In our contentious and ideologically divided national climate, the ability of diverse groups to coexist and even thrive together is critical to democracy. In this episode, USU President Elizabeth Cantwell talks to Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America, about the role of universities in advancing pluralism in society.
Eboo Patel is a civic leader who believes religious diversity is an essential and inspiring dimension of American democracy. Named “one of America’s best leaders” by U.S. News and World Report, Eboo is the Founder and President of Interfaith America, the leading interfaith organization in the United States.
Under his leadership, Interfaith America has worked with governments, universities, private companies, and civic organizations to make faith a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division. Eboo served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council, has given hundreds of keynote addresses, and has written five books, including We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy. He is an Ashoka Fellow and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. Eboo lives in Chicago with his wife, Shehnaz, and their two sons.
Learn more about Interfaith America.
full transcript
Elizabeth Cantwell: Hello and welcome to “Future Casting with Utah State University.” I'm Elizabeth Cantwell. I'm the president of USU and the host of this podcast. Today we're talking to Eboo Patel, who's the founder of Interfaith America, that's a nationally renowned institution. He's a nationally renowned speaker and an educator on religious pluralism, which is both really important for our community and I think really important today. So for those of you out there who don't know, USU has worked with Eboo Patel's organization for over a decade, a really long time, including to set up our university's interfaith initiative, which many of you have participated in, an interfaith leadership certificate program. And he spoke to our group of more than 1,200 Aggies on the Logan campus in 2014 so this is kind of a decadal update for us. I think USU is currently implementing an advancing religious pluralism grant from interfaith American and this idea of religious pluralism is very much in the conversation here in Utah today, although I'm not sure we all use the same language. We don't necessarily call it pluralism, but we are very much engaged in this conversation that I think of as bridge building across religions. So I wonder if you could just actually help our audience today with an explanation of what pluralism is generally and and why religious pluralism, how you got to that, but why it's so important for today's society.
Eboo Patel: President Cantwell, I want to say a huge thank you to you for having me as a part of this podcast. I had a great visit to Logan, Utah roughly 10 years ago, and I did speak to, I think it was 1400 Aggies in a big theater in the center of Utah. And so thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you for focusing on this important conversation of pluralism for the nation and for universities. So let me say that I for us. There's kind of five, you know, kind of five poetic lines that I think of as related to pluralism. Number one, diversity is a treasure. Number two, identity is a source of pride. Number three, cooperation is better than division. Number four, faith is a bridge. Number five, everybody's a contributor, right? So, like, you can kind of think of that as kind of a word cloud, if you will, right? That those that's the poetry of pluralism. Edition of pluralism, for me, is respect for diverse identities, relationships between different communities, and cooperation on common projects for the common good. So respect, relate, cooperate. We respect people who are different than us, even when those differences mean disagreements. Right city is not always the differences you like. Number two, we relate positively across communities. We're always looking for how can I have a positive relationship with you? And number three, we're looking for ways to work together. What are some things we can do to make our community better? And this happens all the time in America. It happens in athletic teams. It happens in cancer research labs. It happens in hospitals. It happens in fire departments. And a huge part of what we want to do at Interfaith America is lift the inspiring ways that pluralism already happens in the country and say, look at that. Look at that, that athletic team or that fire department, where they implicitly understand that diversity is a treasure, that identity is a source of pride, that cooperation is better than division. And I really think that the institution that can lead the way in both the practice and theory of pluralism is universities.
Elizabeth Cantwell: So would love to talk more about that when you describe those five principles, if you will, the one that lit up in neon for me is faith is a bridge, because it's one of the places that everybody can still see bridge building happening in society. And I think a lot of people today don't see bridge building a lot of places in society. So talk a little bit about what, what why you I mean, I have my own perspective on why. I think universities are critical to this kind of community focused bridge building and and the use of faith, really, frankly. But I wonder if you could tell us what you mean by why universities are so important.
