Robert George and Cornel West Open Tocqueville Series

Robert P. George, Ph.D., and Cornel R. West, Ph.D., two prominent thinkers on the right and left, respectively, will speak on the Furman University campus on Oct. 22nd.

They will Christianity and politics Thursday, Oct. 22, at 5 p.m. in Watkins Room of the Trone Student Center. The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Tickets are required and will be available one hour before the event in the Trone Center.

“A Conversation About Christianity and Politics” is the first of four events in the Tocqueville Program’s 2015-2016 lecture series on Christianity and Politics. The event is sponsored by Furman’s College Republicans, College Democrats, Endowed Lecture Fund, and the Tocqueville Program, and is part of the university’s Cultural Life Program.

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. His recent honors include the United States Presidential Citizens Medal and the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland.  In July 2013, George was elected Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, George earned a doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford University. He is author of In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis, and Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, and co-author of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics, and What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his MA and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton.

West has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.  He has appeared frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span as well as on the Tavis Smiley PBS TV Show. He can be heard weekly on public radio with Tavis Smiley on “Smiley & West.” His work seeks to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.—a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Upcoming 2016 Tocqueville lectures include:

Wednesday, Feb. 24–Charles Mathewes, “Christian Citizenship in the 21st Century,” 5 p.m., Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

Wednesday, March 30–Mark Lilla, “The Return to Political Theology” 5 p.m., Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

Wednesday, April 13–Clifford Orwin, “Abraham’s Confrontation with God (Genesis 17-19),” 5 p.m., Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

For more information, contact Paige Blankenship in the Department of Political Science, (864) 294-3547, or visit www.furman.edu.