CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER:
And greetings once more
to the great Class of 2024.
I apologize for the delays there
as we dealt with what I'm told
was a network outage.
But we're back with you
now, thank goodness.
And I'm very glad to
be with you again,
and looking forward to
an engaging conversation
over the course
of the next hour.
Intellectual
conversations like the one
we're about to have lie at the
heart of this great university.
For your first
Princeton assignment,
I asked you to
read Jill Lepore's
important and ambitious
book "This America--
the Case for the Nation."
As I wrote in the foreword
to the pre-read edition
of the book, I chose
"This America" in part
because it addresses some of the
most important ethical issues
of our time, including
how Americans
and the people of other nations
can feel united in a shared
quest for the common
good despite differences
and disagreements that
might pull them apart.
I look forward to
meeting with you
over the course of this academic
year to discuss the book
and what it means for
each of our lives.
Today, we have the
wonderful opportunity
to kick off this
semester by engaging
in a discussion with
Dr. Jill Lepore herself.
Dr. Lepore and I
want this event to be
as interactive as possible.
So we're going to begin
with a brief conversation,
and then open things
up for your questions.
Before I introduce
Dr. Lepore, I'd
like to invite our deputy vice
president for communications
and moderator for today's
event, Ben Chang, back
to the virtual stage for a
quick rundown of the format.
BEN CHANG: Thanks very
much, President Eisgruber.
And let me add my
welcome to all of you
and your families to
the Princeton community.
Welcome to the
great Class of 2024.
The format today
will be as follows.
After opening the conversation
between President Eisgruber
and Professor Lepore,
we will open the floor
to your questions.
Please note the questions
are reserved for the members
of the great Class of 2024.
Raise your hand in
the Zoom function.
And I will recognize you, and
then activate your camera,
if you choose, and unmute.
A reminder that this
event is being recorded.
So if you raise your
hand, your question
will be a part of the
recorded event, saved
for those classmates and
others to view who are
unable to join at this time.
So with review, back to
you, President Eisgruber.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER: Great.
Thank you, Ben.
It is now my pleasure to
introduce our special guest
today.
Jill Lepore is the David
Woods Kemper Class of '41
Professor of American History
and affiliate professor of law
at Harvard University,
a staff writer
at "The New Yorker,"
and the host
of the podcast
"The Last Archive."
A prolific author
of books and essays,
she has received numerous
honors and awards for her work.
And she has been a finalist
for the National Book
Award, the National Magazine
Award, and the Pulitzer Prize
twice.
In recent months,
she has written
a series of insightful
essays for "The New Yorker"
on issues ranging from
the history of loneliness,
to the 50th anniversary of
the Kent state shootings,
to the invention of
American policing.
And I'm going to ad lib from
my remarks for just a moment
here because she was also
featured in today's "New York
Times Book Review," with an
interview with the author,
in connection, I think,
with the promotion
of her forthcoming book,
due out on September 15,
called "If Then--
How the Simulmatics Corporation
invented the future.
We're so pleased that
she is here with us.
Jill Lepore, welcome.
JILL LEPORE: Hey,
thanks so much.
And hello to all
of you students.
I wish we were all there
in New Jersey together,
but it's an honor to be with
you in this virtual way as well.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER:
So Jill, it's
great to see you and have you
here in our Zoom assembly.
I'd like to begin with a
couple of questions about you
and your book, just
to get things started.
Let me start with one
that's a bit biographical.
We're here right now with
hundreds of Princeton students
who are just embarking on
their college experience.
And so I want to invite
you to think back
to your own college experience
and your own first day
of college.
And tell us who you
were at that point.
Were you thinking
were going to become
a great American historian?
JILL LEPORE: [CHUCKLES] No, no.
I was wondering whether I
would end up finishing college.
I was not really clear I wanted
to go to college, actually.
I had applied to one school.
And so I went to Tufts.
And I remember, this
time of the year,
I didn't go first to Tufts,
because the only way I could
go to college was
on a scholarship,
and I had an Air Force
ROTC scholarship.
So my parents drove
me not to Tufts,
but to MIT, which is where the
Air Force ROTC detachment was.
And I had two weeks of boot camp
before the semester started.
So the dropoff was there.
And yeah, so I went there.
And then I think I
just took the T over
to Tufts when I needed to move
from my T into my freshman
dorm, also a week
early, because I
was doing varsity field hockey.
And I was a math major.
Yeah, so nothing that
would have augured
becoming an American historian.
I was just kind of putting one
foot in front of the other,
trying to make ends meet.
My big concern was how
to pay for it all, which
is the big concern of
so many students now,
I think facing much
more dire challenges.
But no, I was nowhere near--
I didn't study in history
in college, honestly.
So I didn't have
the laser-like focus
that many of my own
students appear to have,
and which I'm sort of
envious of but I am sometimes
somewhat suspicious of.
I think, if you don't
know what you're doing,
the big secret is that
neither does anyone else.
There's just some people
who are better at faking it.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER: I think
that's a good piece of wisdom
as we start the school year.
I think most of us find there
are a lot of unexpected turns
in the paths that we take
after we reach college.
Let me turn our attention
now to the book.
I chose "This America" for
the pre-read months ago.
And talk about unexpected
turns in the path.
It feels now like we're in
a completely different world
given the crises that
our country is facing,
from the global pandemic
to a national reckoning
with the scourge of racism
throughout our society.
You write about slavery
and its terrible legacy
among other things
in "This America."
Do you think differently
about your book
in light of current events?
JILL LEPORE: I guess yes and no.
I do-- I wrote
the book very much
of a moment out of grave
concern about the nature
of our attachment to the
idea of a liberal nation.
