Badrinath: Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Ideas and Insights, a show devoted to exploring novel perspectives on contemporary issues.

I am Badrinath Rao, your host.

In this episode, we delve into a topic that resonates with all of us.

The role of moral courage in navigating the complexities and uncertainties of our times.

My guest today is Professor Kristen Renwick Monroe Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California in Irvine and a renowned scholar in moral philosophy.

Her latest work, When Conscience calls Moral Courage in Times of Confusion and Despair, published this year by the University of Chicago Press, offers a bracing analysis of this social, psychological and ethical aspects of moral courage, making it a perfect fit for our discussion.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 individuals from diverse backgrounds and professions, Professor Munro posits that moral courage arises from one's core values and is intimately tied to one's identity and sense of self.

Is moral courage a random adventitious phenomenon, or can people be socialized to heed their ethical impulses?

Just what does it take to create people with moral muscle?

I shall explore these issues with Professor Kristen Monroe.

Welcome to Ideas and insights, Professor Monroe.

Thanks for joining us today.

Kristen: My pleasure.

Thank you for inviting me.

Badrinath: Let's begin with the central theme of your book, Moral Courage.

What is moral courage and why do you think it is important?

Kristen: Well, it's, moral courage is the just the idea that you do the right thing, even if it's going to cost you and it's important because we need people like that in the world.

We.

Ethics is important in the world.

Badrinath: Well, let me ask you a follow up question.

Can it be said that, integrity is just as important?

I want to know why you think moral courage ranks above everything else.

Kristen: Well, I'm not sure it does rank above everything else.

It just happened to be something I wanted to study.

I was very, concerned during the, 2016 election, like most other liberal academics.

I was very surprised and very, disconcerted that Trump had won.

I had a lot of students in my, home and in my office wanting to know what to do, and I didn't have anything to tell them.

And then I remembered in January that Albert Hirschman had said that when France fell, that there were a lot of people who were very discouraged, and he always felt he had to do something, had to be positive.

So I thought, let's look at people who are in situations where they feel the bottom has fallen out of their world.

They're unhappy about something.

How do they handle it?

What do you do when everything around you goes of crazy?

And we all have those moments.

Sometimes they're personal.

We lose someone, we have a sickness we have to deal with.

Sometimes there are political things such as, what happens happens in a lot of political situation.

So I thought it would be interesting to study some of the people to see how they had dealt with it.

And one of my students was taking a course with Herman Chemerinsky, who had sued Trump for violations of the Emoluments Clause.

And I said, why don't you do an interview with him and see what it was that caused him to go out on a limb and stand up to Trump.

And, so that was how the project got started.

Badrinath: We will get into the details of your, interviews with people.

You, have interviewed 50 individuals from diverse backgrounds and, professions, all of which adds to the richness of your book.

But let me ask you this question.

Are there things that you noticed in terms of traits, values, and so on among your interviewees that common to all of them?

You you interviewed 50, but you seven in the book?

I wonder if there are commonalities among them in terms of their values and traits.

Kristen: Right.

That's a good question.

We've actually probably interviewed almost 100 people at this point with, an an ongoing project.

There are a lot of things that they have in common.

First of all, their core values are things that are so central to who they are that they simply can't violate those things and still be the person that they are.

So moral courage is something which people don't have a lot of control over.

It's an identity question.

Secondly, the values tend to be the same.

They tend to be respect for fairness, law and order, law, justice.

Everyone being treated equal before the law.

These are very common values that all of these people held.

They tend to get the values from their families.

They tend to get the help.

They tend to get their support from the families.

They tend to be people for whom duty is very important.

There are people who feel they've been given a great deal in life, and therefore they have an obligation to pay back.

In some ways.

And they all actually a tremendous respect for the opponents.

They tend not to denigrate their opposition.

They tend to feel that there are people who should be convinced and treated well and tried to reason with, rather than people that you just say are horrible human beings and move on and interestingly, we've just finished a project on moral courage and politics, and that last factor is not one that we find in political life, but political life.

The politicians seem to know that sometimes it's just brute power and you got to win.

So they don't always accord respect to their opponents.

But those are some of the common themes that we have.

Badrinath: Interesting.

We will get into the nitty gritty of, the content of moral courage momentarily.

But let me first begin by asking you, a basic question about moral courage.

You say that moral courage is the result of the interface between one's identity, one sense of self and one's core values.

Right.

So are you therefore suggesting that one has to have a robust, identity, a robust moral identity?

