Princeton's Robert George sets up a conservative activist group with intellectual heft

by Fred Barnes
05/28/2009

Enter Robert George. A professor of politics (and a lot more) at Princeton--he holds an endowed chair once held by Woodrow Wilson--George wants to bring intellectual vigor to the Republican party and the conservative movement, especially on social issues like pornography and marriage. "We need to connect our intellectuals with our activists," he says.

George, 48, has founded the American Principles Project (APP) with an ambitious agenda that would change the face of conservative politics. And Frank Cannon and Jeffrey Bell, leading conservative strategists who run a public affairs firm in Washington, have joined him.

George, who created the popular James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton, is no stranger to politics. He's a pro-life, pro-family conservative who was appointed by the first President Bush to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and by the second to the Council on Bioethics. But his new venture will make him a major political player.

The idea behind George's leap in politics is twofold. First, he would publicize scholarship by academic intellectuals that buttresses the conservative case on issues from family breakdown to the "the sexualizing of children" and bring it to the attention of conservative politicians and activists. He calls this the "mobilization of scholarship." The aim is to change the view of Republican elites that social issues in particular are lowbrow, emotional, and to be avoided. the rest