It's sort of a commonplace to
say that the United States is
really an idea, what
we hold in common
is a set of commitments
to equality, and justice,
and liberty, and to the
consent of the governed.
And if we don't hold
those ideas together,
then very little ties
us to one another.
And that had become
very apparent as a kind
of ongoing crisis, something
that I had been paying
attention to as a historian.
And I was asked to
write this book.
I was asked to write some
kind of an accounting
of the relationship between
nationalism and liberalism.
So it kind of came
out of that moment.
And I do think we are very
much still in that moment.
What holds the nation
together as people is,
I think, less and less
clear to many people.
The kind of polarization that
the nation is suffering through
is worsening day by day.
There's also great reason
for hope and for optimism.
So much of that argument
is so essential so much
of the confrontation, the moral
confrontation with the nation's
past, the political
confrontation with injustice
and racial injustice,
these things
are so vital and essential.
And overdue doesn't really
begin to cover that.
Would I have written
it differently?
Yes, because I'm
writing all the time.
And I hope that--
all of you listening, you
know, you have lively minds.
That's what is
bringing your Princeton
to do you want to do here.
You should be changing your mind
a lot about a lot of things.
And if you don't find
yourself changing your mind
over the coming
weeks and months,
then something's
not working right.
So yeah, I would have
taken a different approach
to maybe some of the things
that I stressed here.
But that's all to the good.
CHRISTOPHER
EISGRUBER: Wonderful.
Before we find out what is on
our students' minds right now--
because we're going to turn to
them for questions right after
this--
I just want to ask
you whether there's
anything else you
might want to touch on
before we hand things
over to the students
to start asking questions.
JILL LEPORE: Yeah,
I mean, I think,
for me, this is a complicated
moment to be a historian.
Because historians are often
asked, is this unprecedented?
And we're generally asked
that by political partisans
who want to enlist historians
in their partisan battles.
And so for the first few decades
of my career as an historian,
I would always be
asked that question.
And I knew it was
a loaded question.
Like, well, no, you're supposed
to say this is unprecedented
so that you can condemn
whoever has done the thing.
And for years, I was very
suspicious of that question.
Because most things are
precedented, honestly.
It's a very disorienting
moment as a historian
that we are living through
a moment without precedent.
And I have thought a lot about--
I have three kids of my own, two
of whom are college students--
I have thought a
lot about what it
means to come of age in an
unprecedented time, where
what your elders can tell
you is of limited use.
We're the ones who screwed
everything up, you know?
So I think it's a very
challenging moment
to be a young person.
But what I think about
when I think about--
I'm meeting my own students
for the first time.
On Wednesday of this week
we have our first class--
what it is to be
you, doing this.
This is your college.
This is your first
year of college.
You alone have had
this experience.
No one else has had
this experience.
What does this mean?
What does this do?
What are its consequences?
That's for you to tell us.
So it's a very
weird moment to be
a historian in that I'm
a student of the history
that you all are experiencing.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER: Right.
No, as I said to
the students today
when I delivered
my opening remarks,
there's no playbook for what
they're about to go through
and what they're about to do.
And it's sobering to hear
you, as an historian,
say something like that as well.
I'm going to hand things back
to Ben Chang at this point
so that we can start hearing
from some of those student
voices directly.
Jill, thank you again.
And I look forward
to the conversation.
BEN CHANG: This is great.
What a fantastic
start to the event.
And thanks to the members
of the Class of 2024
who are eagerly
raising their hands.
I was wondering who would be
the intrepid first questioner
bravely stepping
into the breach.
And happy to say that
it is Valeria
from the great town of
Gainesville, Florida, who
has our first question
for you, Professor Lepore.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon,
Professor Lepore.
I'm honored to meet
you and I'm honored
to be part of this
great Class of 2024.
I have a question about
this seeming cycle
that you kind of like
delineate in your book.
When you're arguing against
this more radical, in a sense,
nationalism that has pervaded
our country many times,
it seems like it's almost
in some sort of cycle.
And this cycle between
the nationalism
that you argue against and
the liberal nationalism
that you promote has
been happening many times
over in American history.
So do you think that
this cycle will just
continue over and over?
I know that there
are many people
in the nation that support the
nationalism you argue against.
And is there a
politically correct way
to root out this idea of the
nationalism you argue against,
even when those nationalists
are the majority?
JILL LEPORE: Yeah.
Thanks.
That's such a
perceptive question.
Pattern detection is so
much of the work of any kind
of intellectual inquiry.
So I'm fascinated
that you think of that
as it is a pattern in that way.
And I think there probably
is something to that.
I think that I talk
about ethnic nationalism
and liberal nationalism, sort of
a race-based or ethnicity-based
nationalism that is
historically associated, really,
with atrocity and
with aggression,
versus a liberal nationalism
whose priority is
the guarantee of constitutional
rights to the citizens
of a nation state.
And I think those two things
have been through lines
all across American history.
So which one is
wielding power does,
I guess, maybe seesaw
maybe more than cycle
would be maybe a way
I might visualize it.
What has been the
case in my lifetime
is that I think that the
defense of liberal nationalism
has become extremely weak.
And in the absence of that
defense, the kind of--
I don't think that a
race-based nationalism has
been strengthened honestly
so much as it hasn't been
sufficiently argued against.
And one reason for that
is, as I argue in the book,
is that after the
Second World War,
intellectuals looked at what
ethnic nationalism had done
around the world and said, we
can't defend the nation state
at all.
We'll just have to
kind of hope that we
enter a new stage, a kind
of post-nationalist world,
a global world.
And they kind of embrace
globalism instead,
and thought that kind of liberal
ideas could be expressed.
