Jim Spiegel [00:00:25]:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center podcast. Our guest today is Anne Hendershot. Anne is professor of sociology and director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Urban Studies at Penn State University, her MS in Educational Counseling at Central Connecticut State University, and her BS in Psychology at Central Connecticut State University. Anne is a prolific writer, having authored seven books and nearly 300 articles addressing issues in epics, politics, and practical theology. Among her more recent books is a fascinating work entitled The Politics of Envy, where Anne explores the many ways that the vice of envy is manifested in contemporary culture. Our conversation today will focus mainly on that topic, but we'll also address the subject of her most recent book, A Lamp in the Darkness, which is about the current state of Catholic higher education.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:35]:

So, Anne, welcome to the Kalos Center podcast.

Anne Hendershott [00:01:38]:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. It's good to meet you. It's good to hear about the center. You do amazing work there.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:44]:

Well, thank you. We're excited about it. So, Anne, I'd like to start with a question about your faith journey, specifically, when and how did you come to see your work as a teacher and scholar as a way of applying your Christian faith?

Anne Hendershott [00:02:01]:

That's a good question, because I started out in secular higher education. I taught at the University of Hartford, which I loved and was there for about four years. But when, an opportunity arose to work in Catholic higher education, I just thought I mean, I talked it over with my family, and they all said, would this job help you get closer to Christ? And I had not really thought of it that way. I just thought it'd be kind of nice to teach in a Catholic school. I'd never attended a Catholic college. I I attended Catholic schools all throughout my life, from kindergarten on through high school, but I didn't go to a Catholic college. I went to a secular. But I just thought there might be a little bit more freedom teaching in a Catholic school, and I wanted that kind of freedom to be able to bring my faith to students and to learn from them, because I think that kind of interaction makes a huge difference.

Anne Hendershott [00:02:57]:

And so I I taught at the University of San Diego for fifteen years. Loved it. It's a great school. And when I got there in 1993, I, it was a very, very Catholic school and mass every day, and students were there, and some faculty were there. By the time I left fifteen years later, though, things had kinda declined. And in terms of the Catholicity, it was still a wonderful school and great people, but it wasn't Catholic. I was like an outlier in that I was pro life, and so it was a little disappointing. And so I went and, taught at King's College.

Anne Hendershott [00:03:34]:

I had a friend who was at King's College, Marvin Olaski, you may know him, and he was the provost at King's. And I thought, well, they're very welcoming of Christians, and I thought they would and I knew they would be welcoming of me also because I wanted to teach in a school where the faith is vibrant. I kind of need that. Not that I'm I need I need help being a Christian. I think we all need help. I mean, I don't think anybody can be a Christian in a box alone. I think you need the constant interaction with other Christians, whether it be students or peers or colleagues or supervisors, family. I just find that I need that.

Anne Hendershott [00:04:18]:

Right now, I teach online this semester, and I'm finding myself I just miss that that community of Christians. So I guess that's where I say it, but I miss the day to day interaction. This is a very long answer. I'm sorry. I'm I sound like I'm filibustering, but that's my Christian life. It's a Christian life in community with others. I probably should have been a sister because then I'd know I'd be really prayerful. I can be a better Christian when I'm with other Christians.

Anne Hendershott [00:04:50]:

That's the long answer.

Jim Spiegel [00:04:52]:

Yeah. It's certainly been my experience. I feel that I'm more productive, more invigorated, and inspired, yeah, to address issues from the standpoint of Christian conviction when I've got the reinforcement of my community. That's that's great. So your book, The The Politics of Envy, it looks at the vice of envy as it plays out in every dimension of culture, interpersonally, economically, politically, and on social media. So what inspired you to write on that topic?

Anne Hendershott [00:05:28]:

A lifetime of trying to avoid the sin of envy. Because I see envy in others, and I see it in my own life that I try to avoid, from when I was very little, I was reminded of the advice of envy. I think envy is just a very dangerous sin. I think it's worse than pride because I think it is very close to pride because envious people are very prideful. They feel like they should have everything, because they are more deserving than other people. And so I I don't wanna say I was a middle child, but I was a middle child. And I had a very brilliant older sister who I love dearly. And I always felt like, I wish I could be as smart as she is because she was the smartest kid in her class, developed this ability to not be envious.

Anne Hendershott [00:06:23]:

And I think it really had really good parents who read a lot of fairy tales to me. I knew the bible stories and, you know, Catholic families are not as big on the bible as we should be, but I do know the the stories. And so I wanted to avoid that throughout my life because I could see myself going in that direction of envying people who had more, not that we had very little. My parents were teachers. We were okay. But I I would see somebody with things, and I would want those things. And I I knew that was sinful behavior. But as I've gotten older, I see envy where other people don't see it, but I point it out, and then they see it.

Anne Hendershott [00:07:03]:

I think academia is filled with some of the most envious people I've ever met in my life. And I've been in academia for thirty five years, a very long time. And I have gotten to know my colleagues. And I just at San Diego, there was this constant inferiority complex with colleagues. A lot of them felt that if we could just kind of get rid of our Catholic identity it's so embarrassing we would attain higher status. So I wrote a whole book called Status Envy about envy in academia because I don't know if you've seen it in your academic life, but I see it all the time. Mhmm. And when somebody gets something good in academia, gets a grant or a big book contract, there's not a lot of congratulations going around.

