Inaugural Pluralism Lecture Stresses Dialogue and Conviction [Recording Available]

Law professor and author John Inazu made the case for what he calls “confident pluralism” in the public square, during a lecture and public conversation at Duke Chapel on March 27, 2025. Watch a recording of the lecture here and below, and read a manuscript of his address here.

“Descriptively, we live in a pluralistic society,” said Professor Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. “The second definition of pluralism is a political and cultural response to the fact of our differences. It is … what I have elsewhere called ‘confident pluralism:’ we learn to live with the differences we don’t like, and more importantly, with the people around us who embody and embrance those differences.”

“Confident pluralism requires humility, patience, and tolerance as we navigate our differences,” Inazu said to an audience of 150 in the Chapel and another 100 people watching online. “It encourages persuasion over coercion in our efforts to convince others why we have the better argument.”

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Titled “Pluralism, Particularity, and Possibility,” Inazu’s address was the Chapel’s inaugural Pluralism Lecture and a part of the Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging.

A graduate of Duke’s Law School and Pratt School of Engineering, Inazu drew on lessons from his time at Duke from a challenging convocation speech by Dr. Maya Angelou to the pacificism of Professor Stanley Hauerwas to the clarity of purpose in his ROTC program to an inspiring commencement address by President Jimmy Carter.

“Institutions like Duke confront a host of challenges in today’s landscape of higher education,” he said. “But I would like to believe that Duke at its core remains a place where teachers and students work through the murkiness of life and inquiry, engaged in a shared effort to learn from one another.”

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In responding to questions during a dialogue with Chapel Dean Luke Powery, Inazu said that the First Amendment’s “right of the people peaceably to assemble” is insufficiently protected today. He said, Across “any part of the political spectrum … I can show you someplace in this country where people's protest rights who care about your issue are being invalidated or improperly constrained. So this is something that, by its nature, we should all care about whatever our causes.”

First Amendment law “focuses on speech and words and cognitive arguments, and a lot of assembly is the messy part of life,” said Inazu, who writes the Substack newsletter *Some Assembly Required. “It's what you express collectively. It's singing. It's silence. It's group solidarity. That's tremendously important to who we are as human beings and also citizens.”

In discussing how to combat false claims, Inazu offered advice to faculty and other experts participating in public discourses.

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“If we're honest with ourselves, out of universities like this one or mine, there have been lots of normative claims that have instead been conveyed as facts,” he said. “Most of our human interactions are messy and complex, and our judgments about them are a combination of empirical evidence and our own experience and our values…. So if we can start to be more precise, more modest, more clear about our own factual claims, that's maybe step one to recognizing where we are in this larger political landscape.”

In responding to a question about civil discourse efforts on campus, Inazu said, “I have mixed views about the term and the efforts.”

“I'm not speaking to Duke in particular, but at a lot of college and university campuses today, civil discourse efforts are being largely driven by conservative interests and donors and legislatures as a reaction against what they see as a kind of progressive echo chamber,” he said. “The strategy to me seems to be reinforcing the kind of culture war that isn't taking the time to build relationships within these universities, trying to find people who, from very different perspectives, would have similar goals.”

Duke law student Addison Smith attended the event and said he was both “affirmed and overwhelmed” by the talk.

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“Learning to coexist with people of difference is something that takes a lifetime,” Smith said. “The cultural shift that he referenced is something that takes large buy-in but starts at the individual level, so I look forward to committing to the individual level, friendship-to-friendship cultivation that he referenced."

Garret Kaiser, a dual-degree student at Duke’s Divinity School and UNC’s School of Social Work, said the talk was “winsome” in its portrayal of the power of individual relationships to bridge political and religious differences, but he also saw limits to those relationships.

“I really want to speak with [Inazu] some more about systemic issues and how that comes into play, and also some really irreconcilable—in my view—differences of opinion,” said Kaiser, who is a Chapel Scholar, citing deep divisions in how Americans understand abortion and transgenderism. “I think that there is a lot of room for pluralism to be considered, and I think that he has a lot of richness to say, but I just don't know if it's enough.”

Danielle Samake is the undergraduate program coordinator at the Center for Christianity and Scholarship, one of the co-sponsors of the event. Following the talk, she said her view of pluralism is shaped by coming from an interfaith family with a Christian mother and a Muslim father.

“There are times when interfaith conversation can be so focused on conflict resolution that we're not willing to confront the fact that it's an interfaith conversation because we have different truths,” Samake said. “[Inazu] was able to really articulate that one can hold fast to one's own convictions … and also be in dialog and conversation with others who believe differently … and that's something that I have thought about a lot in my own life.

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In addition to the Center for Christianity and Scholarship and the Provost’s Office, other co-sponsors of the lecture were Duke Law School, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Trinity College’s Transformative Ideas program, and the Sanford School of Public Policy’s Polis: Center for Politics.

The lecture was Inazu’s final engagement in his two-day visit to Duke, which included a discussion with academic leaders, a question-and-answer session with Religious Life leaders, and a lunch with students and faculty.

The Chapel’s Pluralism Lecture was founded to further Duke University’s aim of “foster[ing] a lively relationship between knowledge and faith” as well as its commitment “to creating a rigorous scholarly community characterized by generous hospitality toward diverse religious and cultural traditions.”