And then what you get out
of that is neoliberalism.
So it seemed important
to me-- and the reason
I wrote the book
was to say, well,
what if you take
seriously the tradition
of liberal nationalism,
try to hold on to it,
and try to bring it forward?
I think it's a tricky
argument to make,
and it's why people
don't make it.
Because it seems, so easily,
to slip into something
into something else.
But I was very
persuaded by writers
whose work I had read
you had suggested
that real advances
in political equality
had only ever been possible
in the United States
by making a liberal
nationalist argument,
that that's an element that
is necessary to achieve
that kind of progress.
So I wanted to try to
rekindle that tradition.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much,
Dr. Lepore, for your answer.
And thank you so much,
President Eisgruber,
for your thought-provoking
pre-read selection.
BEN CHANG: Thanks,
Valeria. Our next
question goes to-- and I hope I
get the pronunciation correct--
Tejas, from just down the
way in Short Hills, New Jersey.
Looking locally,
thinking globally.
Over to you.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
I'm just getting the hang of
this panelist version of Zoom.
But hi.
I'm Tejas. And my
question is -- so this past year,
I lived in India through the
Novogratz Bridge Year program.
And I noted that one of the
most important takeaways
is that we're very
united inside--
all people are very
united, across nations,
based on the most important
priorities such as education
for children and basic
needs for food and water.
And especially inside
a pandemic which
has created such
global strife, what do
you think our role is
as global citizens?
And how do you think that
nations should reconcile
that goal between each other?
JILL LEPORE: I mean, I think
that the traditions on which we
should be drawing are the twin
traditions of human rights
and global health, which
are extraordinary realms
of international cooperation
and the elevating of standards
for the mutual benefit.
I mean, I think, I
guess that I would
add that the third
leg of that stool
would be environmentalism
as a global movement.
I don't think that
that has happened.
It doesn't seem to me that the
global response to the pandemic
has followed any
of those models--
that is the human rights
model, a global health model,
or the environmental model.
Really what we're looking at is
kind of capitalist competition
for a vaccine.
We're looking at a lot
of hypernationalism,
the America-Firstism,
the version of that
in other nations, the
walling off of borders.
I mean, one of the things--
a virus crosses
national borders.
And one way that
you fight a virus
is by shutting down borders.
So if you leave New Jersey,
depending on what state you're
going to go into, you
might be pulled over
on the side of the
road and asked if you
have a COVID test with you.
Even state by state,
county by county,
there are kind of
border impositions.
It's a way-- there's a nativism
and a hostility to immigration
in that at the national
level, but there's also
a real public health reason
to care about borders.
So I don't know.
I find the national
competition for the vaccine,
who gets the vaccine first and
can protect their people best,
to be unbelievably
disheartening.
We are not even having, say,
even within the United States
or even in the state where
I live, we're not currently
having a conversation about,
if there is a vaccine,
around, like,
who would be--
wouldn't we of
course want to give
it to frontline workers
and public school teachers
before anybody else?
Shouldn't we be setting
those protocols up?
What are the conversations that
we might have, both internally
and across national borders,
and certainly within the United
States across state borders,
about meaningful commitments
to the vulnerable?
And how would we do
that beyond the nation?
I think, instead of thinking
expansively in that way,
there's been a kind of
great inwardness, right?
Like if I were writing an
essay about this moment,
it would probably be called
"The Great Inwardness."
We are being driven so much
into these little kind of caves,
both within our homes--
I mean, I'm looking around
in my own environment.
These connections
are so essential,
but they're are
harder and harder
to sustain over the long term.
So all which is to say
it's a great question.
I think there's much
that we should be doing.
And I think there's very
little that we currently
are doing, that the forces of
expansiveness, and outwardness,
and what would be called
cosmopolitanismism, say,
or forces of a kind of
global-minded public health
orientation, are not the ones
that are prevailing right now.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much.
BEN CHANG: All right, thanks
very much for your question.
Just a quick reminder--
please raise your hand
via the Zoom function
so that we can add you to
the queue for the questions.
I will continue to
do my best on names.
So please forgive ahead of time.
I will say we have a
healthy set of questions
from all over the US and
around the globe already.
So Professor Lepore, we'll
bring on Rojit from Singapore
with our next question.
Let's see.
Maybe we have a little
bit of a hiccup.
Rojit from Singapore--
oh, here he is.
Fantastic.
Over to you, sir.
AUDIENCE: Hello,
Professor Lepore.
So I wanted to ask a little bit
about federalism in the sense
that I think it's one aspect of
the American political system
that is not as common or
hasn't been replicated as much
in constitutions
around the world.
And as you highlighted
in the book,
of course federalism initially
was a very nationalist aspect
of the United States.
And in some ways it succeeded
to an unprecedented quality to--
the federalist
system these days,
in modern political
discourse, might be
antinationalist in that sense.
But we've also seen,
through the COVID crisis,
that federalism in
the United States
has been providing
more of a roadblock
than as a success in that sense.
So I was wondering what you
thought about this aspect.
And also in the sense of
the international community,
we've seen how quickly,
in a federalist system,
that power moves
towards the top.
And any globalist
society would be relying
on some element of federalism.
And does that experience lead
us to a more nation-focused
global society?
Thanks.
JILL LEPORE: Hmm.
Yeah, that's a
fantastic question.
It's a really
complicated one as well.
I'd be curious to hear
what your view is on that.
It sounds like,
I'm guessing, you
have a view on this
important question.
Do you want to share
that before I launch in?
AUDIENCE: Well, what I was
thinking about a little bit
is the United States
experience has shown that,
at least over 300 years,
what might be designed
as a federalist system move
towards a complete nationalist
system.
