JAMES WAGNER: A Time for Courageous Universities?

 “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in 
mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Less famously,

an intellectual as

“someone who is prepared to admit when another has made a point in a debate.” 

Can 

you imagine the talking heads on some of the cable TV channels and AM radio 

stations pausing in the middle of their heated exchanges and saying,

 “You know, 

Bill, or you know Sean, or you know, Tim – I think you have a point there.” 

ATTN:

 

 FACULTY

AND

STUDENTS OF EMORY

On Thursday, October 9, 2014 11:51 AM, Josh Amerson <JoshA@glennumc.org<mailto:JoshA@glennumc.org>> wrote:

James,

I want to explain to you the delay in our response regarding a meeting. It has come to our attention that you are not allowed on the campus of Emory University or the grounds of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, in accordance with restraining orders held by Emory Police. This is why we cannot invite you here for a meeting, and we want you to be cautioned that the staff is now aware of these circumstances.

In our conversations with Beth LaRocca-Pitts, we have also been made aware of the resources to which she directed you for assistance—particularly the Meth-Recovery meeting held at St. Mark UMC and a mental health facility. Alice and I agree, based on the brief encounters that we have had with you, that you would be best served by programs such as these. Neither of us are equipped to address the concerns you have regarding your addiction or the problems you are experiencing with certain members of this and other churches.

I would be happy to meet with you at one of the Emory Village restaurants to pray and to listen, but that is all I am able to offer you at this time. Again, to avoid a possibly damaging altercation, let me caution you that the staff here is aware of the restraining orders against you by Emory and Glenn Memorial and will have to call Emory Police should you come on campus again.

God’s peace,

josh

  

 

GLENN MEMORIAL 

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CONGREGATION

WHAT IS IT MAKING YOUR UNIVERSITY SO AFRAID OF ME?

As a research university we work at the usual things that all American universities are up to—expanding the frontiers of knowledge, 

slaying ignorance, 

 discovering cures for disease, and, of course, finding places for people to park. 

But although academic enrichment is a very important part of the work of a 

leading university, our world needs universities that can play a still more critical 

role. That role is to provide a forum where people who disagree violently can do 

so without actually resorting to violence. That role is one that requires courage, 

because the more fully we embrace it, the more profoundly we are opened to 

internal dissension and external criticism. It is a role not being played adequately 

by any other institution in our increasingly fractious society. And it is about that 

role – that risky role that requires such courage - that I wish to commit the 

remainder of my remarks. 

You here today don’t need me to tell you what kind of world we live in. 

Those of you in the media report on it every day. And the rest of us —who rely on 

you professionals to give us fuller insight into our world—also know first-hand 

that American civic life has grown harsh. It’s not quite the Hobbesian state of 

nature, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But we may 

sometimes fear that we’re devolving to that. 

We probably can’t (and mustn’t) 

blame it on the Internet, television, talk radio. No, most of these are, in the truest 

sense, mere media – conduits – for ideas and movements that would find other 

means of expression even if electronic communications did not exist. It’s simply 

that we live in a contentious and often polarized world. Many who work as 

researchers and teachers in universities are prone to vilification or worse, from 

true believers of the left and right – from those who oppose the use of animals to 

test new drugs or vaccines, no matter how many years of human life they might 

redeem from pain or death; from those who oppose research-driven state 

policies requiring the use of seatbelts or the use of vaccines to prevent diseases 

in children; or for that matter, from those who contest the teaching of evolutionary 

theory, a foundation stone of the modern life sciences. The list could go on and 

on in considerable detail, reminding us all of the unexpected way, at this late date 

in the history of the West, that science and reason themselves have become 

subjects of controversy. If you have former friends who now keep a distance 

because of political disagreement, changes in religious belief or practice, 

or contention over the way to raise children—well, you can count yourselves part 

of what seems to be a growing club.

All of us are familiar with the famous line attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 

that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in 

mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Less famously, 

Conor Cruise O’Brien (contributing editor to The Atlantic magazine) described an 

intellectual as “someone who is prepared to admit when another has made a 

point in a debate.” 

On both counts it’s fair to wonder whether our society has lost some of its 

capacity for instilling—or at least requiring—this kind of intellectual 

capaciousness, this (perhaps uniquely human but too often underemployed) 

ability to experience or understand life from another person’s perspective. Can 

you imagine the talking heads on some of the cable TV channels and AM radio 

stations pausing in the middle of their heated exchanges and saying, “You know, 

Bill, or you know Sean, or you know, Tim – I think you have a point there.” It 

doesn’t happen, or at least it doesn’t happen often. We are a society 

increasingly trained to hold on like bulldogs to a narrow way of viewing things. 

Perhaps it is in our sense of surety, founded or unfounded, that we find comfort.  

A Time for Courageous Universities 

James W. Wagner 

Emory University 

Address to the National Press Club 

25 April 2007

***

In February 2013, 

President Wagner wrote an essay in the Emory Magazine entitled "As American as... Compromise" in which he used the Three-Fifths Compromise as an example of pragmatic compromise that Emory University should emulate. He wrote, "One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress... Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it." The essay sparked controversy on Emory's campus and attracted national and international media attention and an apology from Wagner. Per the New York Times, Wagner "acknowledged both the nation’s continuing education in race relations and his own." Leslie Harris, an Emory history professor who has worked to address issues of race at the college, countered that “[t]he three-fifths compromise is one of the greatest failed compromises in U.S. history .... Its goal was to keep the union together, but the Civil War broke out anyway.”

In addition to getting the facts straight about Emory,we have come here,in part also, to show off this constellation of stars — just a dozen who will have to stand today for many hundreds of others. We have left behind wonderful scholars who have made great impact – people like Dennis Liotta who is committed to drug discovery and was the co-inventor (along with his colleague Ray Schinazi) of the most widely-prescribed retroviral drug to control the ravages of HIV/AIDS.  Or people like Harriet Robinson, who is leading human trials of a potential HIV vaccine.