Princeton University professor Robert P. George and Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West are unlikely friends.
West says they flow out of different traditions. George admires West’s ability to ask the right questions.
On this episode of “Deseret Voices,” George and West sit down with Deseret News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver and talk about how we can “put truth above your infatuation with your own opinions.”
Subscribe to “Deseret Voices” on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Note: Transcript edited by Steven Watkins
Sarah Jane Weaver: Thank you so much for taking a few minutes for us today. There’s so much to talk about right now in society. Divisiveness, polarization, all kinds of contention and politics. And yet, I think the best place to start with you two is friendship. You’re sort of unlikely friends. How did you meet?
Robert P. George: Well, first, so what a blessing it is to be back with Deseret News on a podcast. I’ve done this before and I’m just delighted to be bringing my dear, beloved brother Cornel West to the party here.
Cornel West: I’m very blessed to be here my dear sister. Absolutely.
RPG: Well, we first met at Princeton University. I was a very young assistant professor. Cornel West was already Cornel West when he came and joined our faculty from Yale. I think you were at Yale at the time, and he came and joined our faculty. And because we’re both interested in the same subject areas in moral and political philosophy, religion, ethics, and so forth.
We were participating together in some faculty seminars on those topics. And so we initially got to know each other as friendly acquaintances in those seminars together. And I always admired, from the very beginning, Cornel’s contributions to those seminars. I often thought he was getting the right answers, but he was asking the right questions, and that’s 99% of the battle when it comes to serious thinking, getting the right questions or getting the questions right. And I’ll be more specific about that. You know, in academia, especially these days, professional academics tend to be more and more and more specialized. We’re specialists. And we can end up in very technical, arcane areas. And very often in these faculty seminars, the discussions would become very narrow and very technical. Maybe we begin starting out with a question about what is justice?
But pretty soon we’re talking about some little passage in, work on the groundwork of the metaphysics, morals or something, and arguing about the translation. And Cornel would always be the guy who would bring us back to the real issue here is: what is justice? What is right? What is wrong? What is for the common good? What is against the common good?
I always admired that, but it wasn’t until 2005, more than 20 years ago, that we really got to know each other when one of our common students, someone who was studying in Cornel’s classes and also studying in my classes, asked me to do an interview with Cornel as a faculty interviewer of another faculty member, for a new magazine, a student magazine they were starting. And so, of course, I was delighted to have the opportunity to do that. I was honored, really, to be chosen to be Cornel’s interviewer. And, we had the interview, and boy, did we have a raucous four hours. It was supposed to be a one hour, and it actually went beyond four hours. I could tell that story, you want me to. But we had a wonderful time talking about all these issues and debating old practical, political things, but deep thoughts, article questions. And of course, we found we had some common ground as well as our, disagreements, especially in our common Christian faith and our Christian commitments. But then, as a result of that, when we got an invitation from the dean of our faculty to teach freshman seminars, the senior members of the faculty were being urged to chip in by teaching freshmen seminars that were very important to our students, but a lot of senior faculty are not really interested in teaching. I conceived the idea that Cornel and I should just carry on that dialogue with 16 or 18 of these brilliant Princeton freshmen. So we proposed the course and the university, of course, accepted the course. They were very enthusiastic about it. And we began teaching together.
And from that very first moment in the classroom, I knew we had something special. You’ve heard about people having chemistry. We had magic, and we had a great semester. And so we just kept going, kept doing it, teaching our freshman seminar Adventures of Ideas, we called it, until Cornel abandoned me and went to Harvard. But that’s another, that’s another story.
And then once we were no longer able to teach together because we weren’t in the same place, we took our show on the road. And over the years, we’ve gotten to not only be dear brothers, but, you know, get to know each other’s families and love each other’s families. And his daughter is really like a niece to me.
She calls me Uncle Robbie. And my my kids have a similar relationship to Cornel. So it’s been a beautiful thing. And one of the great blessings of my academic career.