Anne Hendershott [00:07:55]:

There's usually grumbling or sort of nasty things said about the person, selling out, especially if there's getting a popular press academic contract. And so there's attempt to demean or diminish the abilities of another person. I see that as envy.

Jim Spiegel [00:08:15]:

So how would you define envy? Let's let's get get down to the basic definition of envy.

Anne Hendershott [00:08:21]:

Yeah. Covetousness. It's different from jealousy. Jealousy is okay. Because jealousy is a desire to hold on to some something or someone. Say you have someone you love and you worry that that person might be attracted to someone else. And so you're jealous of that person because you wanna hold on to that person. You're not envious of the person, the other person who wants your the object of your love.

Anne Hendershott [00:08:49]:

That's jealousy. Jealousy is an honest emotion. It doesn't hurt you so much, and it doesn't hurt the person because it's an object you love usually or you just wanna hold on to. Envy is ugly. Envy is seeing something that you might want or you might not want. I know that sounds crazy. Lots of people envy something that someone has, not because they want that something, but they don't want that person to have it. You know, there's that joke about the it's usually a Russian joke where the the Russian has this has a neighbor who has a cow that gives great milk, and, then he finds he could have a wish, anything he wants.

Anne Hendershott [00:09:34]:

And instead of wanting the cow that would give great milk, he would want that cow to be dead. So it's I can't tell the joke very well, but it's a funny joke because they don't want the cow, but they don't want the neighbor to have the cow. Yeah. And so That's envy.

Jim Spiegel [00:09:51]:

It's really a tragic vice, isn't it? So I Oh. It's sometimes described as the pain we feel at another person's pleasure.

Anne Hendershott [00:09:59]:

Yes. It and it does nothing for ourselves. That's the thing. NBC only of devices that gives you no pleasure at all, really. Isn't that true? I mean, gluttony, the food is really good. And you breathe, you get lots of good stuff.

Jim Spiegel [00:10:17]:

Yeah.

Anne Hendershott [00:10:18]:

Envy, it gives no pleasure to anybody. In fact, you're trying to take away pleasure from people. That's an ugly, ugly vice.

Jim Spiegel [00:10:27]:

So you note that envy is often depicted and rebuked in classic literature from medieval poems to Shakespearean tragedies to modern fairy tales. What are some of your favorite examples and why?

Anne Hendershott [00:10:41]:

Well, I was raised on fairy tales and the gruesome, the Grimm brothers, because I'm very old. And the original ones were they were really bible stories in a lot of ways. Something like Cinderella is a bible story in a way. The ugly stepsisters are like the picture of envy. Those two ugly stepsisters, and they're ugly. Grim wants us to know they're ugly because they're envious, and their sin is on their faces because they're so ugly with envy. And in the original stories, they're so envious of Cinderella that they try to make her ugly and, you know, all the ashes on her face, cleaning the fireplaces. And they're so desperate to marry the prince in the book because I have the original Grimm brothers.

Anne Hendershott [00:11:33]:

So their their feet are all bloody because they've cut their heels off, so desperate to marry the prince and doing anything they can to keep Cinderella out of the picture. So all of those fairy tales are almost all of them are envy. And I think the Grimm brothers know that we have to teach children about envy and to not envy people because it will destroy them. So things like, you know, who's the fairest of them all, Snow White. And, you know, that woman looks in the mirror, and all of a sudden, the mirror says, hey. It's not you anymore, lady. You're too old. It's Snow White.

Anne Hendershott [00:12:06]:

And she's just, like, goes into a rage and has to kill the object of her envy, who is this young, beautiful Snow White. Snow White is a great depiction of envy. And now Disney has this new Snow White. You know, it's all politically correct. They're not even gonna release it because they've so distorted these fairy tales that, you know, the kisses of princes don't work anymore. You know? I know people love Frozen and the music is nice, but the men in Frozen, you know, and there's no real moral message in Frozen. There's no envy message where, really, the original stories are all about the moral vices and the way to be a moral person. And so I really highly recommend fairy tales.

Anne Hendershott [00:12:57]:

Yeah. You know, I tell my grandchildren fairy tales, and my, my own children and their spouses worry a little bit because I I tell them the real ones, you know, because I want them to get the moral message. Fairy tales and stories were created for a reason, And that's why when you distort them, you're taking away the moral message and it loses it loses a lot. And so I there was an exhibit here on the East Coast recently. It was called Envy, and it was a depiction of fairy tales in the in a museum, and it was fabulous because they they showed envy. They depicted envy. And I saw it. I went to that, and I think in some ways, I got inspired for the the chapter on envy.

Anne Hendershott [00:13:48]:

I had just left the University of San Diego, and I was kind of unhappy because I felt like that school could be so much better and so much more Catholic if they would just give up the internships at planned parenthood and give up drag shows. I just thought it could be more Catholic. And so I wrote the article's data I mean, wrote the book, status envy. Because San Diego is a really good school. It's a great school. You could send your children there, and they would be safe. It just could be better. And so I looked at all the Catholic schools.

Anne Hendershott [00:14:19]:

There's 230 of them, and I sort of evaluated them. But my bottom line is, NB's a problem on those schools because they feel like second class schools. And there are some Christian schools that are the same way, that are not Catholic schools. The ones who are not envious of anybody are the successful ones. I mean, you look at Hillsdale, you look at Christendom, Grove City, you know, they don't have those kind of problems even though they're not always explicitly Christian, but they're Christian. I feel sorry for the people who are at those schools and just think, if we just got rid of this Catholic stuff or this Christian stuff, we'd be so much more successful. And that's not true.

