Robert P. George

Winner of the Barry Prize, 2023

Dr. George was interviewed by Brandice Canes-Wrone of Stanford University for our series of interviews with 2023 Barry Prize winners. 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.

The prize citation for Dr. George’s Barry Prize reads:

With intelligence, civility, and courage, Robert George has advanced our understanding of the intellectual and moral foundations of our Nation’s republican civic order. Bridging the disciplines of law and philosophy, he has illuminated not only the principles and institutions of American constitutionalism, but also the natural basis of justice, human rights, and the common good. The Academy honors Dr. George’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s pursuit of moral wisdom and liberty and justice for all.

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 as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of JD and MTS from Harvard and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford in addition to twenty-two honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

November 2023

The awarding of the Barry Prize to Dr. George at our 2023 ceremony at the Library of Congress: