In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.
It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.
The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.
This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.
Gujarat is a pro-business state, where civil society organisations are comfortable with working to make sure that business does not suffer. Large parts of the rest of India, for better or worse, are very different.
Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas.
It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.