Jim Spiegel [00:14:59]:

It's a pervasive problem, isn't it? Which, motivated you know, observation, no doubt motivated your most recent book, which we'll talk about, shortly. So, yeah, lots of confusions about what envy is, and some thinkers like John Rawls have maintained that the envy is a natural result of inequality and that removing distributive inequalities will naturally prevent or reduce envy. And that idea has even been used as a rationale for socialism as you know. So what is wrong with that line of thinking?

Anne Hendershott [00:15:40]:

Well, in sociology, we call it relative deprivation in that we always always feel deprived relative to somebody else if we're always in that envy kind of cycle, if we're always looking at people to see if they have more than what we have. And so even people who are very well off will find somebody who is more well off, and they will resent that person. It doesn't matter whether you're very poor and you're looking at someone who is a little more or less poor than you are, or if you're very wealthy making a million or more a year and you're able to take great vacations. And then you look at someone who not only takes great vacations, but he has a private plane and takes him to those vacations. So you're gonna envy that person because you feel relatively deprived. And so I have a whole section on relative deprivation because that's a problem too. Equality is it's not. It's just not there.

Anne Hendershott [00:16:44]:

It's we look at others. I mean, I use Rene Girard, and I know you probably don't want to get into Rene Girard a lot in this this interview, but he talks about a concept of mimesis. Mimetic theory is his thing.

Jim Spiegel [00:16:59]:

Yeah. Mimetic desire.

Anne Hendershott [00:17:01]:

Yes. Mimetic desire. We desire what other people have. All of us. Me, Probably you. Everybody. We we aren't even aware of it very often. But we desire that because we're not quite sure what we should desire.

Anne Hendershott [00:17:19]:

And so we look what others desire. So the private plane is looking really good to you. I had one executive tell me, he said, private planes are like crack and that it's an addiction. And if you then you've if you can't use a private plane, you feel really deprived. And and his company took the private planes away from the senior executives, and he said, I think I'm just gonna quit. You know, for him, it had become such a symbol of status and pride. And I thought, you are a really sad person. You know, that's just sad.

Anne Hendershott [00:17:57]:

Wow.

Jim Spiegel [00:17:59]:

So,

Anne Hendershott [00:17:59]:

no, equality is there's never gonna be equality. Rawls should know that. We know that.

Jim Spiegel [00:18:05]:

So you note that extreme envy often culminates in acts of violence. What are some examples?

Anne Hendershott [00:18:12]:

And Oh my gosh. I give some really scary ones in the book. When I A few years ago, I read a story, and I had to do research on it. This maid, this Well, she was a, a nanny, but she was also a housekeeper and did some things around the house for this lovely couple who had three children in New York City. And they were very good to her. I mean, she would go back to her home in the Dominican. They would pay for her to go there. They loved her so much.

Anne Hendershott [00:18:43]:

Sometimes they went with her and they would get a hotel room and they would bring gifts to her family who was back there. She had a son that she would send her money money home to to the mother who was the grandmother who was raising helping to raise the son while she was being a nanny in this New York. And one day, the mother was taking one of the children to swim lessons, and the nanny was home with the other two children. And when the mother opened the door, the nanny was in the middle of completing a murder of the two children in the bathtub. And she waited till the mother got home so the mother could see her actually murdering the two children. And when they investigated and questioned her, and she even told the media, she has so much, and I have so little. And she has her child with her, and I don't have my child with me. I don't want her to have those children.

Anne Hendershott [00:19:40]:

Sick sick sick envy. There's no other explanation, and even the judge in the case said, this is the saddest case of envy I've ever seen. Because no one no one won in that. The nanny's going to prison for life. She'll never see her son again. The mother has lost two children. Yeah. There's there's quite a few stories

Jim Spiegel [00:20:05]:

like that. Sure. Yep.

Anne Hendershott [00:20:06]:

That's a horrible story. Yeah. It it was, like, chilling to me. But when you see that you open the door to envy, it's like the o you're opening a door to sin, and satanic, demonic things can happen

Jim Spiegel [00:20:20]:

Yeah.

Anne Hendershott [00:20:20]:

If you allow it into your life in that way. Yeah. That's the good story of envy I've ever I've ever heard of.

Jim Spiegel [00:20:26]:

Of all, you know, all the deadly sins one way or another are sins unto death. Right? There's taken to their extreme, there's there's always death at the end of that slope, and that's a particularly vivid and depressing example.

Anne Hendershott [00:20:42]:

I know.

Jim Spiegel [00:20:43]:

Yeah. In your book, you explore the connection between envy and political activism. Can you comment on your findings there?

Anne Hendershott [00:20:52]:

Well, I think a lot of socialism has to do with envy. I don't think you can have socialism without inspiring envy. And that's why I call it the politics of envy, because you're trying to persuade people to vote for you because you want them to hate the people who have more. I think a lot of the hatred toward president Trump is based on envy. I'm I think there's a lot of other reasons that people don't like president Trump besides envying him. And when I've said that to Trump haters, they'll say, oh, I don't envy him at all. And I said, buddy, you know, he has this beautiful wife. He has children who love him.

