Bill Kristol interviews Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz.
Wilentz talks about his relationship with John Lewis, the 1619 Project, monuments, Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Richard Hofstadter, the American quest for “purity,” the illiberality of the Right and the Left, and the need for “informed, thoughtful, and respectful debate.” During the interview we learn what was in John Lewis’s backpack as he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 (hint: Hofstadter and Merton).
Listen here.