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 about Christianity and politics Thursday, March 5 at 5 p.m. in Watkins Room of the Trone Student Center.
“A Conversation About Christianity and Politics” is presented by Furman’s College Republicans, College Democrats, Endowed Lecture Series, and Tocqueville Program. The event is free and open to the public, 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, he 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 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 appears frequently on the Bill Maher TV 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.” He has appeared as Councillor West in two “Matrix” films and has done hip hop, soul, and spoken word recordings. 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.