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I sometimes tell people that I am a recovering racist. It is not really my fault. I grew up in a culture (the 1950s in the border South) when that was just the way things were. The outward and visible sign of our moral failure was that word. You know the one I mean. We used that word without even thinking of it. It was just the word we used. But as I went to college and had two Black room mates, and then lived in Kenya for two years, where all of my students were Black and I was often the only white person around, my way of thinking began to change.

This is a personal story, but it is really a story of how America changed. And after I wrote up my thoughts, I posted on Facebook the story of my struggles and asked my friends and former students to share their experiences and reactions. Their contributions are part of the podcast. I think you will find this podcast of some interest.

And perhaps it will help those of you who are overseas to understand a bit about how we Americans, with our terrible history of racial injustice, struggle with our past.

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Today, June 15, is not only Father's Day. It is also Trinity Sunday. To me, the concept of the Trinity is incomprehensible. Which is why I am the perfect person to explain it to the rest of you.

This podcast started twenty years ago when one of my Muslim students asked me to explain it to her. She should have asked me to explain E=MC Square. Oh, I can do that: "Matter exploded equals energy and this led to the atomic bomb. Is that right?" Well, Einstein probably had a bit more to say about it than a struggling human being like me. The same is true with theology. If God is incomprehensible then all explanations of God are simply human efforts to put into words that which is not subject to words or even understanding.

If that last sentence upset you, then you may not want to listen to this podcast. If it intrigued you, then you are invited to spend the next half hour walking through a theological mine field with me. (And to go to my podcast on Feuerbach, who discussed this concept in great depth).

But as I often told my students, you are probably better off not discussing some of these topics at the dinner table. We are engaging in an intellectual process. You know you are not being asked to change what you believe. Just to understand some perspectives that may be new to you. Not everyone will be where you are. There is no reason to upset people with difficult ideas.

Are you ready? Seat belt on? Here we go.

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In June of 2024 I spent eight days in occupied Palestine, i.e., the West Bank. It is now a year later and I thought this report might deserve a reposting.

I went with a group of people who had religious connections. I was the only secular academic. I found this a valuable approach, to be with people who saw this conflict in such a different way. This is a report on what I saw and what I concluded.

Note that this is Part I of my report. There is also a Part II. It is very different and reports my personal reactions much more than this one does.

Note also that I have a separate report on the South African document presented to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of Genocide. That is a very informative podcast if you are confused on exactly what is meant by the word genocide as a legal concept. There is also a podcast on the document before the International Criminal Court accusing Israeli (and Palestinian) leaders of war crimes. Again, both of those podcasts are meant to be briefing documents to inform the listener about the nature of confusing topics.

Go to Stocktonafterclass to find those other podcasts.

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This is the last lecture I delivered in my academic career. I discovered that I had miscalculated the end of the semester and that I had an extra class. I did have a regular academic topic but my wife said, "You are a senior professor. You have taught 48 years. Your students see you as someone who has had a life time of experiences. They will forget an academic lecture but they will not forget your personal stories. Why not tell them about the famous political leaders you encountered during your lifetime."

So these are my reflections on 19 different people who crossed my path. The first two are Nixon and Kennedy when they were campaigning in 1960. The last was my friend Sibylle Laurischk, a member of the German Bundestag. Some of these stories are funny, some are affirming, some are deadly serious.

Those discussed include Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, George McGovern, Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Carter and Roslyn, Mayor Orville Hubbard of Dearborn, Televantelist and Presidential candidate Pat Robertson, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Nour of Jordan, Nelson Mandela, Ambassador Moallam of Syria, Rabbi Meir Kahane, the racist Israeli who was assassinated, Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokesperson, Vice President Khaddam of Syria, Shlomo Gazit, former head of israeli military intelligence, Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit, and Sibylle Laurischk.

I have separate podcasts on Jimmy Carter, Orville Hubbard, Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela, and Rabbi Kahana.

My son Greg, who was four when we met Vice President Spiro Agnew, reminded me recently that, "I shook hands with Spiro Agnew." I had forgotten that, but he definitely deserves his moment in the sun.