Anne Hendershott [00:21:28]:

He has lots of stuff. And they're like, oh, I don't envy anything. People who envy, they don't wanna admit that they envy. And but I think some of it is. And I think a lot of the Antifa crowd, a lot of the the haters on both sides of politics are motivated by envy of the other. And so they don't like people who have more than they do. And so they go out of their way to paint them in ugly ways. Yeah.

Anne Hendershott [00:22:01]:

I think politics is filled with envy.

Jim Spiegel [00:22:05]:

So, you suggest that liberation theology to to kinda pivot to pivot into, contemporary theology, you you suggest that that's inspired by envy. Tell us what is liberation theology, and how does the device of envy figure in the minds of its proponents?

Anne Hendershott [00:22:24]:

I was surrounded by liberation theology at the University of San Diego because I had some of the premier liberation theologians in the Theology Department, brilliant people, really wonderful people. But I thought they were dangerous, to tell you the truth. Because liberation theology is it's not liberation from God, but it's liberation from the Magisterium and the rules. And it's sort of like the idea of a church of the people. It's called a popular Catholicism and a popular religion. And it's not just in Catholicism. It's in Christianity. And, it's what we say it is.

Anne Hendershott [00:23:03]:

And so at the University of San Diego, they invited this, former Sandinista commander, Maria Telles, to, come to our school, and they honored her. And I wrote an article for The Washington Times. You might wanna look it up. It's very funny. It's called No Terrorists Left Behind. The State Department wouldn't let her come because President Bush wouldn't let her come. So I made myself a little bit unpopular, but I was just kind of furious that they would invite this commander too, who bragged that she had held this government officials at gunpoint in a ballroom in the Nicaraguan revolution. She was, like, one of the leaders of the Sandinista revolution.

Anne Hendershott [00:23:43]:

And they just adored this woman. They thought she was the greatest. And Notre Dame had invited her also, and she was gonna take a teaching position at Harvard because everybody wanted this liberation type person because liberation theology is closely aligned with politics. And, so our theologians just love this woman. She but like I said, she wasn't allowed to come. Tariq Ramadan is another one that was gonna come, and he wasn't allowed to come either because he was part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Faculty like those kind of people because they're outside, and they they they think it gives them status to know these kind of revolutionary people. I see it as part of envy in that liberation theo theology is based on envy.

Anne Hendershott [00:24:35]:

They hate the rich people. And so the Sandinistas were overthrowing the rich people, the the government, Somoza government. But the funny thing is when Maria Telles and the rest of the Sandinistas marched into Managua, the first thing they did is they took over the big palace houses that had been owned by the former leaders of the country. And they moved their own families in. Everybody else got nothing, but they were the high status people. So for me, that's a sign of envy. You know, if you were really a revolutionary and you wanted everybody to be equal and everybody to have wonderful things, you wouldn't have moved into the palaces.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:15]:

So we've had so many Marxist revolutions over the last century or so, and we've still yet to see that classless society.

Anne Hendershott [00:25:23]:

Yeah. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Yeah. Because they're living in the palaces that they haven't been through. So the theologians have adopted that in a lot of ways. They just like they don't want the authoritarian church. And in Catholicism, you can't have that, because we we are a very authoritarian, hierarchical church. And but at the University of San Diego, they are the higher status people, the liberation theologians.

Anne Hendershott [00:25:50]:

But it is a religion of the people. But it's not really of the people. It's of the leaders of the people who have and it's a Marxism. It's really a socialist religion. And it's using religion to justify, taking from the rich and giving to the poor or to them.

Jim Spiegel [00:26:08]:

So you had mentioned, and I agree, you know, this trend in academia of envy. It's it is pervasive in in academia. You devote an entire chapter to that, and specifically this disturbing trend of mobbing in in academia. How does that work, and what are some examples?

Anne Hendershott [00:26:28]:

Yeah. Mobbing is an interesting word to me. Some people would call it cancel culture today, but it's worse than cancel culture. Because mobbing, the word comes from the bird community, people who study bird behavior. And I study bird behavior a little bit. I'm not a bird watcher or anything weird, but I am interested in birds. We live on the ocean. And sometimes you'll see these little birds, and they're going after this giant predator bird, like a hawk even.

Anne Hendershott [00:26:58]:

And they just kind of mob him. It's called mobbing when a a bunch of little birds go after a big bird, a predator bird. And they can peck him. He they probably can't peck him to death, but they can defecate on him. They can make his life miserable, and he's cowering in the bushes because all these this mob of birds are well, I see that in academia, And I bring a couple of stories about that. It's happened to friends of mine. It happened at a Catholic college that I describe in the book at Mount Saint Mary. A president was hired who was very wealthy.

Anne Hendershott [00:27:34]:

He came from the world of finance, had no academic experience. And so he retired from the world of finance. He made enough money. He wanted to do something with his life as a Catholic convert, a very good Catholic and a very good man. And so he came to be the president of Mount Saint Mary's in Maryland. And the faculty despised him. And I was able to get online and look at what they were saying surreptitiously, you know, because they do it on these websites where they think it's we're all academics here. They don't know that I'm looking.

Anne Hendershott [00:28:11]:

Saying things like about, well, he wears cufflinks. Like, that was a crime. And his wife gets her hair frosted as if that was a crime.

