Welcome to the Dissidents podcast

In this week’s Dissidents Podcast, Jennifer Richmond and Winkfield Twyman, Jr. talk about the meaning of life through the eyes of black sheep and non-conformists. Like Martin Buber in I and Thou, we find meaning in relationships. When we can see each other as they are, and make room for that, we end up expanding ourselves. Unlike social media that constrains us to a narrow lens that boxes us into collectivist and cynical ideologies, we find hope in the more expansive idea that “we are all just here to walk each other home”. We move beyond the shallowness of the many ways we, as a society, interact, honing an internal locus of control and seeking for depth in a search for “something more”.

In this week's ⁠Dissidents Podcast⁠ Mike Burke and Elizabeth Spievak speak to Winkfield Twyman, Jr. & Jennifer Richmond about their new book Letters in Black and White.  We discuss what it means to be both authentic and a dissident in an age of mass conformity.  

Winkfield Twyman Jr., former law school professor, writer, and Harvard Law School graduate, joins Elizabeth Spievak for a discussion about Claudine Gay.  Wink questions the moral courage of Harvard's president and has called for her resignation.  Gay's recent congressional testimony is discussed as an example of what is a larger problem on college campuses and beyond.  We talk about what it means to have a moral compass, historical and contemporary examples of moral courage, and what can and should be expected of leaders. Throughout, the issues and challenges are framed in the context of liberal values.