CW: Absolutely. I mean, part of it is just being able to revel in my dear brother’s humanity at the deepest level. He’s someone of integrity, honesty and decency. So even given our political and ideological disagreements that I know that he is his mama’s child and his daddy’s kid.
I knew both mom. And it’s that kind of common, human bond and trust that makes all the difference in the world. Intellectually, he flows out of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and Edmund Burke. And I flow out of, well, in the way I flow. Actually, though.
RPG: Martin Luther, Kierkegaard.
CW: It’s Kierkegaard. It’s Martin, King. It’s John Coltrane, I mean, but I have great respect for the distinguished tradition of Aquinas and Burke and others, though intellectually we just have a great time, even as we wrestled. And personally, we just blessed be brothers.
SJW: Well, what I love, I did a little research and heard you share that story before.
But what I loved about it was that that first interview was being recorded on an an old-fashioned cassette tape. And so every half-hour someone actually had to stop the conversation and flip the tape. And yet, even with that artificial pause, you kept going for four hours. So there must have been more in common there than anything that might artificially devise.
RPG: Well, I have to then, since you’ve heard the story, I’ll share it with your viewers and listeners. It was 41/2 hours because after four hours, I noticed it was 6 o’clock. We’d started at 2, and I said, “Brother Cornel, I know I’ve got to get home. My wife’s going to have dinner, prepared. But this has been such a wonderful experience. We really need to get to know each other better. We need to get together more often.”
And he said, “Oh, yeah, Brother Robert, we do need to do that. You know, we really need to have more of these conversations.” And I said, “Well, walk me down to my car. I’m parked down here on William Street near the Princeton University Press. We can keep chatting and jabbering while we walk down to the car.” So we walked down to the car, and then I’d stand there for another half-hour with my hand on the latch, because we couldn’t let go of that. So that conversation. Finally I said, “Brother Cornel, my wife Cindy, she’s going to call the police and file a missing persons report on, OK.”
But that began this, this wonderful, wonderful friendship and brotherhood. And of course, we’re interested in many of the same issues and many of the same authors. So we have no trouble when we do teach together, we have no trouble, deciding on what books we’re going to teach. I know we’re going to teach something by Sophocles, probably “Antigone.”
We’re going to teach something from Plato. Maybe the “Apology” or the “Gorgias” or the “Euthyphro.” I know we’re going to do Saint Augustine’s “Confessions.” Yeah. And then, you know, he’ll suggest someone and I’ll say, what’s a brilliant idea? And I’ll suggest someone. We’re thinking along the same lines. We we have a shared conception of who the great contributors to this tradition of thought that we are ourselves part of. Who those great contributors are, and we want to share them with our students.
SJW: Well, I want to jump off from there because you’re talking about books, you’re talking about scholars, you’re talking about great minds and thought and and yet at this time in this country, there’s a growing cynicism for higher education. And so why is it that in a society that that wants to be progressive and wants to move forward and have great conversations and seek truth, do we need to help young people know, education and books and thinking matters.
CW: I think that one, it’s important that we recognize there’s never been a golden age where cynicism didn’t exist, where elites were not corrupt and and so forth, that this is always been a challenge, always been a challenge. Not just in the history of American history, of the species, really. Mustering the courage to think critically.
Love your neighbor, be willing to serve sacrifice and then zero in on the least of these. Come that a 25th chapter Matthew just to be theologically honest about this. So it is always an uphill battle. But we’re living in a moment now, yes, of very deep spiritual decay, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s always been a challenge.
And how have those in the past responded? You got to make examples and be examples so that in young people can feel as if they’re alternatives from the superficial models, paradigms, frameworks, which are pervasive in any moment. And right now, celebrities, it’s markets, it’s money, it’s status, it’s manipulation, transaction. Well, those things we know are old, but they take a particular form these days.
