— Inner Mastery, Outer Impact —
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Irshad Manji is the founder of Moral Courage College, which equips people to turn polarizing issues into productive conversations and solutions-driven teamwork. The recipient of Oprah’s "Chutzpah Award" for boldness, Irshad is also a New York Times bestselling author. Her first book, an international blockbuster, is The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. Irshad’s latest is Don't Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars. (Fun fact: the entertainer Chris Rock calls this book “genius.”) A professor of leadership at New York University for many years, Irshad now teaches with the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights.
How can we turn polarizing conversations into beautiful moments of self-discovery, mutual kinship and deep connection? What changes in us and in our relationships when we stop labeling others? Can our ego manipulate and stop us from being open to new perspectives, and how do we overcome it? What are the five skills of moral courage, and how can we use them to win hearts and minds?
Find out from the recipient of Oprah’s “Chutzpah Award” for boldness, Irshad Manji, in conversation with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa on Intersections Podcast.
This episode offers key insights on:
Warm welcome to you, Irshad. Thank you for joining us today.grounds on in encouraging people
It's such a pleasure. Thank you for making this happen. It's been a few years in the making.
That is so true. Your work hit my radar like you said a few years ago. I reached out, and it's taken us a while to get to this moment. Probably, there was some reason why the universe conspired to make it all come together now. It is a very pivotal time in the history of the world, so many of the things that you have experienced, pursued and investigated in your own life as well as ultimately codified and sought to offer to the world through your writing, your training and other entrepreneurial initiatives. It's just so germane and relevant for us to unpack and perhaps offer up to our audience. I'm super grateful that we have this opportunity between the audience, you and me.
Really I've been looking forward to our time for a while, because I know what a leading light you are, Hitendra. I'm not saying this simply because I'm on your podcast, I've spoken to people about you, that you ensure that your purpose really is to repair what we have broken in ourselves. The truth of the matter is that we can't have a world that heals externally, if we, the very inhabitants of that world, the very agents in that world, are not also healed. To me, policies, structures, systems, it's not that they don't matter, it is that they are created by human beings. In order to be recreated or transformed, we have to transform ourselves.
So your point about inner mastery, outer impact is exactly the equation that I think more and more of humanity is waking up to, and hopefully with work like ours, a new generation will wake up to it as well.
Thank you for sharing that. It's so nice to be in the company of such a kindred spirit. I've seen it as quite a blessing to have had the privilege, the opportunity to be intimately and deeply invested and exposed to having spent time in two relatively opposing worlds. One that really has such an investment in the inner pursuit and a little bit, at times, a messier investment in the outer growing up in India, and here in the United States, the opposite. Such a rich and beautiful investment in the outer, but sometimes a little bit messier on the inner. You've had the influence of so many cultural and faith forces as well, right? Could you talk a little bit about that? How have you been shaped by your origins?
The easier question to answer would be, how have I not been shaped by my origins, just because, ever since I was a child, I have been questioning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of challenging. Yet, those questions have been often taken as threats.
I'll give you an example. I've grown up Muslim. I remain Muslim, and at the age of 14, I was kicked out of my madrasa, my Islamic religious school, simply for asking questions. But, that expulsion did not dampen my enthusiasm for questions, quite the opposite. When I came home, I fully expected to have to defend myself to my mother. She said to me, "No, no, Irshad, I know that you are a curious girl, I understand that. All I'm going to ask of you now that you're no longer welcome in the madrasa, is what will you be doing every Saturday for the eight hours that you would have spent at the madrasa?" She said to me, "I want you to be thoughtful about this".
Her vote of confidence in my ability to decide for myself what I was going to do, made me want to live up to her expectations. So I decided, every Saturday, I would spend time at the public library. Yes, I realize I'm a geek, but here's the beauty of what happened at the public library.
