who this week is best but this this
allergy to nuance and complexity which
is of course what thought is we do new
ones in complexity at universities
inevitably leads to a world where the
the corollary lack of trust develops
because we engage with each other
through conversation in an in a trusting
way you know we have to develop common
ground and of course the next step is
the devaluation about which harms the
worried of the spiritual there are some
here tonight who have been kind enough
to tell me you've read my book baseball
as a road to God it's interesting if you
read baseball as a road to God which I
could only write after Lisa's death
because I could only be public about my
spirituality then you'll see that it's
really not a book about baseball and
it's really not a book about God it's
it's a book about and the word I use in
the book is a word that hums are you
scientism and the danger of scientism
the danger of making science into a
religion that is the only true religion
the triumphalism now has all told us
that there is the known and we impart
that hopefully to our students we have
experts here on what is known and and
what we have cognitively and we should
give every bit of that that we have to
our students and then because we are a
research university there is the
knowable but not yet known the knowable
but not yet known and that's of course
what a research university does it
discovers the next generation of
knowledge and and that becomes part of
the virtuous cycle of them of an party
but then and and this was at the S
of what hamza said i think then there is
a third category which is neither known
or knowable and but not yet known if we
mean by known known in our cognitive
terms that's where scientism comes in if
you end the block there if it's all
capable of knowledge through science
then you've left out perhaps the most
important and that is those things that
are ineffable ineffable beyond our
putting into words they're so deep like
love love the meaning of life the fact
that there is a dimension called the
spiritual the fact that that there is a
God not necessarily an anthropomorphic
or interventionist God although perhaps
even that but something that goes beyond
our capacity for words that all the
great religions describe as God and we
need as we approach that to approach
that third category that goes beyond
science with deep humility and and and
never with the triumphalism of extra
ecclesiam nulla Salus because that
displays a pride which is the Greek
tragedy floor of hubris taken to its
extreme so it is that it brings great
pleasure to me every time I walk into my
new office on the fifth floor of the
Student Center here
I always enter through or most of the
time I enter through the spiritual life
center because it's wonderful for me to
see the activity there it's wonderful
for me to see the the affirmation of the
spirit that's true and the work of the
Islamic sent there in the Brompton
Center and everything else and I'll just
close with a story
of my first week here at NYU as
president I I had been named president
it was made 2001 so it was before 9/11
and the students in the Brahmin Center
were the first to invite me to come
visit with them and it was a Friday
night and they all gather for Shabbat
dinner on Friday night and then and then
they go back to the Brompton Center and
they asked me to come over after Shabbat
dinner and I I left Lisa we usually
tried to have time together at home on
Friday night I left her about 8:30 I
think to go over and I said honey I'll
be back in about an hour and when I
walked in shortly before midnight
my beloved understanding wife looked at
me and I said to her because I'd come
from the law school where we built a
little community everybody knew
everybody's name and I said to her you
know honey I think there's a chance I
think that my message of community got
through these students tonight and I
can't I'm sorry I'm late I'm sorry we
missed our Friday night but I was on
such a roll with them persuading them of
the importance of community and she
looked at me and she said honey where
did you go tonight
and I said to the Brockman senton I
remember she's Jewish and she said I
said Friday night and she said where
they bent
I said Shabbat dinner and she said and
you think you taught them about
community
you see that's the wonder of an eye
though love affair right because an ID a
love affair allows you to to understand
the context in love the way this person
is saying to you this is the way you
look to the world how absurd of you to
think and how absurd of me to think
every time the elevator opens does that
go up to the fifth floor and I see the
students the Muslim students gathered
for prayer I just said my heart leaps
for joy every time that elevator happens
or I see it happening and that's the
wonderful work that's being done here we
have to avoid the pride that I was
taught in Brooklyn in the 1950s if we do
if we embrace the ecumenical mission of
our faiths at their best of this place
at its best of our universities as they