Jim Spiegel [00:28:19]:

And he

Anne Hendershott [00:28:20]:

had a, like, a Mercedes. That's the big crime. And he wanted his office painted. And he yeah. Cufflinks. And he has his hair styled. All of these things, to me, just like envy, envy, envy. It was like a a neon light.

Anne Hendershott [00:28:36]:

They hated him. He was attractive. He had a beautiful wife. He had two beautiful daughters. He was a good man, very Catholic, but he also wanted to change things at the university. So they had to go after his cufflinks. You know? It's just crazy. They mobbed him.

Anne Hendershott [00:28:53]:

And he was he was used to business, and some sometimes, he would use profanity and, you know, horrors of horrors. Not that it was he was yelling at people, but he would use words just because in business, people talk like that. My son came out of the army. He was at West Point. And when he came home, sometimes he would use this language that he'd never used before because it's situational. And when this man came to academia, he was used to talking the way they do in in a business world, which is kind of f word once in a while, I guess. And so they were just like, oh, you know, I'm so offended by him. He's so offensive.

Anne Hendershott [00:29:32]:

And then he developed this program that was gonna identify students who would fail the first year. And so that he would give them an a chance to leave because he thought that would help them. They wouldn't have to pay, but the faculty took it that he was trying to get rid of people and giving up on them. And he said a funny thing. He said, well, sometimes you just have to shoot the bunnies in the head. Well, you would think he was advocating for the assassination of all the students. And so they posted that online. There's this philosophy online community, and then it it went viral.

Anne Hendershott [00:30:10]:

And so he's the he's became known as the president with the Glock who wants to shoot news in the head. You may remember that story. Yep. It was an interesting story. It was, like, inside higher education, the Chronicle of Higher Education, made the newspapers, made national news about a president who wants to shoot students in the head. And he didn't wanna shoot students in the head. But they mobbed him, and they were successful in removing him from the school. Yeah.

Anne Hendershott [00:30:38]:

Academia is ugly. And was it Kissinger who said that the fights in academia are so cantankerous or rancorous because the stakes are so low? I don't know if that's true or not, but they are they can be really ugly.

Jim Spiegel [00:30:56]:

Yeah. People can be very envious and peevish and

Anne Hendershott [00:31:01]:

Oh, yeah. When I mean, it's happened to me. I it's usually mobbing usually happens to very high status people. So I it's never I can't say I was mobbed because I'm so high status. But my first book, with the popular press that sold really well, and I was like on big talk shows, Michael Savage, it was called Politics of Deviance. And my colleagues at San Diego hated the book because I used sociology to try to understand how things like homosexuality got defined down from being something very deviant to something completely normal. And so they hated that book. And it was a great book, and it sold really well.

Anne Hendershott [00:31:41]:

It's probably my only book that really sold a lot. So I appreciate you're doing this. But after that book was published, they didn't realize I was conservative until that book was published because I wrote things about, you know, there was a chapter called The Postmodern Pedophile. And I talked about how, you know, these academics were trying to define down pedophilia. And they didn't like this book because it brought attention to me. And part of it was envy. But I went on sabbatical. And when I came back, my office had been given to one of my colleagues who was pregnant.

Anne Hendershott [00:32:18]:

And when I came back, they didn't want her to give it up because, you know, she's nursing. So and then she was done nursing, and I still couldn't get my office back. And they had moved me into, like, a closet that used to be the janitor's closet, and it smelled like like four zero nine and all sorts of bleach and mops and everything. And it was away from them. And I thought, wow, I've just been marginalized here.

Jim Spiegel [00:32:45]:

I've I've heard that story so many times. You know, when you first hear it, you think that's really creepy and unusual. And then you you hear it again and again, and it's a way of, yeah, marginalizing. And as one former colleague of mine put it, sucking the oxygen out of the room on you

Anne Hendershott [00:33:05]:

Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:33:06]:

To where you you want to voluntarily depart. And that is kind of the end game, and many do.

Anne Hendershott [00:33:12]:

Oh, I did.

Jim Spiegel [00:33:12]:

It's just make yeah. It makes life intolerable. It's it's brutal.

Anne Hendershott [00:33:18]:

Yeah. I published the book in 02/2002. I was sort of gone by 02/2004. Mhmm. Yeah. I stayed part time a little bit. Because San Diego who leaves San Diego? You know? And I tenure. I've been chair of the department.

Anne Hendershott [00:33:34]:

But all of a sudden, here I am. I'm in a broom closet that smells like bleach. How did this happen? Oh, now I know. I wrote a book that you didn't know.

Jim Spiegel [00:33:42]:

The targets are, as you know, so often those who were the the most published, you know, the the most high achieving, the most awarded faculty at a university. And that's what kinda confirms the the envy hypothesis there. It it's very real.

Anne Hendershott [00:34:02]:

It is. And mine was nothing compared to other people's stories that I have in that book. And there's a couple of books that I didn't write, academic mobbing books. So if anybody's interested in this, some of the stories, I mean, it just end up in death of people. Suicide. People have committed suicide. And they were the highest achieving people in their department.

Jim Spiegel [00:34:22]:

So sad.

Anne Hendershott [00:34:23]:

But they couldn't take I guess they couldn't take it. And where I to me, it and it was sad because I I thought they liked me.

