2025 Ramsey Award Winner

Dr. Robert P. George

The Center for Bioethics and Culture and the Paul Ramsey Award Committee are delighted to announce that Dr. Robert P. George will receive the 2025 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics. 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 also taught at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served on the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics and as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds the degrees of JD and MTS from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-three honorary degrees.  He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, and a Barry Prize for Distinguished Scholarly Achievement of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, among many other awards, He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee.

About The Paul Ramsey Award

The Paul Ramsey Award honors those who have made an outstanding contribution to the bioethics discussion and are actively engaged in society; facing the challenges of the 21st century, profoundly defending the dignity of humankind, and enthusiastically embracing ethical biotechnology for the human good. The Ramsey Award is given to those who have demonstrated exemplary achievement in the field of bioethics.

Who was Paul Ramsey?

Paul Ramsey is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the twentieth century. He was a distinguished writer on bioethics a generation ago, and served as Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion, Princeton University. Ramsey shines as an almost lone beacon in the general darkness of academic bioethics, since his commitment to the sanctity and dignity of human life was paramount.

Previous Ramsey Award Recipients

• 2014: Daniel Sulmasy
• 2015: John F. Kilner
• 2016: Brent Waters
• 2017: David Albert Jones
• 2018: Farr A. Curlin
• 2019: Patrick T. Smith
• 2020/21: Helen Alvaré
• 2022: C. Ben Mitchell
• 2023: Gilbert Meilaender
• 2024: Jeffrey Bishop