Eboo Patel: Sure, so I want to, I want to talk about two different kinds of pluralism that I think that that universities do excel at, and can it can be. One is intellectual pluralism, the way University is organized is in different academic departments, because we believe in higher education, something that is implicit now, but that was made explicit by the great philosopher William James over 100 years ago, which is that the universe is plural. He actually let the plural verse that the. Universe. So the nature of reality is diverse, and that is why we need different methods for exploring it. That's why at universities, we don't just have physics and chemistry departments, we also have anthropology and sociology departments. These are diverse ways of exploring the beautiful diversity of the universe, right? The other thing that intellectual pluralism has within it is the idea that we have diverse explanatory frameworks for reality. We are. My PhD advisor once said to me that the cardinal sin of the researcher is squeezing the world into his worldview, right? You not just say everything is about class conflict or everything is about biological determinism, and walk around the world finding examples that support your thesis. That is not what intellectuals do. Intellectuals create. The intellectuals have a rigorous way of researching reality, and then they create diverse explanatory frameworks for what might be going on. Why is a student Why does a student excel in one class but not in another class during the same day? Why are kids nicer in summer camp than they are in school, etc, etc, right? So these are some really interesting things that I think that they call for intellectual pluralism, diverse explanatory frameworks in that help us explore the nature of reality. So that's part one.
Elizabeth Cantwell: Intellectual pluralism I see, I see a pop in what interests me. Because right now, particularly in Utah, but really in all of public higher ed in the US, there's this massive focus on how we serve the workplace, if you will, this kind of economic value, but the workplace is equally demanding of pluralistically trained human beings, right? They do not want someone who merely has spent four years in a chem lab. They would not probably get hired. That, to me, is something that seems equally important today, is to remind the entire world that it isn't just that the future of society sort of the intellectual capacity to have multiple frameworks, but it is. It is demanded by our companies and by the economy.
Eboo Patel" Absolutely. I, you know, I often say to university presidents like you, President Cantwell, that a university should ask itself two questions. There are other ones, of course, but here are two critical ones. One is, what's the promise we make to our students? What's the promise we make to our students? And I'll tell you what you don't promise. You don't say, when you come to our campus, you will meet people from different backgrounds, and we will teach you slogans to shout at them.
Elizabeth Cantwell: We don't say that, and we don't, and we don't do that.
Eboo Patel: It is not. One can look out at the landscape of higher education and find enough examples of that, right? That's but, but that is not what you are about. The second thing that I think the second promise you make is, what's the promise you make to the public? So, if a school superintendent said, I want to hire teachers out of your school of education. What can you promise me that they are able to do? What you want to say is I promise you they can help students from a range of identities succeed in the classrooms of your school. That is what I am promising you as the president of Utah State University, if you hire the nurses out of us out of our nursing program, the doctors out of our medical school, the teachers out of our ed school, etc., that is the promise we're making to and that promise is all about diversity, but it is about excellence. It's about rigor, it's about cooperation, it's about all those things. And my analogy for this is, when United Airlines hires newly graduated pilots out of flight school, they're pretty sure that they can fly planes. Similarly, when superintendent hires teachers out of the Education School of the University, they should have a degree of confidence that those teachers can help diverse students excel in their classrooms.
Elizabeth Cantwell: And I think they do as you know. You may not know, but we certainly train a significant fraction, upwards of 25% of the public school educators in the state of Utah get their original training here at Utah State University. Utah is really interesting, but has a long commitment to this idea of things like teachers being able to move into any environment and help everybody succeed, help all their students get to where they need to get to, or doctors working in a number we don't train physicians, but we certainly train a lot of mental health professionals and counselors. Uh, anybody can, should be able to go to them for whatever it is that they deliver after they graduate and get what they need. And we do sort of pride ourselves on being the part of the system in Utah that trains people to, and I think it's that trains people to, to be egalitarian and capable, no matter what situation you put them in, which is, I think why in 2014 coming to Interfaith America was such a like a natural for our some of our faculty and for our students, and why we've really kept it all of those training capacities and and the things that we learned there, we've kept that really strong. We have a huge student organization and a number of faculty who are really committed. So it might be a good segue to sit for our listeners to understand what your that organization does.
