Cries for Justice: A Dialogue on Social Justice in the Middle East
E.J. Dionne, Jr., Michael Ostrolenk, Gregory Khalil, Suhail Khan Thursday, 16 September 2010
This is an edited and abridged transcript of a presentation and panel discussion.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.:
I come here today with a crucial lesson for students that may be the most valuable thing I have to say: Always read your e-mail in detail before you agree to a commitment. When I was first invited, I wanted to accept because my friend Mike Gerson asked me and because he had been so kind in the past in agreeing to speak with my Georgetown students at my class. I also feel enormous gratitude toward Paul Manuel, whose work in this program has been so important, and so I wanted to say yes to him. Because I did not read the email in detail, I thought I was being invited for a general talk on the relationship between faith and public life, not for a conversation about the Middle East—let alone for a talk that would be transcribed and later published. Had I known what the event was about, I would have politely declined. So I urge students to read their emails very carefully.
My reluctance stems not from a lack of interest in the Middle East, but from an uneasiness about addressing its problems from a specifically Christian perspective. Christians are all over the lot when it comes to their views—our views—of the Middle East, and we sometimes recreate in our community the same anger and polarization that we typically preach against when we address others.
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