Our Taft Talks series concluded with a day of insights, scholarly exploration, and intellectual engagement as Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., returned to Taft for a Morning Meeting talk around the need for civil discourse and character within a functioning democracy. Dr. Glaude also engaged with community members through an all-school question and answer session, and small-group gatherings.

One of the nation's most prominent scholars, Dr. Glaude is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. He shaped his Morning Meeting talk as a conversation between philosopher and education reformer John Dewey and author and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin, envisioning how Baldwin’s 1963 A Talk to Teachers might speak to Dewey’s 1939 essay, Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us. Along the way, he delivered thought-provoking ideas, insights and commentary.

On the difficulty of disagreement:

“It is here that conversations often run aground. We try to smoke out the background assumptions that shape a particular view; assumptions that have a moral and ethical register. Instead of disagreeing and being open, we end up seeing each other as enemies across hard battle lines. This is particularly for discussions around race.”

“How do we converse civilly when there are a host of assumptions about who I am informing the debate? Those assumptions have deep histories and shape implicitly and explicitly how Americans see themselves and others, and the world.”

On Change:

“What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.” – James Baldwin

“It is your responsibility to change society, Baldwin says, if you think of yourself as an educated person.”

“Ralph Waldo Emerson was right: Conformity stifles the soul…You must break loose of those assumptions and histories that ultimately determine our relationships with others—that get in the way of our knowing others.”

“Life’s journey consists of better and more excellent versions of who we take ourselves to be. Wach experience calls us to a higher sense of ourselves that requires the abandonment of older versions: Who you are at Taft today is not who you will be 10 years from now.”

On moving forward

“We are not moved about as institutions as they are,” Dewey said, “but those institutions ought to reflect our values and commitments.”

“We have to become better people, and that involves our relationships with others—interrogating the background assumptions that block from view of the humanity of those right in front of us.”

“If you’re not mindful of the human cause, you have to ask yourselves the question, ‘Have I become callous in the heart?' Structures matter. Institutions matter. But who we take ourselves to be matters. We must become the kinds of people democracies require.”

“The answer to our troubles—the answer to the hubris that clogs the nation’s throat—is what it has always been: It rests with the willingness of everyday people to fight for democracy.”

Find Dr. Glaude’s full bio here.