'A fair fight on the plane of reason': Princeton's Robert George

The story is told that whenever former Princeton president Harold Shapiro received an angry telephone call from someone demanding to know why Princeton had hired a professor with such fanatical views, the first thing he did was check to see where the call originated.

If the person shouting into his ear was phoning from outside Princeton's ivy-covered walls, Mr. Shapiro knew the caller was referring to philosopher Peter Singer—promoter of infanticide, euthanasia, and bestiality. If the call came from within the university, he knew it was a complaint about Princeton's other notorious troublemaker: Professor Robert George, an Oxford-trained Catholic moral philosopher whose presence at deeply secular Princeton often raises liberal hackles.