The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom announced Tuesday the election of Robert P. George as the commission’s next chairman.
A devout Roman Catholic and member of the Deseret News Editorial Advisory Board since 2010, George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. The press release announcing his election to the chairmanship of the Commission on International Religious Freedom described him as, “An award-winning teacher at Princeton (and) a prolific writer in the areas of moral and political philosophy, philosophy of law, and constitutional law and theory.”
George published his most recent book, “Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism,” last month. In reviewing “Conscience and Its Enemies,” the New York Times Sunday Book Review reported, “Robert P. George is one of the most prominent conservative backstagers. … He is embraced in social conservative circles — and despised in liberal ones — for being staunchly opposed to abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide and embryonic research. His newest book, ‘Conscience and Its Enemies,’ doesn’t add much to what he has already written on these matters. But it does bring together an accessible group of essays that put his highly burnished philosophical and constitutional learning on full display. They should, at the very least, unsettle those whose only experiences of social conservatism are the blunderings of Todd Akin and the theatrics of Rush Limbaugh, and perhaps even lead to some reflection that rises above the media brawl.”
EMAIL: jaskar@desnews.com