When I was doing my PhD in sociology at Princeton University, Patrick was a junior faculty in the politics department.

And I was recruited by the politics department because they needed a woman to play on their co-ed softball team.

So Patrick and I got to know each other batting softballs trying to triumph for our team named Leviathan.

And we particularly enjoyed competing against our arch rivals, the invisible hands of the economics department.

And the dream crushers of the admissions department.

But not to worry, Patrick and I hardly knew each other back then, but I could sense who he was

because in between at bats or as we celebrated our victories or equally celebrated our losses,

he would inevitably turn to his true idol de Tocqueville. And I myself, you know, perhaps a naive

sociologist at the time would chime in about who I thought where my 20th century social justice were heroes,

heroes, Mother Teresa, and John Paul II.

Well, that I think, kind of, I was in sociology and somehow believed that my passion

for Catholic social teaching

was actually deeply sociological.

But over time, I realized that in my own writing,

I kind of lacked a kind of theological or philosophical depth.

And one story that I like to tell to illustrate

what I think is a larger problem in the social sciences

of not being able to use the language of being and

always turn experiences of faith into something instrumental. In the first book that I published,

Faith makes us live, surviving and thriving the Haitian diaspora. I talk about a woman I met named

Stephanie, who had immigrated to United States from Haiti. And after asking her about all the kind of social justice issues I cared about,

I finally asked her, why did she move to the U.S.?

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