2023 Barry Prize Conversations
Below is our series of conversations with 2023 Barry Prize winners.
Conversation with Barry Prize Winner Robert George
Dr. George was interviewed by Brandice Canes-Wrone of Stanford University. They discuss how the university can do a better job of embodying and explaining to the public its central mission of pursuing and preserving truth, training students to be courageous truth-seekers and truth-speakers.
Conversation with Barry Prize Winner Jonathan Haidt
Dr. Haidt was interviewed by Margaret Chisolm of Johns Hopkins University. They discuss his pathbreaking research on the impact of smartphones and social media on adolescent mental health, and how it relates to his previous research on large-scale dysfunctions in modern social institutions.
Conversation with Barry Prize winner Svetlana Jitomirskaya
Dr. Jitomirskaya was interviewed by Sergiu Klainerman of Princeton University. They discuss her career, including experiences of stark and explicit discrimination as a routine part of university life in the Soviet Union, and the importance of freedom, equal rights and open inquiry to education in the United States.
Conversation with Barry Prize winner Steven Koonin
Dr. Koonin was interviewed by Barry Honig of Columbia University about the relationship between science and the mission of the university, at a time when political pressures on the university are changing the way science is done.
Conversation with Barry Prize winner Anna Krylov
Dr. Krylov was interviewed by Santiago Schnell of the University of Notre Dame about the threat of censorship in science, and the need to defend the philosophical principles upon which science depends.
Conversation with Barry Prize winner Jon Levenson
Dr. Levenson was interviewed by Greg Forster of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. They discuss the danger of “presentism” and “reductionism” – overemphasizing immediate relevance and the role of power relations in a way that can deafen us to the voice of the past and the transcendent.
Conversation with Barry Prize winner Josiah Ober
Dr. Ober was interviewed by Brandice Canes-Wrone of Stanford University about how universities can educate students for democratic citizenship, and why doing so is a vital part of the university’s mission.
