The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Faith, Freedom, and the Future of Universities with Robert P. George

Summary

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show: In-Depth Summary of "The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Faith, Freedom, and the Future of Universities with Robert P. George"

Release Date: August 6, 2025
Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Robert P. George, Founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast, host Tudor Dixon engages in a profound conversation with Robert P. George, one of America's foremost conservative legal scholars. Their discussion delves into the pressing issues surrounding faith, freedom, and the future of universities in the United States. The dialogue explores the challenges posed by ideological imbalances in academia, the shortcomings of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and the resurgence of antisemitism on university campuses. Through insightful exchanges, Dixon and George advocate for increased viewpoint diversity and genuine education over indoctrination.

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Viewpoint Diversity in Universities

Tudor Dixon opens the conversation by highlighting the critical issue of viewpoint diversity in higher education institutions. He references a joint op-ed by Robert P. George and progressive scholar Cornel West, emphasizing the necessity of cultivating civic friendships across ideological divides.

Robert P. George underscores the importance of engaging with diverse perspectives, stating:

"What brother Cornel West and I have in common, despite our vast political differences, is a desire to get at the truth of things and a willingness to be challenged... if you have in common that you're truth seekers, then you've got something more fundamental uniting you than whatever it is that divides you over politics or religion or morality or whatever it is."
[Timestamp: 02:10]

George argues that universities must foster environments where intellectual diversity thrives, allowing for the exchange of ideas and the correction of false beliefs through rational discourse.

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Critique of DEI Programs

The discussion shifts to DEI programs, which were initially designed to promote diversity and inclusion but, according to George and Dixon, have unintended negative consequences.

Robert P. George critiques DEI initiatives, stating:

"Instead of diversity, we got conformism. Instead of equity, we got unfair treatment. Instead of inclusion, we got the exclusion of people who dissented from the dominant orthodoxies... It's a failed experiment."
[Timestamp: 07:15]

He emphasizes that rebranding DEI as a solution is ineffective and advocates for replacing these programs with initiatives that ensure a robust diversity of views. George suggests that universities actively seek out scholars who have been historically marginalized due to their conservative viewpoints, thereby restoring balance and fostering genuine academic freedom.

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The Impact of Indoctrination vs. Ignorance

Tudor Dixon raises concerns about students emerging from universities with a sense of intellectual superiority, attributing this to indoctrination rather than true education.

Robert P. George elaborates on this, stating:

"I'd much rather that my students be ignorant than that they be indoctrinated. If they're ignorant, well, then maybe I can teach them something... But if they're indoctrinated... you've got somebody who's steeped in ideology, whose mind has been shut down by conformism and group think."
[Timestamp: 06:39]

George highlights the difficulties in educating individuals who have been indoctrinated, contrasting it with the easier task of educating those who are merely ignorant. He advocates for educational environments that prioritize critical thinking and openness to diverse viewpoints to prevent intellectual rigidity.

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Resurgence of Antisemitism on Campuses

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the alarming rise of antisemitism in universities, exacerbated by ideological biases and misinformation.

Tudor Dixon shares a personal anecdote involving Holocaust survivors, emphasizing the unexpected and rapid resurgence of antisemitic sentiments:

"In 2018, I interviewed Holocaust survivors... one woman said, 'they hate the Jews and they'll do it again.' And then, October 7th... this is running rampant. And it's at our universities."
[Timestamp: 20:13]

Robert P. George echoes these concerns, noting:

"Anti-Semitism is one of those ancient curses that never remains in the grave... we have it today both on the extreme fringe of the right and on the left."
[Timestamp: 22:53]

He draws parallels between historical antisemitism and present-day incidents, warning of the persistent threat it poses to societal harmony and university environments.

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Historical Lessons and Contemporary Challenges

The dialogue touches upon historical lessons from ideologies like socialism and collectivism, emphasizing their repeated failures and the importance of recognizing these patterns to prevent future catastrophes.