Jim Spiegel [00:34:31]:

So you also discussed social media as a major source of envy. What are some of the ways that social media tempts people to

Anne Hendershott [00:34:40]:

envy? In the book, I call them envy farmers. They're sowing the seeds of envy. And, you know, that can affect everybody, even old grandmas like me. I'm on Facebook because, like, it's mostly grandmas because we like to see pictures of our grandchildren, and we like to share stories and things like that. But I look at other grandmas on Facebook, and they are having so much fun with their grandchildren. And my grandchildren live in Florida and Boston, so I only see them a few weeks a year, holidays. And other grandmas are, like, babysitting, and they're doing crafts, and we're going to the movies, and we're going. So I find that I'm a little envious of this.

Anne Hendershott [00:35:20]:

And I'm thinking, if I'm envious at age 70, for heaven's sakes, what must it be like for someone who's 17, you know, who looks at people who are, like, going to Taylor Swift concert, and they've got a new outfit, and they're going you know? I think it's a source of envy. And I've read things about, you know, what is it about social media that makes you feel bad? And it's usually looking at other people's experiences. It isn't so much looking at, oh, they got a new car or they got a new house. It's more experiences. They're having so much more fun. You know, it's the fear of missing out to the extreme. Look at how much fun they're having. I'm not having any fun at all.

Anne Hendershott [00:36:06]:

And, I mean, I I don't feel that way about my grandchildren. I'm still having fun with them. I'd like to have more fun with them, but I think it it's so hard for kids. I'm just glad my kids were older. They weren't really part. My son was he was, you know, a little bit older. He he's in his thirties, so he wasn't swept up in that. But I worry about my grandchildren, because I have a 13 year old grandson, and he's, oh, he's adorable.

Anne Hendershott [00:36:33]:

But he's always worried about his hair. I mean, a 13 year old boy worried about their hair is weird to me. But he said, oh, grandma, you gotta have the right hair now. And so for Christmas, I got him all these hair products. Isn't that weird? And it's but he said and I look on Facebook and or I look on Instagram where his friends are, and they all have that same hair. Have you noticed it's like a it looks like broccoli on their head. Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:00]:

What's really sad is when you see people middle aged guys try to go for a similar look and think, woah. Now I mean, it's bad it's bad enough when teenagers are envying one another, and they are manifesting that mimetic desire, you know, targeted towards,

Anne Hendershott [00:37:18]:

you

Jim Spiegel [00:37:18]:

know, really young people. That that is

Anne Hendershott [00:37:22]:

But there's real pressure for a 13 year old right now. Because boys at one time didn't care so much. But now cologne is big. 13 year old, 14 year old boys, cologne is huge, and they're it costs very, very expensive now. So, I think it's all social media. And the running tracksuits that are, like, dollars 300, dollars 5 hundred, to have to have one of those Social media is tough. And then there's also bullying. I don't know much about the bullying.

Anne Hendershott [00:37:53]:

My grandson's not bullied, but he's very much swept up in style and fashion and wanting to do what other people do.

Jim Spiegel [00:38:01]:

I think that's an important distinction or just observation that you make that it it does tend to be more, directed towards experiences as opposed to, yeah, some somebody just got a new boat or something. We were more envious. We were more tempted to envy experiences. And maybe relationships, you know, feeling left out of certain social circles and, yeah, it's tough. I wanna I wanna pivot now to talking about your your latest book, A Lamp in the Darkness. So in that book, you lament the mission drift of of most Catholic colleges in The US, which is certainly true in the Protestant world and evangelical, circles that that I've run-in. We've observed the same thing. You extol the faithfulness of a small minority of truly faithful Catholic colleges.

Jim Spiegel [00:39:00]:

And that work is actually you say it's related to your work on the vice of envy. You've touched on this a little bit, but can you expand on that?

Anne Hendershott [00:39:10]:

Yeah. It's really a continuation of my previous book from twenty years ago, Status Envy. And that that book, like I said, I had just left University of San Diego, and I had sort of an anger, I think, about me. Like, you know, why aren't you more Catholic? And, you know, and lamenting the loss. And I didn't know much about the faithful, newer schools. And so I wrote that book, Status Envy, and I'm I it's bothered me ever since. You know, I don't know if you have written things and then twenty years later, you're sorry or you wanna you know, I I wish I'd said something else.

Jim Spiegel [00:39:52]:

Too late. Feather feathers are in the wind.

Anne Hendershott [00:39:54]:

Yeah. I know. That's the thing. And it there it is on the Internet too. So I wanted to write sort of a follow-up to Status Envy, and that's why it's called Lamp in the Darkness, because there are some really good faithful Catholic colleges, just like there are some really good faithful Christian colleges. I was at one for, about five years at King's College in New York City, evangelical, started by wonderful people. Campus Crusade for Christ was instrumental in the start and had a really strong start. And I was there, with Marvin Olaski.

Anne Hendershott [00:40:33]:

He and I had taught at Princeton together, in the Madison program for a while, and we got to be really good friends. And when I left San Diego, I was just gonna retire because I was old enough to retire. And he said, don't retire. And he said, come to King's. And it was a very welcoming and very vibrantly Christian college in the middle of New York City. Yeah. So we had a house in Connecticut, so I would take the train in every day. It was so much fun.