I learned by reading everything I could get my hands on. I learned that in my own faith of Islam, there is a tradition of independent thinking, creative reasoning, even of dissent that I would have never learned about in the madrasa. The public library saved my faith. Here was a secular institution that offered a diversity of viewpoints, the very opposite of what I got in religious school, and yet, through that diversity of viewpoints, I was able to affirm why I can have integrity remaining in my faith.
The point is, the world is full of paradoxes. The part of what I love about questions is that the truth doesn't often lie in answers, it lies in the both ends, secular and religious, in my case, namely the paradox.
Oh wow! That's so beautiful! For you to have not just gone through those experiences, which is quite remarkable at that early, very formative stage of your life, to have that supportive mother to cheer you on and to help you feel even more invested in that journey, and then access to that public library that got you to those answers. Then, the capacity to step back and script it, think about and frame it for us the way you just have, that is so beautiful!
I'm increasingly getting to feel, and I want to test this thought with you, that it is a very limiting frame when we organize and structure society around the religious and the secular. We tend to see the secular as being very skeptical of the religious, and we tend to think about the religious as well. There are the Jews, the Muslims, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Sikhs, etc. You can have this visual with the world divided into these two parts, and one of them divided and subdivided into all these religions. Instead, what I'm seeing is when I've been interacting with audiences and various things, as you know, that we stand on similar grounds in encouraging people to invest in their own sort of pursuit of the inner and the outer, what I'm finding is, there's a number of people on the secular side, who are deeply invested in spirituality, even at times a relationship with a higher power and God. While they may not be regularly showing up in any institutional sort of format.
Then, you've got a number of people on the religion side who are very invested, loyal and committed as Catholics or as Muslims or as what have you, who are at the same time, starting to, in some ways, perhaps call it like evolve or progress more than necessarily the institutions of their religion are yet doing. They continue to value the community, the connection and they're appreciating and respecting a lot of what the scriptures say, the saints of their faith and some of what they're getting from the messengers of their faith today. But, at the same time, they're not feeling comfortable in feeling like, "Hey listen, I need to go out and evangelize my faith and convert everybody else to it because otherwise they are damned. They're not going to get to a good end if they don't become part of my world."
I'm seeing them start to become all embracing, very comfortable, have these interfaith relationships and really appreciate, respect and celebrate, and at times, even borrow a little bit from another faith whilst still going regularly to church and being very committed and being very comfortable and grateful for having that scaffolding and support in community and scripture with them.
I'm almost seeing it like, there's another group of people that is coming up both from within the faith based communities as well as the secular communities that are sharing this common space of celebration, discovery, engagement, connection, maybe being affiliated to one scripture of faith as their core, but also having the capacity to open themselves up to appreciating the beauty and questing of others as well.
That very much resonates, and not just because of my personal experience, but the reality is, Hitendra, that labels fix people in time and freeze people in place. We can start with labels, but to end with them is a real missed opportunity for discovery, both self-discovery and discovery of how deliciously complicated everybody else is. I like to think of us, and remember, I'm not a fan of labels, but if we have to put a label on any sentient being, and that includes non-human animals, I would say that that label would be plural. We are all plurals. We are all so much more than meets the eye. If we could just remember that about one another, then in entering into any conversation that could go sideways, in which there is disagreement for example, remembering that we are plurals would remind us that I can't assume anything about you. I need to engage, not assume. Only then, can I begin to understand where you're coming from, why you believe anything that you believe politically, spiritually, and in between, and whether you actually make a good point that I need to be thinking about. I don't think the same way as you do because, well, guess what? I'm not you and the same in reverse.
For me, remembering that people and even as I mentioned, non-human animals, our pets are plurals is exactly what I need to keep in mind in order to treat learning and really treat life as the adventure that it is.
Yeah. Let me make sure I can unpack that and fully fathom what you've just offered here to us. When you mentioned the non-human sentient beings, are you actually suggesting that, "Hey, listen, even when you use the word spider, like two spiders are completely rich, distinctive, unique and different, not just in terms of species, but even from within the same species." Is that the level to which you're encouraging us to think in terms of, perhaps like an attunement to the unique form of life that is in front of you?
