James Patterson is joined by Rita Koganzon of the University of Houston to talk about the Amish, the Satmar, and democratic education. Brian A. Smith: Welcome to Liberty Law Talk. This podcast is a production of the online journal, Law & Liberty, and hosted by our staff. Please visit us at lawliberty.org and thank you for listening. James M. Patterson: Hello, you are listening to Liberty Law Talk, the podcast for Law & Liberty. Today is September 29th, 2023, and my name is James M. Patterson. I'm a contributing editor to Law & Liberty, as well as professor and chair of the politics department at Ave Maria University, a fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy as well as the Institute for Human Ecology, and President of the Cicerone Society. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanted to make a brief statement of mourning for Dr. Ellis Sandos, who died on September 19th this past week at the age of 92, New Orleans native, father of four, 10 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, but people who are familiar with Dr. Sandos listening to Liberty Law Talk may know of his incredible contributions to the work of classical liberalism and political philosophy, including his edited volumes called the Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730 to 1805. These are two volumes of the most important sermons that helped shape the politics of their day, as well as reflect on the beliefs and standards for constitutionalism held by outstanding religious leaders of the period. He was also the founder of the Eric Voegelin Institute. Many of the people you'll hear on Liberty Law Talk were participants in Voegelin Institute panels, including today's guest. Before we move on to her, I just wanted to read from the foreword that Dr. Sandos wrote in 1994 for the first volume of the political sermons. "Liberty is thus an essential principle of man's constitution, a natural trait which yet reflects the supernatural creator. Liberty is God-given; the growth of virtue and perfection of being depends upon free choice in response to divine invitation and help in cooperative relationships. The correlate of responsibility is that liberty is most truly exercised by living in accordance with truth. Man's dominion over the earth and the other creatures, his mastery of nature through reason, is subject to no restraint but the law of his nature, which is perfect liberty. The obligation to obey the laws of the creator only checks his licentiousness and abuse." Dr. Sandos will be missed, and his contributions are many. And now, I'll move on to today's guest, Dr. Rita Koganzon, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston. While there, she teaches political theory and American politics. Her research focuses on the themes of education, childhood authority, and the family and historical and contemporary political thought. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families, Childhood Education, and Early Modern Thought, examines the justifications for authority over children from Jean Bodin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wow, that's a pair. And explores how and why Locke and Rousseau departed from their absolutist predecessors by refusing to model the family on the state by nonetheless preserving authority, even extreme authority over children within the family, for the sake of liberty of adults. She's working on a second project that focuses on education from the early republic in the United States through the 20th century. But today, we're talking about something a little different. We're talking about her recent presentation at the 2023 American Political Science Association, as well as two things that she's published recently on Judaism and religious liberty. The first is The Satmar Option, which she published for the summer 2023 edition of the Hedgehog Review, and her outstanding chapter from the book Religious Liberty and Education. It's titled Pork Eating is Not a Reasonable Way of Life: Yeshiva Education Versus Liberal Education Theory. Dr. Koganzon, welcome to Liberty Law Talk. Dr. Rita Koganzon: Hi, thanks for having me. James M. Patterson: Sorry for the long preamble, but I'll give you now plenty of time to describe this central insight that really has stuck with me since your presentation on the difference between what you refer to slightly paraphrasing here as the kind of Amish paradigm for religious liberty and religious minorities versus what you call the Satmar option. So who are the Satmar, and how are they different from the Amish? Dr. Rita Koganzon: Well, the Satmar are a Hasidic religious group. They are from Hungary originally, but they sort of crystallized, actually, in New York after World War II, the survivors of the Holocaust came and sort of reconsolidated the Hasidic group, and they were led by a rabbi. And they now live mainly in Williamsburg and in this independent community in Upstate New York called Kiryas Joel. It's kind of complicated to define ...
