Listen to this speech on the Kansas City Public Library website.

I went to a church, the building that was built in 1707. My school was founded in 1748. And what's interesting about these buildings, including the house I grew up in, is that they're quirky. They're not predictable. Their floor plans are weird. They have way more fireplaces and toilets. They leak and there's always some odd quirky thing about them that you wonder why it's there. Old places spark our curiosity. They make us wonder “Why is this here?” There's nothing generic about them.

The town I grew up in has cobblestone streets, which are not great to drive on. The question arises, why are these streets cobblestone? Why are these sidewalks so uneven? Why is this weird low-ceilinged room on the third floor of our house? And what is this trap door in the dining room? Not only are you curious about what really happened there, but if you're like my sister and you make up stuff, we had a whole underground railroad thing going on in that trap door, which I have no idea if that is actually true, but there's a kind of curiosity that is sparked by being in old places.

I think growing up in an old place, you're curious maybe about why things are the way they are. I think you kind of have a little bit of humility because you recognize that this place has been there for hundreds of years, much longer than you're going to be alive and it will be there for a long time after you die and that many other people have passed through it. This curiosity, humility, and the human connection to the other people that have been there before, I think is the reason why stories and old places feel connected to me. Old places hold stories, and when you're in them, you want to understand them.

The democracy question is maybe a little less obvious. What do old places and stories have to do with democracy in America right now? And here, I think I need to start by talking about a problem that I see in our country right now, this country that has given me so much and that I love so much.

And that is that we're a polarized people. I would think of it more in terms of sort of a kind of self-segregation where we're choosing to be with people who are like us in many ways, who think the way we do, who live the way we do, who pray the way we do, who have jobs like the jobs we have. And I think this has increasingly happened over the past several decades, and it's been exacerbated obviously by how we digest. News is now no longer necessary for you ever to hear any point of view with which you disagree because your phone through which many people get their news will automatically channel to you things that you like. We live in an environment that makes it harder rather than easier to experience the range of views that surround us.

This polarization and our increasing—I was on a college campus for my entire adult life—this increasing echo chamber world that we live in means that we're less likely to encounter difference. We're not so willing to engage with people who disagree. We're unwilling to seek the kind of civic discourse that libraries foster. We prefer to look for things and read things that validate what we already know to be true. In a country that was founded on a commitment to pluralism and the idea that we thrive when people have different ideas, we learn from hearing different perspectives. That's not good. One of the problems I see in perpetuating our democratic republic is this polarization.

Why is this the case? People have many different reasons, social media, maybe identity politics, maybe it's globalization, maybe it's increasing inequality. We have lots of explanations for it, but I would like to focus on how we orient ourselves towards one another. What we do when we encounter a stranger or someone we've never met and what we think when meet them. I think what happens now, and this is certainly true in some cases, is that we look for indications of which camp they're in.

There was just an article in the New York Times about this, about coding. My shoes for example, are coded “right” because they're stiletto. My dress is coded “left” because it's black. People are beginning to look for these clues of which camp to put us in, which box do we belong in. And that approach of putting each other into boxes, it orients us towards one another in a way that is not particularly helpful.

It certainly doesn't invite conversation or curiosity. Mostly what we want to know about people when we meet them is whether they agree with us or disagree with us. Now, I'm exaggerating slightly, but I think this is an increasing tendency in our country that we have this problem of wanting to classify one another and we orient ourselves towards each other to try to find out where we stand. And when we do that, when you orient ourselves towards one another, in that way you're sort of primed to debate.

I say I have a very strong view about, I don't know, immigration. I want to know what your view is on immigration. If I find out that we don't agree, I'm primed to debate. I want to persuade you that I'm right and you're wrong. That primed to debate attitude is a very different one than the one I think we need in a democracy.

It also means we are not valuing differences. Our country was founded on a commitment to pluralism out of many. One, we don't all have to eat, pray, think the same. Our democracy thrives in this atmosphere of difference. A challenge we have right now in our democratic republic is how do we get back to valuing difference?

I would suggest—and this finally I'm going to get to how old places and storytelling and democracy in America right now are connected—I think if we oriented ourselves towards each other, not as potential debate opponents, but as storytellers, we would have a different kind of public culture. And what do I mean by that? Well, how do we recover our investment in one another as storytellers? Well, one way to think about that is to just think about the story of where we are right now, this building.

Now, if each of us were to tell the story, and we've heard a few versions of it tonight of this building, we might approach that differently. Some of us might talk about the history of the story of the library. When the Kansas City Library was founded in 1873, how initially it was part of the public school system, how a visionary librarian named Carrie West, like Whitney really believed in child literacy and focused on that and grew the library into a free public library for the benefit of many, many people. This story would in part be the history of this building, but it would really be the history of an institution of the library, which now has many different locations across the city and has moved around and only came to this building fairly recently.

But if I asked you to tell the story of where you are, that would be a perfectly reasonable story to tell and a compelling one, the story of the history of a library, or you might tell the story of the history of this particular building, how when it was built as a bank, it catalyzed the renovation of this district in Kansas City. It sparked commercial development. It helped the city grow from its origins into a modern metropolis. How after many years as a bank and many changes of hands, it sat empty until civic-minded leaders decided to turn it into a library and it is now restored. It is this beautiful library that we're in today.