And if we were to have,
in the ultimate globalist
model, a United
Earth of some kind,
that we would see
a similar dynamic.
So that might be a good argument
for focusing on nation states
rather than continuing
to pursue some sort
of hyperglobalist society.
JILL LEPORE: Yeah, that's
an interesting point.
Well, I think what you see
in the US is that, certainly,
as you say, the vision of the
framers of the Constitution,
which they presented
as a federalist vision,
was fundamentally a
nationalist vision.
And to the degree that we
don't have a nationalist form
of government-- that is to
say, one in which the federal
government has supremacy
in all things--
it is because of the
defiance of the states
and their insistence
on their sovereignty,
even through the
ratification process,
by insisting on
the Bill of Rights
and the enumeration
of federal powers.
And that balance has been very
important in the United States.
I think you could
argue that it has
been essential to the
stability of the union.
But we could also
say, certainly,
that it extended the
institution of slavery decades
beyond which it maybe
could have been dismantled.
You could make a
counterfactual argument there
that the Union wasn't
worth preserving.
If the cost of the Union was
slavery, then we should had--
that's an argument
that you could make,
that to defy what
Americans understood
to be right for the
sake of the Union
did, in fact, end up destroying
the Union during the Civil War.
So it's a complicated
story in American history.
Nevertheless, the story
of the 20th century
largely is about the
aggregation of power
by the federal government,
the rising power of the state.
And that begins really
with Woodrow Wilson--
controversial Princetonian
Woodrow Wilson,
just the gathering of power
to the federal government
in general, but also the rise of
bureaucracy, the agencies that
are founded, what
on the far right
it's called the
"deep state" now.
But the rising power of
the federal government
through the Progressive
era and the New Deal
did diminish, in many ways,
the power of state governments.
But since-- this is just a
little history primer for those
of you who didn't take AP US
history in the last six months,
which is some set of you--
since the era of Reagan
that the federal government
has been largely divesting
itself of a lot of that power,
or seeming to, because it's been
enhancing its power militarily
and many forms of
federal spending
have risen in those years.
So what we're seeing
now during the pandemic
has been quite interesting,
which has really
been the response
to the pandemic
has been led by the states,
red states or blue states.
But they have used
their sovereign power
to either defy or promote
public health mandates,
and in fact have
forged new alliances.
So look the last
one I heard of was
when Larry Hogan, the
governor of Maryland,
had formed a
seven-state coalition.
We in New England
have a coalition
that's around movement between
the New England states.
I think maybe New
Jersey is now in this.
You can drive from
New Jersey to Vermont
without being in
violation of a state law.
But there's been a kind
of new sectionalism.
I think we could
even call it that.
People often think about--
you probably learned,
in your US history
class in high school,
Frederick Jackson Turner's
famous, now infamous,
"The Significance of the
Frontier in American History."
I think I even write about
it in "This America."
He later wrote an essay
called "The Significance
of the Section in
American History."
That is to say the
endurance of sectionalism
as opposition to the power
of the federal government.
I think, in the absence
of strong federal action
on behalf of the
pandemic, we have seen
a rising power in the states.
What that means for
international cooperation
is complicated.
I mean, to some degree,
Wilson of course
wanted the United States to
join the League of Nations,
which was partly of his making.
And it is that
resistance to what
would become a multinational--
that there would be
a higher authority
than your own
national government
that led Americans to defy the
Senate to fail to endorse it.
And the limited participation
or the limited endorsement
of the United Nations.
So are we on the edge of some
new cooperative global body?
No.
In fact, in the
United States, we're
just withdrawing all
the time, withdrawing
from this, that,
and the other thing,
from the Paris Climate Accords
to the WHO.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
BEN CHANG: Thanks
very much Rojit,
and also for bearing with
the time zone change.
Our next question,
Professor Lepore,
comes from Gabe from Buffalo.
Gabe, over to you.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Dr. Lepore.
Thank you so much
for being here.
And thank you to President
Eisgruber as well.
My question to you is more about
the medium than the content.
I've have so much enjoyed
reading your book,
and I listened to your
podcast this summer,
and reading your articles
in "The New Yorker."
And I was wondering,
as a person who
wants to be a
writer in my career
and wants to work in all three
of those media, which have you
enjoyed the most
writing it, and what
ideas do you think come
across the best in each
of those mediums in particular?
Because I know each works best
to disseminate different ideas.
But I wonder if you've
thought about how
you can use each to work with
those different types of ideas.
JILL LEPORE: Yeah, that's a
really interesting question.
I think of all the
ways in which I do work
as a writer as versions
of how I teach, honestly.
What I mainly do, like
most of your faculty,
we mainly are teaching.
This is what we
do all day, think
about how to take something
that you really care about
and know a lot about,
and help people sort of
spark a spirit of inquiry about
it by sharing your knowledge
but also instilling a
hunger for more knowledge
or for the discipline of that
way of knowing and exploring.
So whether it's writing
something for "The New Yorker,"
or writing a book, or
working on the podcast,
or whatever else I
might do, they all
feel to me like versions
of the same thing.
Something I'm so
completely fascinated
by but it's just not inherently
interesting-- like I remember
I once had an assignment
for "The New Yorker"
which was to write a
history of taxation.
And I just was like, oh my god,
you've got to be kidding me.
Even I am not interested
in the history of taxation.
Yet there are people
whose whole lives
is the study of the
history of taxation.
I just thought, how
am I going to make
this interesting to begin with?
And then how can I keep
somebody interested
when I can barely stir,
And "The New Yorker" has this
thing called the strap hanger
test.
Have you heard of this?
So the strap hanger test is--
remember when you used
to ride the subway?
