I interviewed Dr. John Sexton, President of New York University, the largest private university in the United States, on the intersection of faith, pluralism, globalization, and higher-education in the 21st century
Rahim Kanani: When you look at the tension and controversy surrounding the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”, what strikes you as the root of this growing division?
John Sexton: It’s very interesting. There’s a slim volume that I read years ago by Albert Hirschman, it’s called The Rhetoric of Reaction. And I was just looking at it this morning because this afternoon, I am speaking to the 5,000 freshmen that are beginning class at NYU next week. He wrote this book in 1991—some 20 years ago—and in it he analyses political discourse in advanced democratic societies. He expresses what he calls, “A concern over the massive stubborn and exasperating otherness of others.” And he goes on to write of the unsettling experience of being shut off, not just from the opinions, but from the entire life experience of large numbers of one’s contemporaries and how citizens in advanced democracies array themselves in a few clearly defined groups. For example in America, the two-party system, each holding different opinions and easily becoming walled off from each other. And here, I quote again, “As the process feeds on itself, each group will at some point ask about the other in utter puzzlement and often with mutual revulsion, how did they get to be that way?”
Ismailimail 