Summer Friday: Free Speech Debate; Caste in Ameria; American Christianity and Race; James Baldwin's Impact

On this final "Summer Friday" we've put together some favorite recent interviews:

• In July, a letter in Harper's Magazine argues that social media public shamings hamper free speech. Claire Potter, professor of history at The New School, and the executive editor of Public Seminar, a digital magazine of politics and culture based at The New School, signed the letter, and Malaika Jabali, writer, activist and attorney, signed a response letter that argued the original letter “does not deal with the problem of power”;
• Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Warmth of Other Suns and her latest, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020), argues that beyond race and class, America is structured in a caste hierarchy and how that shapes individuals' lives;
• Robert P. Jones, CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity(Simon & Schuster, 2020), looks at the historical reckoning and current opinion surveys to examine the ties between American Christianity and white supremacy;
• Eddie Glaude, Jr., chair of Princeton's African-American studies department and the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (Crown, 2020), talks about his new book.

These interviews were edited slightly for time, the original versions are available here:

Whose Free Speech Is It Anyway? (July 15, 2020)

America's 'Caste' System (August 6, 2020)

A Reckoning for White Christians (August 10, 2020)

James Baldwin for Today (July 1, 2020)