I could ask you to tell me the story of where we are. You could tell me the story of the history of the library, you could tell me the story of the history of this building, or you could tell me the story of a successful adaptive reuse project that this building, this beautiful building was empty, no purpose. Some visionary civic leaders figured out how to through partnerships, public and private and tax credits, how to activate this beautiful building once again so that it could serve the community around it. The story of where we are right now could be a story of the history of a library as an institution.

It'd be the story of a history of a building, this building. It could be a story about the power of adaptive reuse and repurposing older buildings for new reasons. All of those stories are legitimate. And if I were to ask everyone in this room to tell me the story of this building, here's what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't tell you that you were wrong and I was right because this building, the library, holds multiple stories and the facts about it can sustain multiple stories.

Now, I might tell you a story that was false. I could say this building used to be, I don't know, a garment factory. And then it became condominiums and then it became the library and you would tell me that that was wrong. It's possible to tell false stories, but any space, any old place holds multiple stories, all of which can be sustained by the facts. We know and we learn and benefit from hearing all of those stories.

We don't immediately want to decide which one is right. That's the difference between storytelling and debating. If we would think about the attitude that we have when we approach one another as storytellers, as opposed to people who have particular points of view on issues that we care about, we would respond to them in very different ways. We would ask questions instead of countering. We would listen and try to learn, and we would recognize that the world is a complicated place and there can be multiple stories about the same thing and they can all be true. Part of the idea of switching from debate, an attitude towards one another where we think of each other as debaters where towards an attitude where we're thinking of one another as potential storytellers is one way I think to address the challenges of democracy.

Does that make sense to you? That right now in this country, because of polarization and many other things, we are uninterested in learning from one another and much more interested in figuring out where we stand. But if we thought of one another, learning from the power of old places as storytellers, we might have a more nuanced and more productive approach to our engagement with people who disagree with us.

That's the first point I wanted to make by connecting old places and storytelling and democracy in America today, is that if learning from the power of old places and the multiple stories they hold, if we instead of approaching one another as potential debate opponents, we approached one another as storytellers, we would be in effect beginning to rebuild a vibrant, robust democratic public sphere. I'd ask partly that we think about doing that with one another. Everybody has a story to tell and everybody's story is worth hearing, just like the stories that this building holds are all worth telling.

Old places open us up to the power of storytelling. They make us curious, they remind us to be humble. What happens when you visit an old and meaningful place is that you recognize that there are multiple stories held in that place over generations. And you may go into that place wanting to debate, but the place will change you. The place will change you and you will leave wanting to understand. How does this work? I think old places can help us approach one another as storytellers old places can also reconnect us to the founding values of our country at a time when we're not thinking about them at all.

In spite of the impending 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let me try to give a couple of examples of this. If you go to Gettysburg the battlefield, you will hear echoing in that place, President Lincoln's words when he gave the Gettysburg address where he calls for a new birth of freedom in this country so that together we can demonstrate that a nation committed to the idea that all people are created equal can survive.

You will feel that in the ground you're walking on. And that reminder of what it costs to try to have the opportunity to reconnect, to freedom, to create a new birth of freedom and a recommitment to an ideal that we had forgotten in this country, that we were not attentive to at the founding a new birth of freedom. Where truly all we believe that all are created equal and government by all the people can survive. You'll feel it. And I think that will help us remember what we owe to those people and what our obligation is to continue to try to build a more perfect union. And we feel that way because we're visiting an old and meaningful place that people have saved.

My sister and I recently went to Normandy and visited the American Cemetery there. It's a very similar feeling. All these people fighting for freedom, which we all claim we believe in. How am I going to live up to that? What's my obligation as an American to make sure that we are building a more perfect union and that we are honoring this beautiful aspiration of a world that really imagines all people are created equal and we're all entitled to be free.

When you visit the Seneca Falls Wesleyan chaplain in Seneca Falls where Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened the first women's rights convention and they created a document modeled on the Declaration of Independence saying, “Hey, women should have these rights too. Women should be treated as full citizens of the United States modeled on the Declaration of Independence.” I feel like, wow, those were pretty brave men and women who signed that declaration at that women's rights conference in 1848. What am I going to do? How am I going to remember my obligation to these values?

You can go to Akron, Ohio and stand where Sojourner Truth gave her famous speech. She was an abolitionist and a women's rights activist. And you can hear her words honoring the power of women and the importance of abolition and the rights of everybody. You think, okay, what's my place in this story?

If you go to Montpelier where James Madison imagined the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, you'll hear about James Madison, but you'll also hear about Paul Jennings, an enslaved person who lived there and the other 300 enslaved people that lived there. And you will hear the powerful commitment to freedom that Madison had, and to the idea of rights, unalienable rights. And you also read about Paul Jennings and you'll wonder how is it that people could be so committed to freedom and equality and also perpetuate this institution? And that's a question that Americans should ask themselves. We'll come up with different answers, but it's a question that we should ask ourselves if only so that we don't inadvertently perpetuate some form of injustice that we don't recognize.