Eboo Patel: Or so, yeah, I really want to thank Bonnie Glass-Coffin, who I've known and been friends with for for over a decade now, who who played a leadership role in advancing this and everything from teaching classes to helping found groups to organizing my visit there a decade ago to running several of the of the research based projects that we've given grants for, and more recently, Austin Knuppe who is just was a part of our new begin Fellows Program and has also been doing some interfaith work at Utah State University. So I love the fact that, you know, we have a president who's involved in you, President Cantwell, and faculty members, and I've certainly met no small number of students who've been, who've been involved in this. Yeah, I like to say, you know, bridges don't rise from the ground or fall from the sky. People build them. And building bridges in engineering terms. And I believe you're an engineer, right? That's an engineer. It takes a ton of skill and a ton of work and building civic bridges between people who are from different religions or different races, or rural and urban, whatever the difference might be. That's a skill set, that's a knowledge base, that's that's a vision and orientation, and it needs to be learned and it needs to be practiced. And I think that universities are the perfect place for this right one, because of that dimension of intellectual pluralism I spoke of earlier, but second, because of civic pluralism, because a University is one of the few places in our society, frankly, that intentionally brings together people of diverse identities and divergent ideologies, and says you should be proud of your distinctive identity. Here we want you to be both Muslim and Mormon, and you should work together. You know, work together on our intramural athletic teams. You're going to work together in our research labs. You're going to work together in projects and classrooms and and that is a powerful thing for a nation to extol. You should be a distinctive identity, and you should build the skills of cooperation across difference.
Elizabeth Cantwell: And we see that our students are really hungry for permission to kind of be happy about being able to do that and not be unhappy. It's a moment where offering excitement about being able to be part of not just the bridge building solution, but part of communities that are diverse is is something it's almost incumbent on us to do that, because students don't necessarily see that before they get here, or what they're inundated with is an enormous amount of information, generally coming through. I'll call it electronic means one way or another that just is overwhelmingly feels like the world is polarized.
Eboo Patel: My friend David Bornstein tells me this hilarious story that one day his dad calls him and says, David, human beings are worse than animals. And David says, Dad, are you watching cable TV? Yes, you know, social media is like cable TV on steroids and and I think universities are the antidote to that, because they allow for people to be in physical concrete contact with each other. They they lift up the ethos of we are going to look for common ground. If there are 99 things we disagree on, we're going to find the one thing that we can positively relate on and start there. Now we'll get to the other 99 things. Disagreements are important in a diverse democracy, but we're going to start with the place of resonance, right? So that's something that I think universities can really lean into. I think another thing universities can lean into is what I like to call the long thought. There are so many easy ways to like shoot off short thoughts and hot takes. But my favorite line is, I don't know. Let me think about it. Think about it. Think about it. Let me talk to a range of people. Let me consider a number of perspectives. Let me read a book or two. Right universities can encourage that ethos and help people practice that skill.
Elizabeth Cantwell: And so we do, obviously, in. Many components of the teaching and learning environment we do that, we also think about, how do we do that, where we are delivering teaching and learning, either online or in some asynchronous manner, because some of that is upon us, and we believe our students still need some piece of that learned environment, if you will. What else? And I know you've worked with lots of universities, are the kinds of things that we can do to not just create an inclusive environment for and I'll focus on religious diversity or religious pluralism, because we have students of many different religions here. Can we do to create an environment where where our students feel belonged, but also where they can translate the things that they know and learn out to others? I know you've you've seen a lot of ideas and options.
Eboo Patel: I come to Utah a lot because I'm the impact scholar at the University of Utah, and so we share a friend and president, Taylor Randall, and I'm really hoping that that will be able to work with a network of universities in Utah, University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State, maybe Utah Valley University, in really helping partnering, being a good partner to you all, in becoming exemplars of pluralism. Let me give you a couple of examples of, I think, what that looks like. And we have an article called called the practices of pluralism for universities. I'll share that with you, and maybe you can put it on this site. Lovely, yeah. One is, is to, I think, to do exactly what you're doing here, President Cantwell, which is for, for the university president, to make a public stand in favor of pluralism and to do talks at the Chamber of Commerce that basically say this is the promise we make to the public when you hire our graduates, you can expect people who have the vision, knowledge base and and skill set of bringing diverse identities together into effective teams. You can expect that in your businesses, you can expect that in your hospitals, you can expect that in your in your school systems, you can expect that in social services, you can expect that in diplomacy, whatever it might be that is who we graduate, right? And for a university president to be public about what that is, to make that promise effectively, I think a second really important thing is to focus on exactly what you do focus on at USU, which is academic courses that explore the scholarship of working positively together. Listen, this is like half of political theory and social psychology. Right. Political Theory in America is about how you build a diverse democracy. And the term that political theorists like Horace Callan, like John Courtney Murray, like John Rawls use is pluralism, term that they use when they ask the question, how do you build a diverse a healthy, diverse democracy? And in social psychology, you have all of these practical lessons and things like the Robert cave experiment, right? What are ways that identities tear us apart, and what are activities that bring us together? And so those are two examples of the way your academic programs can teach students the knowledge base of working together across difference. And then the final thing, I'd say, is your student affairs division and to focus on skills right the opportunity for a university to be a place where students can lead diverse teams in concrete and cooperative projects. That's why we spend so much time in our interfaith Leadership Summit training people to lead projects. If you bring people from you can bring Muslims and Mormons and atheists and Jews and Catholics and evangelicals together in an environmental cleanup project, but then have each person share what their distinctive faith or philosophy that inspires them to care for creation. That's exactly the kind of leader our society needs.