It would be arrogant for me to say, "Yes, that is exactly what I'm encouraging everybody to understand about non-human animals." I don't know all that there is to know about the life of spiders, right? But this is exactly the point, I don't know and neither do you and neither does the vast majority of humanity, including any scientist who studies different species. The phrase "I don't know" is so crucial to embrace.
I'll tell you something that drives me up the wall. I go internally nuts when people say "We are the only species that" and then fill in the blank. Really? How do you know? How do you know that we human beings are the apex of creation in any way, shape or form? Do you understand the language of spiders? Do you watch them day in and day out? Of course not. So while you might think that somehow we are more intelligent, more capable, more advanced than other species, that can be your view. That can be your opinion. But to assert that we are the only species that, as I say, fill in the blank is hubris. That's what I'm asking people to remember. Not that individual spiders are distinct and discrete from one another. I don't know that they are. But to remember precisely that we don't know. That's why holding opinions, but remembering that none of us has the full truth of anything is a great way to open up yourself to being at one at the same time ethical, meaning you have to make judgments about what's conscionable and unconscionable, but not dogmatic so that you continue to receive information that makes you wonder, "Ooh! Maybe there's even more I need to learn."
Lovely! I want to come to the human side of this in a moment, but just to build on what you were just sharing about, "We are the only species that blank." Another thing that has been emerging for me more and more over the years is just how limiting it is when we monolithically establish a certain quality like intelligence. We are the most intelligent species or something like that. "Oh really? We are the most intelligent species? Are there like animal species out there, non-human, who are engaging in mutual destruction without there being anything except just ego and blind beliefs, etc., that is driving it? Does that happen? What can we learn from the harmony with which species out there in the world minimize damage and destruction unless it's just a part of feeding themselves, or something." Anyway, that's just a thought that is coming to my mind in the context of what you just said.
On the human side of it, I like this idea a lot. I have to confess; this wasn't where I was early in my life journey. I used to imagine this notion of all of us being really born in the image of God, and what that meant is that there was this almost universality to the texture and quality of our soul. The whole point of life was to go ahead and discover that. But, once we would get there, we would find that we're all, in a sense, the same in terms of infinite peace, love and joy and these kinds of soul qualities.
I love your point about a sort of paradox, because I haven't abandoned that view. I continue to feel very drawn to that quest and that idea that within each of us lies that place, that home, which is a shared home. But at the same time, complementary to that, not contradicting that, is the idea that we are also a very unique divine spark, and that each of us has been created with a certain unique gift, with a certain unique something, a mandate or a path or story that the creative force is inviting us to manifest, not just be clones of us.
Precisely. This is why I am very skeptical of consensus. Because consensus, while it sounds benign, sounds cozy, it allows us to just get on with life because we already agree on this. That's fine. But if it stops us from questioning the downside of that consensus, then it's not so benign. Then it becomes groupthink and ultimately dogma.
I'll give you a very provocative example of what I mean. Around the world, the word multiculturalism has a very positive connotation. I grew up in Canada. I think it was the first country in the world that adopted multiculturalism as a policy. Well, how progressive! For the time, it was. But what I learned over the years of growing up is that multiculturalism literally means many cultures. Culture is sometimes not benign. Culture means how we do things full stop, whether in a family, whether in an organization, whether in a society, how we do things or more passively, how things are done. So, culture easily stops us from imagining new ways of being, imagining new ways of doing. No wonder, therefore so much hurt and damage is caused in the name of, "Well, that's just how things are done." Which is why Hitendra, for me, multiculturalism is not merely as positive as pluralism.
Remember I mentioned just moments ago I see all of us as plurals as more than meets the eye, which is why we've got to engage rather than assume. Because we ourselves are paradoxes. We are bundles of contradictions. That's a lovely thing. If we adopted pluralism, what that would mean is that a queer brown woman like me, who happens to be Muslim would be understood as having her own point of view on any issue. That is simply because I am a Muslim, simply because I am a woman, or simply because I am queer does not mean that I automatically think like the cozy consensus of any of these groups, right?
