Interregnum XIII Highlights Interdependence of Equality, Character, and Freedom

From the evenings of April 4 to April 7, The King’s College community observed Interregnum, its annual tradition of canceling classes for three days of competitive academic and artistic events centered around a unifying theme of philosophical and public importance. Interregnum XIII: Equality kicked off Tuesday evening on the Upper West Side with a lecture from Dr. William B. Allen, a political philosopher at Michigan State University.

After remarking that “The Olympics in Greece were apparently not more momentous” than Interregnum at The King’s College, Allen lectured on the connection between American freedom and the concept of national character, for which he relied on the writings of Frederick Douglass and Alexis de Tocqueville, who both provide guidance as to what equality has to do with either concept. For Douglass, freedom rather than equality stood in opposition to slavery, and Douglass’s core motivation was his belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings before God. By extension, according to Allen, American freedom is only called “American” because it is in America that the first political expression of the basic freedom ordained by God for man arose—not because it is in any way American intellectual property.

National character relates to the primacy of freedom because “the starting point for freedom is man’s obligation to obey God—it is conscience.” In contrast to theories that say freedom is the permission to do whatever one wants, Allen said, Douglass and early American founders such as John Adams recognized that “only knowledge and virtue can rightly grant ‘the consent of the governed’”—which consent they saw as the condition of all legitimate government.

Allen then observed that the American national character now resembles that of a troubled marriage, in which no one can bring himself to say “I was wrong.” The greatest sign of this, he said, is our individual and common inability to make decisions based on social norms, and our failure to recognize how perverse it is to ask the government to create such norms for us. “The only interest advanced by our practice of [social] disintegration is that of the state to curtail the agency of everyone else,” he said. The equality we must insist on is not de Tocqueville’s “equality of conditions,” for that leads us astray, but the basic equality of all people before God and the law. Equality, in other words, is not and should not be the goal of political order; it is the place we are already coming from, the starting point of our political life, which is ordered toward divinely-ordained freedom.

Allen closed by urging the community that in civic terms, “nothing is more urgent today than to acquire a sense of what it means to be an American”—a sense that can override the multitude of diverse and competing identities now ascendant. During the question and answer time he added that although the geographic frontiers of the West that exercised so much influence on the American psyche have now closed, he believes there are moral frontiers still to conquer that can replace them. And to fulfill America’s potential as a nation, it is necessary for Americans “to have a fierce commitment to independent thinking.”

The next morning kicked off the student competitions: each House put forth its best effort in academic writing, creative writing, performance and art challenges, renditions of great historical speeches, prepared lectures, and random theme and parliamentary debates (the latter weighing heaviest in the final rankings). Also factoring in is the student reading test, which measured all the students’ comprehension of this year’s readings, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.”

In one of the parliamentary debates, the Houses of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher debated an idea proposed by the political philosopher John Stuart Mill, that college graduates should be given an extra vote. The House of Reagan, which was assigned the “government” role defending the resolution, chose to make the idea more specific by limiting the extra vote provision to federal elections, and argued for their position on the basis that increasing the power of educated voters shows greater deference to those who have studied history and are familiar with it, as well as raising the bar for candidates and public discourse. The House of Thatcher, opposing the resolution, argued that it would contradict America’s founding declaration that “All men are created equal” and places a great deal of unfounded confidence in the judgment, virtue, and public-spiritedness of elites—just as the economy is beginning to highlight entrepreneurship as a powerful path to meaningful participation and contribution in society.

The Interregnum competitions are the grand finale in a yearlong series of competitions among the Houses; thus, the end of Interregnum involves two trophies. This year, the House of Clara Barton won the Interregnum Cup, and the House of Dietrich Bonhoeffer carried off the coveted honor of winning the House Cup. Both awards were conferred following the final Interregnum debate at the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s on Friday, April 7, to much cheering and applause.

Megan Ristine ’17, chair of the student Interregnum Committee, said, “All in all, I am thrilled with this year’s Interregnum. I believe we as a committee accomplished our goals. We facilitated real conversations around real issues that are being discussed in the public sector. The committee worked hard to see this event through to the final detail; I am very proud of the result.”

Dr. Matthew Parks, Assistant Professor of Politics and Interregnum faculty advisor, said, “Interregnum is a time of spirited academic competition that reminds us that excellence matters and that truth matters. With this year’s theme of ‘Equality,’ King’s students once again demonstrated their willingness to tackle some of the most profound and consequential questions of public life with heart, mind, and soul.”