Anne Hendershott [00:40:58]:

I really loved it. But then Marvin left, and, things changed a bit. When you find schools like that, they're very special because then you have a community of faith and I loved it there and they were very welcoming to me as a Catholic much more welcoming than San Diego because they were more Christian in a lot of ways. You know, they were acting on their faith. We need those schools. And so I wrote this book to try to tell people why there's these faithful schools are so important. And, I'm teaching at one of those now. When I left King's, Franciscan was kind enough to invite me to come there.

Anne Hendershott [00:41:50]:

I never lived in Ohio full time, though. We have a few houses there because I kept buying houses thinking my husband would move there. And it was like, I don't think so. Stupid little Ohio. So I mostly commuted there from Connecticut, because Connecticut's really our home, even though we lived in San Diego for fifteen years. But Franciscan is alive with the faith. It's just a very faithful place. And I think it my subtitle is how these Catholic colleges can help save the church.

Anne Hendershott [00:42:22]:

Our church, the Catholic church is needs saving. It's just it's there are problems, like with a lot of Christian denominations. We have serious problems in that mass attendance is way down, believers are way down. I mean

Jim Spiegel [00:42:40]:

Yeah. That's that's true across the board, you know? Yeah. What would you say are some of the essential factors involved when schools do remain faithful? What's the special sauce there?

Anne Hendershott [00:42:55]:

The schools that where faith is vibrant and alive means that the faith is permeating everything. It isn't just like an overlay of good theology and good student life ministry. It's when the faith is in all in every aspect. I mean, even in the curriculum. Like, I teach a course called deviant behavior. And so when I teach that course, I talk about how I use my book even though it's almost twenty years old. We look at behaviors that used to be deviant and are no longer deviant. Or we look at behaviors that weren't deviant in the past but are deviant today, and we look at how we got there.

Anne Hendershott [00:43:38]:

And so something like homosexuality, we spend two weeks on pornography. We spend two weeks on pornography is, like, people wear T shirts that say pornhub on them. And I can't believe that people would wear a T shirt that says, I love porn. I mean, they're not really saying they'll. But to me, they're saying it. Pornhub? Would you want your daughter to wear a pornhub? But it's perfectly acceptable.

Jim Spiegel [00:44:00]:

Pornography used to be something that only the the creepy person, going into a convenience store had the guts to, you know, point to the to the clerk. I want I want that, you know, magazine and that rapper. Yeah. And then, oh.

Anne Hendershott [00:44:15]:

It's behind a wooden panel so you wouldn't see it.

Jim Spiegel [00:44:18]:

He just bought porn. He's a

Anne Hendershott [00:44:20]:

creep, though. Well, now you got a t shirt that says you you love porn.

Jim Spiegel [00:44:25]:

It's become it's, you know, mainstream. And, you know, I think it was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who wrote a book thirty years ago on defining deviancy down.

Anne Hendershott [00:44:37]:

Yes. It was. He he was actually he used that statement at a a gathering of sociologists, and they kind of booed him when he did this. Mhmm. Because he was talking about fatherless families. And Democrats used to talk like that. They don't anymore, of course, because they don't wanna be viewed as

Jim Spiegel [00:44:54]:

Oh, Obama did a little bit, and then he got excoriated for doing stuff.

Anne Hendershott [00:44:57]:

Yeah. He then he stopped. Oh, he said, never mind. Never mind. That's

Jim Spiegel [00:45:00]:

that's not one of our talking points anymore. No. Catch up.

Anne Hendershott [00:45:05]:

Yes. No. And so defining deviancy down, and that's just what we do in the class. We look at who does the defining. And so when I when you say, how is a Christian education or a Catholic education different? We're gonna look at what the bible says about these things. We're gonna look at what the church teaches about these things, and then we'll look at what the Supreme Court says. So we spend three weeks I always tell the students, we're gonna spend three weeks on pornography, and they're like, we're gonna look at the Supreme Court cases, you know, that whole statement of, I don't know what pornography is, but I'll know it when I see it. That was one of the justices

Jim Spiegel [00:45:42]:

that

Anne Hendershott [00:45:42]:

said that. But they get a kick out of that. But then we look at what the church would say about that. What is the moral view of pornography? And same thing with homosexuality, same sex behavior. Abortion, we spent two weeks on how abortion got so defined down that people will wear a t shirt that says I had an abortion. Yeah. Or somebody would accept an Oscar and say, The reason I got this Oscar is because abortion was available to me. Can you imagine that Michelle Williams would say something like that? So, we really bring the popular culture into the class to look at how these things get wind down because we won't understand how to prevent that from happening in our lives and in in public policy.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:26]:

And now we're we're seeing it happening, starting to happen with pedophilia.

Anne Hendershott [00:46:30]:

Oh, I know. Intergenerational intimacy now.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:33]:

Yeah.

Anne Hendershott [00:46:33]:

Don't call it pedophilia anymore.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:35]:

Or look, I'm just arguing for reducing, the the age of consent. Right? Yeah. Who are you to say that a nine or 10 year old boy can't decide who they're going to be intimate with? Right? So it's just a numbers thing. Come on. You know? And we're all different. Everybody's Yeah. Wired in a different way. So, we

Anne Hendershott [00:46:58]:

Well, yeah, we can't call them pedophiles. They're the new thing is MAP, a minor attracted person. Like, that's normal. That's normalizing pedophilia. And so, yeah, we do spend time on that too. It's still a great book, I have to say.

Jim Spiegel [00:47:15]:

Why is this might be obvious to to us and and to a lot of people, but not to everybody. Why is the survival of faithful Christian colleges especially important when it comes to the flourishing of our nation?