So, pluralism, more accurately, if we practiced it, that is not just notionally, not just in theory, but if we actually practiced pluralism, we would instinctively understand that the world is more complex than labels and that that is an upside. Let's therefore inquire about that complexity. Let's appreciate one another for our individuality as much as for our membership in this or that community. Once again, I come back to both ends.
What are some situations today, where you feel a certain kind of categorization or labeling? A certain way of asserting a certain view like this is culture, is really limiting us from advancing our collective potential and validating individuals in their own personal journey as well.
Well, I am a Professor with the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. I do a great deal of work as an Educator of Moral Courage with institutions of higher learning. In that context, I see, how readily educators cave to the fear of asking questions of students who are mesmerized by their own dogmas, whether it's dogma about racial justice, whether it's dogma about the Me Too movement, whether it's dogma about as we're speaking right now, the Hamas-Israel war, about who's right in that situation.
I see how culture means in this case, it's wrong to offend. I see how that tenet of culture actually stops people from asking really important questions about how we treat one another. Particularly in the context of higher education, that is a tragedy. What's higher about education? What's education about higher learning? Where's the learning in any of this? If we're not posing questions that get people asking themselves, "Yes, I see what you mean. Maybe I need to reflect on that more." By the way, this is not to say that professors are the only ones who have something to teach. No, students have much to teach as well to professors. I speak from hard experience, but the point is that in order to learn what we all have to teach one another. We've got to be curious. Curiosity is not well regarded in the culture of higher education today.
Let's continue on this line for a few minutes. I want to invite you to share a little bit about your brilliant project on Moral Courage here as well. One thing I want to get your thoughts on is that, I also feel we have to be very mindful that this shift that we are inviting the world to take, academia to take, individuals to take, is not merely a behavioral shift of asking questions on the outside, but it's bringing a certain purity of intention from the inside, right? I actually feel so many people have also taken on a very performative sort of approach towards behaving in a certain way, because that's supposedly the right way to behave. But meanwhile, fundamentally, from within, nothing has shifted.
That's exactly right. Absolutely. I want to thank you for ensuring that we make that distinction. What I'm advocating is not curiosity as performance, because that comes off as judgment. For example, I could ask you a question, Hitendra, "Tell me what I'm missing about where you're coming from," which is a humble way of asking you a question. The not very humble way would be, "Have you got any idea just how stupid that sounds?" Now, that's a question, but it's actually a judgment, right?
Your point about the purity of intention is so relevant. This brings me, then, to Moral Courage, which is what I teach, which is what my organization teaches. By moral courage, I don't mean 'speak truth to power.' I know that that is the popular definition of it, but let's just interrogate that simple definition, which I think is a simplistic definition for a moment. Speak truth to power. Does that mean that my truth is the only truth worth considering? After all, I'm supposed to speak truth to power, so naturally it'll be my truth. Is that the truth and moreover, to power? That suggests that power only ever resides out there, outside of me, when the reality is that we are all born with a part of the brain that is home to something you mentioned a few moments ago, ego. The ego itself, maybe, the most perniciously powerful force that there is, because the ego manipulates us into believing that your disagreement with me is now an attack on my dignity. It's an assault on my humanity. It is actually a threat to my existence, and so, I've got to get ready to fight back. When the reality is that 9/10 you're just offering up a different point of view.
Moral courage in these 'us against them' times, where we're living not just in America, but you know as well as I do that the 'us against them' culture is raging in many parts of the world. India, Brazil, Australia, the Middle East, through and through, even in a supposedly peaceable nation like Canada, the 'us against them' culture is raging, and so in that context, moral courage has to mean speaking truth to the power of the ego brain even as I speak my truth to power out there, and the truth I need to speak to my ego is, "Ego, I know you exist to keep me alive and I thank you for that. But at this moment, I'm not going to die. All that's happening is that I'm being disagreed with. So, ego, back off, because this is an opportunity for me to learn what I may be missing." What I'm saying is, the vast majority of the time, it is not an existential threat that the ego tries to make us believe is an existential threat. It's not because the ego is sinister. It's because that is its job to protect us. I frankly liken the ego to an overprotective parent. It means well, but it stops us from taking reasonable risks, like asking a question that might be responded to in a way that we don't want to hear. But that is not death. Again, it is a way of being moral courage that allows us to learn what we need to in order to be better versions of ourselves.
