Think About It

James Baldwin's appeal and admonition ring as true as they did in the 1960s, when the novelist became the country's conscience - and also started to feel like a broken record, repeating a message that white America refused to accept. Rich Blint, an expert on Baldwin at NYC's New School, explains how Baldwin's 1961 novel, Another Country, speaks to us today and what it would mean to heed Baldwin's advice for the nation to finally leave its romantic adolescent delusions behind, and truly grow up.

The First Amendment was ratified in 1791. Are we witnessing the death of this hallowed American practice and ideal in today's campus controversies? Professor Robert Cohen is America's foremost historian of the free speech movement. Have we lost our way ? How are today's controversies different from skirmishes and culture wars of the past? Cohen is the author of Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s and The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. 

Affirmative action is under fire. A lawsuits claims that Asian American students are discriminated against by Harvard's admissions policies, while other minority candidates get a leg up. What is at stake? And how do we best think about this legal issue, playing out in one of America's great symbolic sites for opportunity? Professor Frank Wu is Distinguished Professor at San Francisco's UC Hastings College of Law, and has published widely, both in professional journals and in many media outlets.

And how can the university educate citizens for democracy who know that with certain rights come certain obligations? How is higher education linked to democracy in general? I discuss these and other topics with Amaney Jamal, who is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Her most recent book is Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy At All? 

Today's news comes from blogs, podcasts, websites in various shades of truth. Are we just listening to stories we agree with, or are we getting a wider range of perspectives than ever before? If there are fewer editors, are we getting access to raw truth, or more craziness? Rosenfeld is University Professor of Law and Comparative Democracy, Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Program on Global and Comparative Constitutional Theory at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Who changed American universities for the better? Who fought for equality of opportunity, fair access, and more comprehensive curricula? Stefan Bradley, Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and author of Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League, details how Black students' work on campus was as important as the work of Civil Rights activists in the streets in forging a better reality for all Americans.

"Universities and colleges are the most effective site for practicing the First Amendment in the United States today." Professor Sigal Ben-Porath or the University of Pennsylvania and author of Free Speech on Campus, proposes to find a way for inclusive freedom, where students, faculty and staff rights are respected while allowing all opinions to be voiced.

Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter tells the dramatic story of a woman cast out of society for adultery and condemned to wear a badge of shame in Puritan New England. Renowned psychologist Carol Gilligan explains that Hawthorne’s masterpiece is America’s most radical novel because it points to a “new truth [that would place] the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” The book holds the promise of authentic love and true democracy.

“On or around December 1910, human character changed.” Virginia Woolf’s 1927 masterpiece To The Lighthouse teaches us how to make sense of time. How can it be that years pass and we barely blink an eye, but an afternoon can stretch into near eternity, when we want something, or are denied what we desire? Professor Jared Stark has written about Woolf and taught her work for many years. His most recent book, A Death of One's Own: Literature, Law, and the Right to Die, was published in 2018.

What stories should we remember, and which ones are we forced to forget? Maxine Hong Kingston's 1975 masterpiece, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, transformed American literature by giving expression to the experience of Chinese Americans. Author and professor Ava Chin has been teaching The Woman Warrior for many years. In this conversation we examine how this gripping coming of age story teaches us which parts of us are true to ourselves and which have been imposed on us by others.

Does America have a problem with censorship? Yes we do, explains Professor Patricia Williams of Columbia University. But censorship becomes a problem first and foremost when the power to silence, suppress or threaten free expression is exercised by the state. When we look at current debates about censorship, things don’t get easy, but they definitely get interesting. Professor Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and has published widely on race, gender, and law.

In 2017, Cameron published a widely discussed essay, “I’m a black UChicago graduate. Safe spaces got me through college" in response to the University of Chicago’s letter to its freshmen class that there would be no safe spaces, trigger warnings, or limits of offensive content at the university. Cameron offers thoughtful advice on how to include all students in difficult conversations without shying away from controversy. Cameron now works in Washington, after receiving an M.B.E. degree at Johns Hopki

When they go low, we go...where? "We need more civility" in our political discourse is a frequent complaint lodged by politicians on all sides. Teresa Bejan, who teaches political theory at Oxford University, traces the history of civility from early modern English and American thought, especially in John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Roger Williams. She explains what "mere civility" means, and how it can be the common ground for arguments over things that usually divide people, including free speech. 

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's 1958 Things Fall Apart transformed the world by vividly imagining the story of an African community in English, the language of the colonizers, and yet on its own terms. Manthia Diawara, a Mali-born and European-educated renowned filmmaker and writer himself, explains why Things Fall Apart ranks among the great novels of all time.

Why does the ACLU defend the alt-right? What else does it do? Join me in a thoughtful conversation with Emerson Sykes, Staff Attorney at the ACLU on Free Speech, Technology, and Privacy, about the important role of the ACLU in upholding everyone's speech rights regardless of political affiliation. Emerson holds degrees from Stanford, New York University, and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and has worked in both politics and the law.