Nunokawa urges students to merge ‘disparate ideas’

Using the poem “In Memory of William Butler Yeats” to convey his message, Nunokawa urged audience members to connect disparate ideas.

He said the poem “describ[es] a hope and a vexation,” adding that “certain things which we don’t necessarily think of being together or belonging together ... can be, should be, will be.”

Nunokawa explained that his parents were very involved in the politics of the Democratic Party and that they closely followed the Democratic presidential primaries throughout his childhood. In 1968, his parents grew deeply divided over their support for two different presidential candidates. His mother supported Eugene McCarthy, while his father backed Robert Kennedy, and they became so fiercely devoted to their respective candidates that they refused to talk to each other for months. All this changed, however, with Kennedy’s assassination, Nunokawa said.

When the news of Kennedy’s assassination broke, Nunokawa said he returned home to find his parents in a comforting embrace.

“Their personal affection and their political commitment were utterly merged,” he said.

Nunokawa also discussed his father’s unyielding devotion to candidate George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election in the face of opinion polls that predicted that Richard Nixon would win by a landslide.

His father’s support did not even waver when McGovern lost in all but one state, Nunokawa explained.

“His faith was utterly unshakable that McGovern would win the elections,” Nunokawa noted.

He said he remembered his father saying that “there are more have-nots in this country than there are haves” in justifying his devotion to McGovern. This moment exemplified the mixing of personal emotion and political fervor, Nunokawa noted.

Prompted by a question from an audience member, Nunokawa discussed what he felt were the underlying causes for today’s “polarizing” politics, in light of the ongoing battle between Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“We live in an era where a certain kind of identity politics has run so amok that we’ve come to believe that to disagree with someone’s views on something is to insult them or injure them personally,” Nunokawa said. He added that this was “a catastrophic confusion ... to confuse who I am with what I believe.”

In addition to emotions and politics, Nunokawa cited personal love and social commitment as well as a love of the beautiful and a commitment to justice as necessary combinations.

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Kate Huddleston ’11 said she thought Nunokawa made “a really astute point.”

“I think it’s something that people don’t talk about very much, but I think that it’s definitely pervasive and something that needs to be addressed,” she added.

Huddleston said the intertwining of political opinions and personal identity is a particular issue for younger voters who are “a lot more private” than those of previous generations and who are deeply and personally committed to their political viewpoints.

“[The problem] is magnified here at Princeton because there’s also the feeling that you don’t need to push your political views because everyone here believes the same thing,” she added.