If I may be more specific about how I've encountered this. Not too long ago, I got a scathing evaluation from a group of people whom I was teaching. They hated what I taught. For the most part, they hated my stories. They hated my delivery style. They thought I was insensitive to this situation or that situation. I have never had my teaching so ripped apart as I did in this evaluation. Now, that hurt. Sure, it hurt for a couple of minutes as I was absorbing this information, and then I asked myself, "What are they right about?" Some things, I can't do anything about, but other things, I can. The question I had to ask myself is, "Can I learn from this scathing evaluation". The answer was, absolutely. For some of what they said, I then turned into ways of making that particular presentation that much more understandable, relatable and fun. Just to finish off this story, what I did is, I was so grateful for that wake-up call that I phoned the HR director at this particular nonprofit, and I said, "I just want you to know that this evaluation made such a big difference to me that as I am figuring out my end of year charitable giving, you can expect a meaningful donation from me."
Wow! That's a beautiful story. I have such regard and respect for that capacity to open yourself up for that kind of harsh criticism, and also at the same time, not be beaten up by it to the point where you feel like, "Oh my God, they are so right, and I'm just no good".
Exactly. By the way, Hitendra, by no means am I suggesting to any listener or viewer, "Go ahead, tell people they're awful. Just go ahead and tell them because they'll grow from it." No. Could these evaluators have been more humane? Absolutely! They should have been more humane, because not everybody is going to respond the way I did. Most people will react rather than respond. What I'm only pointing out is that, even in a harsh case like this, I intentionally had to remind myself, "You're not going to die from this, Irshad. You can grow from it." And that's my point. That, even when it feels like your very soul is crushed, go ahead and allow yourself to feel that. But unless you are in physical danger, you actually have a hope of becoming a better version of yourself as a result of what you've been given, which is not given in the spirit of gifting. It's given in the spirit of punishing, and it's up to you about whether you will allow yourself to be punished.
What I've noticed in the kind of change makers over the course of history that I've admired, that even being popular consciences look back and feel like, "Oh wow! That was a meaningful life. That was quite an exemplary leader, the way they showed up." What I find is that, one of the magic gifts that they have, whether it's Gandhi, Mandela or Mother Teresa or what have you, is that they see so much more potential in people than the average person does at that time. Sometimes than even this individual does about themselves.
Steve Jobs was able to extract more creativity from people around him than they ever expected they had. Gandhi was able to get people to become the calmest versions of themselves. Mother Teresa got so much compassion, even from generals in uniform, who were dictators of their country and all of that. Somehow they were able to pierce through the ego and get to some kind of very sweet core that lies within them. To that end, Irshad, in your work, I have no doubt that you must have from time to time been able to achieve these kinds of breakthroughs, where you see this quality as something so ennobling, beautiful and important for people to question, for people to rise above labels, cultural precepts and notions and all of that and you exemplify it so much in your own spirit that I'm sure that you've been achieving some of these breakthroughs with people, and therefore, not allowing yourself to just accept them just for how they're showing up but seeking more, inspiring more and getting more.
Can you talk about that a little bit, like some examples that will create a sense of hope amongst all of us that this is good work? We can do it. We can do it within our families. We can do it in our communities. We can do it in organizations and nations. It's not a fixed thing these quality that people come with. A story or two like that would be really helpful for us.