RPG: Cornel and I try to bring across our students, the reality, the fact that there are some things in life that matter, but ultimately not all that much. And then there are other things in life that really matter now. The things that matter, they’re not bad, the things, they’re worth pursuing. They’re not things to be embarrassed about wanting or things like wealth, power, influence, status, prestige.
Those things matter because you can do good things with them. If you have a, if you build wealth, you can create businesses that give people jobs, good jobs, good paying jobs. You can provide people with goods and services that they need and want. If you accumulate a lot of money, you can generously give to very good causes to treat the poor and the vulnerable and, elevate, people and to support education, support so many good things. Same with influence, same with status. You know, celebrity because of the celebrity status, can do a lot of good. Not all celebrities use that status to do a lot of good. But you can’t. So these things are not necessarily bad, but they’re not good in themselves. What distinguishes these things that matter, but in the end, not all that much from the things that really matter, is that the things that really matter are the things that are worthwhile for their own sakes.
Faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity, honesty, decency. These are things we want, not as a means to other ends, but as ends in themselves. Now, of course, especially for our precious young people. As you’re growing up, you’re 17, 18, 19 on into 30, 31, 32. You’re concerned about your future and you’re right to be. That’s OK. You’re worried about your CV.
What’s it going to say? Is it going to say B.A. Brigham Young summa cum laude. Harvard Law School, Sullivan and Cromwell, you know, Goldman Sachs and and we shouldn’t we shouldn’t make students feel ashamed of those ambitions. Those are not bad ambitions. Those can be very good ambitions, but they’re not what ultimately matters. You know, David Brooks has a nice way of putting it.
He says there are some things, like wealth and power and status and money that we might call the CV virtues, the things you put on your CV.
But what we really need to prioritize and care about, even when we’re 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, the things that really matter are what Brooks calls the “tombstone virtues.”
What do you want it to say on your tombstone? Do you want it to say: Summa cum laude, Harvard Law School, Goldman Sachs? No. You want it to say: faithful husband, loving father, loyal friend. Those are the things that really matter. And I think this is why the great Greek thinkers, going after the great Greek thinkers, always say, always consider things from the perspective of your death, because it’s from that perspective that you can get your values in the proper order.
It’s from that perspective that you get focused on the distinction between what matters, but ultimately not that much and the things that really matter.
SJW: Well, and so I kind of want to get to a place where we talk about solutions. A year ago last November. So we just had a pretty contentious election in this nation. And I saw a headline that, as a mother, just broke my heart. It said: “You don’t have to visit your toxic family this Thanksgiving.”
RPG: Oh, isn’t that awful?
SJW: And I’ve thought about that. It’s not just disagreements in society, but now we have disagreements that are actually, you know, tearing apart the very core unit of society. What do we do to help people get along better? To help people prioritize relationships above opinions or other things?
CW: Well, that’s a tough question, my dear sister. It really is. I don’t think that any of us have a definitive answer to the question. I’d mentioned before examples, not just individuals, but relations. Not just relations, but institutions.
Not just institutions, but larger social experiments that inspire people to go against the grain of all of the narcissism and the hedonism and the very narrow, rapacious, rugged individualism as opposed to individuality. We both believe, in fact, that, each person’s made in an image and likeness of a loving and almighty God, and therefore they have a certain sanctity, dignity to be affirmed in all circumstances, no matter what color, no matter what gender, no matter what sexual orientation, no matter what national identity they have a sanctity and identity and dignity being made in the image of God.
And how do you hold on to that, given all of the messiness thrown at us by young people every day? You see, that’s a matter of practical wisdom. And knowing how as much as just propositions and principles and knowing that, that’s why I don’t really have a definitive answer. It depends on the kind of lives we live and hope that others actually can find at attractive.
