Gabriella Mateo | Staff Writer
Cofounders of Academic Freedom Alliance Cornel West and Robert P. George were gathered on June 20 at 10 a.m. by some of FIU’s most prominent staff members, such as the deans of the College of Medicine, CASE, CARTA, and Business school, as well as President Nuñez’s CFO, Chief of Staff, and multiple Senior Vice Presidents, to discuss issues of overcoming differences in the name of understanding, the pursuit of civil dialogue in higher education, and the real friendship that they maintain despite being so different.
Cornel West is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and obtained his MA and PhD in philosophy at Princeton. He is a professor of the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought and ran as an independent candidate under the People’s Party in the 2024 presidential election.
Robert P. George lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, philosophy of law, and political philosophy. He holds the degrees of JD and MTS from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and D’Litt from Oxford University, and is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal.
When they walked onstage, both received a standing ovation from the crowd to which Nuñez joked, “Well, I can assure you I never got that kind of welcome.”
Nuñez opened the discussion by asking how West, a socialist political activist, and George, a conservative legal scholar, became such close friends.
“You’ve heard of two people having chemistry, we had magic,” George said.
The two became more acquainted after a mutual student asked for West to interview George for a student magazine which led to a “hot and heavy conversation and argument” that took four hours and an additional 45 minutes in the parking lot, which proved that they needed to become closer friends.
After that, the two co-taught a freshman seminar at Princeton where their motto was, “You have come here to learn how to die.”
Nuñez then asked if there was one thing that both political philosophers disagreed on, where the other has changed one’s perspective on the topic, referencing their new book Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.
“I think, intellectually, we certainly influence each other in terms of allowing us to engage in that magnificent leap of imagination and get inside his skin and walk around in the shoes of someone who has a very, very different view of the world,” West said. “We have something deeper than friendship. It’s called brotherhood, and love is not reduced for politics so even when he’s wrong I love him.”
Both professors have numerous degrees and a palpable talent at holding an audience. West seemed like a preacher in a southern Baptist church and George was his bluegrass-rooted deacon. West spoke about the “overwhelming spiritual decay and moral decrepitude” the U.S. is experiencing and the rise of people who are “organizing greed, weaponizing hatred, and institutionalizing indifference to the vulnerable,” which even earned some amens from the crowd.
Additionally when asked about civil dialogue West said that “It’s not about some premature victory, “ West said. “This is not the matter of trying to cut somebody down or show that you are better or smarter than somebody else. That kind of arrogance has got to go.”
“It is not academic freedom to threaten somebody, it is not academic freedom to vandalize property, it is not academic freedom to intimidate somebody. It is academic freedom though to question any orthodox, to question any view.” said George when the floor was passed to him.
The event went almost 30 minutes overtime and Nuñez was only able to ask three questions.
The topics ranged from academic freedom to race relations to morality, and George summarized this by stating that “The purpose of real, deep education is wrestling with ideas, and our job as professors is to unsettle students”.
Nuñez used this opportunity to inform and remind the crowd that she got confirmed by the Board of Governors on June 18 and that FIU was ranked as #1 in performance in the state for the third consecutive year.
“We found ourselves to be a great team together. Then, since we were no longer teaching at the same university, we took our show on the road and eventually it brought us here to the Panthers.” said George, “We are committed to the proposition that academic institutions exist, that their mission, their goal, is to pursue the truth. That’s it.”
In a final statement about academic freedom, George said “If the truth is to be pursued well, either in our individual vocations as scholars or institutionally, there must be the freedom to ask any question and challenge any dominant position on the campus, any orthodox, anything’s on the table.”
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