Well, let me begin by saying this. One of the things that Moral Courage, my organization does is it trains and certifies people to mentor others, particularly in their workplaces, whether it's their businesses, their campuses, their kindergarten to 12th grade schools. Trains and certifies people to teach the skills of moral courage within their own organizations. I'll get to those skills in just a moment. But here's what I really want to tell you in answer to your question, it is one of the great joys of doing this work that those who aspire to become certified mentors tell us they never thought that they could have the kinds of conversations about the kinds of issues with the kinds of people that they can now. Issues that have been sort of building up in them, that they have suffocated over the years for fear of being rejected by the people whom they've wanted to have these conversations with, and that now, they're able to have those conversations in a way that does not make the people on the other side of those conversations feel defensive.
This is where I think the real capacity of humanity has been untapped. We don't need to solve problems or heal ourselves through confrontation. In fact, if all we've got in our toolbox is confrontation, then one of two things will happen. Either we will face off and damage whatever relationships we have, or more likely, we will shut up and let the damage in us percolate. Neither one is a particularly good option, and what Moral Courage does in teaching people the skills of collaborative communication is it allows for a third option. Once again, we come to both ends. Yes, I can stand my ground and I can create. Notice I didn't say seek, I can create common ground, because standing my ground is about what I believe. Creating common ground is about how I express what I believe. If I can make my so-called other feel respected, feel heard then the beauty is that I've just motivated them to now hear what I have to say. I have to first ensure that I am coming into the conversation with proper intention. Not to needle you, to badger you or to bait you into a debate or into an argument, but rather, first of all, to express my care for you. Hitendra, these are obviously really polarized times. I just, I care about you. How are you feeling? I'd love to know how you're feeling, and notice I've asked how you're feeling. The thing about feelings is they're not right or wrong. They just are, and so they are not to be debated.
Now, if you say to me, Irshad, it's awful. I mean, look at what that side is doing to my side. That side they're just evil and they have perpetrated these atrocities, here and there and throughout history and so forth. Let's say, Hitendra, that your facts aren't really my facts. I have to remember that the reason I expressed care for you in the first place, the reason I asked you how you are feeling is not to get into an argument with you but rather to genuinely show I care for you, right? I have to remember my own intentions. I can then respond rather than react.
I can say to you, well, my feelings are based on a different interpretation of the facts, but I'm not here to argue. I just want you to know that I care. Now, suppose you're not really getting the point that this is about caring for one another and you push back on me and you say, "Yeah, but Irshad, how? How can you just not say anything about what the other side is doing? I mean, look at what's happening." I can then say, "Hitendra, I came over to ask how you're doing because I care for you and I'm hoping that you care for me. If you do, then the best way to show that is not to turn this into a competition." Finally, if you have to turn it into a competition then I'm going to have to get ready to leave this conversation but before I leave it, I want to give you something to reflect on. We've all heard the phrase, "Facts don't care about your feelings."
Maybe Hitendra wants me to understand and accept his facts, maybe he doesn't care about my feelings, because facts don't care about feelings. But what I want all of our listeners and viewers to understand Hitendra, and I would say the same to you if you were and I were having that conversation is, my feelings don't care about your facts. In other words, it's not just that facts don't care about feelings. The reverse is also true, that feelings don't care about facts. So Hitendra, with all of your facts, if you actually want me to hear you, you first have to show me that you care about me too. That's how you're going to build trust, and without a sliver of trust there is no hope of discussing differences constructively. So, in all of this there are five core skills of Moral Courage embedded in everything that I've just said.
The first is, be sure to take that deep breath before you enter into a conversation that can go sideways. That deep breath will slow down your blood rush and will allow your brain to transition from the hyper emotional ego state to the more evolved state, where emotion and cognition can co-exist. Take that deep breath.
Second, create common ground, not merely seek it, by ensuring that you've done what you can to establish trust, and trust has to be mutual.
Third, if we're starting the conversation in terms of what I believe, let me first ask you a sincere question, "How are you feeling? How are you doing?" Because, that will bring down emotional defenses.
