Enemies. Robert george, when did you first meet the man sitting next to you . In the 1990s after he came to princeton and we are together in faculty seminars but we didnt know each other very well. We wouldhe just say hello to eah other and we interacted in the seminars. We began teaching together and 2007. Thats whe when our Teaching Partnership began. Host how does the Teaching Partnership began . Guest they set up a magazine i think it was called green light [inaudible] taking a course with a civil liberty and he asked who i would like to have a dialogue with and i said i would love a chance to dialogue so we got together and had about a 45 minute dialogue on the recording. He continued to talwe continuedt least three or four hours that weve got to continue this conversation and weve now been going for 11 or 12 years around the country primarily. But we have had a wonderful time and the family is just magnificent. We know the truth is bigger than us, but we aspire to it. The meeting that began the Teaching Partnership and the green knight magazine. They wanted a feature in each issue of one professor by another. So, foraj the first issue they said we would like you to do the interview and he kindly said he would like to interview me. So, technically that was wasnt a conversation, it was an interview. Succumb andrew came to me and said pr starting a magazine. We would like the first to feature cornell west as the interviewer and we told him he could interview anybody he wanted and he said he would like to interview you. Are you willing to be interviewed by professor west . I said let me get this straight, he said he would like to interview me . I want you to send a message back. Tell him professor george says it is i should be seeking you. He didnt catch that reference. I said of course i wont do it, so we have that wonderful dialogue that is included and on and on to the car and im holding my hand on the car latch for about an hour. Then just about a couple of the after that, he remembers the faculty. We got a letter from the dean oo the college saying we want to encourage more of our senior faculty members to teach seminars. We want more interaction between the top more established scholars and freshmen. So, when i saw that letter and the request it occurred to me we should have that conversation of cornell and i were having with 16 wonderful bright and enthusiastic. Why only 16, why did you limit it . There was a story behind that as well because once the word got out that we were going to be teaching it together, they have to read all of the essays to see which ones we would choose him after that we decided we are not going to try to do that we will just let the Registrars Office choose randomly and then they decided they would do it on a firstcome first serve basis. They could start signing up at 7 00 on a particular morning and then of course at 7 00 this morning, they crashed the computer system. Thats the beautiful thing is one that teaches in the undergraduate education and handson each write a thesis and focuses very much on the undergrads at harvard, yale, berkeley, chicago and wonderful places that when its a highquality education, princeton is number one. We invited you on to talk about your book. We have Harvard University press in princeton University Press who are interested in having us do that for them and we felt like the trouble is hes got these days the guys with a lot of responsibilities and obligations. We traveled around the country doing conversations and so forth, so we will get to it. Weve done some interviews together and we recently had one in the the Washington Times and washington examine your and also in the printed magazine. One of the things you do in your book the clash of orthodoxies as you allow other scholars to review queue data readout you. And the humanities and social sciences, we learn by producing evidence and leading a critic respond. Thats how intellectual life in the field of philosophy began with socrates engaging critics and subjecting their views permitting them. We are oldfashioned scholars and we believe in that kind of education. And youve spent enough time talking about socrates and aristotle. They used to say pray for me. It was the education and transformative dialogue that makes us examine our presuppositions to talk about this over time how do we learn how did i utilize when you give up a presupposition to become more willing to grow and develop because you learn how to live as you live as you die. Its the way that you view the world knowing there will be endless progress and possibilities always in the name of what you are after. Is it fair to say that its about examination . Is also more than just self examination but a matterr of sef surrender. Hes not just examining himself, he is take this and see what you can do with it so what you get so forth andty and a self surrendering something bigger than you do the prophetic witnessou you cant love until e disagree and there is some overlap so whatever the barriers are we are going to find that even as we wrestle with the various issues. To render your self capable is the fulfillment and a great paradox surrendering ourselves and being christlike. But getting to the point that you are capable of that, you need the self mastery to control your own wayward desires and your own passions to put them under the control of the reason. Appetite or fashion is under the control of the reason. Passion is in charge and the goal of creating rationalization for activity that can only harm us. How do we get to the selfmastery . The liberal Arts Education comes in. N. We get to the selfmastery by interrogating our own assumptions putting on the table our deepest identities and that is a big challenge because people dont want to do that. We tend to wrap our emotions around our convictions which is good in a way because we would never be motivated for justice for the common good but yet if we wrap the emotions too