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Amanpour
Interview with Wesleyan University President Michael Roth; Interview with Fordham University Center of Religion and Culture Director David Gibson; Interview with "Godstruck" Author Kelsey Osgood. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired April 16, 2025 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president has been quite clear, they must follow federal law. He also wants to see Harvard
apologize.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: But Harvard won't be cowed, and others are now standing up to Trump. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, joins me.
Then the religious leader standing as a moral beacon. Why Pope Francis offers hope these days.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KELSEY OSGOOD, AUTHOR, "GODSTRUCK": Sometimes we want to make sense of religious conversion or we want to think about it through a lens that's
sociological or academic. But in some ways, it kind of doesn't really fit neatly into those categories. It can almost be thought of more as like the
act of falling in love.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: "Godstruck," the women turning to religion in these increasingly secular times.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
The Trump administration is ramping up its war on higher education. Harvard, arguably the world's most important academic institution, is
pushing back, and it is a $2 billion gamble after the university refused to bow to the Trump demands to drop DEI measures and to punish student
protestors. The administration swiftly froze those funds and is now threatening its tax-exempt status.
That kind of presidential interference would be illegal under federal law. And more than 600 foreign students, faculty, and researchers at over 90
universities across America have had their visas revoked. In an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of speech, several of these students,
including U.S. green card holders have been arrested and faced deportation with no charges filed and no due process.
While some universities like Columbia have buckled under the financial pressure and Trump's demands, Harvard is not alone in resisting. Princeton
and a growing number of others are fighting back, including Wesleyan University whose own federal funding has been threatened. And its
president, Michael Roth, is joining me now from Connecticut.
President Michael Roth, welcome to the program.
MICHAEL ROTH, PRESIDENT, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY: Thanks very much for having me.
AMANPOUR: So, let me first ask you where you discovered the steel in your spine not to break? What was the point at which you said, we cannot do
this?
ROTH: Well, that's a great question because there are some things the federal government can rightly insist upon, and I don't have to agree with
those things, but I do have to comply with the law. For example, the end of affirmative action was a change in how we do admissions and we obey the
law. We don't use racial preferences at all in our admissions process. I think we should be able to, but the government disagrees and we follow the
law. That seems pretty straightforward.
In our case, we actually got rid of legacy admissions also at that time because if we're not going to give preferences, we shouldn't give
preferences to our alumni either.
But there are some things when the government assist upon that are contrary to law, which is to tell universities who to admit, to tell universities
how to teach, to tell universities how to understand belonging or fairness on their campuses. And I think the outrageous arrest and threaten
deportation of international students really made me stand up and write some essays about this, even though I disagree deeply with the politics of
those students, that shouldn't matter.
In America, you have the right to speak your mind, whether you have a green card or you're a citizen. And for the federal government to just show up
one day at your door and take you away because of the ideas you express, that is anti-American, anti-education, and undermines our freedom.
AMANPOUR: Well, I want to ask you about that because you wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, essentially saying basically the headline was "Trump is
Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie." And this is one paragraph that you wrote. Jew hatred is real, but today's anti-anti-Semitism isn't a legitimate
effort to fight it. It's a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people. Jews who applaud the
administration's crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril.
[13:05:00]
There's a -- this is really an important statement. So, explain, first of all, the last segment, will soon find that they applaud this at their
peril. You're addressing your own community.
ROTH: Yes. As a Jew myself, I am appalled that people who support Israel will align themselves with an administration that is using scapegoating or
racism and -- which has no trouble supping with Nazis when it's inconvenient for them. I'm appalled that my fellow Jews will support this
because they think it'll be good for Israel.
I myself believe strongly in Israel's right to defend itself. I'm critical of the current government in Israel, but all of that shouldn't matter. The
idea that you can say you're fighting anti-Semitism and then cancel DEI programs, which actually can be used to protect Jews is absurd. The idea
that you say you're fighting anti-Semitism, so you're canceling research grants for diabetes research or Alzheimer's research, this is ridiculous.
What the Trump administration is doing now is demanding a loyalty oath. They are demanding that schools express loyalty to the president and his
current beliefs. This has nothing to do with anti-anti-Semitism. And Jews who align themselves with leaders because they think those leaders are
picking on other people, eventually, those -- they find -- the Jews find themselves the targets of that same abuse.
And we've seen this throughout history. The rabbis have talked about it, beware of governments that seem to be your friend and then violate the law.
You may like the way they violate the law now. But in the future, it'll be at our own expense.
AMANPOUR: So, this is very interesting, because as you rightly say, there are a lot of rabbis and Jewish organizations who are voicing what you're
saying now. They're very uncomfortable. That picture of the young Turkish student, the female Turkish student, which we're going to run now, being
approached by plainclothes, people in hoodies and some masks, plain cars, unmarked cars, just swept off the street. That really turned people, you
know, across America.