Fourth, don't listen to win, now that I've asked you a question, because this doesn't have to be a debate. So why do you want to win? Listen to learn. Not just to understand, because I could always say, "Yeah, I hear you. I really do. Now about my agenda." It's not enough to say, I hear you. I need to learn from you. For example, "Thank you, for bringing this to my attention. I would have never known that", or "I would have never thought about it that way, thank you." And what that does when I specify what it is that I'm learning from you, I am showing you that I continue to listen, and therefore, I'm still worthy of your trust.
The fifth skill is, ask another question. Tell me more, right? Because that then invites you to actually unload what it is that most people aren't hearing. When I'm interested sincerely now, not as a strategy, but as an act of sincerity, in learning more from you, that tells you right away that Irshad is someone I can trust, and therefore, when she has something to teach me, I can trust that she's not going to weaponize that moment.
Any of these five skills on their own is worth practicing and turning into a habit. Believe me when I say Hitendra, I have gotten myself out of more than a few jams, out of more than a few pickles by practicing one or two of these skills, when I've known I have to have a difficult conversation with someone.
These are lovely. Very beautifully framed. They speak to really deep spiritual truths in the universe. I'm being reminded of one of our other guests in the recent past, a beautiful man, Daryl Davis. Have you hung out with him?
I haven't hung out with him, but it's through a process like this that he wins the heart of white supremacists. Daryl himself is a black man, and he manages to do something that the most angry activists are unable to do, which is he actually changes the hearts of very white supremacists whom he is engaged with.
As you were walking through this, I was visualizing him and his approach and like you're saying, it seems to very much be consistent, right? He may have intuitively figured it out or what have you, but you formalized it into something that he's just a shining exemplar of, but any or all of us can activate our own inner Irshad or inner Daryl Davis to go out and do this beautiful work. So it's beautiful that you're putting this out there.
Hitendra, could I just say one other thing about the work that, say, Daryl Davis or I or anybody else does by engaging with fellow human beings.
One of the great pushbacks or one of the great criticisms of work like this is, "Well, great! That's fine for interpersonal relations but what about for systems, structures and institutions?" What I always point out is that systems, structures and institutions do not speak for themselves. It's the people who inhabit them that speak on their behalf. So it still comes back to people. It still comes back to how we treat one another.
Yeah. I've been more and more convinced that the most successful change makers and change making happens when you're able to really win hearts and minds and mold character and not just mandate conduct from the outside. I think I'm hearing a little bit of that in what you're saying. Look, I mean, where is it going to get you if all you do is change who's the president and then just impose some new law or something. That can help, but unless we have truly gotten to win over people's hearts and minds, ultimately people figure their way out of any kind of structural constraints, if they're just not personally compelled to want to be something or do something.
Exactly. The bottom line here is that compliance is not buy-in, caring is buy-in.
That's lovely. So beautifully put. By the way, there's another little common ground we stand on. You talk about Derek Black and his conversion, in some of your writings. I just wanted to share. This gentleman who was a product of the Ku Klux Klan community and was going to be the heir apparent. He gets converted, and he ultimately disavows his beliefs there and moves on. The gentleman, who is very central to doing that Matthew Stevenson, he's one of my former students. He shared the story in class, that's how I discovered it. When you were talking a while back about how much students also teach us, can you imagine having a moment like that for me, where someone like a Matthew standing there and sharing the story and I'm like, "Oh my God, here I am trying to teach anything to do with leadership and emotional mastery and all that and here's, Matthew teaching me."
And doing precisely the kind of thing that you as an educator of his would want him to. So kudos to you for having a student like that.
I mean, just to be clear, he had done it before he became my student. I had no sort of impact on that, but for our audience, for those who don't know, Matthew, who we're talking about, a former Columbia Business School student of mine. He mentioned while he was in college, which is before he came to Columbia, he did this powerful act of transformation very much in the Daryl Davis mold, in the Irshad Manji mold, that's kind of what you're talking about as your Moral Courage approach. It's beautiful!
Where is it that our audience here today can go to tap more into your work? I know you mentioned how you're training people to go and offer these up in their institutions and if some of us want to be those kinds of molders of change, where can they go and access more?
