An Interview with Robert P. George

It’s no secret that viewpoint diversity has long been scarce among faculty and staff at most universities. Yet events on college campuses since October 7, 2023 have exposed for many just how entrenched progressive ideologies have become within higher education, causing an awakening among alumni, families and students. The result could be an opportunity for real reform, allowing universities to return to or reaffirm their role of truth seeking.

Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is esteemed scholar Robert P. George. He shares his thoughts on how to elevate free speech on campus and provides insights on the future of higher education.

Topics Discussed on this Episode:

• Robby’s journey from West Virginia bluegrass bands to Princeton
• Whether universities have strayed too far from truth seeking
• The role of donors and alumni in changing campus culture
• The reining in of university DEI departments
• Is college still a wise investment?
• Overcoming the fear of speaking up
• Opportunities for reform in higher education

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and Director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which he founded in 2000. He holds numerous distinctions and awards, including the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and a 2005 Bradley Prize. He also serves on The Bradley Foundation’s Board of Directors.

Interview with Roger Kimball

Words matter. The right words can advance new ideas, enrich our lives and alter the course of history. Yet in today’s technologically driven world, language is often diluted as people think less about word choice and more about quick responses. This has also contributed to a decline in culture. Shorter attention spans and the lure of the screen have made people less inclined to appreciate or understand the works of the great artists, writers and thinkers. It has also contributed to an erosion of the values of the Western tradition and the principles of America’s founding. 

Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom has dedicated his life’s work to preserving culture and contributing to the world of ideas. Roger Kimball, publisher of Encounter Books, shares his thoughts on the power of words and provides an update on a new initiative dedicated to honoring and preserving the traditions of the West and of America. 

Topics Discussed on this Episode:

·         Kimball’s path toward the publishing industry and Encounter Books

·         The intriguing history of Encounter Books

·         The power of words

·         The impact of technology on culture

·         The New Criterion’s role in upholding the Western tradition

·         Encounter’s Golden Thread Initiative

·         The future of high culture

An Interview with Peter Berkowitz

The US Constitution is one of the greatest governing documents in history. No other charter has so deliberately advanced the belief that the government’s main purpose is to protect the individual rights of its citizens. The founders, recognizing the natural rights of mankind, created a seminal document that protects an individual’s unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  

Despite the exceptionalism of the Constitution and its battle-tested endurance, there are grave threats that could severely undermine and weaken it. 

As we continue our 20th anniversary celebration of Bradley Prize winners, our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Peter Berkowitz, one of the country’s leading political thinkers and Constitutional scholars. Berkowitz warns that a decades long movement to distort the meaning of rights, the weaponization of the legal system, and a general lack of understanding of our rights, pose serious challenges to the preservation of the Constitution.    

Topics Discussed on this Episode: 

·         What drew Berkowitz to the study of the Constitution and America’s founding principles 

·         Current threats to the Constitution 

·         Politicization of the Supreme Court 

·         Expansion of the administrative state 

·         Differences on the right about the role of government and foreign policy 

·         America’s role in the world 

·         Pro-Palestinian protests and anti-American sentiment 

·         Opportunity for higher education reform 

·         Will the Constitution endure? 

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He previously served as the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. Berkowitz is a columnist for RealClear Politics and is a 2017 Bradley Prize winner. 

America’s founders are revered for creating a structure of governance that values individual rights and promotes human flourishing. Nearly 250 years after they took the first steps toward creating a more perfect union by drafting and adopting the US Constitution, the nation continues to be a beacon of hope and opportunity around the world. That the Framers could so eloquently articulate the principles of ordered liberty that guide us today results in part from their own careful examination of the great thinkers of the 17th and 18th century.   Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Dr. William Barclay Allen. A 2024 Bradley Prize winner, he has dedicated his life’s work to studying the Founders and the philosophers who influenced the Western tradition. He is also committed to instilling an understanding and appreciation of that tradition among the next generation.  Allen is the Emeritus Dean of James Madison College and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. He is a former member and chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights and has been a Kellogg National Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and a member of the National Council on the Humanities.