Anne Hendershott [00:47:29]:

That's the future of the nation. I think we this nation can't survive without the Christian moral principles. I don't think. Our founders even said that. They said, in order to have this experiment flourish, this country flourish, we have to have moral men and women, of course. They knew that. But we need to have morality. And can you be good without God? I don't believe so necessarily.

Anne Hendershott [00:47:59]:

I don't. And they didn't either. They didn't think either.

Jim Spiegel [00:48:04]:

That's that's a debate philosophy of religion whether it is possible to, not just behave in a moral way because there's of course, that's possible even among atheists because there's borrowed capital there. Yeah. I know. An assumption of basic Judeo Christian values in many cases, but, that they're willing to, you know, affirm without recognizing the kind of theistic metaphysics behind it. The question is whether you can, in a in a rational and coherent way, justify belief in any moral absolutes absent God. And that's what I'm skeptical about.

Anne Hendershott [00:48:49]:

Me too. And I think and getting back to the envy book, when we look at these stories, and Shakespeare knew better than it, look at Iago, you know, in his hatred, his envy of of Othello. You know, it's sort of like we're hardwired. I mean, as a Catholic, I believe in natural law. I believe that we know what's right and what's wrong, not because of we're some rational being necessarily, but because we're creatures of God. We're children of God. And reading these stories and I look at Cain and Abel. You know? That's I start the book with Cain and Abel.

Anne Hendershott [00:49:30]:

You know? Abel could have just made his sacrifices more pleasing to God. You know? He didn't have to kill his brother. You know? But that's envy.

Jim Spiegel [00:49:40]:

That's envy.

Anne Hendershott [00:49:41]:

Yep. Yep. That's what envy is.

Jim Spiegel [00:49:44]:

Hey. So addressing such weighty issues as as you do in ethics, social science, politics, you're doing immensely important work, and I affirm you applaud, what you've done and what you're doing. You are no doubt driven by an ultimate sense of purpose. Right? So let's close with with your answer to this question. What is that? What in short do you take to be, here it is, the big question, the meaning of life?

Anne Hendershott [00:50:16]:

Well, to be a good person. And not just to be a good person now, but toward I mean, eternity's a long time. You know, I'm good friends with Tom Monahan. He's the founder of Ave Maria College, now Ave Maria University, and I serve on their board. It's a small well, no. It's 3,000 now, in a college in Florida, and he started that college. He took his he was the founder of Domino's Pizza, and he sold it. And he took all that money, and he put it into this school.

Anne Hendershott [00:50:53]:

And he himself was an orphan. Well, his mother gave him up when he was in the Depression. I mean, he's in his eighties now. But his goal for Ave Maria is to help as many people as possible get into heaven, which I think is a noble goal. I just hope I get into heaven. Right now? And I hope my kids get into heaven. So I guess that's the long game. But Tom, he says it all the time.

Anne Hendershott [00:51:23]:

He says it to new students. He'll say it in interviews. I have them quoted in my book. My latest book, he gave me a great blurb for it. I'm very good friends with Tom. I think he's kind of a saint because he he's given everything up. He used to own the Detroit Tigers, and he said it meant nothing to him. He it just meant nothing because he was raised by nuns when his mother gave him up.

Anne Hendershott [00:51:46]:

His father died. Mother couldn't afford him, put him in an orphanage. But he was raised by nuns in the orphanage, grew to love and serve God, and he took it very seriously. And then got very rich, you know, very, very wealthy. But he's he wants to die broke. He wants to give all his money as he wants to help people get to heaven. I think that's very noble. I I'm not that noble.

Anne Hendershott [00:52:11]:

I just hope I can be a good enough person not to go to hell because I think I'm terrified of that.

Jim Spiegel [00:52:19]:

Well, the whole idea of just thinking in terms of, you know, helping others on the way to salvation, that's something that, you would most likely hear from an evangelical. Right? We want to to, see as many people get on board as possible. It it could strike some listeners as ironic that that's the the, the aim that's expressed by a Catholic like yourself. But I often point out to people that, that Catholics outnumber evangelicals something like three or four to one worldwide.

Anne Hendershott [00:52:59]:

Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:53:00]:

There seems to be some evangelistic effectiveness there. I think people

Anne Hendershott [00:53:04]:

well and and I think I've learned so much being at King's and having friends, evangelical friends, made a big difference in my life. I think Catholics should talk a little bit more about that.

Jim Spiegel [00:53:18]:

Well, we're all whether Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, evangelical, Protestant, we really are united and, well, the Nicene Creed for starts for starters, but then we're we're about, you know, doing kingdom work. Right? God is going to bring about and it's a promise. It will happen. He's he's bringing about this glorious kingdom, that we will be there, and enjoying and fellowshipping with others and doing good work for all eternity, in the new heaven, in the new earth. So, yeah, let's, do what we can to to to bring as many people on board as we can. And we do that, you know, by doing this good work that we're doing, you and I, you know, hopefully, as educators, but there's so many different, domains and industries in which one can do good Christian work. So I applaud you for the work that you've been doing and

Anne Hendershott [00:54:14]:

Nice, Jim.

Jim Spiegel [00:54:15]:

I say keep it up.

Anne Hendershott [00:54:17]:

Thank you. This is fun.

Jim Spiegel [00:54:20]:

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