This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Robert George is not a passive observer of what we call the culture wars.

He's been an active participant, very active.

George is a legal scholar and a political philosopher at Princeton University,

and he's been an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage.

He received a presidential medal from George W. Bush,

and he counts Senator Ted Cruz among his many students.

Professor George has also been a Trump skeptic, to say the least.

In 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Trump manifestly unfit to serve as president,

and he argues from religious and moral grounds.

Meanwhile, a major backlash has been brewing on college campuses, not just

against Harvard or Columbia, but many elite schools, state universities, smaller colleges, and other

institutions. The Trump administration has cracked down all over, punishing universities

for policies related to DEI,

campus protest, academic freedom, and much more.

Professor George stands against this effort to force campuses to bend to a conservative agenda.

On the other hand, he does agree that the campus environment, writ large,

is too uniform and its stifled debate for far too long,

which is part of why he wrote a book called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Law and

and Morality in Our Cultural Moment. The book tries to chart a course back towards civil,

functioning debate in a dangerously fractured society.

...