Robert George on Harvard: Today’s Universities Are Incubators of Competing Visions, Social Justice vs. Classical

Robert P. George, Joan Frawley Desmond January 04, 2024 1 min read

Robert P. George, Joan Frawley Desmond
National Catholic Register

Excerpt: A leading Catholic public intellectual, George serves as the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. A staunch defender of free speech and academic freedom and inquiry, George had closely followed the developing controversy at Harvard and weighed in on X, formerly Twitter.

In his conversation with the Register, he examined the essential role of free speech and academic freedom in the mission of U.S. universities. But he also noted that many elite institutions are grappling with two competing visions of academic life: the “social-justice model” that endorses progressive values and the “classical, truth-seeking” model.

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