tightly we abandon any possibility of subjecting ourselves from our assumptions and arguments to criticism. We become incapable of eating what we should aspire to be and that is an interrogators of ourselves. Host guest what he is getting at is something that is so badly needed that you lose the quality of the character as it relates to the various virtues and values but thats something the market cannot teach and there is something deeper going on. It is about integrity, honesty, decency, generosity. When we talk about this one of the Great Questions is always why did socrates never cry and jesus never laughed. He puts the selfmastery rightly so but that is in the proper response to your mothers funeral. But it appears the proper response because socrates never cries so there is a love of wisdom that is important. He weeps precisely because the selfmastery still has a role but its not enough to surrender. The tears shatter the numbness inside of ones heart and the indifference you are a human being like everybody else and as you know when you go to this church is we are teaching the world so much about how to love. Hes in his own tradition even given our disagreements. Every human being faces the question of what is the point of my life. What is worth living for what itisworth doing or what is worthwhile. Every human being is going to be in a certain culture and will have to react to what is coming after him or his culture because it is easy to believe and we are in a culture that reinforces our belief that what its worth living for is to stop us from a prestige, social standing. Ggolfgolf isnt bad in itselft depends on how you use those things that to make them the ultimate goal is to see what human life is all about and this is the mission for ourselves and the students to make people understand that the integrity, honor, decency. These are truly fundamental to y and make life worth living. This is what we should aspire to. Not for the well for glory or power or influence or status or social standing. That is a big challenge for those that are high achievers. Places like princeton and harvard those students are going somewhere and theyve got a big future with investment banking, medicine and other fields. But they face powerful temptations to believe that it is standing in its status and power and wealth and being looked up to by other people that is what matters. If you havent gotten close to being there until you have the selfmastery. You try telling a princeton or harvard student or any student these days in this culture view might be called upon to stand up for what you believe in. If you are openminded and engage you may have a set of opinions that marks you as an outsider and somebodyy to be rejected. So you have the integrity to stand for that knowing that it could cost you in terms of further education, social standing, and your friends and things like that. We think back and we remember how she died. He refused. It was the unpopularity and the free speech. He gets in a lot of trouble. In addition to that, he is willing to deal with the unpopularity of his commitment to the understanding and i try to do that within my own progressive circles because it is not a question of popularity. We want to be in the world and not of the world, we want to be against the world and tied to a kingdom that is so much greater and grander. The kingdom of god is within you and everywhere you go you ought to leave a little effort behind. Theres coldness, cruelty, hatred and resentment that is the dominant way of the world. How are you going to come to terms with it . You can always feed into the self righteousness but not the character of your own. The problem is that we tend to be tribal and tribalism today is a problem in our culture. If yourwn own convictions and ld you to a view that put you outside of the team and you publicly dissent, you could be in big trouble. Thats true whether you are a progressive order like me in the most recent president ial campaign i couldnt bring myself to vote for donald trump. I dont want to litigate that right here. I am just using this as an example. And because i would not play for the team, i got a lot of heat from the team. On a softer as anything worse than donald trump and that the pushback from others but they found themselves in the same position when he refused to support Hillary Clinton he got the same i was getting on the conservative sit side from the liberal and Progressive Side from the left. He wouldnt say okay im going to stay silent on this for the team. Host between the two of you how many times have you been arrested . Arrested . Guest [inaudible] last time was it down in ferguson . They got c a call how much do yu need, he knows im broke. [laughter] but thats the kind of love and respectt and support that he ha. Was it to two counts on the International Religious freedom i had served and was elected so i was sworn in by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. I asked if he would do me the honor of holding the bible for me. Thwe got the wonderful people of upstate new york. It was. Tubman, the wonderful people gave us the bible, and imagine what that must have cost a poor woman in her time. It shows something about her faith, but in any event they gave it on hold when i was being sworn in. As we were walking up the steps to go in them building, im walking with brother cornell and as we passed a couple police officers, i see one of them catch his eye, and the two of them stare for a moment and give each other a nod and we continue walking in. I turned to him and see what is that all about and he said this is the first time ive been to the Supreme Court when i wasnt here to get arrested. We went to jail for a critique of wall street or Something Like that. It was a magnificent moment. There is a new 25th edition out on the race matters. In the introduction you write we live in one of the darkest moments in history, a bleak time of blackout and