I have taken a long break from blogging because the end of my high school career is fast approaching and I want to spend more time doing things I never had time to do before and become better friends with people I never had the chance to in the years past. Given that this is my senior summer, I will probably extend my blogging holiday through mid June.

In the interim period, I already know what I'd like to discuss. I am reading a book by groundbreaking IR theorist Alexander Wendt titled "Social Theory of International Politics". I will expand my thoughts on the European project from the Idealist perspective that I expect to be armed with after my reading. I also met an Assistant-Secretary General to the UN, a Doctor Edward Luck while I was visiting Dartmouth College. I had lunch with him with five other students; it was a surprisingly close lunch where I managed to have a good dialogue with him. As director of the UN's R2P (Right to Protect) initiative, Dr Luck had much to say about intervention on humanitarian grounds; I had discussed the possibility of a paramilitary wing given to the Hague and I have more thoughts on that as well.

Today, of course, Free Exchange continues its tradition of celebrating Malcolm X's birthday. Mr X does not have his own day as Dr King does. That's unfortunate because Dr King's pacifist option would likely have been much less appealing if Mr X's much scarier speeches were not the alternative.

This year, Free Exchange would like to focus not on his political views (as your correspondent chose to last year), but his personal life. Mr X embodies the spirit of inquiry I have sought to foster at Free Exchange. Mr X's trip to Mecca marks a change in his rhetoric and a fundamental change in his beliefs. Increasingly wary of the Nation of Islam and beginning to doubt its message, Mr X made a pilgrimage to Mecca.

His pilgrimage and search taught him that the Islamic message he had long been preaching was flawed. Islam's original tenets were about one thing; he had been preaching another. Publicly and in his actions, Mr X changed from a determined racial separatist to one willing to extend a hand to the other side. While he still fundamentally believed that black men ought to accept that they were victims, move on, and empower their communities, he understood that not all white men were enemies. Indeed, he came to believe that, ideally, there ought to be peace between the races, not enmity.

I founded Free Exchange to air my own thoughts but it has since become a way for me to see my ideas challenged, taken down. Hegel's theory of thesis-antithesis as the driving force of progress is correct in its assessment of the transformation of knowledge. Malcolm X, among many other things, embodies a willingness to accept a new synthesis after one explores both thesis and antithesis.

Today, in a more personal post, I do not recommend policy nor fashion analysis for a country, institution, or the world; instead I urge a personal and, above all, intellectual course of action -- that of introspection, questioning, and an acceptance of error in the pursuit of more nuanced understanding and better modes of inquiry. Malcolm X did not make superficial changes: he did not merely tweak his rhetoric, nor did he internally change but refuse to acknowledge fault in public. Malcolm X underwent a fundamental change and changed his life accordingly. That is the lesson I wish to keep in mind this year and the lesson Free Exchange will continue to embody and promote.