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- [00:00]
Michael Roth
CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back. Have I Got News for you Returns tackling the week's top stories, making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Get ready for a brand new season premiering Saturday, September 6th on CNN.
- [00:16]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [00:44]
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- [01:47]
Christiane Amanpour
Hello everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up.
- [01:51]
Kelsey Osgood
The president has been quite clear they must follow federal law.
- [01:54]
Michelle Martin
He also wants to see Harvard apologize.
- [01:57]
Christiane Amanpour
But Harvard won't be cowed, and others are now standing up. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, joins me then, the religious leader standing as a moral beacon. Why Pope Francis offers hope these days.
- [02:14]
Kelsey Osgood
Plus, sometimes we want to make sense of religious conversion, or we want to think about it through a lens that's sociological or academic. But in some ways it kind of doesn't really fit neatly into those categories. It can almost be thought of more as like the act of falling in love.
- [02:29]
Christiane Amanpour
God struck the women turning to religion in these increasing, increasingly secular times. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Cristiana Manpour. In London, the Trump administration is ramping up its war on higher education. Harvard, arguably the world's most important academic institution, is pushing back, and it is a $2 billion gamble. After the university refused to bow to the Trump demands to drop DEI measures and to punish student protesters, the administration swiftly froze those funds and is now threatening its tax exempt status. That kind of presidential interference would be illegal under federal law. And more than 600 foreign students, faculty and researchers at over 90 universities across America have had their visas revol in an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of speech. Several of these students, including US Green card holders, have been arrested and faced deportation with no charges filed and no due process. While some universities like Columbia have buckled under the financial pressure and Trump's demands, Harvard is not alone in resisting. Princeton and a growing number of others are fighting back, including Wesleyan University, whose own federal funding has been threatened and its president. Michael Roth is joining me now from Connecticut. Michael Roth, welcome to the program.
- [04:10]
Michael Roth
Thanks very much for having me.
- [04:11]
Christiane Amanpour
So let me first ask you where you discovered the steel in your spine not to break. What was the point at which you said we cannot do this?
- [04:24]
Michael Roth
Well, that's a great question, because there are some things the federal government can rightly insist upon, and I don't have to agree with those things, but I do have to comply with the law. For example, the end of affirmative action was a change in how we do admissions and we obey the law. We don't use racial preferences at all in our admissions process. I think we should be able to, but the government disagrees and we follow the law. That seems pretty straightforward. In our case, we actually got rid of legacy admissions also at that time, because if we're not going to give preferences, we shouldn't give preferences to our alumni either. But there are some things that the government insists upon that are contrary to law, which is to tell universities who to admit, to tell universities how to teach, to tell universities how to understand belonging or fairness on their campuses. And I think the outrageous arrest and threatened deportation of international students really made me stand up and write some essays about this, even though I disagree deeply with the politics of those students. That shouldn't matter in America. You have the right to speak your mind, whether you have a green card or you're a citizen. And for the federal government to just show up one day at your door and take you away because of the ideas you express that is anti American, anti educational and undermines our freedom.
- [05:48]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, I want to ask you about that because you wrote an op ed in the New York Times essentially saying basically the headline was Trump is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie. And this is one paragraph that you wrote, jew hatred is real, but today's anti semi, anti anti Semitism isn't a legitimate effort to fight it. It's a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people. Jews who applaud the administration's crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril. There's a. This is really an important statement. So explain. First of all, the last segment will soon find that they applaud this at their peril. You're addressing your own community.
- [06:36]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Yes.
- [06:37]
Michael Roth
As a Jew myself, I am appalled that people who support Israel will ally themselves with an administration that is using scapegoating racism and which has no trouble supping with Nazis when it's inconvenient for them. I'm appalled that my fellow Jews will support this because they think it'd be good for Israel. I myself believe strongly in Israel's right to defend itself. I'm critical of the current government in Israel. But all of that shouldn't matter. The idea that you can say you're fighting antisemitism and then cancel DEI programs which actually can be used to protect Jews, is absurd. The idea that you say you're fighting anti Semitism so you're canceling research grants for diabetes research or Alzheimer's research. This is ridiculous. What the Trump administration is doing now is demanding a loyalty oath. They are demanding that schools express loyalty to the president and his current beliefs. This has nothing to do with anti antisemitism and Jews who align themselves with leaders because they think those leaders are picking on other people. Eventually, the Jews find themselves the targets of that same abuse. And we've seen this throughout history. The rabbis have talked about it. Beware of governments that seem to be your friend and then violate the law. You may like the way they violate the law now, but in the future, it'll be at our own expense.
