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`I sat listening to Dr. Cornel West’s MLK Celebration Lecture two weeks ago hearing echoes of the still-in-progress legacy of President Francine McNairy. West’s talk might well have been the keynote for the existence of CCERP. Just a look at that Thursday evening’s audience confirmed that the MU family and the Lancaster region had come together in a moment of community engagement.
And in that moment, Dr. West employed Dr. King’s life and work as a metaphor for a simple but challenging point about living well: Composing a meaningful life for oneself is a function of one’s efforts to make a meaningful life for others possible. This is not a simple call to a volunteer spirit; it is not about community service. It is a far more complex call to intelligent action, to the recognition that I cannot live well unless all in my global community also live well. It is a call to justice as well as to service.
In 1993, Dr. West argued that the best American philosophers are “organic intellectuals” who recognize that their thought comes from and feeds into the challenges of human living – and who speak to and listen to all kinds of people and take into account all kinds of cultural and intellectual perspectives. American philosophy is most effective, said West, when it is “prophetic,” that is, when it calls each of us — all of us — to justice and service.
Dr. West clearly recognized that both his message (serve justice) and his medium are uncomfortable. But growth is a function of challenge, not comfort.
Both President McNairy and Dr. West are saying more than “get involved.” They are telling us that we each have a responsibility to “respect, protect and correct” those in positions of authority, and the only way we can do that is if we are in the community, engaged in its life and its challenges.