A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he’s been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage, receiving a Presidential medal from President George W. Bush. George decries the “decadence” of secular culture, and, in 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Donald Trump “manifestly unfit” to serve as President. Although George disagrees with the Administration’s tactics to change universities’ policies by punishment, he agrees with its contention that campuses have become hotbeds of leftism that stifle debate. He regards this not as a particular evil of the left but as “human nature”: “If conservatives had the kind of monopoly that liberals had,” George tells David Remnick, “I suspect we’d have the same situation, but just in reverse.” His recent book, “Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment,” tries to chart a course back toward civil, functioning debate in a polarized society. “I encourage my students to take courses from people who disagree with me, like Cornel West and Peter Singer,” the latter of whom is a controversial philosopher of ethics. “Cornel and I teach together for this same reason. Peter invites his students to take my courses. That’s the way it should be.”

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:12.5	Robert George is not a passive observer of what we call the culture wars.
0:17.8	He's been an active participant, very active.
0:20.4	George is a legal scholar and a political philosopher at Princeton University,
0:25.6	and he's been an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage.
0:30.6	He received a presidential medal from George W. Bush,
0:33.6	and he counts Senator Ted Cruz among his many students.
0:41.1	Professor George has also been a Trump skeptic, to say the least.
0:44.7	In 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Trump manifestly unfit to serve as president,
0:48.1	and he argues from religious and moral grounds.
0:52.2	Meanwhile, a major backlash has been brewing on college campuses,
0:56.4	not just against Harvard or Columbia, but many elite schools, state universities, smaller colleges,
1:02.1	and other institutions. The Trump administration has cracked down all over, punishing
1:07.3	universities for policies related to DEI, campus protest, academic freedom, and much more.
1:14.8	Professor George stands against this effort to force campuses to bend to a conservative agenda.
1:20.5	On the other hand, he does agree that the campus environment, writ large, is too uniform and it its stifled debate for far too long,
1:29.6	which is part of why he wrote a book called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Law and
1:34.9	and Morality in Our Cultural Moment. The book tries to chart a course back towards civil,
1:40.1	functioning debate in a dangerously fractured society.
1:46.9	Professor George, we've been hearing a lot from the Trump administration, and in the culture
1:52.4	war discussion now for quite a long time, the notion that American universities are uniformly
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.