- [08:07]
Christiane Amanpour
So this is very interesting because, as you rightly say, there are a lot of rabbis and Jewish organizations who are voicing what you're saying now. They're very uncomfortable. That picture of the young Turkish student, the female Turkish student, which we're gonna run now, being approached in by plain clothes people in hoodies and some masks, plane cars, unmarked cars just swept off the street. That really turned people, you know, across America. And of course, Mahmoud Khalil from. From. From Colombia, whose wife is American and pregnant and again was just whipped off in the middle of the night. The two of these people are still under, amongst many others, still in detention with no due process. And that started to worry a lot of people. Where do you think this is gonna end? What are you doing, for instance, on your campus to ensure the safety of the Jewish community but not allow this kind of, as you call it, you know, extrajudicial process against some of these students.
- [09:13]
Michael Roth
Yeah, we've talked a lot on our campus, and it's a small campus, about 3,000 or so students. We talk a lot about the importance of protecting everyone. Everyone should be able to thrive. And anti Semitism is a real thing, and when we see it, we stop it. But we don't want to see our students living in fear of their own government. I was talking to a group of prospective students this morning and their parents, and someone asked me, how do you find the courage to speak out? And I said to them, listen to yourself. This is America. Why is it a question that we should be afraid to speak out? If I'm a young Palestinian and I want to write an essay in the school newspaper, or if I'm a young Jew and want to write an essay in the newspaper for Palestinian rights, I shouldn't be worried that the government is going to crack down on me because of my opinions. It's un American. It's an attack on freedom. And I think whether I agree with the protesters or not is irrelevant. And it should be irrelevant to the federal government. We should be protecting freedom, not eroding it in the service of the President's ideology.
- [10:19]
Christiane Amanpour
So this, as you say, is having a very chilling effect. But now that more and more of you Pres. University leaders are standing up, maybe it'll find its own water level again. I want to play this little soundbite from the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, also the former Treasury Secretary. This is what he said about this crackdown.
- [10:39]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This is an attempt to impose the kind of regulation on Harvard that is imposed by government on universities in countries that we don't think of as democracies, countries that don't have free speech protections.
- [11:02]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, I'm sitting here in the UK And I cover parts of the world which are not democracies and don't have protections and do crack down on their students. Right now, those brave students who've been protesting in Turkey, many, many of them are in jail. Of course, there's no due process. This is the kind of thing we're used to seeing there. How shocking is it and how long do you think it can last in the United States?
- [11:28]
Michael Roth
It's terrifically shocking, and I fear it will last if people don't speak out against it. It will last if citizens, whether they're at universities or elsewhere, say, we need to protect our freedom. This is not just about universities. This will be about businesses. This is about churches and synagogues and mosques. This is about civil society, where one should have the ability to speak freely. And our position as Americans in the university world has been so strong because we have freedom of inquiry, we have professionals making decisions about molecular biology research or about cancer research. We don't want the government trying to do that. The government has supported that work with funding that's really important and has made us a stronger nation. But it has never demanded ideological loyalty until now, and we must reject those demands and protect our freedoms.
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Christiane Amanpour
Did the Mikasia era demand ideological loyalty during that time from universities? I know the other areas that they the red baits, et cetera, red baiting and the red scare. Was it directed at academia as well?
- [12:33]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Yeah.
- [12:36]
Michael Roth
Absolutely. It wasn't directed from the White House, but for sure, elements of the federal government led by McCarthy got some states to demand loyalty oaths and people left. I know academics who moved to other countries rather than sign that loyalty oaths. This whole idea that you would have to subscribe to not even a coherent ideology, just support, loyally support Donald Trump. That idea flies in the face of the pursuit of truth, flies in the face of the scientific research. And it'll weaken us not only academically but morally. It'll weaken us politically. And I think Americans won't stand for it. They may like the idea that a fancy university is getting attacked because they're fancy, but we all believe, I think, that you're a citizen in the United States or you live in the United States as a legal immigrant. You should be able to speak your mind, see the people you want to see, have the meetings you want to have, and not worry about the government peering into your affairs. We want the government to support good work without demanding ideological conformity.
- [13:47]
Christiane Amanpour
I want to get more to that because as you know, there is a conservative agenda to do exactly what is happening by all means possible. Chris Ruffo and the lot, they say we're going to take them down. I mean, that's, that's their public thing, and I'm going to get to that. But I want to ask you the funding that's at threat, the government funding, whether it's the $2.2 billion at Harvard, which has been stopped, whether you're funding Columbia's, et cetera. Is this for DEI projects? Is this for Palestinian, Israeli studies? What is this funding?