Robert P. George reflects on Heinrich Heinecke's prophecy, linking it to current events:

"Heine predicted that as biblical faith collapsed, tyrannical, secular forces would rise, leading to atrocities like the Holocaust."
[Timestamp: 24:05]

He argues that understanding history is crucial in identifying and mitigating similar threats today, such as movements advocating for defunding the police or seizing the means of production. George contends that these ideologies can lead to destabilization and violence if not effectively countered with informed, critical perspectives.

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Positive Developments and Solutions

Despite the challenges discussed, George offers a ray of hope by highlighting emerging programs and initiatives aimed at restoring genuine education and viewpoint diversity in universities.

Robert P. George states:

"There are programs and institutes being built at universities now across the country that are providing a genuine deep liberal arts education... where they were free to dissent from campus orthodoxies, to question the dogmas that are dominant on the campus."
[Timestamp: 29:34]

He cites examples such as the James Madison Program at Princeton, the Civitas program at the University of Texas, and the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. These initiatives prioritize free speech, critical thinking, and the exploration of big questions, attracting students who seek education free from ideological indoctrination.

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Encouraging Community and Parental Involvement

The conversation emphasizes the role of parents and the community in supporting these positive educational shifts.

Tudor Dixon shares insights from his family, illustrating the importance of intergenerational wisdom and moral grounding:

"My great grandfather... became an alcoholic, and then one day woke up after not returning home and found the Lord... story that created this sense of, like, I can do great things because look at what he did exactly right."
[Timestamp: 15:35]

Robert P. George advocates for parents and grandparents to actively engage with and educate younger generations, ensuring they are equipped with critical thinking skills and an understanding of historical lessons to navigate and resist indoctrination effectively.

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Conclusion and Call to Action

As the episode concludes, George and Dixon reinforce the message that change is possible. They encourage listeners to support and participate in initiatives that promote genuine education and viewpoint diversity.

Robert P. George urges:

"We really can turn this thing around... Help spread the word about these programs and support a genuine, deep education that challenges and cultivates true understanding."
[Timestamp: 29:34]

Tudor Dixon echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the potential for positive transformation through collective effort and informed community support.

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Key Takeaways

• Viewpoint Diversity: Essential for preventing ideological conformity and fostering genuine education.
• Critique of DEI: DEI programs have inadvertently promoted conformism and exclusion; replacing them with viewpoint diversity initiatives is crucial.
• Indoctrination vs. Ignorance: Prefer education over indoctrination to cultivate critical thinkers.
• Antisemitism: A persistent threat that requires vigilant action and education to combat effectively.
• Historical Lessons: Understanding past failures of collectivist ideologies is vital to prevent future atrocities.
• Positive Initiatives: Emerging educational programs prioritize freedom of thought and rigorous intellectual discourse.
• Community Involvement: Active participation from parents and the community is necessary to support and sustain positive educational changes.

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Notable Quotes

1. Robert P. George on Engaging Diverse Perspectives:

   "If you have in common that you're truth seekers, then you've got something more fundamental uniting you than whatever it is that divides you over politics or religion or morality or whatever it is."
   [02:10]

2. Robert P. George on DEI Failures:

   "Instead of diversity, we got conformism. Instead of equity, we got unfair treatment. Instead of inclusion, we got the exclusion of people who dissented from the dominant orthodoxies."
   [07:15]

3. Robert P. George on Education vs. Indoctrination:

   "I'd much rather that my students be ignorant than that they be indoctrinated."
   [06:39]

4. Tudor Dixon on Antisemitism:

   "They hate the Jews and they'll do it again."
   [20:13]

5. Robert P. George on Historical Lessons:

   "Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. When you see the lightning, the thunder is going to come."
   [22:00]

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This episode serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of maintaining intellectual diversity and safeguarding education from ideological biases. Through thoughtful dialogue and actionable insights, Tudor Dixon and Robert P. George provide listeners with a roadmap to fostering environments where truth and critical thinking can thrive.

Transcript

[Tudor Dixon]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. We are so happy to welcome back Robert P. George. He is one of America's leading conservative legal scholars and the founder of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Also happens to be friends with a progressive, Cornel west, which seems impossible, but that's kind of what we're going to talk about today because you have co authored a joint point op ed in the Washington Post about cultivating civic friendship at universities, which I I totally love. Welcome back.