This was a recorded zoom lecture that was then shared with students. Sorry that this podcast platform will not allow zoom images.

Note that I also have a lecture on Memorable Students. That was posted back in 2020.

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Why I Killed Gandhi by Nathuram Godse

Two employees of the Israeli Embassy in D. C. were shot to death this week (May, 2025) . The Manifesto of the shooter shows him to be very distressed by the mass death in Gaza. He felt what is called "the moral imperative to act." So did the person who killed Gandhi. This is a discussion of that person's manifesto.

Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. In the two movies I have seen, the assassin is portrayed as a deranged bearded scary-looking fanatic. Some of those words might well be justified, but we are never told that the assassin was an exceptionally well educated, well-read reformer, someone who hated the caste system and looked forward to a modern India. His name was Nathuram Godse. He was tried for Gandhi’s murder and hanged. He knew from the beginning that he would be executed for his action, but he did it anyway. He saw himself as a patriot for his people.

During the year or so that he was waiting for his trial, he wrote a lengthy statement discussing his life and his philosophy and his reasons for what he did. During his trial, he was allowed to read a shortened version of that longer text. This is the text I am going to read for you during this podcast.

I hope you will forgive my bad pronunciation of some of these Indian names. They are strange to me, and all I can do is pronounce them in a phonetic way, phonetic as I understand them. Below are a few of the names and terms but there were others – for example intellectuals and political leaders – that I did not include. I suspect if we read their writings we would understand much more than we understand now, but that will have to wait for another time.

My students considered this a shocking document. It was not shocking because this person killed Gandhi – we knew that -- but because it was logical.

Some of you know from another podcast, my Rules of Good Studenting. In a class where we deal with political movements and ideologies that may offend, two of the most shocking Rules are these:

“Until you can understand an argument well enough to explain it to the satisfaction of someone who holds that view, and defend it from its critics, you do not understand it well enough to know if you agree or disagree. “ Well, that excludes maybe 90 % of the people who get into arguments. But my students found it liberating, that they were allowed to understand arguments that offended and terrified them.

A second Rule is this one: “If you were there, you would be there.” Or as I put it to my students, every single thing we will encounter in this class, no matter how shocking or offensive, you would quite possibly do it you were in the condition of the person who did it and had experienced all the things that person had experienced. Again, that is distressing. You would kill and even participate in a massacre? I would? Yes, you would. And if you think you would not you are not thinking deeply enough.

My students considered this one of the most disturbing things we read during the whole semester, that the person who assassinated the saintly Gandhi was a thoughtful intellectual who made sense (even if we disagree with him).

Some terms

Hindutva -- Hindu nationalist ideology. Linked to the BJP party of Prime Minister Modi.

Mahatma (term of respect for Gandhi)

Moghul Empire (Muslim conquerors of India)

Satyagraha: Gandhi’s philosophy of active, non-violent resistance

Hindi and Hindustani A “real” language and a bastard language created to mollify Muslims

Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The first president of Pakistan.

Warning: Don't expect to like this podcast.&nbs

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I was amazed at how much information is available on the internet about this election. Of course, biographical information is public, but the cardinals swear an oath of secrecy before they go into the conclave. And yet somehow information leaks out. I wish I could say I had a cardinal-friend who shared insights with me, but all of this 2025 Conclave stuff comes from the internet.

Please forgive me for mispronouncing the name of the Cardinal of Jerusalem. I practiced it but then at the moment of truth, fumbled. Blah.

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This was an orientation lecture in my course on Religion and Politics in 2020. It does have a few of those classroom comments ("don't forget to turn in your papers" sort of things), but otherwise it has quite a bit of information about sometimes confusing topics.

Don't forget to check out my recent podcasts on Leo XIII and my own candidacy for pope. I did not get the nod but you can see that I raised the right issues (and maybe even influenced the outcome).

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Are you interested in why the new pope took the name of an old pope? Is he sending us a message?

Leo XIII was a modernizing pope whose most famous encyclical (1891) was called Rerum Novarum (New Things). This is a class lecture that I delivered on that encyclical. I discussed key passages and why it was so important.