- [14:20]
Michael Roth
It's for everything, Christiane. It's for scientific research. We have a researcher here who works on things for the physics for the Department of Defense and Energy, and they just are freezing things because they can not because there's some coherent agenda there. They're punishing schools for not being loyal. In their view, they don't like dei. They don't. Which means they don't like programs that support greater access, more inclusion, and that ensure fairness. Why they wouldn't like that is something I don't understand. But they are punishing universities with. By freezing grants to other dimensions of their activities. And so they use anti Semitism or anti DEI as a cover. But in fact, what they're doing is taking money away from Alzheimer's research. They're taking money away from clinical trials for new cancer drugs. And this is like shooting ourselves in the foot. It's really taking the funding away from what the United States does best, which is to attract great scientists from all over the world who solve problems in ways that help many people. And so I do think this is so much about loyalty to the administration and about attacking universities that many people have grown to resentment. And I think we in universities do need to do a better job of explaining how the work that goes on at universities serves the common good. That it's good for America that there's research going on. It's good for the United States that we have students who are on scholarships supported by the government, because those students from modest economic backgrounds will go on to do great things and improve their way, their station in life. And these are things that American universities have done for decades and decades. And to shake them up, just in order to show that the White House has the power to do so is a grave mistake.
- [16:25]
Christiane Amanpour
As you know, many European countries and universities are laying out the welcome mat for anybody who's disaffected or fired in the U.S. you know, people. People around the world are dying for your. For your great scientists and researchers. But on a more immediate level, is it just about loyalty or is it a bigger conservative agenda as expressed by Chris Ruffo? And you've heard the interviews. He's the head of a. An organization, a conservative organization dedicated to doing what you just told me to. Taking down liberal universities several pegs and saying that these universities, your universities, are not representative, that you should not be, you know, teaching, or be paid taxpayer money for teaching critical race theory, diversity, you know, DEI and all the rest of it. And has already crowed to the New York Times that his group has brought down three presidents, if you remember, Harvard, Penn, and Columbia at the beginning of these protests last year. Um, he also says that the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty across the board is totally lopsided. Um, you know, and and says that they want colorblind admissions. Do they have a point? Is there any reform or greater diversity, diverse opinion or faculty that you should be including?
- [17:54]
Michael Roth
Absolutely. I wrote in, I think 2017 in the wall Street Journal about the need for an affirmative action program for conservatives on university campus. That's because in the humanities especially and in the interpretive social sciences, we tend to hire people who are left of center. And I've talked with my faculty a lot about how this is a bias and we have to overcome our biases in hiring the folks who go to graduate school in history or philosophy or English and spend 10 years working on a PhD. They may be people who skew left rather than right in the world, but we have to be more aware at colleges and universities of the biases we bring to the hiring process. So I would love to see and have written a lot about wanting to see more intellectual and political diversity on campus. But the schools that they're attacking, it's not like they're graduating these legions of progressives or radicals. You know, people graduating from Harvard these days, they want to be in Wall street, the popular majors. It's not like critical race theory, it's economics, or they're going into computer science. And these are not radicals. These are people who are using their education to advance themselves and to contribute to the ongoing developments in the economy and culture. So it's just nonsense. If you look at these, especially at the elite schools and what kind of jobs they take or what kind of jobs they seek, they're not seeking to be political organizers in large numbers. They are seeking to play a role in the economy and in the culture. Here at Wesleyan, we have a lot of people who want to actually become teachers. And we have lots of people who want to become part of the entertainment industry. We've had Lin Manuel Miranda has spawned generations of people who want to right the next Hamilton because he was a student here. And at many of these lead schools, you have people who are not graduating with lunatic fringe ideas. They're graduating with ambition to make a contribution in the fields they've chosen. So although I do believe very strongly that we need more ideological diversity on campus, and we talk about that all the time now at Wesleyan. I also believe that having the government choose people on the basis of your ideology is a recipe for disaster. I mean, this is a government that can't even use the Signal app. Well, we need the professional historians choosing historians, but being mindful of their political biases. And the same in English or in anthropology. I don't worry that people in chemistry are really using political biases when they hire a chemistry. I don't worry that people in computer science are biased politically when they choose the computer scientists, they are choosing people who are smart, who are ambitious and who can advance the field. And if we let the government try to choose those people, we'll have a disaster because that's not what the government is good at. The government is good at funding these departments to do important work by their own light, with their own professional competences. Can I just be good at picking winners, as we say?
- [21:27]
Christiane Amanpour
I just want to interrupt for one moment and ask you because it seems that the reactions and the responses from the universities have been pretty much individual and somewhat ad hoc. And I just wondered whether any of you are banding together like the Ivies or the other. You know, your, your, your levels and this and that. Like an attack on one is an attack on all. There needs to be a strategy, clearly, right? It can't be a one university has one answer, another has another answer.
- [21:56]
Michael Roth
That's exactly right, Christiane. And we're doing exactly that. For the last few weeks, I've been trying to get schools together to make such a statement and really make, have such a commitment. And I think in the next four or five days you'll see statements from some national organizations linking that have many, many universities as members. I think they will now come out with a declaration defending the freedoms that are so important for a good education. I wrote this book called the Student, and it's about the history of the idea of the student. And I thought at the end, in the modern era, being a student means you get to practice being free. And we need to have campuses where people can practice being free. And so I think you'll see coalitions of colleges, universities, community colleges, I'd say the next five days bringing out statements. I've been talking to my colleagues about this with a much more unified front.