If you go to Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island, a place that is deeply committed to educating all Americans about the importance of religious freedom, you'll hear a letter that George Washington wrote to them where he said, there's no place for bigotry in this country. Everybody deserves the right to worship however they want. And you'll remember how important the freedom of religion is in this country. And you'll think, okay, what's my role? What's my job? So you get my point? Yes, old places.

These old places hold stories that remind us of the values that we claim to hold, what other people have given up, to make them more real for more people. And what our obligation to them is so old places, meaningful places, and it doesn't have to be. Famous places can reconnect us to the values that should unite us as Americans, no matter who we voted for, no matter what we think about the issues of the day. In addition to helping us overcome our polarization, old places and the stories they hold can remind us of what unites us as Americans and our collective obligation to build a more perfect union today.

Two connections between old places telling stories and democracy in America today. One is stories held by old places can help us overcome polarization. Secondly, stories that are held by old places can help connect all of us to the values that we claim to share and that can unite us as Americans at a time when we feel divided. And then finally, I think old places and the stories they hold can open up new possibilities for conversation about the issues right now that are most divisive.

I was on a college campus for a really long time and a lot of people have very strong opinions about student protests. They have very strong opinions about them now, they had very strong opinions about them five years ago. They have very strong opinions about them 50 years ago, and I know that from Davidson alums who protested 50 years ago, I myself protested apartheid in South Africa when I was a graduate student at Princeton.

Protests are a common thing on college campuses and people feel strongly about them right now and have thoughts about what they mean. And other people tend to say it's about freedom of speech or it's about that lack of respect for law and order. I would say let's all walk the National Mall together. Let's all walk the National Mall together in Washington, D.C. and let's remember what's happened there. As Americans from all political parties with every point of view have expressed their right to freedom of assembly, let's just walk it and remember the rabbis who marched there to protest the Holocaust and were turned away by Franklin Roosevelt from the White House. Let's remember Marian Anderson singing there in 1939 when she couldn't sing anywhere else. Martin Luther King, the March for Life.

Remember all of the Americans who've walked that walk as an expression of our shared right to freedom of assembly? And it won't change your mind necessarily about student protests, but it will embed your view in a long history of assembling Americans. And then we can maybe open our way to think about it differently or see paths forward that we're not seeing right now. Walk the National Mall.

You may have views about the polarization between Republicans and Democrats. I would say visit Robert Smalls house in Beauford, South Carolina. Robert Smalls was born into slavery in the house that he later bought, was born into slavery as a very young person. He was lent out as a laborer in Charleston. He was allowed to keep a dollar of the $12 that he made in a given time period. He became adept at sailing during the Civil War. He was charged with sailing a confederate ship. He organized the crew, stopped it, loaded all their families on the boat, stole the boat, drove it to the union side of the Civil War, and became a union officer in the Civil War. After the Civil War, he was one of the founding members of the South Carolina Republican Party where he was elected to the United States Congress, bought the house he was born into as a enslaved person and lived there. His family lived there until fairly recently.

He defies your view of what a person is and also demonstrates that the Republican party has a complex history and that the polarization we now think of is part of a long history of the evolution of party politics in this country. Maybe we should think a little more expansively about what these parties represent and how we think about the two-party system and our urge to put people into boxes when humans don't normally fit in these kinds of places.

The National Mall, Roberts Smalls House, this library, and the Tenement Museum in New York. How many of you have been there? Has anyone been there where immigration is a big issue right now. If you go to the Tenement Museum in New York, no matter what you think about immigration, you will come out thinking about it differently. And that's because the Tenement Museum includes apartments where generations of immigrants lived.

Jewish immigrants, Italian immigrants, Americans from Puerto Rico, or recently Chinese immigrants have all lived in this one neighborhood in New York City. And you will learn their stories and the stories of their families. Whatever you think about immigration now, you'll come out with a more complex sense of what it is and maybe new ideas about how we can address the immigration challenges that we face in this country because you're grounded in the history of how immigration has shaped who we are.

Historic places can open up new ways of thinking about the issues that divide us if we let them, therefore old places and the stories they hold can help us address the challenges of polarization. They can help reconnect us to the founding values of the country, which we all claim to hold and remind us of our obligation as citizens to build a more perfect union based on those values.

Old places can also open up new paths, new ways, new frameworks. We're talking about the issues that most divide us if we let them old places and the stories they hold change us if we let them. On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and a decade plus later, the anniversary of the Constitution, we have an opportunity to highlight the power of old and meaningful places. This library, the National Mall, Sojourner Truth Plaza, Montpelier, Monticello, Ellis Island, we have an opportunity to highlight the power of these places and the stories they hold to rebuild a public culture worthy of the promise of our founding.

I know I'm speaking to the preaching to the choir here, that's the job, the noble job of preservation. That's preservation's job and opportunity right now. And I cannot thank you enough for your commitment to that cause and for the work ahead of us. Thank you very much for your time.