Kwame Anthony Appiah on the Right—and Wrong—Way for Universities to Handle Identity

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6 • 907 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yascha Mounk and Kwame Anthony Appiah discuss cultivating thick identities (and thick skins). Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British-Ghanaian philosopher, Professor of Philosophy and Law and New York University, and the “Ethicist” columnist for The New York Times Magazine. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Kwame Anthony Appiah discuss why universities discarded an ethic of common humanity for a new form of identitarianism; how we can recognize and respect individual and cultural diversity without making it the main factor in our interactions; and why faculty must be agents for the change they wish to see in universities. This conversation is part of the Persuasion series “Universities, Diversity, and Democracy,” a new collection of podcasts and essays, featuring leading voices in higher education, that explores how universities can pursue truth in the spirit of philosophical liberalism and in pursuit of social progress. This series is made possible by the generous support of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by Jack Shields, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	But if you think that your American Catholic friends all agree about gay marriage or abortion or something like that, you'll be profoundly misled, even though we know what the church's view is on those matters. So maybe it's easy for a kind of
0:18.2	rich upper middle class person like myself to say, but I think people should hold their identities maybe a little more likely than they currently are prone to do, that they should recognize that they can't speak for all the black people or all the trans people or all
0:36.4	the cis people or all the men or gay people and that while these identities give us guides to how people are going to interact with us,
0:47.0	they're loose guides and the more we know them, the less useful they're going to be.
0:52.0	And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
0:57.0	Hi, my name is Brendan Rubari and I'm production editor and podcast producer at Persuasion.
1:05.0	And I recently published a piece in Persuasion, titled The Future of American Sports isn't Pretty.
1:09.0	I decided to write this piece following the revelations that the interpreter for a Japanese
1:13.3	superstar showy otani allegedly stole millions of dollars the player's
1:17.2	money to pay down sports betting related debts that he had incurred to a Southern
1:20.9	California bookie. I realize this would be a good opportunity to have a conversation about what's happened since 2018
1:26.0	when the Supreme Court decided to overturn a 1992 congressional ban
1:30.0	that effectively made gambling illegal outside of Vegas and a few other areas.
1:34.0	Since 2018, 38 states in a pretty bipartisan fashion have legalized sports betting.
1:38.8	It's become a massive industry.
1:40.3	You kind of see it everywhere.
1:41.4	I think we've been very reluctant to take a look at some of the downsides that would inevitably follow on the mass legalization of something like sports betting.
1:49.0	One of the big assumptions was that it would be better if we brought betting into the sunlight that we rather sports fans
1:53.8	place bets with companies and corporations and do so in an open and regulated manner rather
1:59.2	than you know seeing bookies who might be affiliated with the mafia. Another of the assumptions was that
2:03.6	state governments could basically tax this and it would be a huge massive new
2:08.0	source of revenue for them and that it would be worth whatever social downside
	...

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