Please come to www.moralcourage.com and there you will see a number of resources that you can access, and also a way of contacting me and my team so that if you would like to know more about becoming a mentor of Moral Courage in your own organization, we would love to speak with you.
This is so beautiful, Irshad, I'm going to ask you one final question and make a couple of comments while you perhaps reflect on that and then invite you to close us out with that.
My final question to you is, with everything that is going on in the world and it's just accelerating complexity, change and what's at stake in all of that, what at this point gives you the greatest zest in what you are seeking to manifest in not just the present moment, but really in the years ahead? In whatever period of time life has in store for us, for you, for me. What is it that you're most keen and zestfully engaged in wanting to manifest?
I'm not going to be surprised if it has something to do with this platform of Moral Courage. But if you can give us a little bit more texture and tangibility to that, I'd love to hear that from you and as you're doing that, I just want to highlight how thankful I am for what it is that you have shared with us today. Both very profound but also very practicable and simple constructs, this notion of challenging labels, being very thoughtful that culture shouldn't be a box that you just get locked into unconsciously. The notion of healthy questioning as a quest not to judge or be standing in condescension of, but as a way to deepen our understanding of things. The notion of having taken your faith of Islam and rather than rejecting it because certain things weren't happening the way you were comfortable, you were getting even more of, to become a student of it and discover even more about it than what had been exposed to you at a certain moment in time. Then, going on from there to create this whole work on Moral Courage and be open and honest with your own frailties, foibles and moments where you've had to learn, some of which you've spoken about here today with that beautiful story about that moment where you got that very critical feedback from students, but also from your audience. Other stories that you've shared in some of your writings, which I think are really powerful.
Then this framework for Moral Courage and this teaching that you're doing. Thank you for bringing that to our audiences. Wishing you well on that journey. But tell us now, what is your big quest?
Well, remember the P word, paradox. I'm grappling with a paradox right now, Hitendra, and I'm going to confess something to you that I hope is a bit of a surprise.
For all of our work about lifting up the human spirit, I actually don't have a lot of faith in humanity. I struggle every single day with my faith in humanity. Why? Because I believe that everything we've needed to learn as a species has been taught. We just haven't learned it. We show over and over and over again by making the same mistakes over and over again that we have yet to learn what has already been taught. So, here's the struggle. Why am I doing the work that I do then? Why bother? I'll tell you why.
I believe so much that humanity needs more humility and that includes me as a member of humanity. I do the work that I do, because I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong about not having very much faith in our fellow human beings, and I'd like to be able to go to my grave believing that people exist aplenty out there, who are evolving, who are taking a both end perspective, who are not drawing artificial dichotomies between animals and human beings, since we're all animals, who are not artificially putting people into boxes that make us less than we actually are.
I'd like to be able to say people proved me wrong. That's the day I'm working towards.
I think of someone who is like a world champion. Somebody who's being admired for her or his incredible accomplishments and some pursuit of human endeavor, who's reflecting on their life journey and is at some point pointing to how there was this incredible mentor and coach they had and how that individual was constantly just not happy with where they were and wanted more. While it was hard work and it took a lot of effort and time, here is where they've arrived at today, whatever that pinnacle is, that peak is and that moment for them, they're looking back with a great sense of gratitude towards that force in their lives who was never satisfied. I see you as that coach, as that mentor. I see the champion is some future state of humanity, where we've actually grown, evolved and learned some of these lessons. Because always within you, there was that conviction that more can be done and more will be done.
I'm feeling that disappointment and pain because I love this entity of humanity so much. I see that in you, Irshad. That's so beautiful for all of us to take from what you're saying.
Thank you for all you're doing for the world and for blessing us with your presence and your great gift of ideas, thoughts and stories today.
Wishing you all the best in all you do, and looking forward to observing the continuous and glorious arc of your life and career.
Thank you so much for the invitation. I am so eager to break bread with you in New York City. Let's make that happen before too long.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it myself. Take care. Godspeed. All the best!
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