So the strap hanger test is like
someone's reading your article
on the subway, and they're
holding on to the strap
while the subway is
kind of chugging along.
They're reading your
article, and they're
reading your article, and
they get to the bottom
of the page and the last word.
In order to turn
the page, they would
have to let go of the strap
and risk getting knocked
into someone else on the train.
I'm so nostalgic for
this, I can't even say.
So you have to be
willing to let go
of the strap to turn the page.
As you're writing--
this is just a piece
of writing advice
that I'm telling
you, this story, because
you asked about writing.
As you're writing, you
should be imagining
the gap between every word
should pass the strap hanger
test.
Your readers should
be motivated enough
to find out what your next word
will be to risk getting knocked
down on the subway.
So I think about that a lot.
Because I think about
that when I teach.
Teaching is like-- it's such a
drag if people aren't following
you and they're not interested.
You're paying a lot.
Your family's giving up
a lot for you to be here.
I should be holding
your attention.
So whether it's thinking
about how a podcast works
narratively, or how you
embed an argument in a story
for an essay, or what it is
about the shape of a book that
justifies it being a book
rather than an essay,
that strap hanger test is
actually kind of in my mind.
Because to pass
that test, you have
to be willing to
let go of the strap.
You have to be so into
what you're thinking about.
For the crazy taxation
essay, I ended up
finding out that there was
something about the San
Francisco earthquake
in 1906 that arguably
led to the creation of
the Federal Reserve.
And an earthquake
is a good story.
Everybody likes an
earthquake story.
So the piece opens
with the earthquake.
And all the money in all
the banks is destroyed.
And oh, shoot, if we'd
had a Federal Reserve,
we could have got
through the earthquake
without a financial panic.
And it creates enough
momentum for the federalizing
of the monetary system,
which is necessary for what
becomes the passage of
the 16th Amendment, which
makes a graduated federal
income tax constitutional.
So I don't know.
When in doubt, start
with an earthquake
is my answer to your question.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much.
That's very helpful.
And thanking the
panelists, as well.
Thank you.
BEN CHANG: Thanks
for that question.
Apologies for the delay.
I'm taking some notes, as a
communicator, Professor Lepore.
That strap hanger
test too.
So I'm jotting that down.
Our next question is going to go
to Mollika from Rockville.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Professor Lepore.
Thank you for joining us.
So I have a question
specifically
about something you talk
about towards the end
of "This America," which is
you bring up journalist Jose
Antonio Vargas's
idea of collecting
all these definitions of what
it means to be American from all
these immigrants.
And you argue that
America should
be that collection
of definitions,
or rather any nation in
general is a collection
of those kinds of definitions.
And I think that's
a really great idea.
And always, in language,
the meanings of words
simply depend on
how people use them.
And those words' meanings
can change based on that.
But there is still
a lot of people
who aren't ready to accept
many different definitions
of Americanness.
And of course you
explain the importance
of historical narratives
to support that.
But I'm sure you know
I am not and many
of the great Class of 2024
are not renowned historians.
So I'm wondering how you
think individuals can reckon
with defining
their own identity,
which they call the
same as someone else
but it's a very
different definition,
and what, concretely, you think,
as citizens and specifically
as university
students, we can do
to promote the acceptance of
all those different definitions.
JILL LEPORE: Yeah.
Can you give me an
example of definitions
that some people
would believe to be
inconsistent with each other?
AUDIENCE: I mean, as simple
as birthright citizenship.
And people would argue that,
if your parents came here
illegally and you're born
here, you're not American.
And it spans very widely.
I think some people
would argue--
like I have birthright
citizenship,
but my parents have also
been here for decades.
And some people would argue
my parents are Americans,
because they're immigrants
and naturalized.
But some people would
also say they aren't.
And that, I feel, can be a
threat to their personal sense
of identity.
JILL LEPORE: Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, my question
wasn't disagreeing
with the proposition
of your question,
but just getting some
clarification there.
It's a really vexing issue.
Because, as a
historian, I got to say,
it just seems so
clear, empirically,
that immigration to
the United States
is essential to what the United
States is and ever could be,
and that the incredible
tapestry of that story,
historically, just
seems so overwhelming.
But there is the
counterstory, which
is the persistence of
nativism, and xenophobia,
and of immigration restriction.
I think [AUDIO OUT]
has xenophobia,
the underside of that
narrative of the kind
of immigrant story of America.
What's also
perplexing about it is
that people who have done
empirical research-- like,
it seems like our contemporary
political discussion
of immigration is
hyperpolarized.
There are people
certain people who
say, well, the Democrats want
to just open the borders.
And the Democrats will
say, but the Republicans
want to build a wall.
And in some ways, those -- both
things, people,
and in other ways,
most people don't
want to either build a
wall or have no borders.
There's a really interesting
research organization
called More in Common.
And what they do is
empirical research
where they do public
opinion measurement.
But they mess around
with the questions
so that the questions don't
read as partisan questions.
Like if you ask people, do
you want to build a wall?
People think, oh, I'm being
asked an identity question.
That is to say, did
I vote for Trump?
So I'm going to say yes,
because I did vote for Trump,
and I'm just being
asked to say that.
Or no, I didn't vote for
Trump, so therefore I'm
going to say no
to that question.
They're not actually-- no one
asked that question is really
thinking about, should
the federal government be
allocating these funds to do
this thing that requires this,
that--
But if you ask people, should
we have border restriction?
But if you ask
people questions that
are not coded as
partisan questions,
most Americans actually agree.
Immigration is really
vital, and important,
and a source of
ongoing dynamism.
But there should maybe
be some enforcement
at the nation's borders.