- [22:58]
Christiane Amanpour
All right, well, that'll be really, really interesting. And I think that's a great sort of term, a place to practice, to be free and what freedom means and the responsibilities. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, thank you so much indeed for joining us. Thank you. And we'll be right back after this break.
- [23:21]
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- [23:52]
Michael Roth
I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast.
- [23:56]
Kelsey Osgood
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- [24:03]
Michael Roth
Dr. Yael Bunsusan is a laryngologist. She is director of the University of South Florida's Health Boy Center. She is co leading research there on using AI to try and detect diseases and perhaps even treat them. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [24:27]
Christiane Amanpour
It's not surprising so many people around the world today are seeking antidotes and relief from hard line strongman policies. Pope Francis has emerged as that figurehead, a moral authority for these times beyond his 1.4 billion Catholic flock worldwide. In a recent essay for the New York Times, religious scholar and journalist David Gibson writes, the age of Trump has its prophet, Pope Francis. And of course, it's Holy Week right now for Christians around the world. But the Pope won't be able to preside over the masses and Good Friday services of mourning this year as he continues to recover from that long illness. And David Gibson joins me right now from New York.
- [25:07]
Michelle Martin
Welcome.
- [25:08]
Christiane Amanpour
Welcome to the program. It was very, very interesting, your op ed and we really did want to talk to you about it because it just opened my eyes to a lot of things. First of all, what do you mean by, you know, Trump has his prophet? What does that mean?
- [25:23]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Well, in the sense that if you're looking for the polar opposite of Donald Trump in the modern world, it's a bit of an irony. It's the Pope in Rome. I mean, look, the Catholic Church wasn't always the greatest friend to democracy and human rights throughout its history, but especially in the last half century or so, the church has emerged as such a vocal moral voice on behalf of human rights and democracy. And Pope Francis very much so. Remember Christiane a month ago? We didn't think the Pope was going to survive. He was in the hospital in intensive care, double pneumonia, 88 year old man. We were waking up every morning thinking we'd be reading obituaries. Everyone was talking about his legacy as pope, his openness, his to gays and lesbians, his elevating women in the church, all of these remarkable things, his openness to immigrants and welcoming refugees. These are all important things. But what I don't think was getting enough play was what an important champion of what he calls a better kind of politics and his moral voice against nationalist populism, the kind of Trumpism that's gone rampant around the globe, and his championing democracy, open debate, scientific research. He's, you know, on climate change, he's been a really. The Guardian called him the moral voice of the world. So these things I don't think were being highlighted enough. But also, it's not just in a vacuum. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we would have had the United States being side by side with the papacy and so many others on these kinds of causes. But that's not the world we live in anymore. It's the world of Donald Trump and Trumpism in so much in so many countries around the world. And Pope Francis really stands against that.
- [27:23]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, it is interesting because even in his, you know, sick months and days, et cetera, there have been clashes between this administration is only a few months old and this pope, particularly, J.D. vance. He wrote Pope Francis before his illness, a letter to US Bishops hitting back, as you mentioned, the policies of deportation, demonization of immigrants. He said, what is built on the basis of force and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being begins badly and. And will end badly. Of course, the counterpart is that Vance had said the idea of Christian love, love thy neighbor. He wrote that other Catholics and Christians seem to have inverted it. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about the people outside their own borders. There seems to be a real, you know, fisticuffs, verbally anyway, between this Vatican and this administration in the U.S. yeah, very much so.
- [28:26]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
You couldn't find a bigger contrast. And look, we have J.D. vance, who's heading over to Rome this Holy Week. He's going to be in Rome for Easter. Whether he'll meet with the Pope or not depends on a lot of factors, but. And J.D. vance, a Catholic, a new Catholic, a baby Catholic, as he calls himself, he just converted a few years ago, but he's directly attacked the Pope, the Catholic bishops, he called them, greedy for taking federal money to help resettle refugees and immigrants. That's an astonishing kind of contrast. And Pope Francis, again, his prophetic voice, as I call it, you know, he sees this and he's going to speak out. That letter you spoke about was released, was sent to the US Bishops. It was sent to the US Bishops. It was a message to Donald Trump. But that was sent just a couple of days before he went into hospital with this near fatal illness. And he called out Trump and he spoke on behalf I think very importantly of the rule of law. And what you said, that line you quoted, what starts in force, ends badly. I mean, that's a prophetic statement if there ever was one. But will he be a Cassandra? But he also then, as you said, he went after something that J.D. vance had highlighted, this ordo amoris, the ordering of our loves, a kind of Catholic theological concept that Vance kind of got wrong, kind of weaponized as a sort of tribal version of love. We just care for our own. Whereas Pope Francis says, no, that's not the gospel. That's not what Jesus taught. We care for everyone.
