Next Steps

Assignment: Eboo Patel, We Need to Build (Chapter 21 and Conclusion); John Inazu, “Life Together in the University,” Some Assembly Required (May 28, 2026)

Eboo Patel’s closing chapters in We Need to Build return us to the constructive task of pluralism: not merely analyzing division, critiquing broken institutions, or naming social failures, but building the relationships, organizations, and civic spaces that help people live together across deep difference. Patel believes that pluralism requires more than good intentions. It depends on leaders, habits, narratives, and institutions that make cooperation possible without pretending disagreement has disappeared. The question as we near the end of the course is therefore not simply what you now believe about disagreement, but what you are prepared to help build.

My Substack post brings this back to the university. Drawing on themes of dependence, purpose, wisdom, and shared life, I ask how campuses might be redesigned not only for knowledge production or professional success, but for deeper forms of human community.

Together, these readings invite you to consider how the practices of the course might extend beyond the classroom—into friendships, residence halls, student organizations, families, workplaces, religious communities, and public institutions. We will ask what kinds of people and communities are needed for disagreement to become not merely something we survive, but one way we learn to live more truthfully and responsibly with one another.