[Robert P. George]

Thank you. It's great to be back with you Tutor.

[Tudor Dixon]

I say that it's interesting that you are friends because that's kind of the conversation that you continue to have is that because we disagree with someone on certain points does not mean we should never speak to them or have feelings of anger toward them.

[Robert P. George]

Absolutely right. Look, we're all together in this veil of tears, doing the best we can. Every single one of us is a frail, fallen, fallible human being. All of us know this much, that we aren't right about everything. There are some things we're wrong about. We just don't know which things those are. You know, we believe what we believe knowing that some of our beliefs are they can't all be correct. So some of our beliefs are going to be incorrect. Now how are we ever going to make some progress? We'll never perfectly get into a situation where we only have true beliefs in our head. But how can we get to a situation where we can swap out as many false beliefs as we can and replace them with true beliefs? Well, you're certainly not going to get there if you only Talk to people who already agree with you and who confirm you in everything you say. What brother Cornel west and I have in common, despite our vast political differences, is a desire to get at the truth of things and a willingness to be challenged, to be criticized, to subject our views to rational scrutiny by intelligent people on the other side, all in the hope that we can swap out the beliefs that are false, at least some of them, and replace them with beliefs that are true. Anybody who recognizes their own fallibility has very good reasons to be open to engaging with people you disagree with, even on the most profound issues, even on the issues that you care most about. If you have in common that you're truth seekers, then you've got something more fundamental uniting you than whatever it is that divides you over politics or religion or morality or whatever it is.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, but if you're in a university where there is, as you've pointed out, a lack of viewpoint diversity, and you have not only professors but students across campus that are saying, if you don't fit into this box, we don't want you to come anywhere near the box, then how do you, how do you do that? And you've pointed out that universities should increase their viewpoint diversity, which I thought was interesting because we've talked about these programs with affirmative action and DEI and all of this, that was supposed to create diversity at these universities, but it actually ended up kicking people to the side who actually deserved a spot there. But viewpoint diversity is something different. And that's, it's, it's a conversation, I don't think many people have had that. If you look at these universities, there really isn't a diverse group of thinkers there. It's, it's really one, one way and our way or the highway. And that's, that's kind of leading these kids to this, the point where they don't try to be truth seekers.

[Robert P. George]

Well, that's exactly right. And Cornel west, who's on the progressive side, joins me in pointing that out and in saying that we've got to do something about it. We say that in our new book, Truth Matters, and we say that in our recent op ed piece in the Washington Post. Although Cornell's on the progressive side, he sees every bit as much as I do that there's a big problem when you have a faculty like the Harvard faculty that has only 3% of its members who identify as conservative, when you have that kind of an ideological imbalance. The bottom line is that the students who were there to educate are basically going to be hearing one side. Even if you have some professors who are doing their best to represent fairly views that they themselves disagree with, you're going to end up with one sided education. You're going to end up with something much closer. I hate to say this, tutor, but it's true. Something much closer to indoctrination than education.

[Tudor Dixon]

And you pointed out that indoctrination is the opposite of education. There's no education there at all.

[Robert P. George]

It's the very antithesis of education. I often say, tutor, I'd much rather that my students be ignorant than that they be indoctrinated. If they're ignorant, well, then maybe I can teach them something, get them thinking about something, expose them to some ideas, you know, get them in a position to gain some knowledge. But if they're indoctrinated, then before I can ever start teaching them anything, I've got to pry open their minds as if I were doing it with a crowbar. And that's a big step when you've got somebody who's steeped in ideology, whose mind has been shut down by conformism and group think. Before you can ever get to actually educating them, you got to get their minds open. So give me ignorance anytime over indoctrination. I can work with ignorance. Indoctrination makes it triply difficult.