fight against simplicity and advance
truth or this miniaturized world can be
a world of much great joy and not fear
and don't listen to anybody that tries
to scare you
about people that are different from you
[Applause]
[Applause]
so let me first begin by thanking both
of you for your reflections for your
combination of story and abstraction if
you will which often sits at the heart
of what makes the sacred tick I don't
quite know where to begin in terms of
opening up the conversation between you
but the scholar in me wants to ask right
here at the beginning as we've been
using this language of the sacred and
the secular like as you were reflecting
on your remarks do those terms actually
mean anything anymore
what what are they referring to what is
the difference between the secular and
the sacred what's the difference with
the sacred and the religious or the
secular and the state but what are we
playing with when we're playing with
this big distinction that underlies both
of your thoughts well one of the
beautiful words in our language is
sacrifice and one of the religious
aspects of baseball is the sacrifice
bunt the word the word sacrifice is the
Latin root is to make sacred and so at
the root of sacredness is really the
idea of sacrificing things for greater
things and whenever you have that
whether it's from a secular person or a
religious person you have something
sacred and in my estimation
I read a an op-ed in the Los Angeles
Times about It's a Wonderful Life which
in when I was growing up that was an
American ritual I think to watch that
around Thanksgiving and
Jimmy Stewart I was just actually at
Princeton where he went
Jimmy Stewart plays a character who
keeps sacrificing his dreams for other
people's dreams and and he's got a lot
of resentment he's a bit of a
passive-aggressive in the film but by
the end of it he realizes what an
incredible life he's had and what what
deep meaning was in those sacrifices but
the article was arguing what a horrible
movie it was and how terrible a
philosophy that was because why should
we give up our dreams for other people's
dreams and and I thought that was just
such a testimony to the secular so first
of all I want to join brother Hobbes his
opinion this is what we lawyers do I'll
join but I'll write a concurring opinion
with a slightly said no dissent yet no
dissent here at all says so for me the
dimension of which we're talking in
which every human tries to touch whether
it be in love or through spirituality or
whatever is in this ineffable space and
just as it's ineffable that means that
all the architecture of doctor in an
organization and so forth serves the
wonderful role of carrying on the
tradition on the one hand but has the
danger of sapping all of the energy out
of the tradition on the other and when
that sapping occurs by people who want
only to maintain their power
that's when religion can become very
dangerous so for me you know the word
sacred and profane or sacred and secular
are completely circular words if you try
to make an explanation of them in other
words they there is no explanation
beyond the experience of the person who
is experiencing the higher Offaly of the
sacred the sacred shining throat and and
and and so so I I can't convince you
my sacred or vice versa any more than I
can convince you of the existence of God
or I could convince Lisa by a syllogism
that we were in love I mean these things
are not touchable bye-bye
the first two of the three categories I
spent so just very quickly and then I'll
toss it back to you so one example I use
for my students is you know suppose I
were as could have been a Catholic
priest and the heart of the Liturgy of
my religion is is the Eucharist where
the bread and wine are transformed
sacramentally into the spirit and body
of the Savior that's my belief now I'm
walking through the outback in Australia
with a native Australian guide and and
the great vast flatness of the outback
suddenly arises uh LaRue ul you are you
google it you'll know you'll recognize
it this tremendous orange mound that to
the native Australian that's with me and
his one hundred thousand year olds
culture of welcoming and love represents
the connection of this world to the next
and we stopped because he's in awe in
the religious sense of it and I'm in awe
of it as a beautiful beautiful piece of
nature that has caused me to travel
around the world to see it and I'm so
moved I take out the bread and wine that
I have with me and I consecrate them
liturgically
for me the deepest spiritual act I'm
looking at a wonder of nature not Axis
Mundi he's seeing me eat my lunch
right I mean this is what's sacred and
what's profane what's sacred and what's
secular it's it's it depends upon the
experience and how it calls you but we
know there is this category that calls
us okay and each of us so many of us at
least in this room are called deeply to
that plane of existence which is the
most fulfilling and joyful of all planes
it's the plane of love and I think one
of the most interesting phenomenon
that's happening right now in the u.s.