ROTH: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And of course, Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia whose wife is American and pregnant, and again, was just whipped off in the middle of the
night. Two of these people are still under -- amongst many others, still in detention with no due process. And that started to worry a lot of people.
Where do you think this is going to end? What are you doing, for instance, on your campus to ensure the safety of the Jewish community but not allow
this kind of, as you call it, you know, extra judicial process against some of these students?
ROTH: Yes. We've talked a lot on our campus, and it's a small campus, about 3,000 or so students. We talk a lot about the importance of
protecting everyone. Everyone should be able to thrive, and anti-Semitism is a real thing. And when we see it, we stop it. But we don't want to see
our students living in fear of their own government.
I was talking to a group of respective students this morning and their parents, and someone asked me, how do you find the courage to speak out?
And I said to them, listen to yourself. This is America. Why is it a question that we should be afraid to speak out? If I'm a young Palestinian
and I want to write an essay in the school newspaper, or if I'm a young Jew and want to write an essay in the newspaper for Palestinian rights, I
shouldn't be worried that the government is going to crack down on me because of my opinions.
It's un-American. It's an attack on freedom. And I think whether I agree with the protestors or not is irrelevant, and it should be irrelevant to
the federal government. We should be protecting freedom, not eroding it in the service of the president's ideology.
AMANPOUR: So, this, as you say, is having a very chilling effect. But now that more and more of you university leaders are standing up, maybe it'll
find its own water level again. I want to play this little soundbite from the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, also the former Treasury
secretary. This is what he said about this crackdown.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER PRESIDENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: This is an attempt to impose the kind of regulation on Harvard that is imposed by government on
universities in countries that we don't think of as democracies, countries that don't have free speech protections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You know, I'm sitting here in the U.K. and I cover parts of the world, which are not democracies and don't have protections and do crack
down on their students. Right now, those brave students who've been protesting in Turkey, many, many of them were in jail. Of course, there's
no due process. This is the kind of thing we are used to seeing there.
How shocking is it and how long do you think it can last in the United States?
[13:10:00]
ROTH: It's terrifically shocking and I fear it'll last. If people don't speak out against it. It will last if citizens, whether they're at
universities or elsewhere, say we need to protect our freedom. I mean, this is not just about universities, this will be about businesses. This is
about churches and synagogues and mosques. This is about civil society where one should have the ability to speak freely.
And our position as Americans in the university world has been so strong because we have freedom of inquiry. We have professionals making decisions
about molecular biology research or about cancer research. We don't want the government trying to do that. The government has supported that work
with funding. That's really important and it has made us a stronger nation, but it has never demanded ideological loyalty until now. And we must reject
those demands and protect our freedoms.
AMANPOUR: Did the McCarthy era demand ideological loyalty during that time from universities? I know the other areas that they -- the red baits, et
cetera, red baiting and the red scare, what was it directed at academia as well?
ROTH: Yes. Absolutely. It wasn't directed from the White House. But for sure, elements of the federal government led by McCarthy got some states to
demand loyalty oaths, and people left. I know academics who moved to other countries rather than sign that loyalty oath. This whole idea that you
would have to subscribe to -- not even a coherent ideology, just support the -- loyally support Donald Trump, that idea flies in the face of the
pursuit of truth, it flies in the face of the -- of scientific research. And it'll weaken us, not only academically but morally, it'll weaken us
politically. I think Americans won't stand for it.
They may like the idea that a fancy university is getting attacked because they're fancy, but we all believe, I think, that you're a citizen in the
United States, or you live in the United States as a legal immigrant, you should be able to speak your mind, see the people you want to see, have the
meetings you want to have and not worry about the government peering into your affairs. We want them, the government, to support good work without
demanding ideological conformity.
AMANPOUR: I'm going to -- I want to get more to that because, as you know, there is a conservative agenda to do exactly what is happening, by all
means possible. Chris Rufo and the lot, they say, we're going to take them down. I mean, that's their public thing. And I'm going to get to that.
But I want to ask you the funding that's at threat, the government funding, whether it's the $2.2 billion at Harvard, which has been stopped, whether
your funding, Columbia's, et cetera. Is this for DEI projects? Is this for Palestinian-Israeli studies? What is this funding for?
ROTH: It's for everything, Christiane. It's for scientific research. We have a researcher here who works on things for physics, for the Department
of Defense and Energy. We -- and they just are freezing things because they can, not because there's some coherent agenda there. They're punishing
schools for not being loyal, in their view. They don't like DEI. They don't -- which means they don't like programs that support greater access, more
inclusion and -- that ensure fairness. Why they wouldn't like that is something I don't understand. But they are punishing universities with --
by freezing grants to other dimensions of their activities.