There is actually
this very broad--
I think the More
in Common people
call it the exhausted
majority, which
is the overwhelming majority
of people in the United States
who are like,
yeah, I don't know,
immigration seems
like a good idea.
But on the other hand, I
don't know, maybe there
should be some more
coherent laws around it,
that it's become--
so much of our political
discourse is absolutist.
It's because people are making
so much money off of selling
political messages to people.
It's a frustrating thing.
Because for me, the history--
it does certainly does
not go all in one side,
but the history really is about
people who have fought again,
and again, and again
against immigration
restriction have been on
the right side of history
because they have opened
doors and built staircases.
And that's what we should
be doing for one another.
AUDIENCE: Thank you,
Professor Lepore.
JILL LEPORE: Yeah.
Thanks for the question.
BEN CHANG: All right.
Our next question comes from
Abid from Bangladesh
via New York City.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
Can hear me?
JILL LEPORE: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Oh, cool.
So my question was, a lot of
colleges and college campuses
are generally
characterized as kind
of a liberal, at least
left-leaning, place.
And it's not necessarily due
to the fault of the classes,
although, often, the
professors are liberal.
So my question is
basically, do you
think Princeton
and other colleges
promote liberal nationalism,
and not necessarily liberalism
or conservatism?
JILL LEPORE: I can't speak
to Princeton, per se.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
You don't need-- yeah,
yeah, yeah.
JILL LEPORE: I
mean, universities
are worldly places.
They have a very, by definition,
outward-looking vantage.
They want to bring people
from all over the world
to their beautiful campuses.
And they want to
send those people
back out all over the world.
So with the exception of, say,
the service academies, which
have a very specific interest in
the nation state as an entity,
I don't think there's a
vision for that one way
or the other on most campuses.
Although I do think that--
AUDIENCE: I guess I
didn't necessarily mean,
are your classes
or your professors
giving you that sense.
Because it's so different for
every student what classes
they take.
Me, as an engineering
student, I
don't have to take
those classes.
And so I'm not
even going to have
to engage with a lot of that.
But I mean, I guess just
for the student body.
Because student
bodies on colleges
are often characterized as
at least very left-leaning.
So on the case of liberal
nationalism versus nationalism,
do you think they lean
one way most of the time?
JILL LEPORE: I think it varies.
There are a lot of different
kinds of institutions
of higher education
in the United States
if we're just
talking about the US.
There are evangelical
Christian colleges,
there are Catholic colleges,
there's the service academies,
there's HBCUs, there
are community colleges.
I think we do a disservice to
the range of institutions when,
by college, we mean the
Ivy League or something,
or like Ivy-plus.
And I don't mean to
intimate that that's
exactly where we're going.
But when people want
to say, colleges
are left-leaning
indoctrination, they generally
are talking about a certain
kind of, broadly, Ivy something.
AUDIENCE: Can we restrict
the colleges to that, then?
JILL LEPORE: Yeah, I
mean, it is the case
that those institutions
tend to have--
well, they're
politically liberal.
They generally are
politically liberal.
There's some that are famously
less so, that are more--
Stanford is host to a number
of research institutions
and other institutions and think
tanks that are conservative.
It was founded, in
many ways, to advance
a set of conservative ideas.
That hasn't always
been the case.
For instance, after
the Second World War,
the CIA funded a lot of
area studies programs.
And there's an enormous
amount of defense funding
that goes into the modern
research university,
really for the sake
of the Cold War.
So there's an enormous amount
of federal government defense
money and federal money of
other sorts that goes into--
I think there's
a different story
of higher education
in the middle decades
of the 20th century.
This moment that
we're in now, where
people want to say
higher education is
a bunch of liberals
or whatever, is
a kind of post-Vietnam moment.
And that is largely about the
incredible energy that students
who engage in the Civil Rights
movement and then in the free
speech movement and the
anti-war movement are engaged
in activism on college
campuses, where young people are
the leaders of--
and starting in 1960, in
Greensboro, North Carolina,
which really kind of begins
a decade of student protest,
that the protests
that have been going--
Like imagine, this
past spring and summer,
with the George Floyd
protests, if classes
had been in schedule,
had been on campuses,
kind of student movements there
would have been on college
campuses, versus what became
much more of an urban street
sort of situation.
In the '60s, a lot of that
action was on campuses.
So, so much of how we think
about higher education
dates from that era,
and dates in particular
to, also, faculty-led
disavowal of accepting money
from the government
for defense spending
at research universities.
There are all kinds of
ethics laws that emerged
in the wake of the Vietnam War.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I mean, that
like being liberal
or left wing.
But do you think
that necessarily
fits into your idea of
what liberal nationalism is
versus nationalism?
JILL LEPORE: No.
Because one of the arguments is
that most liberals don't want
to talk about nationalism or
think about the nation state.
Because that's been an important
piece of intellectual work,
a kind of disavowal.
So I don't think that
schema fits on there.
AUDIENCE: OK, so
students are not
engaging in either
way with the spectrum.
They're just not
engaging with it at all.
JILL LEPORE: Is
there a place where
you can point to
where you see one
or the other being expressed
on college campuses?
AUDIENCE: So I'm a freshman.
So I can't really
necessarily point to colleges
because it's not like I've
been here for very long.
But I know, at least in high
school, from my experience,
I remember in ninth grade
once-- this was around 2016,
so I can see why they viewed
me with some reasonable
suspicion--
but I said that America
was the number-one country.
And of course all the
kids in my ceramics class
immediately started
questioning me.
And I think they
were very suspicious.
And whenever I kind of
argued that viewpoint
in other classes, I
think I was immediately
proposed to be a
nationalist, whereas I
was of that liberal
nationalism thing, where it's
like America's the
number-one country in terms
of promoting free, liberal
values and challenging them.