Elizabeth Cantwell: It is indeed. You've been listening to, you know, the voice of young people for a long time in this context, is there anything about, I'll call it the demand signal from young people in the last few years that that is changing around The desire for introduction to pluralistic thinking, but also experiential opportunities. I certainly hear a lot from our students about the screaming desire for actual experience, like living life, doing it, not just learning about it, but but I haven't, in this context, actually been observing students for a decade, so I thought I would throw you something perhaps unusual, is that, is there anything that you're noticing about the voice of young people that is changing?
Eboo Patel: So I think the visual display of the Olympics captured a moment. I think it's a new moment, right? I don't think it is a. Going too far or inaccurate at all to say that we've lived through an era of critique where part of what people got good at is telling other people what they were doing, wrong, right. Part of what people focused on is all of the things that were bad in the world. But that's not what you do if you're an Olympic athlete. What you do if you're an Olympic athlete is you strive for excellence, and you do it in the context of diversity. So if you take the men's and women US Olympics gymnastics team, of the five women, four were women of color. Of the five men, two were men of color. Two of the quote, unquote, white guys, of course, nobody's ever just white. Everybody comes from somewhere, right? Paul Judah, his parents are immigrants from Poland. Don't speak a word of English when they arrive. Mom's a nanny. Dad's dad's an electrician, and he puts that bronze medal over his dad's neck, and there's like, a lot of tears, because that is an American story. That immigrant journey is an American story, right? Steven netterocek is blind on the pommel horse, and to look at people who excel in the context of diversity and are so proud of their diverse teammates, I really think that that captured them. And I think a lot of 18 year olds are implicitly saying to their professors, help me be that person. Help people all the reasons I can't succeed. I don't want to get good at knowing all the barriers to my success.
Elizabeth Cantwell: I want to just get good at excelling and sharing that with one another. We do hear a lot from our student organizations about how can they, you know, take up initiatives like this, even if that's not the original purpose of the organization, and we certainly have a lot of faculty here who and advisors who now, over the last decade, have have learned how to do that and how to provide advice to our student organizations on how to do that. I'm going to shift gears a little bit, because one of the things that I do, I not only do these kinds of podcasts, but I also I do a rare series, just because they're usually pretty large of discussions about, I mean, really, at their base about, how do we do hard things, largely around political matters, in a way that protects our capacity to continue to have conversations about it, framing that may be an interfaith dialog. How you got to the this idea that or this? It's it's well beyond an idea, right? But going from from interfaith dialog and cooperation to really, a whole movement, really honestly, at least in this country, because I think people listening are mostly here, are campus folks who could get some inspiration from, how do I do that? And just as an individual, what am I going to go do tomorrow that's going to make a difference?
