Free Speech and Unity

Kudos for this piece particularly for calling out the committee of faculty making demands to judge others.
I watched the Cornel West interview you cited. I thought he agreed and agreed and agreed with his “brother” the jurisprudence conservative. But he also slipped in there a reference to the very popular view (Caste, White Fragility, etc.) that all white people some how inherently have an attitude of racist thought and unconscious feelings of prejudice. Norman Thomas was no such white man and I was raised on his example. Many were. Those folks are shutting down discussion and not writing about the people and movements who for decades have been working together — Black and white — for social justice. Those voices, books, and committees are widening the divide when we need to hear more about people like Norman Thomas who mentored John Lewis (look it up), who was asked to speak at the I Have a Dream March on Washington, who risked his life to defend black sharecroppers and poor whites who were not getting New Deal money and who were being shot at for trying to unionize, who demonstrated and sang with James Baldwin and others, who was a leader for free speech and freedom of conscience starting in 1917. Free speech and unity is the way forward.