RPG: You know, some of the, great Saint Francis of Assisi, is said to have said, well, I don’t know if he actually said it, but he’s said to have said to his, well, disciples, or sort of like his followers. He’s said to have said, “Preach the gospel always. If necessary, use words.” Now, I’ve always loved that because I think there’s so much truth, and it’s such a deep truth in that. But I’d amend it just a little bit. I think when it comes to teaching the value of loving people across your differences, despite your disagreements, we do need to do a little preaching. We do need to use words.
We do need to exhort. We need to speak to our children, speak to our students, speak to young people with whom we have influence because we’re a coach or a pastor or teacher or a librarian or whatever we are. But it’s even more important to model the behavior that we want to see. The students come to appreciate and therefore adopt.
And much of the witness Cornel and I try to bear is in that mode. Now, we do a lot of talking because we’re a couple of talkers, but I think we probably have a greater impact on our own students and on others, just in virtue of what we model that you can disagree deeply about very important things and still love each other, learn from each other.
Put truth above your infatuation with your own opinions, which might be wrong because we’re all frail, fallen, fallible human beings. I think that modeling is even more important now. I don’t want to excuse anybody from using words. We should also do a little teaching and preaching, but it’s even more important to model that behavior, and not just for public intellectuals or celebrities, the people who have the most influence and whose example matters the most.
It’s a bad example, It’s going to do the most harm. It’s a good example, it’s going to do the most good. Our mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and aunt and uncle and teacher and pastor and coach and librarian. The people who know the young men and women by name and who they have an actual relationship with, unlike the celebrities and the public intellectuals and the politicians. You may happen to know a celebrity, you may happen to know a politician, but you definitely know your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa and your teacher and your pastor and your librarian and your coach.
And so we got to we have to model it. We have that’s, that’s the — you’re looking for solutions — there’s the solution. You want this good behavior from our young people. Then let’s show them how it’s done. At that Thanksgiving dinner table, show them how it’s done. We will never say don’t visit your toxic relatives on Thanksgiving. Even if we think you got pretty toxic relatives, you’ve got to bear witness.
CW: But, you know, I was having this wonderful conversation with my dear brother, Paul Edwards, who is a visionary leader here. In this particular place, his Wheatley Institute. And I was telling him about in many ways, there’s such a hunger for what so many of our Mormon brothers and sisters have to offer, not just here, but in the world.
I know Africa is a very crucial site, and the reason is, is because if you have a memory of persecution and have a steadfast commitment to being shaped in a form or soulcraft that puts a premium on integrity, honesty, decency and serving others, not serving yourself, your influence is much broader than your numbers.
And no matter where the world is going, if you’re part of that tradition and you can interpret it in a variety of different ways. I mean, I’m, I come on the legacy Martin King and there’s overlap between Martin King’s legacy and that of Joseph Smith. Different in a whole lot of ways, but overlap in terms of soulcraft, integrity, honesty, service to others in the face of hatred, tear, trauma from being pushed in the corner may marginalizes it.
And I think we’re in a moment now where people who could sustain that kind of example and that would in the name of purity and self-righteousness, but in the name of integrity and having roots in a tradition that informs your witness. Then there’s something very special about the Church of Latter-day Saints. I think of Chase Peterson.
He was my dear brother. I take a bullet for him. He was the dean of admissions at Harvard. I think of my dear brother, David Holland, who was my colleague, a colleague at the Harvard Law Benedict School, you know, and Jeffrey Holland, his father, just passed recently. But Matthew was —
RPG: Yes, my dear friend.
CW: When I encountered his brother and I say, these are interesting vanilla brothers here. What tradition keeps them up, because they do stand out with integrity? I don’t always agree with Chase — we never political thinkers — he was more like a father. But when I think of the legacy of what Brigham Young is about, it’s worth asking and speaking very boldly about.
RPG: Jeffrey Holland was a very dear friend of mine. But I focus on Jeffrey in the context of this conversation because, you know, there was something about Jeffrey that made clear to people that he loved them, no matter how deeply he disagreed with them.