[Tudor Dixon]

Hmm. It's interesting because obviously a big part of Donald Trump, his campaign and becoming president was saying, we don't want this indoctrination, we don't want this. These programs that are keeping certain students out of places. And he kind of shut down DEI across the country. But just in the past couple of weeks, some of. I don't know if you've seen some of these videos that have been coming out where universities actually continue to have their DEI programs. And there's undercover journalists that are going in and saying, well, tell me about what your program is like now that DEI has been shut down. And they said, oh, don't worry, we're just rebranding it. But this isn't going over well with this administration. So what is university life like with Donald Trump as president?

[Robert P. George]

Well, first of all, let me say a word about dei. Whatever good intentions people might have had in trying to increase on university campuses, diversity, equity and inclusion. That's what DEI stands for. Diversity, equity and inclusion. The net result was the opposite of those things. Instead of diversity, we got conformism. Instead of equity, we got unfair treatment. Instead of inclusion, we got the exclusion of people who dissented from the dominant orthodoxies, the ideologies on the campus. So if it was an experiment. It is a failed experiment. And the way to deal with a failure is not to rebrand it. It's to get rid of it and replace it with something valuable. Now, what would be valuable. What would be valuable is making sure that you have such a diversity of views represented on your faculty and in your student body that everybody on campus, faculty members and students alike, can never rest comfortably in their opinions. Their opinions will always be challenged because there are going to be lots of people on the campus who will challenge their opinions. And that's the way we break out of group think and conformism. That's the way we advance knowledge. Most of the great advances of knowledge of history have come when people were willing to question what up until that point was a kind of dogma, a kind of established view. That's every bit as true, by the way, tutor in the sciences as it is in the other fields in the humanities and the social sciences. So we really need to go for aim for viewpoint diversity. Now, does that mean we should do affirmative action for conservatives?

[Tudor Dixon]

No.

[Robert P. George]

What we should do is maintain the highest standards, but treat people fairly. The reason Harvard is only 3% conservative on its faculty, only 3% of the faculty identify as conservatives, is simply and straightforwardly discrimination over many years, now, many decades, against people who dissent from the progressive orthodoxies on campuses like Harvard. We'll end it with a discrimination. Enough with that. And then let's look out around the country. This is my advice to the Harvard leadership or to the Princeton leadership or the leadership of the University of Illinois or any other university. My advice is this. Look up throughout the country and you'll see scholars out there who your institution has passed over for ideological reasons or that have been passed over by your peer institutions for ideological reasons, and then say, we're sorry about that. We want you to come join our faculty. That's not affirmative action. That's not lowering standards for conservatives. That's not special treatment. That's righting some old wrongs in order to give the university really what it needs if it's to fulfill its educational mission. And giving it what it needs means making sure that there is a robust dialogue, a robust exchange of ideas on the campus. So everybody is thinking and nobody is resting, content in conformism and group thinking.

[Tudor Dixon]

So let me ask you this. How do we. What do we do with about all the students that have gone through this and they have an attitude of I'm superior and therefore I am right? And I say that because I've had so many people who have experienced this in their lives where, you know, you go to undergrad with, with friends and then they go to one of the Ivy graduate schools and they come back to you and they say, I've been educated more than you at a better university than you. I am now in an elite class. And because of that, I can tell you you are wrong and you're bad. And those are people who I believe the way they speak is indoctrination. They come out with this, all white people are bad and we have to fix the wrongs of the past and you have to have an open border and you have to have all these things. And like you said, I mean, we can disagree, but, but they're not disagreeing. And they are now in the workplace and they are now running campaigns and they're, they're putting, they're voting for people who they believe, believe in this indoctrinated status. And, and I, and I am concerned about that period, which seems like it's like a 10 year period of graduates who fall into that or maybe more.