not outside of the US but in the u.s. is
precisely the rise of this category sort
of like the sacred was called the realm
of the spiritual and it's the rise of a
whole generation of people who are
spiritual but not religious who who
claimed exactly to feel that common
human yearning for the ineffable and
that that thing that we reach for which
is beyond and yet it's it's not
connected to any kind of religious
practice or deep religious tradition and
it is in many ways calling into question
what we mean by secular or sacred
anymore and my question is is what is
the future of the category the reality
of this thing called religion which is
about not the ineffable but about
oftentimes practices and doctrines and
borders and boundaries and determining
mechanisms and related to identity and
not about sacrifice and the giving away
of oneself I mean that's almost the
opposite of the dogmatic and religion is
not about the reaching it's often about
the the defining that stops the reach so
if you could both just reflect on that
the the future of religion well one of
the things I mean obviously what's
called organized
aegeon has put off a lot of people I
always tell them become a Muslim or the
most disorganized religion on the planet
but there there is there is a real you
know disdain now for organized religion
for me personally one of the things that
I love about the the the pre-modern
world is is the discipline of the
pre-modern world if you wanted to dance
you had to learn how to dance I grew up
my my mother was half Greek so we had to
learn how to Greek dance and one things
about the Greek dancers is somebody who
really masters the the steps and becomes
a great Greek dancer is allowed to
improvise and a great musician has to go
through all these scales and learning
all these these the circle fists and all
these this music theory but at a certain
point they become free to play the piano
and this is essentially what the liberal
arts is about it's about the discipline
of becoming free one of the things most
people think that they think freely but
there are many shackles of the mind and
and and we have natural prejudices that
were often very unaware of like
generalization people come to New York
they have a bad experience with a taxi
driver and they're convinced that all
New York taxi drivers are cheats that's
a very common hasty generalization and
and this is why traditionally learning
how to to think clearly and to think
effectively it was a discipline that
actually took a great deal of time and
so I think that religious practice one
of the things that I've found because we
have a very specific practice of praying
five times a day and I Muslims always
tell me you know I pray and and I'm not
really feeling anything and for me I
think we tend to forget that this is a
spiritual experience consciousness
itself is a spiritual experience and and
what practice is meant to do if it's
done right is to actually free you
to have that experience and this is why
they say to live in wonder the the child
who is is still in that that world of
the sacred you know little children are
there already there they don't need to
be anywhere else but as they come into
adulthood and and and they they come
into their bodies and have their their I
mean you can't even use this word
anymore but they're sinful experiences
and and they and they become tainted
with the world religion is there to
remove that taint and and to
re-establish that purity of children and
and somebody one of my favorite quotes
of Confucius is when I was 15 my heart
was set on learning when I was thirty I
remained firm when I was forty I no
longer had doubts when I was fifty I
knew the Mandate of Heaven when I was
sixty my ear was obedient and I was when
I was seventy I could fulfill my heart's
desires without deviating that's a
spiritual path and that's practice and
that's the purpose of practice so you
can be spiritual without a practice but
where is it going to take you
[Applause]
so I would I would say picking up
exactly on what you said Hamza that the
future of religion depends in large part
on how we use it and how those to whom
we've given it as stewards in my church
the hierarchy uses it I'll take the
spirituality as a good start even if
it's not inside organized religion if
you find it at a baseball game because
of the intense attention to detail a
baseball game requires fine that's why I
say bass boys a road to God because it
cultivates the intense hard work of
noticing and paying attention if you
find it in the Grand Canyon you know in
the wonder of nature or in Leroux that's
a good start but Hamza is completely
right that that there are truths I mean
to to affirm the importance of the
ineffable is not to deny the importance
of what we can know and what is knowable
and we should come to know this is not
an argument against science it's an
argument against scientism that we're
making it's making science into a
religion and saying it has all knowledge
that's the argument I think both of us
are making so so yes we should try in in
in the great liturgical stories of the
great faiths to return to them because
they have an ability to convey the
ineffable and and and doctrine is
important because it shines a light but
if doctrine becomes an instrument of
power you know if I'm told by my church
the Church of life I the father of an in
vitro child and the grandfather of three
in-vitro grandchildren am told that that
is a sin then doctrines gone
