Since his inauguration as the 11th president of Cornell University one year ago, Jeffrey Sean Lehman, the first Cornell alumnus ever to become president, has demonstrated himself to be an exceptional orator. Looking back on Lehman's several public addresses, three themes emerge. First, Lehman reaffirms Cornell's "revolutionary" founding principles, including coeducation, racial diversity, and "nonsectarianism." Second, Lehman has a vision for extending these principles to promote "the peaceful and spiritually satisfying coexistence of people with one another and with our planet." Calling Cornell "[the] Transnational University of the Future," he speaks often of the need to transcend the categories of race and religion, which have been "especially powerful stimuli for conflict, mistrust, segregation, and war." The third and most common theme, mentioned in almost every public address the president has given, is the need for students "to engage respectfully with others who have different perspectives or values from your own."

At first glance, talk of nonsectarianism, transnationalism, and the valuing others' values may sound like yet more of the tired secularism that Christians have come to associate with their marginalization in the academy. But that, I would suggest, would not do justice to the nuance of Lehman's thought. While Lehman's choice of words may not always be perfect--the "transcending" of religion smacks of the privatization of faith--a closer look suggests that he may be inviting the very kind of dialogue that Chesterton House exists to facilitate and promote.

Take, for example, Lehman's first commencement address, in which he observes that Schoelkopf stadium's artificial turf is unlike the real world, where the "dirt" of immorality readily contaminates. "[O]ver the course of the next few years," Lehman told the class of 2004, "most of you will, at least once, choose to get dirty by relaxing a moral guideline that you ordinarily endorse. You will do so in order to promote what you consider to be a greater moral good. All I ask of you is that, if you do so, you think of Cornell on a rainy day. The Slope can be slippery. And recognize that, for some kinds of dirt, the effects on your soul can be cumulative."

Drawing from Vonnegut's narrative of Ice-9 in Cat's Cradle, Lehman distinguishes between what he calls first-order and second-order moral "contamination." In first order contamination, we contaminate our own souls by our own actions. "How will you ensure that you do not wake up one morning and find that your soul has been polluted by choices you made in response to the crushing demands of life?" It is well to note that this is not a question typically asked by philosophically committed liberals, for whom the only form of sin has to do with causing others pain or displeasure.

But Lehman is more interested in the notion of "Ice-9" or second-order contamination, "a popular but troublesome form of moral argument" that goes like this: "Don't have anything to do with X because X is bad and if you engage X you will elevate X and debase yourself, X's name will be legitimated, and yours will be sullied." (His qualifications of Ice-9 contamination are themselves interesting. "Obviously some forms of contact do transmit one person's moral dirt to another, for example where the second person explicitly endorses the activity that produced the dirt in question. Or where the contact has the consequence of enabling the ongoing production of additional new dirt.")

Then, criticizing Sartre for canceling a visit to Cornell in 1965 because of US involvement in the Vietnam War, Lehman highlights his theme: "My primary message this morning is that you should be very wary of Ice-9 contamination arguments and the sense of despair that is implicitly associated with them. Let me stipulate that there is a special satisfaction one can derive from using them as a reason to withdraw from contact with the world. It is the satisfaction that follows from feeling a certain kind of moral superiority. But I would argue that this satisfaction carries a very heavy price. Yielding to Ice-9 contamination arguments will often, perhaps usually, lead us to miss opportunities to accomplish genuine good in the world through serious engagement."

In his convocation address to the class of 2008 earlier this fall, the president developed this theme further still. "Many students arrive at Cornell having internalized a norm that might be called 'respectful disengagement.' Points of disagreement--about politics or religion or culture--are treated as points of potentially unpleasant conflict. And conflict is avoided by declaring them to be mere matters of 'taste,' where everyone's tastes are treated as equally legitimate. If the choice between Bush and Kerry is no different from the choice between a latte and an orange-mocha Frappucino, then there will be no disputes, and everyone will feel, in the vernacular, 'validated.'"

Simply put, those of us at Chesterton House like what we hear. Lehman's "respectful engagement" is a promising vision in many ways--it does not despair of character development or even moral formation, and it avoids reducing religion to a mere matter of taste. If "respectful engagement" has been too often a code for relativism, it appears not so with Lehman; he wants students "to engage respectfully with others who have different perspectives or values from your own, without being required to endorse every aspect of that person, without being driven to somehow lose your own soul."

Finally, Lehman's vision prompts two questions for further consideration--one for the academy and one for the church. First, although Lehman affirms Cornell's founding principles, is there not a tension between Lehman's ethic of engagement and Cornell's founding version of "nonsectarianism"? A university that is nonsectarian in the sense of non-confessional indeed can be pluralistic in the best sense, but only if the non-confessionalism is broad enough to include confessionalists. Unfortunately, Cornell co-founder A.D. White's nonsectarianism was so ruthlessly rationalistic and anti-revelational that he caricatured rather than respectfully engaged those who believed in the supernatural. White's was a narrow nonsectarianism that helped fuel a fundamentalist reaction and widespread Christian disengagement from higher education, thereby contributing to, rather than "transcending," one of the great divides of the twentieth century. "Nonsectarianism" has not always been a force for pluralism and inclusion.

Second, what theological resources does historic Christianity have to offer the question Lehman is asking, and what may be the central question of postmodern times: How can we all get along? Just as Christian abolitionists and civil rights activists articulated persuasive public reasons for their causes, campus Christians must now articulate dignifying ways to navigate an increasingly pluralistic "transnational" culture.

If Cornell is to truly embody President Lehman's vision of a pluralistic and peaceful campus where respectful dialogue occurs across religious as well as other differences, then the university must accommodate Christian students and faculty members who seek to articulate a lively integration of faith with reason. That would be revolutionary indeed.

Thanks to the many of you who have joined our growing list of supporters this past year, we are making progress on our goal of raising $100,000 in regular, annual support. We are very pleased to announce that two Cornell faculty families have pledged a total of $100,000 as a challenge matching grant to help us reach this goal.

The goal of the matching gift is to encourage a broad base of friends and alumni to give generously toward the ministry's vision of assisting students integrating faith with learning. Please see the details of this matching opportunity, along with information on giving to Chesterton House, at http://www.chestertonhouse.org/funding. We invite you to prayerfully consider joining our growing list of supporters.

President Lehman's several talks are at http://www.cornell.edu/president/speeches.cfm. I especially recommend his inaugural, commencement, and new student convocation addresses. They are full of thoughtful questions ("How should we adapt to the fact that our students enter our classrooms with a less comfortable relationship to the written word than they did 30 years ago?"), encouragement ("May you always be able to confess ignorance, doubt, vulnerability, and uncertainty"), and wise admonition ("It will sometimes take courage to reject the call for contented isolation and self-protection, and I am urging you to be brave"). A sense of humor comes through ("I remember a moment in kindergarten when some of my fellow kindergarteners revealed to me that some lullabies do not begin, 'Far above Cayuga's Waters, ....'"), as well as one seemingly cruel joke ("May you know enough bad weather that you never take sunshine for granted"). After a record breaking 49 days of rain this summer, he might better quote C.S. Lewis to the effect that it's been raining so much that "even the squirrels are depressed."

We are pleased to announce that Steve Froehlich, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church, has recently been elected to serve as the President of the Board of Chesterton House. Froehlich, who formerly served as Executive Vice President of Reformed Theological Seminary, succeeds Karl Johnson, who has served as Board President since the ministry's founding in 2000. Martha Stipanuk, professor of Nutritional Sciences, has recently moved off the board after completing a two-year term. We deeply appreciate Martha's service and contributions to the ministry, and wish her the best during her sabbatic year.