[Robert P. George]

Well, Tudor, let me tell you a little personal story. My father did not complete high school. He got a diploma. It was sent to his parents while he was off fighting in Normandy and Brittany in World War II. When he turned 18, they shipped him off to Europe to fight before he'd even finished his high school, sent his parents a diploma, and then when he came back, his father had been a coal miner. When he came back, fortunately, he didn't have to go into the mines because he had some training from the military. And of course, we had a booming economy. Economy after the, after the war. But he, as I say, didn't even complete high school. Now I have an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore. I've got a law degree and a master's degree from Harvard, and I have three doctorates from Oxford. Okay, I'm supposed to be a really smart guy, right? I got all these credentials. I wish I had half the wisdom of my father. Joseph M. George, I don't. If you wanted to, if somebody came to me, say, one of my own children came to me and said, I've got a really tough personal, existential ethical question here. I need your advice. I'd say, well, I'm going to give you the best advice I can, but I also want you to talk to your granddad because he's wiser than I am. And this is what young people have to learn today. Fancy degrees and fancy education doesn't necessarily equal wisdom. And you can have wisdom if you haven't even been to college. My father, we just lost him last year at age 98. He had it in spades. And that's just one example of countless examples that you and I and everybody else could give of profoundly wise people, virtuous people, good people who don't have fancy degrees. And I'll tell you what, fancy degrees also don't make you virtuous. I can tell you about a lot of people who are really lacking in virtue but have doctorates from Yale and law degrees from Stanford and medical degrees from Harvard and all of that stuff. So I think we just need to straighten people out about that.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

It's interesting because my great grandfather, actually he ran away at 16 to join the Navy. He was a child coal miner in Pennsylvania. So they had, we have that in common. He had gone into the coal mines when he was 8 years old and started working. And because they were tiny back then, they sent the tiny kids into the tiny veins of the mine and they would, they would mine with their hands, they would dig with their hands. So his fingernails were always gone. And he told us these stories, you know, and that, and it just, it's interesting to me because those were the things that we wanted to learn when we were little. The school was not nearly as interesting as going and sitting with grandpap and having him tell us about how horrible that was and that that caused him to join the Navy at 16. Lie about his age join at 16. He became a Navy diver, which was one of the Most dangerous jobs. And then when he returned to Pittsburgh, he became a. A diver for the government. And he would fix the bridges, go down and weld the bridges in the river, which was also incredibly dangerous. Became an alcoholic, and then one day woke up after not returning home and found the Lord and from that day on, read the Bible every year all the way through and never took another drink. And those were the stories that created this sense of like, I can do great things because look at what he did exactly right.

[Robert P. George]

Those heroes are inspiring. My dad was like that, Your grandpa. We have so much to learn from them. And it's so idiotic of people to think that we today are better than those people or we're wiser or we're more virtuous. We're not. We really should be their students.

[Tudor Dixon]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there's just so. There's so many. There's so much that you can learn from history. And yet we're not. We don't seem to be. You talk about bringing civics back, but there is. There are true historical learnings that we seem to be missing out on. I know you've commented on Mamdani. I've seen it on your. Your X account. There are things that he has come out and said that sound wonderful, they sound so great, but they've been done before and they don't work. But how do you convince people that these plans are not real plans?

[Robert P. George]

Well, there are lessons to history. Take mom Donnie's idea that we should have publicly owned, city owned grocery stores. We have plenty of people in our country today. People like Garry Kasparov, the great tennis, not tennis, chess champion, brilliant man. We have people like Kasparov who can tell you exactly what life was like in the Soviet Union with government run grocery stores. There was very little food in the grocery stores, and you had to line up from here to Tuesday in order to have a shot at getting a morsel or two from the little food that was available in the stores. If there's something that we have now tested, if there's an experiment that we've done and we've proven that it doesn't work, that is the experiment with collectivism or socialism or that form of socialism called communism where the government owns the means of production or owns the shops or owns the stores, it doesn't work. By contrast, the market system has lifted millions of people from Chile to India and all over the world where markets have been introduced, lifted millions of people out of poverty. So we. It's not as if we have to start from scratch here with no knowledge. We have knowledge. The experiment has been run time and time again. Socialism in the Soviet Union, socialism in Korea, socialism in Vietnam, socialism in China, socialism in Cuba, socialism now in Venezuela. You can't find a time when it worked. Now we need to draw the lessons from that. And we can't leave our young people in ignorance about those things. They should be studying the period in Russia from, say, 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s of the Soviet empire. We don't want our kids to be ignorant of that history.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, that's another thing that I think, even when we see this increase in antisemitism in the United States, even in Europe, I mean, it's been somewhat shocking, I think, how quickly it took hold. I've told this story before, before, but in 2018, I interviewed Holocaust survivors, and the one woman didn't speak the entire time, just her husband spoke, but she was also in a concentration camp. And when I went to leave the room, she grabbed my arm and looked at me. And in a very nasty tone, she said, they hate the Jews and they'll do it again. And I remember thinking, gosh, that would never happen again. Naively, you know, naively thinking that time is done and there is not that hatred out there. And then, you know, you heard these rumblings for years about antisemitism, but not until October 7th do I think we really went, whoa, my gosh, this is very, this is running rampant. And it's at our universities. I mean, we saw all the protests last year. And that to me was an outside effort organized to go into our universities and see that there was a weakness there. Go in there and start to teach one of those untruths truths. And when you were speaking up against it, you were the one that was silenced. If you were speaking to say, you know, stop the hatred, you were the one that was silenced. As opposed to the people who were out there saying, you know, globalize the intifada. And now you have even this situation in New York where that conversation has come up and this, this man has not said he condemns that. He said people think of the definition differently, but there is no different definition if you know, history, isn't that right?