And if so, how can a person apply that?

Kristen: I think most of these people were people who felt that there's always something you can do.

You light a single candle rather than curse the darkness.

You feel that you can help one person.

You do a small thing, and that's that's all you can do.

You do it.

And I think that was very important, the idea that that they were people not of of importance but of significance that they counted.

Now, I think that comes through self-esteem.

I think that comes through parents and people who treat them well.

But we look at lots of people who had horrible childhoods, and they still end up doing amazing things.

So it's an interesting question.

That one, I don't think we have a good answer to that.

Badrinath: You make an interesting point, Professor Monroe.

In your book you say, and I quote, core values usually come from the family, unquote.

Now, as you know, the family as an institution has come under immense pressure owing to a number of factors.

Are you implying that individuals belonging to dysfunctional families will have a more challenging time acquiring a solid moral identity and, exhibiting moral courage?

Is that what youre saying?

Kristen: No, not at all.

I think, in fact, I think one of the other factors that I didn't mention is empathy, the ability to put yourself in another person's place and so you find a lot of people who had horrible childhoods, and they will take that and say, okay, I'm going to use that in some way.

You know, take lemons and make lemonade, as they say.

So, there was a psychiatrist we interviewed who said, extremely, if you meet him now, he seems a very serious, solid person.

His childhood was horrible.

And he said having a bad childhood helps me understand my patients better.

So he's taken something that would be a negative and turn it into a positive.

And I think that's the ability to do that is often very important.

So that I found a lot of people, who did not have ideal childhoods.

In fact, I don't think anybody really does have an ideal child.

But somehow you managed to think about other people and take your sorrow and your suffering and your unhappiness and turn it into something positive.

I think one of the quotes that I used at the beginning of the book was Meryl Streep when she, got her, award, for acting, Golden Globe, she said, take your broken heart, turn into art.

And I think that's one of the things I tried to show the students.

If something bad happens, take it.

Use it in some way to make it positive in some way.

And so the book was in some ways, our effort to take our own, distress at what was happening politically around us and try to do something positive with it.

Not that you can change the world, but you can do a little bit.

Badrinath: Well, that point is well-taken, and it is indeed true that we routinely see individuals who go through a great deal of hardship in their lives and still manage to give a good account of themselves.

Many of them have turned out to be stellar moral exemplars.

Having noted that, isn't it also true, Professor Monroe, that our values are significantly impacted by our socioeconomic circumstances, the ecosystem we operate in, and so on.

Aside from which all of us have different thresholds for pain, for suffering and things like that.

In other words, not everyone will react, in a similar manner to, challenges in life.

All of which brings us to a more basic question.

How does one acquire moral identity, and what is it specifically that makes and individual likely to be morally courageous?

Kristen: I think it's the idea that you feel that you you have to do something, that what is happening around you is so strong that you can't stay the same person unless you speak up.

And there are a lot of people who are very shy, people who will do things, simply because they can't not do it.

I've done research on people during the Holocaust, and I interviewed bystanders, and I interviewed people who rescued Jews, and I interviewed people who were actually perpetrators, Nazis.

And it was interesting because the bystanders said things like, I was one person alone against the Nazis.

What could I do?

And the rescuers said they were human beings like you and me.

Well, I had no other choice.

I had to help them.

And so I think how you see yourself in relation to other people sets and delineates the range of choice options that you find, not just morally, but cognitively.

So you generally don't realize that there's another option that you could do.

So that some of the bystanders I interviewed so they could do anything, whereas, one woman and her cousin was a rescuer, he was in hiding.

He'd been condemned to death early in the war.

He still saved over 100 people.

She had all kinds of resources.

She didn't do anything because she didn't see yourself as someone who had the ability to do anything.

So I think your perception of yourself in relation to other people is really critical for the actions that you take towards them.

Badrinath: This is interesting.

Let me ask you a related question.

You make an interesting point in your book about a distinctive trait among morally courageous people.

You say they have moral muscle.

What do you mean by that?

And how does one develop moral muscle?

Kristen: Well, I think it's a that's a really interesting question.

I use the term just because of the way you, you go to the gym and you, you can't lift anything that you work out, and then you can do a little more.

And I think morality, it comes that way, but I think it's complicated.

I had an interview, with a woman who had seen some people being, being rounded up during the, during the Holocaust, and she was kind of in shock.

She didn't realize what was happening.

It happened so quickly.

