand that integrity, honor, decency, these are what are truly fundamental. These are what make life worth living. This is what we should aspire to. Not in itself for their own sakes wealth or glory or power or influence or status or social standing. Thats a big challenge for young men and women who are super high achievers. Weve been left to teach those kinds of students our entire lives in place like princeton and harvard. Though students are going somewhere and it got big futures in investment banking, as lawyers, in medicine of the field and they can do a lot of good in all of those fields but they really taste powerful temptations to believe that it is standing in status, influence, power, wealth, being looked up to by other people that is what really matters. And you really havent gotten it there and nobody is finally there to our entire lives but you havent even gotten close to being there until youve got the strength of character, the selfmastery to be willing for the sake of what try, whats good and sacrifice it all. You try telling a princeton student or a harvard student or a william student or really any student these days in this culture, you might be called on to give all that up, to stand up for what you believe in. You may arrive at if you are truly openminded, if are truly going to listen or engage you will arrive at a set of opinions that mark you as an outsider, as a bad guy, a somebody to be rejected. Now are you going to have integrity to stand for that, knowing that it could cost you professionally in terms of further education, social standing, your friends and things like that . When we think back to socrates, cornel and i, we remember how he died. Guest the hemlock. Guest the make and drink the hemlock. He was a martyr. Guest died for his fellow citizens. Guest he refused to go sign on the truth even when the truth was unpopular. He did want to hear in depth line 24 a, it was because of my unpopularity. Fearless speech, and intimidated speech. A plain speech and it can get you into trouble. Brother robbie gets a lot of deeper trouble. I do. Guest just hanging out with me. A lot of trouble. But in addition to that, that hes willing to deal with unpopularity based on his own commitment to is understanding what it is to be a person of integrity. And i try to do that within my own progressive circles as well because its not a question of popularity. We recheck the chains of conformity. We want to be nonconformist. We want to be in the world and not of the world. We want to be over against the world. We want to be tied to a kingdom that is so much greater and grander than, this is what i learned at Shiloh Baptist church, the kingdom of god is within you, then everywhere you go you want to leave a Little Heaven behind. That kingdom of god means what, in this world the world of cruelty, domination, oppressi, hatred, resentment, that the dominant ways of the world. What you going to do now that you are in a . How are you going to come to terms with it . Be a nonconformist. Not out of selfrighteousness. We try to keep each other accountable because you can always fade into a selfrighteousness and not acknowledge yourself critical character of your own stand. We tend to be tribal, and tribalism today is a big problem. Guest all around the world and in our culture. People expect you to play for the team, but if your own convictions, your own reflections, your own inquiries lead you to a view that puts you outside the team on this one, and you publicly dissent or you can be in very big trouble. That is true whether youre progressive like cornel, a conservative like me, in the most recent president ial campaign. I could not in the end bring myself to vote for donald trump. I disregarded as morally unfit to be president of the United States. I dont want to litigate that here, im just using this as an example. And because i wouldnt play for the team, i got a lot of heat from the team. You want to elect Hillary Clinton. I opposed her, too. I saw her of anything worse than donald trump that got a lot of pushback from other people but cornel fan fetisov in the same position. When he refused to support Hillary Clinton after she had gotten the nomination, and supported Bernie Sanders. He got the same heat i i was getting on the conservative side from the progressives, from the left but he wouldnt yield. He wouldnt say okay, im going to stay silent on this for the team. Host between the two of your family times have you been arrested . Guest arrested . Hes that the jail door. Im not. I ha