Eric Segall talks Supreme Court danger, the original sin of racism and thoughts on the arc of the moral universe.

Host Bruce Ledewitz sat down with writer and law professor Eric J. Segall to talk about the current state of the supreme court and its recent foray back into Affirmative Action. Segall argues that the supreme court itself is badly constructed. He says, “Never give unelected life tenure to government officials with largely irreversible power. Our supreme court is the only one like this in the world.” He talks about the frustrating immersion of law into politics and the necessity to combat institutional racism.

 “Race is the great unfinished business of America,” says Segall. Because of this, he's not so sure the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. 

 Segall teaches federal courts and constitutional law I and II at Georgia State University. He is the author of the books Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in many law journals.

Segall’s op-eds and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, SLATE, Vox, Salon, and the Daily Beast, among others. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and France 24 and all four of Atlanta’s local television stations. He has also appeared on numerous local and national radio shows.

Eric Segall Talks Supreme Court, The Original Sin of Racism and The Arc of the Moral Universe

This week Professor Ledewitz welcomes Brian Thomas Swimme, the narrator, co-author, and producer of the Emmy award-winning film Journey of The Universe, broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide. 

They discuss the question that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. posed: “Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice?” 
For Dr. Swimme, it’s a nearly unanswerable question. He starts by saying, “When I reflect on the meaning of this universe, I know that I am drawing from the history of reflection within Catholicism, within Christianity, within Buddhism, within Greek philosophy. That is my first criticism of the generally accepted view of the universe. Like in my book, Cosmogenesis, when I say it's an unveiling, I mean that we can't even begin to understand the universe if we start off with such a truncated view of the human ability to understand."

Strap on your seatbelts for one of our deepest conversations yet. 

Dr. Swimme is a professor of cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco. His department, "Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness" (PCC), is the only graduate program in the western world that places equal emphasis on contemporary science, indigenous spirituality, classical philosophy, and feminist thought for its masters and doctoral programs. 

The heart of Dr. Swimme's work is his focus on knowledge that is transformative--of ourselves and of our civilization. He is also Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics.

He is the author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He is co-author of The Universe Story, which is the result of a ten-year collaboration with cultural historian, Thomas Berry. Dr. Swimme is also the creator of three educational video series: Canticle to the Cosmos, The Earth’s Imagination, and The Powers of the Universe. 

Dr. Swimme lectures widely and has presented at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The World Bank, UNESCO, The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Host

Read Bends Toward Justice host, Professor Bruce Ledewitz’ column in the Pennsylvania Capital Star. He is the author of four books, including, The Universe Is on Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life published in 2021  and available on Amazon.

Ledewitz is a professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. He teaches in the areas of state and federal constitutional law and jurisprudence, specializing in law and religion and law and the secular. Ledewitz is co-director of Duquesne Kline's Pennsylvania Constitution website.

Brian Thomas Swimme, Famed Cosmologist Talks About the Universe

Host Bruce Ledewitz talks with Yale professor Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He directs the Human Nature Lab.  

The author of four books and over 200 articles, Christakis was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

His current research is mainly focused on two topics: (1) the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form (“connection”), and (2) the social and biological implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (“contagion”).

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