there's something wrong if the Church of
life is telling me that my daughter and
three grand doing is and there they're
being brought into the world through in
vitro was sinful
now there's something so that's a misuse
and and depending on now in my church
Francis gives me hope after a bad 30 or
40 years since John the 23rd Francis
gives me hope and makes me believe maybe
the Spirit is so indomitable that even
those that we've charged with the
stewardship of the great organized
institutional faiths will be overcome
ultimately by the goodness that's in
people I realized these questions I'm
asking aren't leading directly back to
the role of the sacred and the secular
in the liberal arts but and John you
mentioned this at the very end of your
previous comment and you mentioned it at
the end of your talk but historically
the space of a sacred has also been the
space where we reflect deeply in
practice on what it means to love love
very difficult topic but also the
reality of profound human suffering and
how we keep going in the face of it and
particularly in this day and age the
events of last week the events of the
year before and the century before these
questions of how do we learn to love and
how do we engage and stop and respond to
the profound reality of human suffering
how do those relate to the sacred well I
think the abrahamic face in the
pre-modern world certainly suffering was
never questioned in in I mean obviously
the story of job which is a very
important story in the Bible and job is
a good man
and gods making him suffer and his
friends say he must have done something
wrong you know he's being punished for
something he did wrong but he's a good
man and that story is also mentioned in
the Quran suffering is certainly part of
the world and we will all suffer just by
being human in fact this is the first
truth of the Buddha is is Thanh had the
nature of the world is it is is is the
nature of suffering because the world
this world is not conclusion to put it
in Emily Dickinson's
words the the idea somehow that the
temporal in the presence of the infinite
could could could really exact from us I
think any crises of faith for for
somebody who has deep and profound faith
for me personally I don't know I I know
that I've seen great suffering I've
experienced we've all had levels of
suffering but I've seen great suffering
with incredible fortitude and faith and
it's always just overwhelmed me to see
that it's incredibly inspiring but we
know that there today so many people are
perplexed by the amount of suffering on
the world and by what some have referred
to as the silence of God the absence of
God very often people ask where is God
from our tradition the question is not
where is God where are we to alleviate
that suffering one of the benefits of
tribulation and suffering and and I
actually translated a work called the 17
benefits of tribulation and one of them
was that the suffering of others enables
you to be a vehicle of alleviating that
suffering and certainly our religious
traditions have a profound understanding
of suffering that in fact say nor see
one of the great Turkish saints and
scholars said that sometimes God will
give you tribulations just to make you
uncomfortable in the world because he
wants to
give you a continual reminder that this
is not an abode of comfort for you it's
it's the yearning for the next world and
I think all religious traditions grapple
with this issue but I think profound
faith is is what enables people to
withstand great suffering and I've seen
this I think you know people say that
that religion is the opiate of the
masses but it was there to numb the pain
of the world right it was the heart of a
heartless world and and now I think we
replaced real opium with religion so we
have a crises of opioids in America
because now people numb that suffering I
mean with with drugs and wanting to just
get out of the world ex stasis you know
to experience some out of state
experience from that but as somebody who
knows chronic pain I I always just try
to remind myself that it could be much
worse
so I'm tempted to say nothing because
that was so beautiful
if I add anything and I think I will
it's it's it's dangerous because I'm
going to go to a very personal
illustration of what Holmes was just
talking about so if you've not read and
I have to warn you it's it's it's very
Catholic but in the spirit about many
and acumen ism I would welcome you to
read it if you've not read CS Lewis's
book a grief observed which is his
wrestling through the silence of God and
whether he can continue to believe in
God after the death of his wife whom he
married knowing she was dying a Tony
award-winning will be called Shadowland
which was made about their love for each
other and I will just give personal
testimony to affirm what hamza said I
mean the deepest existential suffering
that I've had was to find my wife who
was younger than me and it was not ill
ten years younger than me and it was not
ill suddenly dead a half an hour after
I'd been speaking to her but what that
transformed was my understanding of our
love into something that was greater and
I've lived every day of the last ten
years trying to be worthy of
representing her in this world and in
the belief unprovable that our love
continues to exist and that she is
conscious of my continuing love as we
will be together and that could not have
come to me and I couldn't have known the
fullness of my love for her cause in