They would know that even if he disagreed with the way they led their lives, he loved them. If he advocated a different path, it wasn’t out of hatred or contempt or animosity. It was out of love. He reminds me, when I think of Jeffrey, of that wonderful line. It would often tell you that if you’d conclude a conversation with Jeffrey, you’d say, I love you.
But he reminds me of that wonderful line that says, I love you, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.
SJW: Well, and since we’re talking so much about inner convictions that are, that are actually manifest through outward behavior, I want to talk a little bit about character in society as a whole. I graduated from college in 1990. It felt like we talked about character a lot during political elections or other things. And it feels like we talk about it less today.
What can we do as a society to make character, make integrity, to make truth, to make some of these virtues that you were just talking about matter more?
RPG: I believe those things: truth, integrity, decency, honor, those virtues have a certain luminosity about them such that when we see them practice, we can’t help but admire them and can’t help but be inspired to at least want to emulate them. The problem is, there are things that obscure those virtues so that we don’t see them. If we saw them, that luminosity would draw us in.
But there are these blockages. Some of them are, of course, just normal human vices, the deadly sins, you know, greed, lust, envy and so forth. Those are you find in all times, in all places. They can also be blocked by ideology. And so if we’re deeply in the grip of an ideology so that we really have fallen so deeply in love with our opinions that we prefer them to truth, that ideology will block our vision of the truth.
It’s like something being put up in front of the sun, like an eclipse, like when the moon blocks them, blocks the sun. The sun is very luminous, you know, it’s a grand thing if you see it, but if something’s blocking it, you don’t see it. So I think part of our effort needs to be to remove those blockages.
And again, I think example is even more important than precept. That modeling that is even more important than teaching. Now precept is important. Teaching is important. Again, I’m not writing anybody an excuse, permission slip to to not use words, to not talk. But even more important is again, to model that if you show that you’re a person who does not fall into ideology, and the way you do that is by showing that you’re a person who is open to critique, to challenge, to criticism.
You don’t take it as a personal assault. You engage in a truth-seeking spirit. Then you’re setting a wonderful example that will help to remove what’s obscuring the luminosity of the virtues.
CW: You know, I’m thinking of the great John Bunyan in the prison for 12 years, where he wrote, among other things, “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” You see, the conception of life in which you are a pilgrim or sojourner, moving through time tied to something bigger than you, even beyond time, means you’re going to be less likely to succumb to the forms of idolatry. The way Rabbi Heschel uses every view. Life was a gold rush, you end up worshiping the golden calf. We transformed the Golden Rule and he or she has a gold rule: might makes right again.
But if you have a conception of yourself as tied to something that’s broader than just time and space, it means your sense of calling is deeper than just your sense of career. Me and Robbie encounter this all the time and young people come, “We love your brand.” We say, “No, we don’t have a brand.”
You know, we have a cause. We have a calling. It cuts deeper, but it’s beyond just the now. And it’s beyond just history and time and space. And historically, it’s been those figures who had a sense of what John Coltrane called the bigger picture that connects us to the smaller picture that allows us to persevere with levels of integrity and love and honesty that make no sense in the eyes of the world.
But it’s the most desirable way of being in the world. And how do you make that accessible to the younger generation? Example, not just of the quick, but of the dead, those who’ve come before.
RPG: You know, Cornel, I wonder if we talk too much in general in the education sphere, you know, colleges, universities, professors, guidance counselors, teachers.
I wonder if we talk too much about careers and career choices?
CW: Oh, no doubt about it.
RPG: And not enough about vocations. Callings and vocations, yeah. Maybe we should just stop, with our young people speaking the language of career choice, you know? Have you have you decided what career and start asking, have you discerned your vocation? Or where are you in the discernment of your vocation?
