"To teach young people that they are this (pointing to his skin), is criminal; in my opinion, okay?
We're to challenge them. They come in telling me that they're this or that they're their genitalia. That's how they get to me at 18 years old. They think they are these things.
They haven't read anything. They haven't been anywhere. They haven't done anything.
I'm a teacher. My job is not to reaffirm them in their preconceptions. It's to challenge them to outgrow them, their preconceptions.
So the first point was a point about the intellectual mission of the university in terms of knowledge production and the deliberation over questions, important questions, of understanding about social life. But my second point is the pedagogic trust that we have.
We're entrusted to shepherd young minds into their maturity. And to jump on a bandwagon and to fill their heads with slogans rather than challenging them with the best that human beings of any color have thought through the ages is a criminal abdication."
Access short clip on Twitter here.