- [30:07]
Christiane Amanpour
Talk a little bit about where this might have come from. You know, Pope Francis had humble beginnings. A book was written about him called the Outsider. He was the son of immigrants. He went from Fascist. They went from fascist Italy to Argentina. Give me a little bit about that history again, that perhaps, probably certainly shapes his worldview.
- [30:30]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Yeah, I think you hit on it. That book, The Outsider by CNN's Chris Lamb is a terrific book. And that title really encapsulates, you have to understand. And I wrote that op ed for the times for the 12th anniversary of his election as pope, the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the cardinal archbishop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the first pope from the Southern hemisphere, thousands of miles away, the first Jesuit pope, the first pope to take the name of Francis after Francis of Assisi. And the reason he's shaken up the Vatican and the church so much and tried to reform the church is because he comes from the outside. His parents, as you mentioned, he's the son of Italian immigrants who left Fascist Italy and migrated. They were immigrants to Argentina. So he identifies very much with those who are on the move, those who are suffering, those who are on the outside. So when he was elected pope, he took a look around him and he said, this is not going to be business as usual. We need to be. We need to be a prophet in the world. But we cannot do that with any authenticity until we reform ourselves, until we reform the church itself. And that reform of the church itself has really upset a lot of Catholics, among them, American conservatives like J.D.
- [31:58]
Michael Roth
Vampire.
- [32:00]
Christiane Amanpour
Let me maybe, because, you know, he has been so identified. This is Pope Francis with the dispossessed. He went to, as we all remember, Lampedusa was his first trip, I think, that island off the coast of Italy where all the migrants would come from North Africa. He celebrated Mass on an altar made from those wooden refugee books. He begged God's forgiveness for, quote, the indifference shown to the suffering of immigrants. He said they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families. So he's really, really ident. And as you say, it's put him at odds with a lot of conservatives in the Vatican around the world and even in parts of Africa and elsewhere in Asia and of course in the US where does that power struggle stand right now, as the Pope is in his twilight time?
- [32:51]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Well, that's. That power struggle is going to be answered and resolved in the next conclave. And that's the backdrop to, I think, everything that going on. There is a lot of pushback. But really, I think the opposition comes largely from the United States, the Anglosphere, the wealthier Catholic communities that are very small. And American Catholics have to remember they don't realize they're only 5, maybe 6% of the global Catholic community, the wider Catholic Church, the growing church in the Southern hemisphere, in Latin America and Africa, Africa and Asia, they find what Pope France says, Pope Francis is saying that resonates with them. They love it. On climate change, on migration, on refugees, things on poverty, things they deal with all the time. The opposition, I think, is really among, you know, wealthier conservative Catholics in the Northern Hemisphere. But they have the money, they have the influence, and they have the media and social media megaphone and, and they're having a lot of influence as this kind of shadow campaign happens before the next conclave, whenever that happens.
- [34:06]
Christiane Amanpour
Can I just say, you know, reading some of my notes, he basically wrote to the bishops, to the US Bishops saying, don't listen to Vice President Vance's constant theologizing. He basically said, no, this isn't our, our Christian values or it's being twisted a little bit. It's quite bold.
- [34:29]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Yeah, no, of course. And that's the great thing about Francis. Look, when you're looking, people are saying, who's going to come next? Everybody was talking a month ago, he's going to die right away. Who's going to come next? What, you know, is there going to be someone like Francis? You have to ask yourself, what is Pope Francis? Who is Pope Francis? Who would be somebody like him? And what you really have do to, apart from any particular policy. It's a leader, a Pope who is bold, who would speak forthrightly and write a letter like that. Look, the Pope doesn't want to pick fights with politicians, but J.D. vance, almost like by coming to Rome at Easter time, J.D. vance, by citing Catholic theology and Catholic teaching, invited the Catholic Pope and Catholic leaders to correct him when he got it so wrong. They're saying, look, we can talk we can debate, we can talk about policies, we can talk about politics, all these kinds of things, but don't come at us with the gospels that you're perverting.
- [35:35]
Christiane Amanpour
David Pope Francis came across this opposition, as you said, from conservative many in the US they were his fiercest critics, people like Raymond Burke. He had his salary in Vatican apartment privileges revoked. Then the Texan Bishop Joseph Strickland was fired, who he had attacked the Pope's attempts to update the Church's stand on social matters, et cetera. I mean, he really has laid a marker down and said what he will tolerate as the leader of the faith and what he won't. But do you think some of the other stuff that he's done, you know, as you mentioned, you know, much more expressing, I hate using the word tolerance, but much more sympathy and acceptance for gays, for women, improving women's rights, et cetera, will those things survive him?
