
Ever since the University of Melbourne took from us Rai Gaita’s public lecture series we have been going to Rai’s house in St Kilda to talk. Not regularly, life is too much for that, whenever we can though.
Few people in this world believe more in face-to-face conversations – in speaking with others not when you’ve done your thinking, but in order to think – than Rai. This is how The Wednesday Lectures, first at Australian Catholic University and then at Melbourne University, where we teach in criminology and creative writing respectively, came to be. This belief is a guiding presence in Rai Gaita’s latest book, a collection of his works, Justice and Hope.