And she said, we all have memories of times when we should have done something, you know, we didn't.

And it gets in your way during the rest of your life.

And so she ended up doing work later, and I told the kids I wasn't proud about this, but when I was, I think in third or fourth grade, there was a group of cool girls, and I was not cool, but I was in the group and there was another girl that wanted to get in, and they kept making fun of her, and I wanted to say something, and I was too afraid to because I was afraid they kicked me out.

And that fact that I had screwed up, even though it wasn't, it gave me moral muscle later to say things.

So I think you realize sometimes that if you don't do something, it makes you feel bad about yourself, and so you don't want to be there.

But I think if you do one little tiny thing, you realize, well, maybe I can do another thing and then you can do another thing.

And they found that that happened a lot.

Situation so that my Erwin Chemerinsky had done several things that were very important.

He ran the ramparts investigation.

Most of these people had had a lot of experience before doing things.

So I think it's just like building up regular muscles.

If you do one thing, you realize you can do it again.

Badrinath: Indeed.

You talk about, seven extraordinary individuals.

These are everyday folks who stood up for their values and unmindful of consequences did the right thing.

And you call that moral courage?

Now, in your book, Professor Monroe, you say that moral courage is influenced by two critical factors.

One is one's theory of agency.

One sense of agency.

And the second thing has to do with one's understanding of human behavior.

What is the link between our sense of agency and courage?

Secondly, what's the connection between our understanding of human behavior and being morally courageous?

I ask because there are a lot of people who know much about human behavior, but that always does not translate into moral courage, does it?

Kristen: Well, we know that, for example, there are a lot of things social psychologists have done a lot of tests in this area.

So they find that if you are walking down a dark street and you're alone and you see somebody who's lying on the curb and they look as if they need help, if they're a big, you know, guy who looks maybe threatening, he's got a dirty or you're not likely to go over.

If it's a child, it seems unthreatening.

You will go.

We also know that if you're with other people and you say, oh my goodness, that person looks as if they're in trouble.

And the other person says, oh no, they could, you know, they could have a disease, they could hurt Then you tend not to go.

So other people have an impact on you.

But I think the idea, the essential critical idea is the idea that you might be able to make a difference, that you may not be able to do a lot, but at least you're going to try to do something.

And I think that, that's the kind of psychological leap that people have to take between feeling that they're not, they're not alone, that they are somebody that can have some impact on things.

Ive done experiments with students where, we had, we know that I won't go into all the details on that, but, sometimes if students react differently, if others people in the class, well, behave differently.

So we say, Badrinath: let me, ask you a question about another key theme in your book.

You posit a connection between what you call liberal courage and the liberal democratic state.

What is the connection and how does it work?

Kristen: That's a really good question.

I have gotten the book done.

It had already been.

I've sent it out to friends for to review.

It had gone through the review process at the University of Chicago and two of my friends, Lily Gardner Feldman and Jennifer Hook, she wrote me and said, you're assuming that moral courage is behavior that you like.

Can you have moral courage?

It's behavior that you don't like.

And I started thinking about that, and I realized that virtually all of the contemporary analysts, most scholars live in what we call the liberal democratic values system we tend to respect truth with.

We believe there's objectivity.

And I thought, well, okay, so that's the kind of behavior we're going to like, can you have behavior that is morally courageous, that does not reflect its values.

So that's a whole other project.

So that I'm actually looking at, Tudor England where Thomas Moore stood up to Henry the Eighth, was executed.

That is usually viewed as a great hero.

He was actually a terrible bigot.

He, hated anybody who was a Catholic.

He had instruments of torture he kept in his own home so that he could torture people who were suspected of being Protestants.

This is not a man that we would admire much today.

Martin Luther is another person, again, an anti-Semite.

Had no problems with all kinds of things that would bother us today.

He's considered very morally courageous in tacking his, theses on the door of the church.

And then the last group of people I'm looking at are people in the Third Reich, Albert Speer and Wilhelm Stuckart, who was the, drafter codrafter of the Nuremberg Laws and was at the Wannsee Conference which proposed the Final Solution.

Stuckart was given, a fine and, time off for time served.

That was it he didn't go to prison at all for since he'd already been in prison.

And Speer was given just twenty years, and they were considered because they said they stood up to the Nazis.

Well, so so I'm looking at those people to see whether or not their moral courage looks different than ours.

And I think it is, but I haven't finished that analysis yet.

Badrinath: That is very interesting, professor Monroe, we are almost out of time.

