In a conversation lasting a little more than an hour, two longtime friends—John Sexton, president emeritus of NYU and dean emeritus of NYU Law, and Arthur Miller, university professor and founder and chairman of the NYU School of Professional Studies, Sports and Society Program—chatted about baseball. With Yankees caps atop their heads, Sexton and Miller exchanged memories of the sport and shared their views of its role in society and in their own lives. The virtual event, held on July 21 and presented by the Law Alumni Association, coincided with the return of Major League Baseball following a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Selected Remarks:
40:59-41:39
John Sexton: “Many of the people on this event know that a few years ago, I wrote a book called Baseball as a Road to God. Just so you think I don’t only write about baseball, last year I put out a book called Standing for Reason about my concepts of university, but the book I’m working on now is called The Law of Baseball, and I take the various areas of law and illustrate them with baseball cases.”
1:00:16-1:02:14
Arthur Miller: “The war against racism is in part, a story about baseball and Jackie Robinson, whose entrance into baseball I also witnessed, and saw the nastiness, the racism, that used to exist in the ballpark. If you went to the ballpark, as I did with my dad, it was white. Male and white. And then you get ‘47 and Jackie and then the normalcy of people of color and various ethnicities and nationalities, and that’s a powerful force.”
Watch the full discussion below:
Posted August 13, 2020