- [36:26]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
I don't know. No one knows. It really depends. The Romans have a lot of great sayings about popes. They've lived with them for 2000 years. And the Romans like to say what one pope can do, another pope can undo. And you have to realize the Pope is the top leader. It's great to be pope, but everything that he does, another pope could in many respects come in and undo. I think it would wreak great damage on the reputation of the Church. So I think many of the things he's done are going to be reforms that are going to remain. But there is a real backlash, a conservative backlash against some of these things he's done. And he's been veryhe's been very patient with so many of these, these bishops who are really fierce advocates, Cardinal Burke, Joseph Strickland, as you mentioned. But at a certain point, they kind of flash over to the almost January 6th type they're trying to overturn when they say that you're not the legitimate Pope, when you're the Pope and you're preaching heresy, those are things that just kind of go beyond the pale and he has to crack back on that. But it's, but, you know, he's been patient with them. But when they go into a conclave, when the cardinals go into a conclave, are they going to say, look, we need to readjust? We can't have this kind of, you know, someone as outspoken as this. We need someone who can keep these right wingers in the fold.
- [37:49]
Christiane Amanpour
Interesting. We've got 20 seconds. What will you miss most? What will the world miss most about Pope Francis?
- [37:57]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
The humanity of Francis the Christianity, Pope Francis, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote of Pope John XXIII back in the 1960s, here we finally have a Christian on St. Peter's throne. I think that's what the world wants and that's what I'd like to see.
- [38:17]
Christiane Amanpour
David Gibson, thank you very much indeed. And in his first official appointment since emerging from his illness, Pope Francis has made moves to put the architect Antoni Gaudi on the path to sainthood. Long nicknamed God's architect for his lifetime dedication to creating those soaring spires and celestial stained glass windows of the Sagrada Familia, or Holy Family Basilica in Barcelona, the Spanish visionary is now a step closer to canonization almost a century after his death. Stay with cnn. We will be right back. And now from the changing landscape of the Catholic Church to an increasingly secular America, our next guest, inspired by her own conversion to Judaism, decided to delve into the stories of millennial women who've discovered organized religion just as so many others are turning away from it. Journalist and author Kelsey Osgood joins Michelle Martin to discuss her new book, seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion.
- [39:30]
Michelle Martin
Thanks, Christiane. Kelsey Osgood, thank you so much for joining us.
- [39:34]
Kelsey Osgood
Thank you so much for having me.
- [39:36]
Michelle Martin
So let's just set the table here. There's a Pew Research center study showing that the percentage of Americans identifying as having no religion rose from 16% in 2007 to 29% in 2021, which is all the more reason that your book is really interesting because you explore the journeys of seven women, all people kind of in their 30s, millennials, including yourself, who each turned to organized religion at a time when a lot of their peers are not. So first of all, why all women and what started you on this journey?
- [40:20]
Kelsey Osgood
One question that arose early on for me was I thought that most people would assume that if you were a woman, to join a most organized religions would be to kind of take a step backward in terms of your own freedom. Most institutional religions are fairly patriarchal in nature or their structures remain fairly patriarchal to this day. And I think that I certainly came of age at a time when there was the idea that we had more and more freedoms, more and more opportunities. And so to be a woman specifically to enter these realms where there would be higher standards for your domesticity, higher standards for maybe the number of children you might have and sort of less opportunities to participate publicly in your faith by holding positions of power, maybe that that was a bizarre choice. Most people would think of as being a bizarre choice. So that's mostly why I focused on women. There's a tension there also with some of the data that shows that women more often are the ones who convert or who tend to be more preoccupied with questions of meaning and tend to be more active in their faiths when they are religious.
- [41:41]
Michelle Martin
You grew up in a sort of a. You describe your upbringing as kind of deeply secular, in some ways, kind of almost kind of anti religious. I would say somewhat, but just. But clearly secular. And that you ended up, as you put it, drawn to a Judaism that is mystical, conservative and rigorous. So just as briefly as you can, would you just tell us a little bit?
- [42:08]
Kelsey Osgood
Sure. I'm not sure I would describe my childhood environment as anti religious so much as just neutral towards religion. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City was a pretty secular milieu insofar as, you know, nobody. It didn't seem to me that anybody's driving force was their religious belief. People celebrated Christmas and Easter, but outside of those things, you never really heard or saw religion being practiced in a way that was visible to the outsider. I decided, really quite young, that God must not be real, but went through all the questioning that people sometimes do. I just happen to be. Maybe a little earlier than a lot of people. I. In my teens and early twenties, I struggled with anorexia. Ironically, it was in those early experiences of. In one hospitalization particular that I met a number of very observant Jews. And I was very. I was surprised. I didn't realize that it was. In a way, I didn't even think it was possible to be that religious in the world at that time. I thought that, you know, religion, even for the Jewish people that I had met earlier on in my life, they had a relationship to it that looked to me the way that most of the Christians that I knew did, which is they had a bat mitzvah or a bar mitzvah and that was. And maybe they, you know, celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But outside of that, it wasn't something that they really thought about all that often. So through college and into my early and mid 20s, it was something that I became progressively more interested in. I had friends at school who were what you might loosely call modern Orthodox. I learned from them. When I was in my mid-20s, I met the man that I would eventually marry. When we first started dating, I guess in a way I was kind of like, okay, this is my chance. I started doing some learning with various rabbis who were very kind to give me their time. And it Took a while to realize, okay, I think I want to pursue this in a way that's real.