that moment when I found her in that
sudden moment every bit part of my being
cried out to such
dude for her and although I would have
said those words I knew in that moment
that that was true and that was a
spiritual ecstasy that I've lived with
now for the rest of my life so I'm sorry
if that makes people uncomfortable then
I went to that place but it's a it's a
perfect illustration I think I'm sort of
what you said I you know I just lost
both of my parents in the last few
months and my mother who lived with me
the last four years of her life was
suffering from cancer and my mother had
taken her vows of the Bodhisattva about
20 years ago and she was she was
practicing actively what are called the
six perfections and despite the fact
that we knew she was in great pain she
always had a smile on her face and she
never complained and I actually put up
online on on on my website a letter that
her doctor her oncologist had written
and he said in his two decades of
practicing cancer he'd never met a
cancer patient that confronted cancer
the way she did because he said her
symptoms were joy happiness and smiling
and he said he realized that he was the
patient and and she was his doctor and I
think that that was certainly I know it
was her faith and it was a conscious
thing that she she was practicing
this past week at Union Theological
Seminary we welcomed a leading legal
scholar in the United States Michelle
Alexander who wrote the new Jim Crow on
mass incarceration and which she says is
the great moral issue of our day that
that we put people in cages and that
there's a social consensus that this is
allowable and she left the law to come
to a seminary because she said in the
spaces of the law
she found that you couldn't actually
address the deep spiritual needs which
undergird the policy issues that lawyers
are concerned about that the practice of
the law can't get you there so she's
come to a seminary what's so interesting
to me about that is also taking the
register of a way to engage suffering
and including the personal suffering and
how we manage it
putting starkly in front of us
our complicit role in the suffering of
those in our own communities and how
from a secular or sacred or the circle
of them as you describe it John we touch
that place so in my own context we have
a Center for Islamic studies which is
called the Center for Islam
inter-religious engagement and social
justice and we have a Buddhist Center
for Buddhism inter-religious engagement
and social justice to talk about that
social justice part of the reason it's
constructed this way is because
the sacred in the work that we're doing
we believe cannot be undone from the
public work of social justice so and you
spoke of that near the end and John you
have as well but step into that space
with this question of the sacred and the
secular for me well I think one of the I
think the facts of life on Earth is that
there is a great deal of injustice there
always has been I think there's a great
utopian fantasy about creating a world
without justice part of the reason why
sin is in the world is that we're meant
to stand up oppose it within ourselves
and attempt to help others remove it
from themselves I think one of the
things about dr. King and my family is
heavily involved in that movement my
sister actually marched across the
bridge in Selma I marched as a
seven-year-old with my mother on the on
Selma with the theological Union in in
Marin County so one of the things that
was very clear and and I've heard this
from people that were actively involved
in that movement is in fact somebody's
who struggled with my mother and the
civil rights said at her funeral that
that we were motivated by a sense of
hope a sense of righteousness and
indignation about these things but she
said but there wasn't the kind of anger
that you're seeing today in a lot of
people and I think that's because of the
absence of the sacred I think that one
of our prophetic traditions from the
Prophet Muhammad is he said help your
brother the oppressor and the oppressed
and and and they asked him how do we
help the our brother the oppressor in
other words because they knew his
teaching so what do we oppress with him
and he said by stopping him from his
oppression and Albert memy wrote a very
important book called the colonized
the colonized which is he was a Jewish
Tunisian who was looking at the
colonization of Tunisia and as an
outsider as a Jewish outsider within the
Tunisian community he could see this
horrible cycle and the wonderful poet
Blake talks about the the purple tyrants
the hand of vengeance found the purple
tyrants bed and and smashes the purple
tyrants head and then becomes a tyrant
in his stead that this is the cycle of
justice the desire for justice by
becoming unjust the something Nietzsche
warned us in fighting the monster don't
become a monster and this is very often
what happens in these movements I mean
one of the tragedies now of seeing a lot
of reverse racism and I'm seeing a lot
of this now just in in in a lot of the
the just from the black lives movement
which has emerged which which is
addressing a very important issue but
when it's very tragic for me to see a
society that there is I don't think
there's any society and I've been all
over this world I don't think there's
any society that is actively trying to
overcome the historical wrongs of the
past like this society and I really
believe that I we the
anti-discrimination laws that have been
