Robert P. George

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Currently, he also chairs the New Jersey Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. George is general editor of New Forum Books, a Princeton University Press series of interdisciplinary works in law, culture and politics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is of counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee. He will help close Chautauqua’s week commemorating “America at 250” with his perspective on the significance of “freedom of conscience” in the American founding and ongoing experiment. George has frequently been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, teaching philosophy of law and related subjects. In addition, he has served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, on the President’s Council on Bioethics, as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. George is the author of several books; his most recent is Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment. He has written numerous academic articles and review essays along with pieces for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. A graduate of Swarthmore College, George holds the degrees of J.D. and MTS from Harvard University and the degrees of PhD, BCL, DCL, and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to 23 honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.