NEWBERG, Ore. — Two prominent public intellectuals with sharply divergent political and philosophical views will appear together at George Fox University next month for a free public conversation.
Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Robert George are scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, in Canyon Commons. The discussion, titled “Civic Friendship in a Polarized Age,” is open to the public. Seating is limited, and reservations are recommended.
“This is not another political debate,” GFU stated in a press release. “It is an exploration of what it truly means to be a neighbor in a divided world. Rooted in a shared faith, this dialogue moves past the noise of the day to demonstrate what genuine civic friendship looks like.”
West holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary and is a philosopher and author whose work focuses on race, justice, and democracy. He previously taught at Harvard University and holds the title of professor emeritus at Princeton University, where in 1980 he became the first Black man to earn a PhD in philosophy.
George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton and director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the President’s Council on Bioethics and is known for his scholarship in natural law theory.
“In an era defined by political tribalism and the collapse of public trust, what does it actually look like to disagree — deeply, even fiercely — and still remain friends?” asks Joseph Clair, Associate Provost for Humanities and Honors at George Fox, in the press release. “These two men hold profoundly different views on politics, economics, and society — yet they have modeled, for decades, something increasingly rare in American life: genuine friendship across the ideological divide.”
The two men are former Princeton colleagues. George Fox describes the event as an exploration of disagreement and friendship across ideological lines rather than a formal debate.
Clair continued to say that the conversation would address “what civic friendship requires of us, what makes it possible, and why it may be the most urgent practice a democracy can cultivate.”
The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are available through George Fox University’s website.