Eboo Patel: So one of the quotes that I love is John Courtney Murray, the great Jesuit philosopher, who said civilization is living and talking together. And the reason that pluralist civilization is so challenging is because you are living and talking with people with whom you disagree on important items. And to just think about that is so inspiring. We in the United States of America have tried something truly new in human civilization. We have tried to build a pluralist democracy, a place where people who who have diverse identities and divergent ideologies, live and talk together. And then John Courtney Marty goes a step further. And he says the definition of the barbarian is the person who destroys the conversation. So I look at that my job as a citizen, and I mean that in an Aristotelian sense, right? Somebody who participates in public life, my job as a citizen of a democracy is to talk to people, a wide range of people. So I'm probably not buying a brownie from the KKK bake sale, but I'm talking to everybody else, and I'm actually considering that a duty of participation in a diverse democracy, and the notion of finding out something that I disagree with someone else on and deciding to not talk to them because of that disagreement, maybe that's who we voted for. I just think that that's that is a violation of the ethos of diverse democracy, like, literally, unless you are a Nazi, I am curious about you. And even if you are a Nazi, I'm still curious about you. I might not want to get that close, but I'm curious, right? We take interest in other people. We seek to work with other people. So let me, let me give you an example of this. People would during a particular time in my life. I like to say everything is political. Everything is political. Everything is political. Somebody turned to me and was like, hey, if your house is on fire and you. Called the fire department. Do you want them to ask you who you voted for? Is everything really political, or are there actually a huge set of things in American life that are what we might call civic in which we recognize there are going to be political differences again, up to the parameter of Nazism, and we engage with each other anyway, and I think a university is a civic space where we understand are going to be political differences, and we are interested in each other's story to those differences, and we look to engage cooperatively and positively and in an exploratory way.
Elizabeth Cantwell: So for so many people, that takes a kind of courage today that it didn't feel to me as growing up many years ago, it took that kind of courage to go engage with kids that were really, really different from me. At least it has felt to my five kids like it takes some courage to do that. I might say that, be saying that, just to acknowledge, for all the students that are listening, that, yes, it might take some courage to not just listen, but actually engage and go to your perspective on I don't know, like I might have to do a little more thinking about that before I think I know, but it doesn't mean I'm not going to listen in the moment. So I put that out there, because I do think a lot of young people feel like it takes some courage to to engage in that kind of conversation at this point.
Eboo Patel: And one way to think about this is, is when you come home from class or extracurricular activities or or you know, whatever your your normal day at the university is, whether you're the provost or whether you're an incoming first year student, kind of keep a tally, right, like how many people that I talk to today that I largely agree with, and who see the world the way that I do, and how many people that I talk to today who surprised me, who don't see the world the way that that that I do, and who did I learn More from? Who did I learn more from? And I are from people that that don't see the world the way that I do, because, by definition, they have a story that I don't know or don't understand, and I'm interested in that. I'm looking for things that I am that that that help me learn about the world, and people who don't see the world the way that I do, help me learn a lot, and then they pose a really interesting challenge, which is, if we were in a fire department together, or on an athletic team together, or if we were cancer doctors together, how would we work together across this difference? And I'll tell you something, the alternative is worse. The alternative is not working together across that difference.
Elizabeth Cantwell: Yes, in areas where the difference doesn't define the work.
Eboo Patel: So one of the things we like to say a lot at Interfaith America is to build a diverse democracy, you have to learn to disagree on some fundamental things and work together on other fundamental things. And so you might disagree on who you vote for, and that is a fundamental thing, right? You might disagree on on what's happening in the Middle East. That is a fundamental thing. This is not to minimize those really important things. And if you work for a fire department or a hospital or an athletic team or a school, there is another fundamental thing in front of you, which is how to teach kindergartners how to read or how to do surgery and somebody's gallbladder and the ability to do those activities together, racketing the disagreement. That is the only way a diverse democracy functions. Otherwise you're going to drop your kid off at school like I did. You know this morning, first day of school here in Chicago, and bunch of teachers are going to be like, Hey, we've decided we can't work together. We vote differently. We view abortion differently. We sorry, sorry. We can't teach your kids. That would be the great travesty.
Elizabeth Cantwell: It would be. But, and in that context, maybe I would love to come back to faith as a bridge builder and that, just that whole bucket, I'm just trying to think of a more elegant word, but the bucket that holds all faith, everybody's different but really meaningful perspective on faith. Because while we are enthusiastic here at USU, and we have students and faculty and staff who are very interested. It appears to me that we have more that we could be doing, because we have so many people of faith and a pretty wide variety. Certainly, we're a large LDS community, but we have our we have many, many other versions of people of faith, and I'm talking about religious faith, and I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit more about how our community members can use their faith to build bridges.
Eboo Patel: Yep, so I'm going to say three things here. This is, this is what we really do at Interfaith America. It's the area we specialize in, right? States, we are a broad based pluralism organization, meaning we help institutions of all kinds really center cooperation across difference and identity as a source of pride. But our the yeast for that is how we think about religious diversity. So I want to quick things in this number one is imagine if every institution founded or inspired by a faith community in your city, in Logan or in Salt Lake, disappeared overnight. Now let's do a walk and see what would be gone, right? And my wild guess is that Utah State University, it, even though it's a public institution, that that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints played a massively important role.