Let me end by asking you one last question.

As I read your extraordinarily fascinating book, I see that this is part of a trilogy that you have, planned.

But one thought crossed my mind.

Might it be possible for an individual to be morally courageous if they are in a place like North Korea or mainland China or elsewhere?

You do mention that your context has a huge impact on moral courage.

If you can briefly address this in just two minutes.

Badrinath: Well we do.

I don't have empirical evidence from, North Korea, mainland China.

I'm not an expert in that area.

I have spent a lot of time with people who lived during World War Two, which is certainly, as we, repressive as you can get.

And there were many, many instances of people doing extraordinary acts of kindness, very morally courageous.

And so, yes, you can have it even in the worst of situations.

And that's one of the interesting points that these people know that it be it's going to hurt that they're going to pay the consequences, and that the consequences are not going to be good.

And they do it anyway because they feel they have to do it.

So we've just, finished a book, called Politics Principle and Standing Up to Donald Trump, which we looked at moral courage and politics, and we looked at people like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger.

These people have really paid their careers are over the Republican Party, but they felt they had to do it.

And so they do it anyway.

So I think there are always situations where people.

That's the interesting thing about moral courage.

It the context is critical.

But I think these people, they're going to do it anyway, even if it's going to cost them their lives, which it did for Thomas Moore.

And it has for a lot of other people who were morally courageous.

So, yes, Badrinath: Badrinath: One important point you raised in your book, Professor Monroe concerns the personal characteristics of morally courageous people.

And you list them as humility, restraint, empathy, a sense of connectedness, gratitude, and wanting to give back to society.

But.

And you also say that, these values generally come from family, religion, literature, which is indeed true, but I just wondered if you gave some thought to this question of individuals who, unfortunately, for reasons beyond their control, never had the, privilege of being part of, caring, loving family, never had the privilege of going to school.

Never had the exposure to religion and so on.

How might such individuals acquire moral courage?

Kristen: Well, I think there are a lot of different factors that can trigger moral courage.

And what triggers it in you may not be what triggers it in me.

So, for example, religion might be important in some people, but not for others.

A family might be important for some people, but not for others.

Even within a family and even within the happiest, best possible families, there are always a few lacuna things that you don't get.

So it's interesting to me to look at where other people go.

So one of the people we interviewed, was a schoolteacher named Kay and she talked about literature.

She was she had not was not particularly religious.

And she said other people get their values from religion.

I got my inspiration from literature.

So she mentioned Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

She mentioned, Hester Prynne and The Scarlet Letter.

These were people that resonated for her.

One man who's not in the book I did an interview with.

He said his father really wasn't there.

He wasn't much of a father.

So he watched cartoons and, not cartoons, he watched TV shows.

And he said Roy Rogers was important.

A lot of people with some literature says Mr. Rogers, was important.

There's a role model, so you can be somebody that someone can watch and say, oh, well, look at him.

You know, he looks like me.

He's done this.

He's a professor.

He's been successful.

He seems to be someone concerned with moral issues.

Maybe I can be the same thing.

I'm very conscious that as a woman, there are not a lot of female faculty.

There were fewer when I started.

And so I realized I have to be a role model for some of these kids.

And that's one of the things that I think all of us can do.

You can be a critical others with term that sociologists use, as you know, and, you know, we know what what it is that you're doing that's going to influence somebody.

The one little thing that you say that you're not even aware of.

I had a student write And said, I was partying a lot when I took your course.

I thought it looked like an easy course was a good time.

Then you showed an interview with this woman, who then during the Holocaust, and you got done, and you said it is never too late.

And she said, I felt like a door had opened.

And I realized I don't have to be a silly person who parties all the time.

So I got very serious and I thought that was a success.

I didn't even remember saying it was simply a toss off.

I said in class, but it was significant for her.

So I think it's that's one thing that's important for everyday people.

The fact that these are not ordinary people, because I don't think there really are any ordinary people, but they're just like you and me.

And if they can do it, I think that says that you and I also have the potential to be inspirational and to show moral courage.

And I think that's one of the very hopeful things about the book that it does show people that because they are so normal, we also have the possibility for greatness if we want to rise to them.

that is a very interesting and encouraging thought.

Professor Monroe, you have flagged a critical issue.

That is relevant for all of us, particularly at the present time.

It's a great pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it Kristen: thank you so much for allowing me to discuss it, I appreciate that.

Thank you Badrinath: thank you.

That's it for today.

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