[Robert P. George]

Yeah, I mean, we know what the intifada is. It's the effort to destroy the Jewish state. It's the effort to destroy Israel, to create a situation from the so called river to the sea. Although most of the protesters can't tell you which river in which sea to create a situation from the river to the sea that is non Jewish, where the Jews are erased from that part of the world. So yes, I mean, anti Semitism is one of those ancient curses that never remains in the grave. It's like a vampire. You think you've killed it, you think you've stigmatized it, you think you've put it on the margins, but then it comes back again, you know, out of the coffin. And here it is and we have it again. And you know what frightens me, Tudor, is we have it today both on the extreme fringe of the right and on the left.

[Tudor Dixon]

Yes, yes.

[Robert P. George]

It's not just on one side of the political spectrum. You know, in addition to the book that Cornel west and I have out Truth Matters, I have a new book of my own out called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. And one of the chapters in the book I devote to a prophecy, a prediction that was made in 1830 by the German Jewish Christian poet Heinrich Heinecke. Heine looked at his situation there in Germany in the 1830s, 100 years before Hitler, and he said, what I see is biblical faith, biblical principles collapsing in the minds and hearts of our people. They're being pushed out and it's being replaced with the kind of almost revival of the pagan, the Teutonic paganism of pre Christian Germany. And he predicted, he prophesied that as a result of this loss of faith, this collapse of biblical faith, there will come a time when tyrannical forces, secular tyrannical forces will take control in Germany. And as he put it, and this is a near quote, a situation will arise that will make the bloody French Revolution look like an innocent, like an innocent walk in the park. And sure enough, a hundred years later, what he predicted happened, the Nazis, the Holocaust, the mass killings of the Second World War, all of it came true. Now how did he foresee it? How did he prophesy it? He himself explained it, even back in his own time, before it actually played out. He said thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. When you see the lightning, the thunder is going to come. What's the lightning? What he saw was the collapse of biblical faith. And he knew as a result of that violence and evil, a return to the warlike pagan traditions of pre Christian Germany would be back. And it's exactly what happened.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, but that's what we see right now, I would say, in New York, with the massive numbers that came out for the idea of defunding the police, having the government take over all of these, I mean, they've openly branded it as socialism. But he said, seize the means of production, which, as you pointed out, is communism. This is, I think, a combination of ignorance and indoctrination. I mean, I think that there are a lot of people out there who are very ignorant to how impactful their vote is when they put somebody in power who wants to change the way the country has run from the time of its founding. And these are changes that are radical changes in what I argue is the most important city in the world because it's the financial hub of, of the world. Right. And so you have somebody.

[Robert P. George]

I mean, you know, that's why it was attacked on 9 11. It wasn't attacked because it happened to be on the east coast or, you know, on, on the Atlantic seaboard or anything like that. I mean, it was attacked because it was the financial hub of the United States and of the world. That's exactly right.