Elizabeth Cantwell: Huge and still play in a role in our community, our community support, and yes, it's a big it's a big faith deal here.
Eboo Patel: So think about the hospitals, things, all of which would be gone. And now think about the fact that we live in the most religiously diverse nation in human history and religion is our largest source of social capital in the country. What you want to do with that massive treasure, that religious treasure, is you want to encourage cooperation, not division. You want the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints, and the Muslim community and the Jewish community and the Catholic community to be working together to serve students, to help refugees, to help reduce the challenges of homelessness, to help people who have addiction issues, to make sure that our environment is a place where you can breathe the air and drink the water right so in a very concrete way, you Want the largest source of social capital in the country, which is faith communities, to be working together, to be bridging, to serve the nation. That's number one. Number two, let's recognize that there are massive differences between religious communities. I'm a Muslim. I believe the line of Prophet ends with the Prophet Muhammad. I am fully aware that the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints, sees it definitely. In fact, the definition of the church is you have a 19th century prophetic figure in Joseph Smith and continual lines of prophecy in the church. I disagree with that theologically, and I admire it civically, and that is a wonderful muscle to build, is the mission of of disagreement, and yet the ability and even the ability to work together and even admire Yes, for that difference, right? Each religion has what I call a theology of interfaith cooperation, and it was beautifully expressed in a recent statement by President Nelson called peacemakers needed. So how do we live out the theology of interfaith cooperation, which is to say the dimension of our faith, which indicates that it is sacred to work with people who are different than you. That is what President Nelson is saying in peacemakers needed. So that's point number two, to lean into our faith and to ask, How is cooperation across difference, sacred in my tradition? And the third thing I would say is the real what is sui generis in the United States of for the United States of America, what like? What we truly do that is new in human history is create a religiously diverse democracy. It is, it is religion that political philosophers over the ages have believed you need to have homogenous everybody, the same religion in order to have a democracy. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Ben Franklin and John Adams, for all of their sins and faults and they were Legion, believed you could do something different, that actually people from different religions could live together, could cooperate together. So in our history, we develop the ability to have a religiously diverse democracy, and they're all kind of hic, all kinds of hiccups along the way, right? So, you know, federal troops pointing their guns at what is now Utah, against the Christ of Latter Day Saints, the anti Catholicism, the anti semitism, the Islamophobia. Over the course of our history, these are terrible things, and yet we have dealt with them, and in most cases, gotten over them. And so this notion of how you build a religiously diverse democracy is a huge and inspiring American history, and that's the third thing that I would really focus on. So the first, how do you build bridges of cooperation between diverse faith communities to serve the nation? The second is, how do you lean into the theology of interfaith cooperation within your own tradition? And the third is, can you learn the history of interfaith cooperation, of religious pluralism in the United States of America? Because that history is actually American history.
Elizabeth Cantwell: And I would even start because I have had to say this. You know, we are absolutely a secular institution, and your faith is welcome here, just like. Your your religious, your sorry, your ethnic background, or your or your prior learning, or any of the things about who you are, your faith is welcome, because, to me, that opens the door for the for these three aspects of our students to interact with one another, first and then maybe have the courage to have a discussion with a faculty member or someone who's older than they are, and actually bring to their classrooms that ability to speak to one another, which is going back all the way to what you said at the beginning, At this idea of part of what we do at universities is we literally bring people face to face with one another, physically close to one another, in a way that allows them to speak about many diverse things be the diversity that they are.
Eboo Patel: I mean, you know, I've been doing this for over 20 years, and one of the I hear some version of this story with with with amazing frequency that a student will, you know, show up in in some college administration office on the second day of school and say, I'm sorry you've made a mistake. You have me rooming with the heathen. And the college administrator will say, actually, that's how we do it. Here, we assign random roommates, and people get to know one another, and then 10 years later, that person is a is the best man at a wedding, right? That that's, that's how you build a diverse democracy. You build diverse democracy by creating spaces where people with different identities and divergent ideologies can cooperate.