enacted in this country are are
unprecedented and they're imitated in
other places but many places don't have
them if you want to see real racism and
I've lived in Africa I've lived in the
Middle East and and I've been to Asia
you you will find racism that has no
redress to those wrongs and I think that
the fact that there were so many white
people involved in the civil rights
movement that we're trying to overcome
those wrongs and and I get and I
understand
the real problems that a lot of white
people have about white privilege and
all these things I understand that but
we need to help people overcome within
themselves not from a place of anger but
a place centered and rooted in a
spiritual desire for not only helping
ourselves but helping others overcome
these tribulations and I truly believe
that it is the sacred voice that enables
this I don't think the secular voice has
that capacity because I think the second
voice too easily falls into the demands
of justice and not recognizing that not
only do we need social justice we need
social mercy and I and I really believe
we need a social mercy movement the
history of righteous anger
[Applause]
remember anger ethically should be
directed to the right object in the
right degree for with the right amount
at the right time and for the right
reasons
and so when you're just angry which a
lot of people are we call it road rage
where I come from I mean there's just
people that are they're pissed off and
they're walking around angry and they're
looking for anybody to explore their
anger with and and that's a spiritual
disease anger is a mortal sin not
because it's an activity of an event or
two events or three events it's a state
of being IRA it is a state of being and
when you fall into that state of being
whether it's righteous anger because
every angry person is going to justify
their anger but if you don't see it for
what it is our Prophet was asked once by
a man he said give me some advice and he
said talk about don't get angry and he
said give me some advice and he said in
other words I know I don't want that if
I give me some real advice and the
Prophet said let's talk about don't get
angry and he said a third time give me
some advice he said don't get angry
so I'll just I'll just loop back to say
that there is so much suffering in the
world I mean now in I'm back on the
faculty at NYU but but in my work
outside of NYU I'm trying to bring
education to the kids in the world that
that are being neglected I mean really
neglected 85 million 85 million primary
and secondary aged kids in the world
today who if we don't change things will
never once in their lives meet a teacher
ok never once not one nobody's even
pretending to educate them another 260
million that I'll never get past the
fourth grade so 350 million kids that
had just been written off and some other
were in urban slums and some of them in
remote areas and we just don't care
because they don't have a disease that
we might catch okay there's a lot of
suffering out there and if if we can
touch the religious space the sacred
space that we've been talking about then
we understand that sacrifice for others
is is the natural extension of love of
self it's really the only way to love
yourself and to see real love is to
extend it so so the social justice
movement is intrinsically in my view
tied up with the spirituality that comes
with the elevation of what it means to
be human and the universal that that's
getting back to not dividing up into you
know oh I'm on the winning team but but
you know it's very interesting from this
stage Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrestled one
night in a major lecture with the
question what does it mean to be the
chosen
people and he said much in the same
words that hamza has said here tonight
chosen for special obligation I've
chosen for special privilege and that's
what connects all of this with me so
we're getting near the end of our time
and I can't avoid asking you both a
question about this conversation in the
context of the election so you knew it
was coming
no conversation can happen in this
country right now that lasts more than
five minutes without it turning to this
topic what is being revealed to us from
your positions as theologians who engage
the public square in this election it's
the end of time
somebody said it's like one of those
television series or soap operas where
at the end they just start getting so
outrageous in their scenarios but I have
just a one of the benefits of learning
logic one of my close associates and
dear friends is a ER doctor down in
Florida she's teaching her
thirteen-year-old logic she did formal
logic with her now she's doing material
logic so they watched the debates last
night and she said she's 13 years old
she's saying oh my god mom dad that's an
ad populum oh that's an ad hominem
attack and so she was picking up on all
the on all the fallacies going on in the
debate so that was one of the benefits
you know we forget that logic was
actually taught in all the high schools
in the United States even even 60 or 70
years ago which helped a lot for people
to see these my great-grandmother
studied Bains logic in black Falls
Wisconsin and I actually have her book I
know she had a toothache on December
23rd 1882 because she wrote it in her
book but they have there's a chapter on
on the emotions because that's part of
learning rhetoric is dealing with the
emotions and probably the most
