This week we’re talking about getting comfortable with uncomfortable ideas. First up, Thea Abu al-Haj joins the program to discuss the unprecedented censorship she and other academic authors experienced when the Harvard Educational Review pulled the plug on an entire issue of their journal dedicated to Palestine. Thea discusses this new level of censorship as a deep and targeted blow to the very core mission of places of higher education: namely to be places of open debate, open minds and where we can all confront uncomfortable ideas with curiosity, reflection, and exploration. Next up, Dr. Robert Talisse joins the show to talk about what he calls civic solitude - the need, indeed the responsibility to remove ourselves from the ever widening divisions in US politics for the sake of our collective benefit. Robert and Eleanor tease out how this relates to a loneliness endemic to the United States, the need to engage with people and ideas that are unknown and even uncomfortable to us, and the problems of an overly mediated world that interrupts our ability to reflect even when we are physically alone.

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