Michael Eric Dyson, the George­town soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, talks here about how civ­il rights move­ments have his­tor­i­cal­ly built upon one oth­er. MLK took pieces from Gand­hi, and the gay rights move­ment is now draw­ing on the black civ­il rights move­ment of the 60s. The clip runs about 7 min­utes, and you can watch the full video here. You can also watch anoth­er Dyson speech, “No Dreams Deferred?: Black Aspi­ra­tions from Mar­tin Luther King Jr. to Jay‑Z.”

via The Huff­in­g­ton Post

If you’re won­der­ing what the much-dis­cussed water­board­ing expe­ri­ence is all about, you can watch it in real time. Above, the pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, Christo­pher Hitchens, goes through the real deal. Although often known for tak­ing left-wing posi­tions, Hitchens sup­port­ed aggres­sive action in the Mid­dle East and par­tic­u­lar­ly the war in Iraq. Mean­while, if you’re look­ing for a round­ed response, you can also watch a con­ser­v­a­tive radio show host endure the “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­nique” as well.

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The media want­ed to turn this into a bit­ter con­tro­ver­sy. But it turned out to be far less than that. Aside from a few heck­lers, the crowd at Notre Dame’s grad­u­a­tion gave Barack Oba­ma, the com­mence­ment speak­er, a gen­uine­ly warm recep­tion. And what the pres­i­dent gave back is a speech whose moral con­tent is hard to take issue with, no mat­ter where you sit on the polit­i­cal spec­trum. A uniter, not a divider. Part 1 above. And then Part 2 and  Part 3.

As a quick aside, while Notre Dame had the tact to give Oba­ma the per­func­to­ry hon­orary degree, Ari­zona State did­n’t, and here’s what Jon Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show had to say about that.