And so, they use anti-Semitism or anti-DEI as a cover, but in fact, what they're doing is taking money away from Alzheimer's research. They're
taking money away from clinical trials for new cancer drugs. And this is like shooting ourselves in the foot. It is -- it's really taking the
funding away from what the United States does best was to -- which is to attract great scientists from all over the world who solve problems in ways
that help many people.
And so, I do think this is so much about loyalty to the administration and about attacking universities that many people have grown to resent. And I
think we in universities do need to do a better job of explaining how the work that goes on at universities serves the common good, that it's good
for America, that there's research going on, it's good for the United States that we have students who are on scholarships supported by the
government, because those students from modest economic backgrounds will go on to do great things and improve their way -- their station in life.
And these are things that American universities have done for decades and decades. And to shake them up, just in order to show that the White House
has the power to do so is a grave mistake.
[13:15:00]
AMANPOUR: As you know, many European countries and universities are laying out the welcome for anybody who's disaffected or fired in the U.S.
ROTH: Yes.
AMANPOUR: You know, and people around the world are dying for your great scientists and researchers. But on a most immediate level, is it just about
loyalty or is it a bigger conservative agenda, as expressed by Chris Rufo, and you've heard the interviews, he's the head of an organization, a
conservative organization dedicated to doing what you just told me, to taking down liberal universities several pegs and saying that these
universities, your universities are not representative, that you should not be, you know, teaching or be paid taxpayer money for teaching critical race
theory, diversity, you know, DEI and all the rest of it?
And (INAUDIBLE) crowed to The New York Times that his group has brought down three presidents, if you remember, Harvard, Penn, and Columbia at the
beginning of these protests last year.
ROTH: Yes.
AMANPOUR: He also says that the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty across the board is totally lopsided. You know, and says that they want
color blind admissions. Do they have a point? Is there any reform or greater diversity, diverse opinion or faculty that you should be including?
ROTH: Absolutely. I wrote in, I think, 2017 in the Wall Street Journal, about the need for an affirmative action program for conservatives on
university campus. That's because in the humanities, especially in the interpretive social sciences, we tend to hire people who are left of
center. And I've talked with my faculty a lot about how this is a bias and we have to overcome our biases in hiring.
The folks who go to graduate school in history or philosophy or English and spend 10 years working on a on a PhD, they may be people who skew left
rather than right in the world. But we have to be more aware of colleges and universities of the biases we bring to the hiring process.
So, I would love to see, and have written a lot about wanting to see more intellectual and political diversity on campus. But the schools that
they're attacking, it's not like they're graduating these legions of progressives or radicals. You know, the people graduating from Harvard
these days, they want to be in Wall Street. The popular majors, and it's not like critical race theory, it's economics. They want -- or they're
going into computer science.
And these are not radicals, these are people who are using their education to advance themselves and to contribute to the ongoing developments in the
economy and culture. So, it's just nonsense. If you look at the -- especially the elite schools and what kind of jobs they take or what kind
of jobs they seek, they're not seeking to be political organizers in large numbers, they are seeking to play a role in the economy and in the culture.
Here at Wesleyan, we have a lot of people who want to actually become teachers, and we have lots of people who want to become part of the
entertainment industry. We've had Lin-Manuel Miranda, has spawned generations of people who want to write the next time "Hamilton." And he
was a student here.
And at many of these league schools, you have people who are not graduating to be with lunatic fringe ideas, they're graduating with ambition to make a
contribution in the fields they've chosen. So, although I do believe, very strongly, that we need more ideological diversity on campus, and we talk
about that all the time now at Wesleyan, I also believe that having the government choose people on the basis of your ideology is a recipe for
disaster.
I mean, this is a government that can't even use the Signal app well. We need professional historians, choosing historians, but being mindful of
their political biases. And the same in English or in anthropology.
I don't worry that people in chemistry are really using political biases when they hire a chemist. I don't worry that people in computer science are
biased politically when they choose the computer scientists. They are choosing people who are smart, who are ambitious, and who can advance the
field. And if we let the government try to choose those people, will have a disaster, because that's not what the government is good at. The government
is good at funding these departments to do important work by their own lights.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
ROTH: With their own professional competencies.
AMANPOUR: Can I just in --
ROTH: They're not good at picking winners, as you say.
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: Yes. I just want to interrupt for one moment and ask you, because it seems that the reactions and the responses from the universities
have been pretty much individual and somewhat ad hoc. And I just wondered whether any of you are banding together, like the Ivys or the other -- you
know, your levels and this and that, like an attack on one is an attack on all? There needs to be a strategy clearly, right?