imperial meltdown. I need a relative eclipse of the honesty and decency that we have normalized to say weve made them a normal way of life if we naturalize the criminality which is to say we make the crimes look as if they are natural. It could be drum strikes, market manipulation, none of them go to jail. It could be so many different ways but what we need is our prophetic fight back. It is a moral and spiritual issue as well. Not an abstract, but by example. Right now the american empire is a neoliberal. Like how many times a year do you hear the word on television its obviously this and its obviously that. That is to show that they are part of this park crowd. We dont believe in that and this isolation, we believe in the way some and its tied to theo richness. That is just a sign of the emptiness and symptom of society that is idolized smart and rich. Barack obama dropped 26,000 in the last year. He got a nobel peace prize. Something like as many strikes. What happens is the spectacle can hide in the substance when it comes to morality and spirituality and this is what breaks the ideology. The substance is always deep in the political ideology. Theres a nuclear catastrophe, mobile catastrophe, survival of the slickest and the smartest thing thats also an economic catastrophe. Its to the bottom 160 million, they have the equipment and 50 of our fellow citizens. This is grotesque. It looks like the louis 14 times and now we havee a tax deal to o tightening the benefits for the poor. What did you do to the least of these unto us, the poor, immigranttheimmigrant, the musl, black, indigenous, so forth and so on, that is a spiritual orientation. His behemoths. When it comes to economic equality i dont have that as the goal of equality and dignity with the declaration of independence all men are created equal but i have chosen a career as an academic i know that isnt highpaying i could have gone to law school and made more money or Business School and make more money than that because he generally they make more money. As long as it is fair making more money in other people with economic equality but negative four opportunity because we are losing with those prospects of upward mobility i grew up in West Virginia in central appalachia i remain close to people there my entire family are there all of my family my High School Friends this was donald trump why . Because they feel the effects of the neglected and left behind economically, culturally, and they feel bigotry and prejudice but certainly on the basis of their own experience there is the cultural elite that has only its own interest in mind not the people of central appellation values of those peoe so those that condemn the trump voters ive got a friend of donald trump i will h give his him some credit for some good things he has the bottle so that things but the is a mistake to imagine that those supporters of Donald Trumps largest racist and a big hit san horrible people they have legitimate reasons even the establishment of either party responded and he beecher 02 them reach out to them know whether they were wise to do that i have been debating that in western virginia but he noticed there were forgotten and left behind and held in contempt and with very economy and he benefited. Host cornel west do you agree . They are a diverse lot there is a slice that our homophobic and increase the stand but that does not exhaust the whole group broke there is always the slice but there is also the trump voters that voted for bernie and obama. So to keep track of that diversity you never want to downplay the role of the legacy of White Supremacy in the country no doubt about that precisely because it is so vicious you cannot allow it to be the only thing the you see from these other cultures or the black intellectuals little you can see is White Supremacy that is always linked to Something Else. This link to slavery, patriarchy, of homophobia of a also empire black and white soldiers a come together to go to the philippines treat them like they were cockroachs because no the risense empire so you haven to be very honest of to tell the truth tell the truth of who they are they are heterogeneous many were suffering under the policies under barack obama of the top 1 percent cut 95 percent of the Income Growth that is morally grotesque but i want a floor of 01 to focus on poverty. The poverty is attacked i am trying to do with barack obama with the Democratic Party here they have no concern about poor people tied to upward mobility with the professional middle class coming to people who who were working or report he had very little to say other than with movement on health care a Market Driven program coming in out of his the heritage probation coming from mitt romney is not known to be on the edge of fighting poverty but he did sunday some things in regard to health care that is for the Health Care Program comes from to be honest about that. Lets try to tell the truth for ruth parties when it comes to these issues of poverty putting pressure on the Republican Party but the underside of this to be honest is the Market DrivenCorporate Media to make him the center of the of entertainment to make big money of one of the ceos made a very clear donald trump is bad for the country but good for us because of revenues and redeems and every twitter. And brady and spur growth Bernie Sanders cut 20 seconds to every 30 minutes it is Market Driven even in the media thank god for cspan. Can you imagine but it would be in this country without cspan . Because it did amazon Corporate Media. Msnbc . Those are propaganda machines. Now they are kind enough to invite amazon and we have dialogue but leonora youre notou going to get the most balanced view they have their own agenda. You have to be interested in the truth not your agenda. This is highly relevant in education especially Higher Education but you have got to tell the truth but too often quite extreme whitewashes American History