- [44:18]
Michelle Martin
So let's talk about some of the women in your book. And they're all different. I mean, there's Angela, who's a queer identifying, started out atheist journalist with a deep belief in rationality. She ends up drawn to Quakerism. You talked about Leah, who was a committed, also committed atheist who ended up converting to Catholicism. So just want to tell us a little bit about Leah and what her story is and why she was drawn to it.
- [44:44]
Kelsey Osgood
So she was actually quite well known in the rationality community around the time of her conversion. And I don't know if people know what rationality is, but it's a sort of modern philosophical diffuse network school, if you will, of people who try to use systematic reasoning to come to make the best decisions across the board, moral decisions, but also any decision you can apply this sort of reasoning to. So Leah was well known in this community. She was a blogger who wrote about her own atheism. She was a debater at Yale. And she, like the, like the, the headline subject of that chapter, whose name is Angela, she was very morally questioning. She asked herself a lot of questions about morality and I shouldn't say was, is. I assume she still does ask these questions about morality. But she felt that, I think there were a couple of things that really nudged her in the direction of religion. She felt very strongly that morality was something that existed in the world. Meaning like we people, we didn't make up morality, we didn't decide what is good and bad, that, that it exists elsewhere. But she couldn't bridge the gap from, okay, if it exists elsewhere, then why or how? I can't see it the way that I can see plants. And so therefore, if it, if we know it exists somewhere, what, how could that be possible? And that ultimately led her to feeling, you know, that, that that must be God who had, you know, created this morality, that morality had agency of its own. Catholicism is very supportive of this idea of using your natural reasoning to get to, and to get to points of, of identifiable morality. So I think that that part resonated with her.
- [46:50]
Michelle Martin
And then of course there was Sarah who embraced sort of a particularly kind of demonstrative form of evangelical Christianity. There's Kate, who became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints after growing up. And she really, more than, you know, you kind of had an anti religious kind of upbringing to the point where when she started studying, you know, Mormonism, she was actually afraid to tell her parents because she thought they would be mad. And then Hannah, who became an adherent of a particularly kind of rigorous practice of Islam, as, like I said, we don't have time to talk about all of them. But I was. I gotta tell you, I was particularly fascinated by Hannah because she's not from a Middle Eastern background, she's not African American, which are two groups that have particularly embraced Islam. She's a very sort of white presenting person to the point where she wears like a baya, like a full covering. The question arises, is this cultural appropriation? Right. This is not the culture. And to what degree does your embrace of it sort of mean that you're kind of adopting something? But she describes it as a feeling of kind of great peace that just felt like home when she became a part of this community.
- [48:08]
Kelsey Osgood
You know, I think that part of the reason I was drawn to her story so much is this. I hate to use this word again, but there's. There's tension there too, Right. And it's not easily solvable. And maybe it's not really a problem that needs to be solved. But like, we think of, especially over the last few years, maybe it's sort of dying down now. But there was time where we were all very sensitive to ideas of cultural appropriation. Right, but so then what does it mean when you're talking about somebody who is, okay, they're a religious convert. So it's, It's. There's always a pathway to conversion in most faiths, and there's a pathway to conversion in Islam. But then you're also talking about taking on the cultural characteristics of a particular subset of individuals. But actually those people are, for the most part, probably quite happy about that. I think Hannah is a really good example of one thing that I've thought about a lot in the last few months, even since. Since I put the book to bed, really, you know, that like religion, sometimes we want to. We want to make sense of religious conversion, or we want to think about it through a lens that's sociological or academic. But in some ways it kind of doesn't really fit neatly into those categories. It can almost be thought of more as like the. The act of falling in love. And I think that she really just fell in love with Islam and she fell in love with this particular expression of Islam. But I think it's also interesting that as she's been Muslim for longer and as she also. She relocated, she lives in Saudi Arabia. And as Saudi Arabia.
- [49:40]
Michelle Martin
Wait, say that again just to make sure people didn't miss that. She lives in Saudi Arabia now, where, until very recently, relatively women weren't allowed to drive. She really did make a big lifestyle change from going up in the Midwest to, you know.