[Tudor Dixon]

And that to me is very scary. That that's the target.

[Robert P. George]

Very scary. And it'll be targeted again, I fear. But back to the point you were making about antisemitism and the revival of antisemitism. I saw this and I spoke out against this in the universities 15 years ago. It wasn't yesterday that this started. I told people, it's here. I see it. It's maybe just barely below the surface, but just barely. On the day after that horrible attack by Hamas on those innocent children and others, on October 7th, the day after, 33 student groups at Harvard, 33 left wing student groups put out a statement blaming the rapes and murders and kidnappings on Israel, on the Jewish state. Can you believe that?

[Tudor Dixon]

They said, I mean, sadly, I can.

[Robert P. George]

Today, with Israel for babies being murdered, for women, girls being raped, this shows you how deranged the situation was, how deep the antisemitism was even before yesterday.

[Tudor Dixon]

Yeah, because how could you convince people to sign that if it hadn't already been there?

[Robert P. George]

Oh, exactly, right. It's October 8th. You would think that on that day of all days, people would be having sympathy for the people of Israel. Sympathy for the Jewish people? People who were killed for no reason other than they were Jewish or were thought to be Jewish. Some people who were, who were killed there weren't even Jewish, but they were killed because they were either Jewish or thought to be Jewish. Of all days. There should be sympathy on that day, surely. But no, there wasn't sympathy. There was antisemitism. 33 student groups at Harvard.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll Continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

So can this be reversed? Because yesterday we posted something on DEI in universities and I noticed that one of the comments was it's too late, there's nothing we can do now. And I just thought, I can't believe that.

[Robert P. George]

No, we can turn this thing around. We really can. I mean, good stuff is happening now. Most people don't know about this, but there are programs and institutes and centers being built at universities now across the country that are providing within these universities, even indeed Harvard, certainly my own institution here at Princeton, but also University of Florida and University of Texas and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of Tennessee and Arizona State University and the Ohio State University. There are programs and institutes being built that are really modeling for the entire university what a genuine deep liberal arts education is all about. Wrestling with the big questions, wrestling with the questions of what it means to be human. Having complete free speech so you can challenge any orthodoxy requiring only that you do business in the proper currency of intellectual discourse by giving reasons and making arguments and marshaling evidence where students are genuinely educated and not indoctrinated. And these programs tutorial are attracting terrific enrollments and majors. There's a big student market for genuine deep real education that is not indoctrination and our job is to provide it. And we're starting to see it all over the country. My program here at Princeton, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions does that. The program in Human Flourishing at Harvard does that. The Hamilton School at the University of Florida does that. The Civitas program at the University of Texas does that. The Salmon P. Chase center at the Ohio State University. These are all things that we should know about and that we should be cheering on.

[Tudor Dixon]

And that's what I was going to say, having the support of people out there, because people have been suddenly speaking up about this. And you see a lot of folks, a lot of parents saying, we don't want to send our kids to an indoctrination camp. You see a lot of conservatives speaking up against it. And even on the news, you see people speaking up against it. Does that help to push these programs forward?

[Robert P. George]

It certainly does. It certainly does. We need the support of everyone we can get on this. I'll give you the example again of my own university, and the program that I founded 25 years ago now was the first of these programs. It's been the model for so many others. Princeton is not a large university. We're actually a liberal arts college kind of masquerading as a big university. We only have about 7,500 students, including our graduate students. So we're a third the solace of Harvard or Yale or Stanford, and I don't know, maybe a fifth or even, even less the size of big state universities like Ohio State or University of Florida or University of Texas. And yet in this very small university, my program, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, had last year 325 undergraduate fellows of the program, 325 Princeton students who were eager to get an education that was not indoctrination, where they were free to dissent from campus orthodoxies, to question the dogmas that are dominant on the campus, to really be challenged and to challenge others. There's a tremendous student market for the good stuff. Well, let's just give them the good stuff.

