Robert George, prominent conservative U. professor

Robert George, the University’s only professor of jurisprudence and one of the country’s most prominent conservative intellectuals, was not always a conservative.

George, the grandson of coal miners, grew up in the West Virginia Appalachians. Though one of his grandfathers spent his entire life in the mines, the other was able to save enough money to leave and open up his own business.

“We were union people, we believed in the Democratic Party and the United Mine Workers of America, and that is what I was brought up with, that the government had a very important positive role to play,” George said.

However, after entering Swarthmore College in 1973 and studying under the tutelage of James Kurth, a conservative political science professor there known in part for his frequent magazine articles about international relations, George said his ideological outlook shifted.

He ultimately questioned his core political beliefs after seeing first-hand the apparent lack of success of government economic programs in his hometown combined with the influence of Kurth.

“This was during a period when I was really beginning to question the old-fashioned, the old-time religion of the New Deal and Great Society liberalism,” he explained.“[At Swarthmore], I found that I was now thinking for myself and not simply letting myself be directed by whatever the dominant opinion of people around me.”

George’s views, however, did not shift toward libertarianism, but rather away from the idea that government programs could be productive solutions to people’s problems, he said, adding that his views shifted toward what he called “civil society conservatism.”

Civil society conservatives believe government can play a constructive, but less direct, role that is primarily concerned with assisting institutions of civil societies such as families, civic associations, religious communities and fraternal organizations, George said.

“I believe when they are properly empowered and have the resources, they can do a much better job than the government at assisting the family in meeting the health, education and welfare needs of people,” he said.

Melding politics, ethics and religion

George has been appointed by presidents of both parties to offer his advice, serving on the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2009 and serving as the presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 1998.

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“Rob is a great paradox because he’s a cheerful and optimistic conservative,” Michael Reynolds, associate professor of Near Eastern studies, said.

George has also worked closely with black church communities for over 10 years, inviting them to lecture and lead seminars at the University,saidEugene Rivers III, founder of the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.

“Professor George is an enormously influential philosopher in growing numbers of black church circles in the United States and abroad,” Rivers said.

These communities draw upon George’s scholarship and published works on natural law, like his book “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life,” to inform their philosophies, Rivers explained.

George’s scholarship helps inform conservative views in Jamaican religious communities, Rivers added.

“We need professor George as a bridge-builder to help us be in conversation with the white evangelicals,” he said. “There is increasingly an effort … to force U.S. cultural values onto Jamaican society and to force people to embrace things like gay marriage.”

At the University, George and professor emeritus Cornel West GS ’80 are currently co-teaching —and have co-taught in the past —a seminar. The seminar this spring is called “Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities — Adventures in Ideas.”

“We both strongly believe in the method of dialogue as the best way to pursue understanding,” George explained.

George and West have given joint lectures at other institutions, such as Swarthmore, but have sometimes been met with boycotts and protests by students, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former Swarthmore classmate and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, said.

“It’s extremely valuable that the University has Robbie George, because on many campuses, they believe in diversity as skin color, they believe in diversity as sexual identity but they don’t believe in diversity of intellectual opinion and this is a big lack on many, even Ivy League, campuses,” Furchtgott-Roth said.

The Case of Raif Badawi

On Jan. 20, George, who is vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and seven of the nine other commission members sent a letter to the government of Saudi Arabia requesting immediate action against the imprisonment of liberal Saudi activist Raif Badawi.

Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for operating a website advocating for free speech.

The letter said the commission members would each take 100 of the lashes assigned to him instead of doing nothing.

George mentioned Badawi’s sentence at a meeting of the USCIRF earlier this year.

The commission advises Congress and the President about religious freedom abroad and makes related recommendations about executive and legislative foreign policy.

“Our commission immediately saw the need to press our own government — that’s our job really — to bring pressure on the Saudi regime to correct this really great injustice in human rights abuse against Badawi,” George said. The meeting between the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and commission members had been fruitless, he said, and there was a need to “up the ante.”

The letter was also motivated by the need to disrupt a larger pattern of human rights abuses by the Saudi Arabian regime, especially because Saudi Arabia is an economic and military ally to the United States, George said.

“Three-quarters of the world’s population, roughly, live under regimes that are regular abusers of religious freedom and other human rights,” he said.

The lashings have been temporarily discontinued since the release of the letter, Katrina Swett, the chair of the USCIRF, said. Members of the USCIRF knew they could not send such a bold letter unless prepared to follow through, she added.

“I’m just so grateful to Rob for, first of all, his moral clarity of courage and creativity, all three of which were brought to bear in this instance,” Swett said.

In recent weeks there have been rumors relayed to the commission by the Badawi family that the Saudi Arabian judiciary intends to retry Badawi, this time for a capital offense, which could result in the sentence of a beheading, Swett said.

“We are all very nervous about the uncertainty that remains,” she said.