Topics discussed on this episode: 

• How Allen’s experience growing up in the segregated south influenced his life’s path
• The story of his intellectual journey
• Why Allen translated Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws
• His decision to focus on America’s founders and the US Constitution
• Why Allen believes Washington is the most important founder and America’s first progressive
• Teaching history in a way that reflects the words and experiences of those who lived it
• Advice to young scholars who are just starting out
• What it means to Allen to win a Bradley Prize 

An Interview with Jay Bhattacharya

Four years ago this past March, America followed the direction of public health officials and went into lockdown mode due to the emergence of Covid-19. Yet by the fall of 2020, it became clear to some in the medical community that the soundest approach to the pandemic was to let healthy individuals resume daily life, while protecting the most vulnerable. 

Medical experts from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford led the way in promoting this approach by issuing The Great Barrington Declaration. 

What happened next is a case study in government overreach and censorship. The Declaration’s authors were cast aside by their peers, shut down by the US government and threatened by the public. 

Courageously, they continue to speak up. 

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is one of those experts and is our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom. A 2024 Bradley Prize winner, he joins us to share his experience and what’s at stake for a free society, and science and research, when free speech is denied.

Bhattacharya is Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University, Director of the University’s Center for Economics and Demography of Health and Aging, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research.

Topics Discussed on this Episode

• What drew Bhattacharya to economics, medicine and health policy and why these fields are complementary
• The point at which he realized that continued lockdowns were devastating
• Why scientists felt compelled to self-censor during the pandemic
• The reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration
• Key takeaways from oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a landmark free speech case
• Where Americans can go to learn perspectives that the media doesn’t cover
• The state of scientific integrity and debate
• What it means to Bhattacharya to win a Bradley Prize

Interview with Samuel Gregg

America’s entrepreneurial spirit is part of what defines its national character. Americans celebrate the notion that one can build a business from the ground up by virtue of sheer determination and perseverance, whether it’s a neighborhood ice cream shop or a global auto company. This zeal for free enterprise quickly catapulted the country into an economic powerhouse and continues to captivate dreamers and innovators throughout the world.

Yet America faces real obstacles to sustaining an environment that’s ripe for entrepreneurship. Burdensome red tape, a dire debt crisis and the vast expansion of the administrative state are barriers to entry and growth for businesses. 

Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Samuel Gregg, one the country’s preeminent free enterprise scholars and a 2024 Bradley Prize winner. He shares his thoughts on how to keep America’s entrepreneurial vitality strong, as well as insights into current economic debates.

Samuel Gregg is the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, monetary theory and policy, and natural law theory. He's the author of 16 books, including his most recent book, The Next American Economy: Nation, State and Markets in an Uncertain World. 

Topics Discussed on this Episode:

• America’s support of free enterprise compared to other countries
• How entrepreneurial success stories have shaped Gregg’s perspective
• Improving the climate and outlook for American industry
• Big Tech, woke capitalism and the weakening of the family
• How proponents of limited government can address the breakdown of civil society
• China’s economic outlooks and lessons for the US
• The intersection of markets and morality
• The conditions that will allow the next generation of entrepreneurs to succeed
• What it means to win a Bradley Prize

Interview with Allen Guelzo

What would Lincoln do? Leaders and historians often ask this question when America is in a time of crisis. It’s understandable, considering Lincoln’s extraordinary leadership during the darkest and most fragile period in the country’s history.  Today, our nation confronts a vast array of serious challenges that threaten to undermine its strength and the trust of its citizens. Underscoring this point is a recent poll showing that only 28 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the U.S. Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Dr. Allen Guelzo, a preeminent authority on President Lincoln. As America navigates another time of strife, we turned to him for answers to the perennial question – what would Lincoln do?  Allen Guelzo is a New York Times bestselling author, American historian, and commentator on public issues. He is Director of the James Madison Program Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship and Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. 

