Rayhan Asat is a 2021-2022 Yale World Fellow whose brother is being held in solitary confinement as part of China’s genocide against the Uyghur minority. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Rayhan is an international human rights lawyer and advocate fighting for the release of her brother and freedom for all Uyghur people.
Among Rousseau’s greatest concerns was human dividedness. How does Rousseau suggest solving this problem? After leading a seminar organized by the Yale Buckley Program in June, Professor Benjamin Storey at Furman University sat down with The Politic over Zoom to offer some explanations.
We’re in this situation because rich, wealthy people have been treating the planet like their personal playground—unnecessarily polluting and letting their companies pollute our planet.
In any case, I don’t see myself as a collector of interviews—what I really want to do is to tell stories. And so what I found is that the tool of the interview is very useful. When you begin a real dialogue with someone, you find that everyone has something to tell, a story to share, but we need to listen.
“We have a leader that can validate [insane belief systems], and it’s just like how Bigfoot is a leader to a lot of people.”
“I think there will always be a need for finding out the truth, and now more so than ever.”
“I got an 11-day PhD in Washington scumbaggery. I have a better idea of how these people operate now, and what they’re really all about, and how they really don’t give a shit about the American people.”
“Run 100 miles an hour the other way from the kind of bitterness, polarization and division that we see happening in many places of the world”