ROTH: Yes.
AMANPOUR: It can't be a one university has one answer, another has another answer.
ROTH: That's exactly right, Christiane. And we're doing exactly that. For the last few weeks, I've been trying to get schools together to make such a
statement and make -- really make -- have such a commitment. And I think in the next four or five days, you'll see statements from some national
organizations linking that have many, many universities as members. I think they will now come out with a declaration defending the freedoms that are
so important for a good education.
I wrote this book called "The Student," which -- and it's about the history of the idea of the student. And I thought at the end, in the modern era,
being a student means you get to practice being free. And we need to have campuses where people can practice being free.
And so, I think you'll see coalitions of colleges, universities, community colleges, I'd say the next five days bringing out statements. I've been
talking to my colleagues about this with a much more unified front.
AMANPOUR: All right. Well, that'd be really, really interesting. And I think that's a great sort of term, a place to practice to be free and what
freedom means in the responsibilities. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, thank you so much indeed for joining us. Thank you.
And we'll be right back after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: It is not surprising. So, many people around the world today are seeking antidotes and relief from hardline, strong man policies. Pope
Francis has emerged as that figurehead, a moral authority for these times beyond his 1.4 billion Catholic flock worldwide.
In a recent essay for The New York Times, religious scholar and journalist, David Gibson writes, the Age of Trump has its prophet, Pope Francis. And of
course, it's Holy Week right now for Christians around the world, but the pope won't be able to preside over the masses and Good Friday services of
mourning this year as he continues to recover from that long illness. And David Gibson joins me right now from New York. Welcome. Welcome to the
program.
It was very, very interesting, your op-ed, and we really did want to talk to you about it, because it just opened my eyes to a lot of things. First
of all, what do you mean by, you know, Trump has his prophet? What does that mean?
DAVID GIBSON, DIRECTOR, CENTER OF RELIGION AND CULTURE, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: Well, in the sense that if you're looking for the polar opposite of Donald
Trump in the modern world, it's a bit of an irony, it's the pope in Rome.
I mean, look, the Catholic Church wasn't always the greatest friend to democracy and human rights throughout its history, but especially in the
last half century or so the church has emerged as such a vocal, moral voice on behalf of human rights and democracy, and Pope Francis, very much --
remember, Christiane, a month ago, we didn't think the pope was going to survive. He was in the hospital in intensive care, double pneumonia.
[13:25:00]
88-year-old man, we were waking up every morning thinking we'd be reading obituaries. Everyone was talking about his legacy as pope, his openness,
his -- to gays and lesbians, his elevating women in the church, all of these remarkable things, his openness to immigrants and welcoming refugees.
These are all important things. But what I don't think was getting enough play was what an important champion of what he calls a better kind of
politics and his moral voice against nationalist populism, the kind of Trumpism that's going rampant around the globe, and his championing
democracy, open debate, scientific research, he's -- you know, on climate change, he's been a really -- The Guardian called him the moral voice of
the world.
So, these things I don't think were being highlighted enough. But also, it's not just in a vacuum. 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we would've had the
United States being side by side with the papacy and so many others on these kinds of causes. But that's not the world we live in anymore. It's
the world of Donald Trump and Trumpism in so much -- in so many countries around the world. And Pope Francis really stands against that.
AMANPOUR: You know, it is interesting because even in his, you know, sick months and days, et cetera, there have been clashes between this
administration, it's only a few months old, and this pope, particularly J. D. Vance. He wrote, Pope Francis before his illness, a letter to U.S.
bishops hitting back, as you've mentioned, the policies of deportation, demonization of immigrants. He said, what is built on the basis of force
and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.
Of course, the counterpart is that Vance had said the idea of Christian love, love thy neighbor. He wrote that others -- other Catholics and
Christians seem to have inverted it. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about the people outside their own borders.
There seems to be a real, you know, fisticuffs, verbally anyway, between this Vatican and this administration in the U.S.
GIBSON: Yes, very much so. You couldn't find a bigger contrast. And look, we have J. D. Vance who's heading over to Rome this Holy Week. He's going
to be in Rome for Easter. Whether he will meet with a pope or not, depends on a lot of factors.
But -- and J. D. Vance, a Catholic, a new Catholic, a baby Catholic, as he calls himself, he just converted a few years ago, but he's directly
attacked the pope, the Catholic bishops, he called them greedy for taking federal money to help resettle refugees and immigrants, that's an
astonishing kind of contrast.
And Pope Francis, again, his prophetic voice, as I call it, you know, he sees this and he's going to speak out. That letter you spoke about was
released -- was sent to the U.S. bishops -- it was sent to the U.S. bishops. It was a message to Donald Trump, but that was sent just a couple
of days before he went into hospital with this near fatal illness, and he called out Trump. And he spoke on behalf, I think very importantly, of the
rule of law.