However, I was often suspected
to be of nationalism.
And so I never felt like it
was even a discussion really.
It's not like we ever really
talked about the difference
that you defined in your book,
because it was kind of assumed
that if you like America you
are that Trump nationalist, big
group thing.
JILL LEPORE: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's been
a very odd time historically
since the
all-volunteer military.
Because that really has changed
what is at stake for students
in talking about,
and thinking about,
and engaging with the
United States as a nation.
When there's a
draft, and when it
isn't just people from
low-income families
who serve in the
military, there's
a very different
kind of engagement
with what the objectives of the
nation are on college campuses.
And I guess I just
like reflecting back.
When I was your
age, I was in ROTC.
And how I thought about
what the nation was doing
was really different
than everybody else,
who was just like
it was like school
was kind of like a holiday.
So your experience is
an interesting one.
I can see where
that would have been
a complicated and
uncomfortable situation.
AUDIENCE: Mm-hmm.
BEN CHANG: Cool.
Thank you.
Sorry. Thanks very
much for your question, Abid.
Appreciate it.
Our next question-- and I
would note we have just a few
more minutes, but
we'll try to get
two more questions
in-- our next question
is from Katrina from Delaware.
AUDIENCE: Hey.
JILL LEPORE: Hey.
AUDIENCE: How you doing?
JILL LEPORE: All right.
AUDIENCE: My question
is about-- like,
I don't know if you've heard,
but Princeton's decision
around--
so a white student
said the n-word,
and a professor
called the Black Justice
League a terrorist group.
And they were not reprimanded,
based on the university's
decision saying
it didn't violate
any policies or anything.
So I was just wondering what
your idea on that in general,
your view, and then also
just the role of universities
in lack of education
versus education
on these important
kinds of matters,
and what that facilitates for--
we're being sent out in the
world to do all these things.
So white students being
allowed to say the n-word being
a policy at the university
and stuff like that,
like what do you
think that will have
on the major national play,
and this whole conversation
on liberalism and nationalism.
JILL LEPORE: What would you
like to see Princeton do?
BEN CHANG: I also think--
sorry, Professor
Lepore, to interrupt,
I think we might
bring on Chris also,
given the institutional
nature of the question.
But sorry to interrupt you.
JILL LEPORE: OK.
Yeah, Katrina, can
I just ask what you
would do about this issue?
AUDIENCE: I mean, personally,
I feel as though it
was grossly mishandled.
Because I feel as
though, by saying,
white students can
say the n-word, it's--
and all that he did in general.
He just had a lot of
messages of harassment.
And I think it really
neglected black mental health
and the effects that
hearing that word
can have on black students.
And by saying it wasn't
harassment was invalidating.
At the time, when students
emailed, they
were sent to counseling
services, which acknowledged
the harassment without
actually giving any punishment,
and saying, oh,
education is the way,
or like, we told him not
to do that, really negates
the importance of consequences
for one's actions,
and how I feel that that
black students are often
ignored in that.
And then same thing
for being called
a terrorist group and all that.
And I of course
believe in free speech,
but I also believe that free
speech doesn't mean freedom
from consequence.
JILL LEPORE: Mm-hmm.
I don't know anything about
what's going on at Princeton.
I can barely keep up with
what's going on here.
But these are obviously issues
that come up across the country
repeatedly.
We keep having this
conversation, again, and again,
and again.
So I feel like I just don't
want to put my foot in.
I don't really know
what's going on there.
So I'm going to
punt over to Chris
and hear a little more about it.
But thank you for raising--
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER: I want
to make sure the students have
chances to hear from you.
So let me describe,
roughly, the background,
and see whether you
want to comment on it
or leave it for
discussion at Princeton.
As the student questioner
said, we had a faculty member
this summer who referred
to a student activist group
as "a small local
terrorist organization."
That was inaccurate.
And I registered my strong
objection to the statement.
But I also said that our
policy on free speech
and academic freedom
protects that speech,
along with a lot
of other speech,
and then wrote an
essay saying, look,
it's very bad when we
call one another names.
But on the other hand,
the search for truth
requires us, at a university,
to have a very broad ambit
for free speech,
including speech that
can make people uncomfortable.
As you say, Jill,
it's a conversation
that goes on a lot
and a conversation
that we will continue
at Princeton,
and that obviously
I'm very engaged with
and I expect the students
to be very engaged with.
But the principles, the issues,
aside from the specific facts,
are about the application
of a broad understanding
of free speech in the
college environment.
JILL LEPORE: I mean, I
guess what I would add,
I can say something--
I guess, Katrina, I
could say something
as a historian about one of
the ways I think about this.
I mean, in terms of what
community Princeton is,
god knows this is the last thing
for me to say what decisions
you all should be making.
But obviously I think that
students should be very much
a part of that conversation.
But historically what's
always fascinated
me is how what came to
be called the No Platform
movement on the left
came from the right.
It really was first expressed
in the 1960s in California,
when Ronald Reagan was running
for governor of California,
and the University of
Berkeley California students
invited Stokely Carmichael
to speak on campus.
And Reagan and Reagan
supporters waged a big campaign
to insist that it was wrong
to present a university
platform for someone to speak
the way Carmichael spoke.
So, so much of what we
think of as that impetus
to deny people a platform,
to insist on speech codes,
historically comes
from the right.
That's why the Free
Speech movement--
that's among the reasons
it got started and was
so dynamic at the University
of California, Berkeley,
in the early years of the 1960s.
What's fascinating to
me, as a historian,
is how that moved from
the right to the left.
Because now it's a
partisan battleground.