interesting section in Aristotle's book
on rhetoric is his section on the
emotions and explaining the emotions but
one of the things that in in Bane's book
is that fear is often used by demagogues
and a population should always be
vigilant when they see a politician or a
demagogue using fear to scare people
because people will override their
rational impulses and and move towards
irrational responses when the emotion of
fear begins to motivate them and so I
think the thing that troubles me most
about this current environment is the
environment of fear and I think there's
a lot of unsettled aspects that are
happening but the other thing that that
really
voules me is I just I watched once great
speeches with my wife and we watched the
inaugural address of Kennedy and and you
know in Kennedy was no saint and I'm not
in any way sentimental about that but I
just after watching this speech I turned
and my wife had tears coming down her
eyes and she just looked at me and she
says what happened you know how do we go
from that to to to what we've got now
and I would argue that it's a loss of
liberal arts education
[Applause]
so this might be the first point of
disagreement of the night I didn't
expect that we would go here but I'm
very happy to be here and it only might
be and I won't I will push it except to
say the following it could be the end of
time but notice the difference ok I'm
not making a declarative statement it is
the end of time I I took that as being a
bit facetious it was ok it's it's always
the end of yeah
but but but I'm gonna use the difference
you're playing baseball I'm gonna use
the differentiated language for a
purpose because I spent a lot of time in
the world of logic and I agree with you
about it and I'm gonna say that this is
a very very tough moment as I said for
thought and for trust and if we reward
the absence of thought and if we allow
20 years at least of the building of a
Colosseum society where 85% of Americans
say in polls they don't trust their
neighbors forget about the institution's
there's just no trust we we have a
trustee named Evan chess Allah
Evan chess Allah grew up as a tailor's
son up in the Grand Congress I may have
a factor too long because I'm I'm
reaching back to when we installed him
in this building as a trustee in a
ceremony about 2002
and he said that he grew up on the Grand
Concourse and and he was the only one in
his family that went to high school and
the only one that read the newspaper and
he would come home from high school and
he would say to his father at the dinner
table dad what about this what about
that and Evans father would always say
don't worry Evan they're taking care of
it and he said I always wondered who
they were and tonight as I become a
trustee of NYU this is 2002 I realize
I'm part of they with the responsibility
to take care of it right and I said to
him last night I said you know Evan no
father is saying that to his son in the
United States today
no one believes they're taking care of
it but there is a reason for that ladies
and gentlemen in 1995 I was the head of
the Association of American law schools
and I wrote a pastoral letter to all my
constituents all the professors and
educators in the country because I been
given a copy of an internal memo by a
man named Frank Luntz two candidates for
office saying if you want to win attack
law and lawyers there is nothing too
negative you can say about them and I
remember writing at that time this is a
nation that was built on law on de
Tocqueville's notion of the Jeffersonian
law and if we start attacking law and
lawyers and then idea there's got to be
just as corrosive build-up and there is
no equivalency between the two
participants in that debate last night
and I I don't care how you bohtan I'm
gonna tell you how I'm voting and I'm
with her okay and the fact of the matter
is the fact of the matter is that if
that man is the representative of this
country to the world and to our children
not only will we all be embarrassed by
it
but we will have rewarded a 40 years
baseless attack on a strong woman
and we will have put another nail in the
coffin of thought so yes do I think that
she's a panacea or perfect no do I think
that on January 21st the campaign of
2020 will begin and that it will require
leadership beyond my capacity and
perhaps beyond hers to restore trust in
this country and so forth because the
pummeling will begin of course I believe
it's going to start then but make no
mistake about it I'm not going to leave
this stage with any any doubt that I
think there was an equivalency or is an
equivalency in terms of where this
should be
and that's not so much a political
endorsement as is an endorsement of
liberal arts education period end of
case I certainly wasn't making any
equivalency I always looked look for
good grammar that's just a hallmark I've
always found that on the Internet
invariably all the stupid statements of
trolls are poorly written so last last
question John earlier you brought up
Abraham Joshua Heschel amazing intellect
who fifty years ago last spring wrote a
remarkable essay no religion is an
island in which he made the claim the
very radical claim that actually a
religious person actually only comes to
know themself truly through their
encounter with another religion and not
just an encounter but one in which they
are willing to be vulnerable and less
than their own hold upon the claim
of their own religion that that is in