- [49:55]
Kelsey Osgood
Yeah, she moved there as a single young American woman. And that is really, for lots of different reasons, is a decision that I think a lot of people would find very confusing. And she, as Saudi Arabia, has changed a lot. Because it has changed a lot in the last five years. She's also changed a lot. She. She wears now mostly just kind of scarves. She wore a knee. For five years, she wore a knee cob. So she was totally covered, even, you know, the bottom half of her face. And then she started to move a little bit in the other direction. Now she really frames that as. As a decision that doesn't reflect anything about her relationship to Islam. I think she feels that people. She. I think she understands why people would assume that, but she doesn't feel that that is this. She feels like that's people just putting too much emphasis on the outside and that her heart and her faith are in the same exact place. But it's an. It's an interesting transformation. And part of me feels like, you know, I think especially right around the time that you convert, if you are. If you're somebody like Hannah or like me, and you come from a culture that's really quite different from the one that you're joining, there is this sense and that you need to be really, really good, and you need to, like, just try to look like everybody else and do things the way that everybody else does. And I think, you know, as time passes, maybe I don't want to put words in her mouth, but for me, I think there's a little bit less of that where you feel maybe some greater sense of ownership.
- [51:31]
Michelle Martin
I realized that in the course of reporting this book or researching this book, you had to go out of your comfort zone as a person who observes an orthodox practice of Judaism. You would not be going to Christian ceremonies. Other religious. Religious. Religious. Specifically, religious ceremonies for other religious groups. Right. That's just not a thing. So you had to do that. I mean, you did. Well, maybe two questions. First of all, how did you navigate that? Did you. Did you. Did you pray over it? Did you seek guidance from your kind of religious community about how to think about that? And then I have another question about it.
- [52:09]
Kelsey Osgood
So I did seek some rabbinic guidance about how to do that. Part of interfaith dialogue is part of my job, sort of generally. Like, I mean, when I've written smaller articles and essays. I don't only write about Judaism, I write about other faiths. Why I do that, I, I don't know. I'm a nosy person. You know, like I'm, I'm interested and it, there, it's, it's an interesting facet of my life that I'm interested in. You know, I, I'm part of this community that in some ways can be insular. Not my immediate community, but orthodoxy as a whole certainly can be insular. But I'm also, I am very curious about others, how they live. And actually I think that all of my subjects are the same.
- [52:56]
Michelle Martin
The final question I have for you is that experience of this deep immersion in other people's faith life, did that challenge you at all?
- [53:06]
Kelsey Osgood
I have a lot of like love and respect for the people who made these enormous changes in their lives. And I felt really understood by them in many ways. We had a lot of, but huge points of convergence in our experiences of doing these things that again, sort of look irrational. And a lot of the ways our lives can be sort of similar even though some of the underpinnings of those lives are very different. You know, if I'm talking to somebody who's Amish and she believes obviously that Jesus is her savior, but then also we can talk about what it means to be join these high bar cultural situations where all of a sudden we're expected to understand kind of coded action and language that we didn't have access to before. So I don't want to say that I was changed because I have more respect and affection for that kind of experience. I feel like I always have, but I definitely feel that strongly now, if that makes sense.
- [54:10]
Michelle Martin
Kelsey Osgood, thanks so much for joining us.
- [54:13]
Kelsey Osgood
Thanks.
- [54:15]
Christiane Amanpour
And finally tonight, reaching for the heavens in a different way, two professional mountaineers have shattered a decades old record scaling three of the Swiss Alps most challenging peaks. Starting off in complete darkness, the climbers say it was surreal to discover they had tackled the formidable north faces of the Eiger, Monch and jungfrau in just 15 and a half hours, beating the previous record by almost 10 hours. Some achievement. That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always catch us online, on our website and all over social media. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
- [55:03]
Grainger Announcer
This is the story of the one as head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on. That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the H Vac is humming, and his facility shines with Grainger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces. Plus 24. 7 customer support. His venue never misses a beat. Call quickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [55:34]
Liquid IV Announcer
This week on the Assignment with Me, Audie Cornish. My guest is Larry Wilmore. He's a writer and producer who has worked on some of the most successful shows of the century. In Living Color, the Bernie Mac show, the Daily Show, Black Ish, Insecure. We're just naming a few. But in his heart, he's still a comedian.
- [55:52]
Michelle Martin
I'm getting back into doing standup again.
- [55:54]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Which I really haven't done full time in a while. So.
- [55:57]
Michael Roth
Wait. What?
- [55:58]
Kelsey Osgood
Wait a second. Like, you're going.
- [56:00]
Michelle Martin
You're doing open mics?
- [56:01]
Michael Roth
I know.
- [56:01]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
I'm going up Saturday night. I'm gonna start working on a new hour. Yeah.
- [56:05]
Michelle Martin
So it's a little scary.
- [56:06]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
Audie, don't get me wrong.
- [56:08]
Michael Roth
I can imagine.
- [56:10]
Liquid IV Announcer
What do you think is pulling at your chest here?
- [56:12]
Michelle Martin
I feel like I have to say something.
- [56:15]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
I can't stay silent anymore about just the world that I'm in.
- [56:18]
Liquid IV Announcer
Listen to the Assignment With Me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast app.