And what you said, that line you quoted, what starts in force ends badly, I mean, that's a prophetic statement if there ever was one. But will he be a
Cassandra? But he also then, as you said, he went after something that J. D. Vance had highlighted this Ordo Amoris, the ordering of our loves, a
kind of Catholic theological concept that Vance kind of got wrong, kind of weaponized as a sort of tribal version of love. We just care for our own.
Whereas Pope Francis says, no, that's not the gospel. That's not what Jesus taught. We care for everyone.
AMANPOUR: Talk a little bit about where this might have come from. You know, Pope Francis had humble beginnings. He -- a book was written about
him called "The Outsider." He was the son of immigrants. He went from -- they went from fascist Italy to Argentina. Give me a little bit about that
history again that perhaps probably certainly shapes his worldview.
GIBSON: Yes. I think you hit on it, that book, "The Outsider" by CNN's Chris Lamb. It's a terrific book. And that title really encapsulates. You
have to understand -- and I wrote that op-ed for The Times for the 12th anniversary of his election as pope, the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio,
the Cardinal Archbishop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the first pope from the southern hemisphere, thousands of miles away. The first Jesuit pope. The
first pope to take the name of Francis of Assisi.
[13:30:00]
And the reason he's shaken up the Vatican and the church saw much and tried to reform the church is because he comes from the outside. His parents, as
you mentioned, he's the son of Italian immigrants who left fascist Italy and migrated. They were immigrants to Argentina. So, he identifies very
much with those who are on the move, those who are suffering, those who are on the outside.
So, when he was elected pope, he took a look around him and he said, this is not going to be business as usual. We need to be a prophet in the world,
but we cannot do that with any authenticity until we reform ourselves, until we reform the church itself. And that reform of the church itself has
really upset a lot of Catholics, among them American conservatives like J. D. Vance.
AMANPOUR: Let me -- maybe because, you know, he has been so identified. This is a Pope Francis with the dispossessed. He went to, as we all
remember, Lampedusa, was his first trip, I think. That island off the coast of Italy where all the migrants would come from North Africa. He celebrated
mass on an altar made from those wooden refugee -- he begged God's forgiveness for, quote, "the indifference" shown to the suffering of
immigrants. He said they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families. So, he is really, really identified with them.
And as you say, it's put him at odds with a lot of conservatives, in the Vatican, around the world, and in -- even in parts of Africa and elsewhere,
in Asia, and of course, in the U.S. Where does that power struggle stand right now as the pope is in his twilight time?
GIBSON: Well, that's -- that power struggle is going to be answered and resolved in the next conclave. And that's the backdrop to, I think,
everything that has been going on. There is a lot of pushback. But really, I think the opposition comes largely from the United States, the
Anglosphere, the wealthier Catholic communities that are very small.
And American Catholics have to remember, they don't realize, they're only 5 maybe 6 percent of the global Catholic community, the wider Catholic
church, the growing church in the southern hemisphere, in Latin America, and Africa and Asia, they find what Pope Francis says -- Pope Francis is
saying that resonates with them. They love it, on climate change, on migration, on refugees, things on poverty, things they deal with all the
time.
The opposition, I think, is really among, you know, wealthier conservative Catholics in the Northern Hemisphere, but they have the money, they have
the influence, and they have the media and social media megaphone, and they're having a lot of influence as this kind of shadow campaign happens
before the next enclave, whenever that happens.
AMANPOUR: Can I just say, you know, reading some of my notes, he basically wrote to the bishops, to the U.S. bishops saying, don't listen to Vice
President Vance's constant theologizing. He basically said, no, this isn't our Christian values, or it's being twisted a little bit. It's quite bold.
GIBSON: Yes. No, of course. And that's the great thing about Francis. Look, when you're looking -- people are saying, who's going to come next?
Everybody was talking a month ago. He's going to die right away. Who's going to come next? What -- you know, is there going to be someone like
Francis? You have to ask yourself, what is Pope Francis? Who is Pope Francis? Who would be somebody like him?
And what you really have -- apart from any particular policy, it's a leader, a pope who is bold, who would speak forthrightly and write a letter
like that. Look, the pope doesn't want to pick fights with politicians. But J. D. Vance, almost like by coming to Rome at Easter time, J. D. Vance by
citing Catholic theology and Catholic teaching invited the Catholic pope and Catholic leaders to correct him when he got it so wrong. They're
saying, look, we can talk, we can debate, we can talk about politic policies, we can talk about politics, all these kinds of things, but don't
come at us with the gospels that you are perverting.