Elizabeth Cantwell: So this is, I have to tell my story a little bit for you. Eboo, because I spent most of my career working, you know, down and dirty, national security, engineering, technology related things. And then I met Michael Crow, who's the president of Arizona State University. And the short version of that story, he said to me, you know, I know you think you have a mission, but the most important mission in the United States right now is the public education higher education mission, and I think you should come and test this out, because without people like you in that mission, you know we need you, and I've been in higher ed now for 12 years, and I believe this absolutely, that what we can do is provide the basis functions for the continuation of of the nation, because we have an obligation to and do, by hook or by crook, provide the platforms for diverse conversations. It is really hard sometimes. Politics doesn't always, and I'm thinking about many, many decades of higher ed doesn't always agree with that approach, but we have managed so far to keep it going. And in truth, we get a lot of support in Utah for that, but it is a mission, and I'm a both a person of faith and one who who finds that if I can lead our students to a discussion about the ability they have to use their faith in this environment, in conversations with and or even in their intellectual output, the papers they write, et cetera, to bridge from whatever they're Thinking about, whatever they're troubled by to the next place where they they can feel a little more part of the system. That's something they can hear and they can do right now.
Eboo Patel: Absolutely, listen, identity is a source of pride. You cannot say identity is a source of pride and then ignore or be dismissive of somebody's religious identity. You can't say that.
Elizabeth Cantwell: You cannot. It does come up occasionally, but no, you can't, not if you really see that. So we have maybe five minutes left. Eboo, I don't know if there's anything you want to say about kind of interfaith America and how you how you work. I think we will have plenty of people who listen to this and go, I want to I want to play. I want to play there. Now we're going to put, for those of you that are listening, we have a number of links that we'll put on our website. We'll put a link to interfaith America. We'll put a link to the work that that goes on here at USU, in case you want to learn and participate there for our community members, strongly encourage you to read any of the books that Eboo Patel has written, but the one that I have read is your most recent one. It's, I think, is it We Need to Build?
Eboo Patel: Right.
Elizabeth Cantwell: Yes, yes, which I found nice, I mean, comforting, in the role that I occupy. If you have other thoughts to leave our listeners with —
Eboo Patel: A line from, from we need to build which is, which is we, the things we do not love. By building the things that we do. And from how you approach a football team to how you approach an academic department to how you approach a whole university or a state government, we build. Things we do not we defeat the things we do not love, not not by, you know, overwrought critique, but by inspiring creation of new and better things.
Elizabeth Cantwell: The better thing, yes.
Eboo Patel: And I think that pluralism is something that is built, and I think it can be modeled at universities, and it can be launched into the wider culture by those universities. And I've loved working with Taylor Randall on the University of Utah on this, and and I've loved the 10 year relationship with Utah State University on this. And hopefully we can, we can strengthen that relationship. And there could be this notion of Utah State and University of Utah and BYU are really in their own context and with their own identities, exemplars of pluralism.
Elizabeth Cantwell: And we all work together incredibly well. You may see us, the three of us, doing something interesting in this coming year. It's a perfect, perfect moment for it.
Eboo Patel: Yeah, it's great. I mean, there's if there's a wonderful places in Utah, I'm excited about all of you.
Elizabeth Cantwell: We would love to come talk again in a year or two, as we, as we march through this political moment, which the next year will be really interesting for our students to observe and participate in And and learn about and bring their their own perspective on faith to the future that they uniquely will be delivering that I will not be, because my my moment for that has has passed. They are, they are creating what they love rather than what they don't love. But I appreciate the work that you do. I was not introduced to it before someone said you should really do a podcast with Eboo Patel. And I'm like, Yes, this is actually exactly what I'm talking about. So thank you for having created that whole body of work, because it's really inspiring to me.
Eboo Patel: I appreciate that President Cantwell and thank you again to Austin Knuppe and to Bonnie Glass-Coffin at the university, who has really built this ethos within the university, along with you. President Cantwell and I look forward to strengthening the relationship.
Elizabeth Cantwell: Very, very good. Thank you so much for appearing with me. I appreciate it so much. Thanks. Eboo, bye.
Future Casting with Utah State is a production of Utah Public Radio and Utah State University sponsored by the Office of the President. Thanks to Eboo Patel, Justin Warnick, the USU Marketing and Communications team, and producer Hannah Castro.
