How conservative and progressive Ivy League professors became best friends

BOSTON, MA. — Robert George and Cornel West may be two of the most improbable friends in American public life.

George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, is a devout Catholic and a staunch conservative. West, on the other hand, is a passionate progressive intellectual — a professor at Union Theological Seminary, celebrated for his activism and critiques of inequality and injustice.

This unlikely friendship between the two professors started with a conversation about 20 years ago. A student at Princeton was launching a new campus magazine and invited West, who was at Princeton at the time, to interview a professor for the first issue. West chose George, whom he only knew only in passing.

What began as a planned half-hour interview in George’s office turned into a four-