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