AMANPOUR: David, Pope Francis came across this opposition, as you said, from conservative, many in the U.S. They were his fiercest critics, people
like Raymond Burke, he had his salary and Vatican compartment privileges revoked. Then the Texan bishop, Joseph Strickland, was fired, who he had
attacked the Pope attempts to update the church's stand on social matters, et cetera.
[13:35:00]
I mean, he really has laid marker down and said what he will tolerate as the leader of the faith and what he won't. But do you think some of the
other stuff that he's done, you know, as you mentioned, you know, much more expressing -- I hate using the word tolerance, but much more sympathy and
acceptance for gaze for women, improving women's rights, et cetera. Will those things survive him?
GIBSON: I don't know. No one knows. It really depends. The Romans have a lot of great sayings about popes. They've lived with them for 2,000 years,
and the Romans like to say, what one pope can do, another pope can undo.
AMANPOUR: Right.
GIBSON: And you have to realize the pope is the top leader. It's great to be pope, but everything that he does, another pope could, in many respects,
come in and undo. I think it would be a great damage on the reputation of the church. So, I think many of the things he's done are going to be
reforms that are going to remain.
But there is a real backlash, a conservative backlash against some of these things he's done. And he's been very patient with so many of these bishops
who are really fierce advocates. Cardinal Burke, Joseph Strickland, as you mentioned. But at a certain point they kind of flash over to the almost
January 6th type, because they're trying to overturn. When they say that you're not the legitimate pope, when you're the pope and you're preaching
heresy, those are things that just kind of go beyond the pale, and he has to crack back on that.
But it's -- but, you know, he's been patient with them. But when they go into a conclave, when the cardinals go into a conclave, are they going to
say, look, we need to readjust. We can't have this kind of, you know, someone as outspoken as this. We need someone who can keep these right-
wingers in the fold.
AMANPOUR: Interesting. I have -- we've got 20 seconds. What will you miss most? What will the world miss most about Pope Francis?
GIBSON: The humanity of Francis, the Christianity of Pope Francis. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote of Pope John XXIII back in the 1960s,
here we finally have a Christian on St. Peter's throne. I think that's what the world wants and that's what I'd like to see.
AMANPOUR: David Gibson, thank you very much indeed. And in his first official appointment since emerging from his illness, Pope Francis has made
moves to put the architect Antoni Gaudi on the path to sainthood. Long nicknamed God's architect for his lifetime dedication to creating those
soaring spires and celestial stained-glass windows of the Sagrada Familia or Holy Family Basilica in Barcelona. The Spanish visionary is now a step
closer to canonization, almost a century after his death.
Stay with CNN. We will be right back.
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AMANPOUR: And now, from the changing landscape of the Catholic Church to an increasingly secular America. Our next guest, inspired by her own
conversion to Judaism, decided to delve into the stories of millennial women, who've discovered organized religion just as so many others are
turning away from it.
Journalist and author Kelsey Osgood joins Michel Martin to discuss her new book, "Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious
Conversion."
[13:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Kelsey Osgood, thank you so much for joining us.
KELSEY OSGOOD, AUTHOR, "GODSTRUCK": Thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: So, let's just set the table here. There's a Pew Research Center study showing that the percentage of Americans identifying as having no
religion rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 29 percent in 2021, which is all the more reason that your book is really interesting because you explore
the journeys of seven women, all people kind of in their 30s, millennials, including yourself, who each turned to organized religion at a time when a
lot of their peers or not.
So, first of all, why all women and what started you on this journey?
OSGOOD: One question that arose early on for me was I thought that most people would assume that if you were a woman to join a most organized
religions, would be to kind of take a step backward in terms of your own freedom. Most institutional religions are fairly patriarchal in nature or
their structures remain fairly patriarchal to this day.
And I think that, you know, I certainly came of age at a time when this -- there was the idea that we had more and more freedoms, more and more
opportunities. And so, to be a woman, specifically to enter these realms where there would be higher standards for your domesticity, higher
standards for maybe the number of children you might have, and sort of less opportunities to participate publicly in your faith, by holding positions
of power maybe, that that would -- that was a bizarre choice. Most people would think of that as being a bizarre choice.
So, that's mostly why I focused on women. There's a tension there also with some of the data that shows that women more often are the ones who convert
or who tend to be more preoccupied with questions of meaning and tend to be more active in their faiths when they are religious.
MARTIN: You grew up in a -- sort of a -- you describe your upbringing as kind of deeply secular in some ways, kind of -- almost kind of anti-
religious, I would say, somewhat. But just -- but clearly secular. And that you ended up, as you put it, drawn to a Judaism that is mystical,
conservative, and rigorous. So, just as briefly as you can, would you just tell us a little bit.