fact the most sacred moment when your
own hold is loosening as you encounter
the other so could we end with each of
you giving a description of a moment in
your own life when that was in fact
manifest that's your own sense of your
own tradition was jarred loose by an
encounter with another in another
religious tradition well for me
personally I once worked as a cardiac
nurse and I had a patient who had just
had a heart attack he was a Sikh and yet
his turban on and he was he was opening
up his heart to me about what was
happening to him and the turban the Sikh
turban disappeared and that other nurse
completely dissipated and I just saw
another human being in front of me
confronting his mortality and reaching
out to me for solace and I think we just
we very often I've never been a person I
went through a period just after being
brainwashed for a little while
dogmatically probably that was
troublesome for me but I wasn't raised
like that so I it didn't last very long
and and I think a lot of religious
converts to other religions often very
they very often in fact mama Gandhi said
about Marmaduke Pickthall that he was
that rare individual that convert could
convert to another religion without
becoming a fanatic and so I think I've
never looked at people with religious
hats on or religious personas I've
looked them I try to look at them I mean
I I look at
John sex and I see a very distinguished
man of character and that I respect and
I'm not gonna let his Catholicism which
I respect deeply because I I grew up in
the Catholic tradition and and um in
some ways an armchair Catholic
theologian but and the same is true for
any other religious faith I and even
secular people I'm not I'm not going to
allow the secularity to blind me from
their goodness one of the things that
the Quran says is Leia dear Amanda come
Shanna and no commonality recorded taqwa
it says do not let the hatred of another
people prevent you from being just and
so even when people hate you it should
not prevent you from being just with
them let alone merciful and
compassionate for those that don't hate
you and so the word in Arabic Shannon is
a specific type of hatred that blinds
you of the goodness of the of the object
of your hate and that's the worst form
of hatred where you can't even see the
the goodness in the other and so I think
ultimately that's my attempt and that's
why my mother was in the world she I
once said to my brother that she didn't
see color and he said no I totally
disagree with you
she saw colors and she loved it she
relished it
[Applause]
[Music]
so for me it would be too easy to refer
to the fact that everybody in my family
my children my wife my grandchildren are
all Jewish and the Seder is is is always
an experience that takes me out of
myself every time I go to NYU Abu Dhabi
I'm take it out of myself by the wonder
that I see in the evidence spirituality
of some of the people I encounter there
I can't give I can't give an example as
deep as Hamza just did I wouldn't try to
touch the space that he just touched but
if I were you know in a life that tries
always to see things through the the
ecumenical lens that I described earlier
I think perhaps some of my deepest
ecstatic experiences you know where I've
looked back on my own experience I said
boy I've been taken out by another's
religion have occurred in very remote
areas of the world where I encounter
extraordinary spirituality in villages
or huts and Laos and Cambodia and you
just there's this sense of the ancestors
and the spirits that we don't associate
with modern dogmatic religion it's it's
it's it's almost pre temporal or
prehistorical at least but I've been in
the presence of people who manifest such
a deep spirituality and and a
blessedness and a goodness and a
happiness that comes out in both Laos
and Cambodia and then undergone najara
of listening to their stories about how
they would blind themselves in one eye
to prevent going into the military
service tour
the war the American war is they call it
and I think every time I'll just come
back this is maybe being too
intellectual but every time that we
enter into what I called early a
dialogic dialogue not just a dialogue
but where you're listening to each other
in exchanging views and so forth but
will you really try to put yourself in
the place of the other being and
understand where he or she is and then
face back that's been a habit of life
that was inculcated in me by a great man
who used to teach her at NYU he was my
mentor at Fordham named Hugh and cousins
who when I met him in 1963 was the
world's leading expert on a single
medieval theologian of the Christian
faith and by 1983 when I was beginning
my career here at NYU there was a
conference at the United Nations that I
intended to celebrate the publication of
his 60 volume work on world spirituality
which had 25 faith traditions in their
spiritual ineffable strain because all
the organized religions have that
spiritual ineffable strain that's the
greatest migration I ever saw and I've
just tried to expose myself as much as I
can to it well I ask all of you to join
me in thanking
[Applause]
these two theologians these two
defenders and inspires of the liberal
arts tradition and two very deep public
intellectuals and I feel privileged to
have been here tonight I want to thank
the people who organized this at NYU and
all the good work that's going on here
and walk away from this with lots to
think about and lots to do thank you all