Even if you use the
expression, free speech,
it no longer refers really
to the First Amendment.
It refers to a partisan
discussion that
is an essential one to have.
But again, in terms of
what Princeton does,
does it follow a model--
like University of Chicago
has embraced a set of what
some people would describe
as a kind of free
speech fundamentalism.
Other universities have very
particular speech codes,
where they the talk
that you described
would have been prohibited,
and where there'd been kind
of predetermined consequences.
Universities have struggled
with how to address this.
That is to say how to
both be mindful of,
and really hear, and
think through, and have
the leadership within
the institution come
from communities
that have heightened
concern about certain
kinds of language
while also doing what
Chris was talking about,
thinking about the
commitment of a university
to be a place for
unregulated speech
or for freedom of speech.
So I think it can be,
for many institutions,
a really tricky situation.
And I'm sorry to hear about this
you know really bad stuff going
down over the summer.
It can be really painful way
to start out at an institution.
But I hope that your experience
there, the experience
of everyone there this
year, is that this
is a place where you feel
like you can do your best
learning, and your
best thinking,
and learn from other people,
and express yourself, and feel
safe to do so, and emboldened.
It should be a place where you
feel ready to do your best work
and to say what you need to say.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, I definitely plan on
doing that and challenging
this policy.
JILL LEPORE: Thanks.
BEN CHANG: Katrina.
Thanks very much
for your question.
Appreciate it.
And indeed, given the time, we
will have one more question.
And if Aaron from Pittsburgh
is still on the line, Aaron,
the question is over to you.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I'm not sure how my name got
put as Aaron, but my name's Sam.
I'm from Pittsburgh, PA.
And I guess I
should preface this
by saying that I'm interested
in studying history.
And so one of the things
that really stood out
to me about your
book was this tension
you talk about shying away
from writing national history
and how that opens the door
to people like Bill O'Reilly
to write his very hortatory--
these histories
that have an agenda.
But you also tell us
that these historians
have existed for a long time.
You point to Lothrop
Stoddard of a century ago.
And that's someone who's
largely been discredited today.
So my question is,
if we are going
to continue or start again
to write national histories,
what lessons can we learn
from the sort of halcyon
days of writing national history
that we could apply today
as we try to combat
people like Bill O'Reilly.
JILL LEPORE: So I wrote this
little book, "This America,"
after I had finished
writing a 1,000-page history
of the United States.
I wrote this very long
book called "These Truths--
A History of the
United States," that
was my attempt to offer an
account of the nation's past
that was different from those
earlier academic stories,
and also really different from
the triumphalist narrative.
I mean, I think what I take
away from the state of affairs
is that the stories that we
tell about the nation's past
have become as polarized
as our politics.
It's all kind of
this weird either/or.
Like either you have a
kind of Bill O'Reilly,
like, everything the United
States and America has ever
done in the world and at home
has been a brilliant triumph
of liberty, freedom,
and prosperity,
or you have a kind of
Howard Zinn version
on the other side, where
everything is essentially
this litany of atrocity.
And the same way you pick
your political affiliation,
you pick your history.
And that's nuts.
History is a form of
intellectual inquiry
that is answerable to
evidence and to the discipline
of historical
investigation and research.
So it's not like, when you
are interested in chemistry,
you choose between
chemistry or alchemy.
It's not like when you're
interested in the stars
you choose between
astronomy or astrology.
We recognize astronomy as
a science and astrology
as kind of like a hobby.
That alchemy is goofy.
You can't turn
things into things.
Chemistry is a science.
History is a thing.
You actually have to study it,
and there has to be evidence,
and you make an argument.
And yes, it's an interpretation
and someone can revise it,
in the same way your
chemical finding
could be proven to be wrong
by a subsequent researcher.
The fact that what we know in
any discipline changes over
time, in any other discipline,
we feel like, as
of course it should.
So I think that
we need to bring--
we need to insist
on the necessity
for that kind of rigorous fealty
to the methods of a discipline.
Now, we will have a disagreement
over interpretation.
But I think what's
to be resisted
from the history is using your
history to just kind of line
yourself up with a political
party and its agenda.
That doesn't help
our public culture.
It's not really defensible
in scholarship either.
Thank you so much.
BEN CHANG: Thanks very much
for your question, Sam.
That was our final question.
I will note, as your
humble moderator,
that we took the
questions as they came in.
So that means Sydney
from Piscataway,
Aybars from Turkey,
Nick from Atlanta,
Ashley from Michigan,
and all the others, apologies.
Sorry we could not
turn to your questions.
I do hope that
everyone found this
was a fascinating
conversation as I did.
There will be
opportunities to continue
this discussion on these
important issues in the days
and weeks to come and
truly throughout your time
as a Princeton student.
So with that, over to
you, President Eisgruber
for our closing.
CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER:
Ben, thank you.
And my thanks
especially to the Class
of 2024 for joining
us for this session
and for asking such
good questions.
You'll all have the
opportunity to continue
the pre-read conversation over
the course of the coming week
in small discussion groups.
And I'll look forward
to speaking with you
over the course of
the coming term.
And Dr. Jill Lepore,
thank you again
for your participation in
this wide-ranging discussion.
I'm so glad that you could
be with us virtually.
And I hope that we have
a chance to welcome you
to Princeton in person in
the not-too-distant future.
Class of 2024, I want to close
with one more program note.
I hope that you'll
be able to join
the watch party for the Virtual
Step Sing at 8:00 PM.
That's Eastern Daylight Time.
And good luck with your
first day of classes,
tomorrow, when we all begin.
I look forward to our
interactions in the years
ahead.
Take care and be well.
Thank you for joining.
Bye bye.