And what’s the difference in a career or vocation? Well, a vocation is fundamentally a way of serving. If I ask, what is your vocation? I’m asking, what is the way you have been called to serve others. Now it might be as a lawyer, as a doctor, as an accountant. Those are professions. But the focus then is not on how much money I can make, though that’s not bad, you know.
It’s not on how much social status I’ll have as a lawyer or doctor. That’s not bad, but those things are made secondary and what’s primary is how am I going to serve? How am I going to use the talents, abilities, opportunities that God has given me to serve other people?
CW: Absolutely. But see, that sense of calling means there’s got to be some voice, some standard, some being that’s bigger than you.
RPG: That’s it.
CW: Socrates had his Daimonion calling him. Christians have some grand set of standards and criteria that’s bigger calling them. Even the great artists, you know, Coltrane said I want to put a smile on Johnny Hodges’ face. Miles Davis said I want to put a smile on Charlie Parker’s face.
Aretha Franklin said I want to put a smile on Marion Williams’ face. These are people who set higher standards, and it’s not a matter of being for sale because we live in a society, everybody is for sale. Everything’s for sale. Oh, integrity is not for sale. You’re calling’s not for sale. Your divine mission is not for sale.
Love of your mama is not for sale. Oh, there are some sites and spheres outside of just money-making, buying and selling, you see. And that’s something that our young people are hungry for. But I think many of them are mindful of it because I don’t want a modernized, younger generation. We’ve got some marvelous figures and voices among the other generation, too.
RPG: You know, maybe Cornel, that’s where the concept of the transcendent comes in is so important in our practical living, because it’s a burden if you don’t have that in your life, if you don’t have an openness to something great or something above that share more than the merely material, this worldly, then your temptation when you think about, well, how am I going to spend the next six years?
What am I going to do with my life? I think the temptation will be to try to calculate, trying to think, reasoned out. What would make me happy or what would make me happiest. When we know from all of human experience, the worst way to find happiness is to pursue it. To be obsessed with it.
At least if by happiness should be not what our Founding Fathers meant by happiness. Which was felicity, beatitude, flourishing. But you mean the psychological state. I think when you’re open to the transcendent, you shift from what’s going to make me happy in that psychological sense to how can I accomplish my mission? All right.
I love the LDS concept of a mission. You say, he’s just back from his mission, or she’s being sent to honor this couple being sent on —
CW: This brothers coming out of the Church of Latter-day Saints, where they send them off to Thailand, they’re not running for the happiness. I’m going to serve and we’re going to have a good time and enjoy. Asian brothers and sisters.
RPG: But they’re the happiest people I know.
SJW: Well, I have to tell you, I now know why your first, encounter together lasted 41/2 hours. I guess I could keep turning that cassette tape over and over and over again and listen to you talk forever. But we’re running out of time. And so what I want to do is have you conclude. And each of you just share in just one or two sentences, one quality that you’ve observed in the other, that you think could help bless or strengthen this nation.
RPG: Well, and in Brother Cornel’s case, I think it’s the way he combines being a person of conviction, who’s willing to act on his convictions with being open to challenge, open to critique.
If he weren’t open to challenge, open to critique you’d a thrown me out the window a long time ago. But his openness to challenge and openness to critique. His intellectual humility, his willingness to recognize that he could be wrong does not paralyze him and make it impossible for him to act. But he acts. Having in view that well, there’s always possibility that I’m off track here, so I need to remain open.
So that’s a deeply admirable quality that Cornel possesses from my point of view. I try to emulate that.
CW: We both want to thank you for being such a force for good. But no, I would say, Robbie has both sincerity. He says what he means. He means what he says. He doesn’t pose and posture. He doesn’t act as if he’s X when he’s Y. He is who he is.
And there’s a certain kind of integrity and sincerity so that you can always trust that what he’s saying and what he’s doing is something he’s putting his whole self into. And that is too rare these days.
SJW: I cannot thank you enough for spending a few minutes with us. I know I’m better because I get to observe your friendship. So thank you so much.