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 U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also been the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. 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 University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. He is Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Cornel West, also warmly regarded as Brother West, is the current holder of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. In his capacity as professor, Dr. West offers instruction on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects encompassing philosophy, politics, literature, cultural theory, music, and the classics. He is dedicated to engaging diverse audiences and advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with a focus on truth-telling and the pursuit of love and justice.

Dr. West previously served as Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in three years, and subsequently received both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton. Cornel West was the first Black man to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1980.

Dr. West has written 20 books and edited 13 additional volumes. He has also contributed forewords and blurbs for hundreds of authors. His most celebrated publications include Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His book Black Prophetic Fire explores the legacy of prominent African American figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most recently, he co-authored Truth Matters with Dr. Robert George, fostering thoughtful discourse on contemporary social issues in the United States.

Through a partnership with MasterClass.com, Dr. West teaches several courses, including a class on empathy, MasterClass’s first multi-instructor course on Black history, Black Freedom & Black Love, and a course on philosophy. For further information, visit www.cornelwest.com and select the MasterClass banner.

In 2024, Dr. West was an independent presidential candidate. That same year, he delivered the 2023–2024 Gifford Lecture series, titled “A Jazz-Soaked Philosophy for Our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane,” at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.