[Tudor Dixon]

Good. That's. That is exactly what we need to hear. So I. For everybody out there listening, what you're doing is, is working. There is a chance that you can send your kids to universities and get them back. And yeah, I was just saying, I said the other day on this program, my daughter, the other night, I was putting her to bed and she said, my, my friend, her friend, she's going into her freshman year in high school and her friend is going into her senior year. And she said, my friend said, it goes so fast. And she said, and then you go to college. And she said, but the kids that go to college, they don't come back as Christians, Mom. And I was like, that doesn't have to be the case. But it's. It's interesting to me that a senior in high school was talking about that concern with a freshman in high school. Like they are really genuinely saying what's going to happen. We have to be particular about what we choose and where we go because we don't want somebody to change who we are. I think that's interesting.

[Robert P. George]

That's kind of a prescient comment on the part of that high school senior. But here again, I can tell you about my own university. We have a thriving Catholic chaplaincy. We have several thriving evangelical chaplaincies. We have a thriving Orthodox Jewish chaplaincy. There are chaplaincies Jewish and Christian, both Catholic and Protestant, within the Christian community that really represent an alternative to the kind of secular progressive orthodoxy. And again, they're attracting hundreds and hundreds of students. That's super encouraging.

[Tudor Dixon]

It is, absolutely. Okay, so tell us where to get the new book. Give us the name again and tell us where to get it.

[Robert P. George]

Well, the book that Cornel west and I have out is called Truth Matters Truth, Cornel west and Robert George, and that's available from all the online booksellers. It's available in a very inexpensive paperback and a pretty, pretty well priced, fairly priced hardcover as well. So Truth Matters by Robert George and Cornel West. And then my own book, which is just out a few days ago, is called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. And you can acquire Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth at any of the online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any of the others, or from the publisher, which is Encounter Books, which is offering the book at a very nice discount right now. And both of these books tutor Truth Matters and Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. We have written My Case, My Book, and Cornell's the other Case, the book Cornell and I did together. We have really written these books not for our fellow academics, not for scholars, but for general audiences. This is for anybody who's interested in ideas, anybody who's interested in how we can turn things around in academic life, how we can bring up our young people to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers. And I'd especially encourage parents and grandparents to get these books into the hands of your high school or college age children and grandchildren. These books are really written above all for them, for the kinds of kids who are now tempted to say things like, well, you have your truth and I have my truth, but there's no such thing as the truth. That's a very pernicious idea. There really is a truth. We never get at it perfectly, we never get at it fully, but we can make progress and we can get nearer and nearer to the fullness of truth. And we can correct our errors, but only if we think carefully, think critically, think well, think logically, think precisely, question these dogmatic orthodoxies, resist indoctrination. And that's the message that we're bringing in these books to our young people. And they're written for young people to be able to read. So if you have a grandchild, if you have a child who's in high school or in college, get one or both of these books and get them into their hands.

[Tudor Dixon]

So I haven't read the new one yet. I have to get that one. The Truth Matters is really, it's great because it's from your perspective and it's from Cornel West's perspective. And every chapter is going back and forth, forth and, and just the conversation and the interview style of what you both, how you both respond to these questions and, and the conversation that you're having together of, of truth and seeking truth and how you both individually do it. I think that's the beauty of it is that you're seeing the fact that two people who have very different viewpoints on things are able to sit down and have a really thriving friendship in these discussions, even if the discussions are that you, you disagree on certain things. To me, that is so critical for students to see right now. Like if you have a kid that's in high school, I have one that, like I said, is going into high school and one that's going into her junior year. And I want them to read that so that they can understand as they're kind of learning that there's going to be discourse in, in universities and colleges and they're planning to go there, prepare them. This is the best way for them to be prepared. And they're going to be ready. They'll, they'll have an understanding before they go. And I, I think it's great. So I'll get the new one. Truth Matters. I loved and Robert P. George, I always love having you on. Thank you so much for being here.

[Robert P. George]

Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you tutor.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. And thank you all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon podcast. For this episode and others, go to tutordixenpodcast.com the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can watch, watch the video on Rumble or YouTube uterdixon. Have a blessed day.

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[Tudor Dixon]

This is an iHeart podcast.