Topics discussed on this episode: 

• Why Dr. Guelzo focused his scholarship on Lincoln
• The many unexplored angles and aspects of Lincoln
• Lincoln’s character and complexity
• Lessons to be learned from Lincoln’s leadership
• Whether democracy is currently in peril
• Election integrity in Lincoln’s time compared to today
• How citizens can restore trust in each other
• What could have been different if Lincoln wasn’t assassinated
• How Dr. Guelzo himself became a distinguished orator

Previously, he was the Director of Civil War Era Studies and the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He is a 2018 Bradley Prize winner.

The state of democracy, upcoming elections, the economy and political discord are just a few of the many issues that are top of mind among Americans today. Yet, as history reminds us, these same challenges have confronted the country since its founding. Looking to history can help inform leaders, communities and citizens on how to navigate times of upheaval with greater confidence and even optimism.

Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Andrew Roberts, a distinguished scholar who has brought some of history’s most prominent figures to life through his many books, publications, and his podcast. Roberts shares some of the lessons learned from the past and how to apply them to today’s environment.

Andrew Roberts is the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a visiting professor at the War Studies Department at King’s College in London and the Lehrman Institute Lecturer at the New York Historical Society. He has written or edited 20 books and is an accomplished public speaker.

Topics discussed on this episode: 

• How Andrew chooses his topics and his approach to writing about them
• His latest book, co-authored with General David Petraeus, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine
• Vladmir Putin and how history may view him
• Andrew’s take on the level of engagement America should have in current conflicts
• Key differences in how war is waged today versus during World War II
• Universal characteristics of good leaders
• Andrew’s service in the House of Lords
• How the study of history has changed his life

In 2022, Andrew was elevated to the United Kingdom’s House of Lords as Baron Roberts of Belgravia. He is also a 2016 Bradley Prize winner.

An Interview with Judge Janice Rogers Brown

The U.S. Constitution has held our Republic together through wars, the Great Depression and civil unrest. Yet for all that it has helped us endure, the Constitution faces great challenges. 

Will Americans cherish and defend it, or bend to efforts to weaken and undermine it? 

Our guest on this episode of Voice of Freedom is Judge Janice Rogers Brown. She shares her thoughts on whether citizens have the “discipline and toughness” required to safeguard the Constitution and addresses other significant Constitutional matters.

Brown was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2005, where she served until 2017. Before that, she was an associate judge of the California Supreme Court.

Topics Discussed:

• What drew Judge Brown to a career in law and the principles of the Constitution
• Why she believes the Constitution’s teachings are tough
• The significance of originalism and how to defend it
• The impact of partisanship on the justice system
• Her thoughts on whether racial set asides are constitutional
• How independent thinking and an inquisitive nature shaped her judicial philosophy

She has received numerous awards and honors throughout her distinguished career, including a 2018 Bradley Prize. 

An Interview with Dr. Ed Fuelner, a Conservative Institution Builder

What does it mean to be a conservative? That question has long been debated, but the foundational principles of conservativism have been more sharply challenged in recent years. Focal points of discussion have centered on the role of government and America’s approach to global conflict.

Few have as much insight into the development and growth of conservatism and its current state than our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Dr. Ed Feulner, a renowned leader and institution-builder, shares his own path towards the ideals of freedom, describes what it took to build a movement, and offers his thoughts on the principles upon which conservatives can coalesce. 

Dr. Ed Feulner co-founded and built Heritage in the late 1970s from a small policy shop into an American powerhouse of conservative ideas.

Feulner has authored nine books, played a prominent role in dozens of organizations, and speaks frequently both in the United States and abroad.

Topics discussed on this episode:

• The books that influenced his ideological perspective and shaped his life
• Feulner’s role in building institutions of the modern conservative movement
• How he transformed ideas into policy that have impacted America
• What it means to be a conservative
• Whether conservatives can coalesce around the restoration of civil society
• America’s role in the world and the state of our country
• Are we in a new Cold War?
• The role of free markets and free enterprise in today’s conservatism
• How he continues to remain a happy warrior

Over the years, he has consistently been listed as one of the 100 most influential conservatives in America and his service has been recognized with numerous accolades and honors, including the 2012 Bradley Prize.