One of the most difficult intellectual and emotional challenges I faced earlier this year at Yale was finding an answer to a Native American student’s poignant question: Why should she put any faith in institutions in our society — including our judicial system and universities – when those institutions had clearly betrayed her people in generations past?

“The same Constitution with its protection of the rights to free expression and assembly that you revere,” she said, “was previously of no use to people like me.”

She was right, of course. So why should she and other young people place trust in systems that can perennially fail us?

I wish I had told her that the way out of this conundrum is to make these institutions her own. I wish I had told her that these institutions are worth respecting and preserving for their (albeit imperfect) embodiment of Enlightenment values; that she surely should want to embrace those values; and that her generation could make those values more true, not less. These institutions could be hers, and I believe she should want them to be hers.