OSGOOD: Sure. I'm not sure I would describe my childhood environment as anti-religious, so much as just neutral towards religion. I grew up in the
suburbs of New York City, was a pretty secular milieu, in so far as, you know, nobody -- it didn't seem to me that anybody's driving force was their
religious belief. People celebrated Christmas and Easter, but outside of those things you never really heard or saw religion being practiced in a
way that was visible to the outsider.
I decided really quite young that God must not be real, went through all the questioning that people sometimes do. I just happened to be -- maybe a
little earlier than a lot of people. I -- in my teens and early20s I struggled with anorexia. Ironically, it was in those early experiences of -
- in one hospitalization in particular that I met a number of very observant Jews, and I was very -- I was surprised, I didn't realize that it
was -- in a way, I didn't even think it was possible to be that religious in the world at that time.
I thought that, you know, religion -- even for the Jewish people that I had met earlier on in my life, they had a relationship to it that looked to me
the way that most of the Christians that I knew did, which is they had a Bat Mitzvah or a Bar Mitzvah and that was -- and maybe they, you know,
celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but outside of that, it wasn't something that they really thought about all that often.
So, through college and into my early and mid-20s, it was something that I became progressively more interested in. I had friends at school who were,
what you, you know, might loosely call Modern Orthodox. I learned from them when I was in mid-20s I met the man that I would eventually marry.
When we first started dating, I guess in a way I was OK, this is my chance. I started doing some learning with various rabbis who were very kind to
give me their time, and it took a while to realize, OK, I think I want to pursue this in a way that's real.
MARTIN: So, let's talk about some of the women in your book. And they're all different. I mean, there's Angela, who's a queer identifying. Started
out atheist, journalist with a deep belief in rationality. She ends up drawn to Quakerism.
[13:45:00]
You talked about Leah, who was a committed -- also committed atheist who ended up converting to Catholicism. So, I just want to tell us a little bit
about Leah and what her story is and why she was drawn to it.
OSGOOD: So, she was actually quite well known in the rationality community around the time of her conversion. And I don't know if people know what
rationality is, but it's a sort of modern, philosophical, diffuse network school, if you will, of people who try to use systematic reasoning to come
to make the best decisions across the board, moral decisions, but also any decision you can apply this sort of reasoning to.
So, Leah was well known in this community. She was a blogger who wrote about her own atheism. She was a debater at Yale. And she -- like the
headline subject of that chapter, whose name is Angela, she was very morally questioning. She asked herself a lot of questions about morality,
and I shouldn't say was, is, I assume she still does ask these questions about morality.
But she felt that -- I think there were a couple of things that really nudged her in the direction of religion, she felt very strongly that
morality was something that existed in the world. Meaning, like we people, we didn't make up morality, we didn't decide what is good and bad, that it
exists elsewhere, but she couldn't bridge the gap from, OK, if it exists elsewhere, then why or how? I can't see it the way that I can see plants.
And so, therefore, if it -- if we know it exists somewhere, how -- what -- how could that be possible? And that ultimately led her to feeling, you
know, that that must be God who had, you know, created this morality, that morality had agency of its own.
Catholicism is very supportive of this idea of using your natural reasoning to get to -- and to get to points of identifiable morality. So, I think
that that part resonated with her.
MARTIN: And then, of course, there was Sarah who embraced sort of a particularly kind of demonstrative form of evangelical Christianity.
There's Kate who became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints after growing up. And she really, more than, you know, you would kind of had an anti-religious kind of upbringing to the point where when
she started studying, you know, Mormonism, she was actually afraid to tell her parents because she thought they would be mad.
And then, Hannah, who became an adherent of a particularly kind of rigorous practice of Islam, it's like -- so we don't have time to talk about all of
them, but I was -- I got to tell you, I was particularly fascinated by Hannah because she's not from a Middle Eastern background. She's not
African-American, which are two groups that have particularly embraced Islam.
OSGOOD: Right.
MARTIN: You know, she's a very sort of (INAUDIBLE) person to the point where she wears like abaya, like a full covering. The question arises, is
this cultural appropriation, right? This is not the culture and to what degree does your embrace a bit sort of mean that you are kind of adopting
something. But she describes it as a feeling of kind of great peace that just felt like home when she became a part of this community.
OSGOOD: Yes, I think that part of the reason I was drawn to her story so much is this -- I hate to use this word again, but there's tension there
too, right? And it's not easily solvable. And maybe it's not really a problem that needs to be solved, but like we think of -- especially over
the last few years, maybe it's sort of chimed down now, but there was time where we were all very sensitive to ideas of cultural appropriation, right?
But so, then, what does it mean when you're talking about somebody who is - - OK, they are religious converts who -- it's -- there's always a pathway to conversion in most faiths and there's a pathway to conversion in Islam.
