Third Season of Presidential Speaker Series Kicks Off

Sept. 11, 2025

Thank you all for being here this evening for this launch of the THIRD season of the Presidential Speaker Series.

We created this series two years ago to support a culture of civil discourse and disagreement on the Seattle University campus.

Three interlocking phenomena reaffirm for me of the continuing need for this effort.

The first is a climate for campus speech that continues to deteriorate at the national level.  The 2026 report on campus speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression highlights how support for suppression of controversial points of view continues to decline on most college campuses.

And support for the suppression of speech seems to be coming from students on both the far left and the far right.

The second phenomenon is the effort of the current administration in Washington, D.C. to exert expansive control over American universities, public and private, not through normal rulemaking and enforcement, but rather through the unprecedented use of federal funds as leverage for dictating university policy and practice, including by limiting the expression of views they disagree with, particularly around diversity, equity and inclusion.

For some on campus, the unreasonableness of these federal interventions are a reason to resist any concessions to the idea that there may be problems with the quality of discourse on campus.

The challenge for universities in the present moment is to resist unreasonable federal demands or intrusions on our legitimate autonomy without losing sight of the need to engage in our own process of self-reflection and reform to foster a culture of civil discourse.

The excesses of the current administration do not absolve us of our responsibility to provide our students with an enriching and challenging educational environment characterized not just by diversity of identity but also diversity of viewpoint and the free exchange of ideas.

Universities – and especially Jesuit universities – are places that should prize the virtue of curiosity, of seeking to understand people we disagree with, applying the Ignatian practice of presupposition.

The third phenomenon that contributes to the need for this series is the increasing prevalence of political violence in our country.

As yesterday’s contemptible assassination of Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University demonstrates, it has never been more difficult to expand the contours of civil discourse, but also never more important that we do so.

Whatever you think of Charlie Kirk’s politics, now is a moment when people of good will must come together to condemn political violence, regardless of where it comes from or against whom it is directed.

Kirk’s practice was to venture to university campuses – places full of people he knew disagreed with him – and to sit in a tent with a sign that said "Prove me wrong."

I don’t think he was engaged in good faith conversation.  I don’t think he was genuinely open to persuasion. I think he was wrong about a great many things. But I think that could be established through argument.

The person who shot him – and (perhaps more importantly for how we move forward from here) those who rationalize, soft-pedal or (even worse) applaud the horror of that act – are admitting that they lack the intellectual resources to do just that – to prove him wrong. 

In that admission, they are undermining the very causes and values they claim to care about.

Seattle University’s mission of empowering our students to become leaders for a just and humane world requires that we prepare them to engage productively, civilly – even empathetically – with people who think differently than they do. . . with people they think are wrong.

That is our mission as a university.  And that is what this series is all about.

Before I turn things over to tonight’s speakers, I want to encourage you to mark your calendars for our November installment of this series, which will feature the author Monica Guzman, whose book – “I never thought of it that way,” – is serving as Seattle University’s common text this year. 

Her book focuses on how we can engage productively with people who think differently from us, not just to persuade them, but to understand them.

That talk will be on November 19 at 5pm.

And on October 15, we will be hosting a conversation with the Editor in Chief of America Magazine, Fr. Sam Sawyer, S.J.

We have not yet confirmed the presidential speaker for May, 2026, but we have an invitation out and hope to confirm that speaker by the end of the calendar year.

I look forward to seeing you at these upcoming events.

As for tonight, we are both delighted and honored to welcome Professor Stephen Macedo, the Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics in Princeton’s Center for Human Values.

Professor Macdeo writes and teaches on political theory, ethics, public policy, and law, especially on topics related to liberalism, democracy and citizenship, diversity and civic education, religion and politics, and the family and sexuality. 

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the past president of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.

He is also the founding director of Princeton’s Program in Law and Public Affairs.

When I was a law school dean, we always made fun of the US News law school rankings – and their reliance on peer surveys – by joking that the Princeton Law School always scored very high in those surveys. 

The joke is that Princeton does not have a law school.

But, while it may not have a law school, the Program in Law and Public Affairs attracts some of the most influential legal scholars to Princeton every year.

Professor Macedo is the author, co-author or editor of over 20 books, including, Liberal Virtues; Diversity and Distrust; and Just Married:  Same-sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage.

Tonight, he is here with us to discuss his most recent book, co-authored with his Princeton colleague, France Lee, entitled In COVID’s Wake:  How Our Politics Failed Us.

Our format this evening is going to be slightly different from past presidential speakers.

We are delighted to be joined by Sandeep Kaushik and David Hyde, hosts of the Seattle podcast, Blue City Blues.

Sandeep is a political and public affairs consultant with Sound View Strategies.  He has worked as an advisor and communications director for a number of local campaigns. Previously, he also worked as a political columnist and writer for The Stranger.

David Hyde is a journalist.  For nearly two decades, he worked at Seattle’s NPR affiliate KUOW, where he was a Murrow-award winning politics reporter. He departed KUOW in 2024 to dedicate himself fulltime to podcasting as well as other journalism and writing projects.

David and Sandeep’s podcast, Blue City Blues, explores the politics of – you guessed it – blue cities. As they have put it, the podcast aims to pick up on Dan Savage’s idea of an “urban archipelago,” exploring the distinctive present and future of urban America through a national lens.

Blue City Blues has featured guests like Representatives Adam Smith and Marie Glusenkamp-Perez, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, as well as media figures like Dan Savage and Mike Pesca, among many others.

Seattle University is delighted to partner with Blue City Blues for tonight’s event, which Sandeep and David will be recording as one of their podcast episodes.

I am hopeful that this is just the first of a series of collaborations with Sandeep and David.

Please join me in welcoming all of tonight’s speakers to Seattle University.

Listen to the discussion on Apple, Amazon, and Spotify.

(Pictured above: President Eduardo Peñalver, Princeton Professor Stephen Macedo, and Blue City Blues hosts David Hyde and Sandeep Kaushik.)