But then you're also talking about taking on the cultural characteristics of a particular subset of individuals. But actually, those people are, for
the most part, probably quite happy about that.
I think Hannah is a really good example of one thing that I've thought about a lot in the last few months, even since I put the book to bed,
really, you know, that like religion -- sometimes we want to make sense of religious conversion or we want to think about it through a lens that's
sociological or academic, but in some ways it kind of it doesn't really fit neatly into those categories. It can almost be thought of more as like the
act of falling in love. And I think that she really just fell in love with Islam and she fell in love with this particular expression of Islam.
[13:50:00]
But I think it's also interesting that as she's been Muslim for longer and as she also -- she relocated, she lives in Saudi Arabia. And as Saudi
Arabia --
MARTIN: So, wait, wait. Say that again, just to make sure people didn't miss that. She lives in Saudi Arabia now, where until very recently,
relatively, women weren't allowed to drive. She really did make a big lifestyle change from growing up in the Midwest to --
OSGOOD: Yes, it's very big.
MARTIN: -- you know.
OSGOOD: Yes. She moved there as a single young American woman. And that is really, for lots of different reasons, is a decision that I think a lot of
people would find very confusing. And she -- as Saudi Arabia has changed a lot, because it has changed a lot in the last five years, she's also
changed a lot. She wears now mostly just kind of scarves.
She wore a knee -- for five years she wore a knee cup. So, she was totally covered even, you know, the bottom half of her face. And then, she started
to move a little bit in the other direction. Now, she really frames that as a decision that doesn't reflect anything about her relationship to Islam. I
think she feels that people -- she -- I think she understands why people would assume that, but she doesn't feel that that is this -- she feels like
that's people just putting too much emphasis on the outside and that her heart and her faith are in the same exact place.
But it's an interesting transformation and part of me feels like, you know, I think especially right around the time that you convert, if you are -- if
you're somebody like Hannah or like me and you come from a culture that's really quite different from the one that you're joining, there is this
sense that you need to be really, really good and you need to like just try to look like everybody else and do things the way that everybody else does.
And I think, you know, as time passes, maybe -- I don't want to put words in her mouth, but for me, I think there's a little bit less of that where
you feel maybe some greater sense of ownership over it.
MARTIN: I realize that in the course of reporting this book or researching this book, you had to go out of your comfort zone as a person who observes
an orthodox practice of Judaism, you would not be going to Christian ceremonies, other religious -- specifically religious ceremonies for other
religious groups, right? That's just not a thing.
OSGOOD: Yes.
MARTIN: So, you had to do that. I mean, you get -- well, maybe -- two questions. How did -- first of all, how did you navigate that? Did you pray
over it? Did you seek guidance from your kind of religious community about how to think about that? And then I have another question about it.
OSGOOD: So, I did seek some rabbinic guidance about how to do that. Part of -- interfaith dialogue is part of my job, sort of generally, like, I
mean, when I've written smaller articles and essays I don't only write about Judaism, I write about other faiths. Why I do that? I don't know. I'm
a nosy person. You know, like I'm interested.
And it -- there -- it's an interesting facet of my life that I'm interested in -- you know, I am part of this community that in some ways can be
insular, not my immediate community, but orthodoxy as a whole certainly can be insular. But I'm also -- I am very curious about others, how they live.
And actually, I think that all the -- all of my subjects are the same.
MARTIN: The final question I have for you is that experience of this deep immersion in other people's faith life, did that challenge you at all?
OSGOOD: I have a lot of like love and respect for the people who made these enormous changes in their lives, and I felt really understood by them
in many ways. We had a lot of, well, huge points of convergence in our experiences of doing these things that, you know, again, like sort of look
irrational and a lot of the ways our lives can be sort of similar, even though some of the underpinnings of those lives are very different.
You know, if I'm talking to somebody who's Amish and I -- she believes obviously that Jesus is her savior, but then also we can talk about what it
means to join these high bar cultural situations where all of a sudden, we're expected to understand kind of coded action and language that we
didn't have access to before.
So, I don't want to say that I was changed because I have more respect and affection for that kind of experience, I feel like I always have, but I
definitely feel that strongly now, if that makes sense.
MARTIN: Kelsey Osgood, thanks so much for joining us.
OSGOOD: Thanks.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And finally, tonight, reaching for the heavens in a different way. Two professional mountaineers have shattered a decades old record,
scaling three of the Swiss Alps most challenging peaks.
[13:55:00]
Starting off in complete darkness, the climbers say it was surreal to discover they had tackled the formidable north faces of the Eiger,
Matterhorn, and Jungfrau in just 15 and a half hours, beating the previous record by almost 10 hours. Some achievement.
That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always
catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media.
Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
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END
