He was led to resign after a scandal surrounding an alleged sexual affair between him and his daughter-in-law, Lissa Jackson Roche, and her subsequent suicide.
Ronald Reagan appointed Roche chairman of the National Council on Educational Research in 1984.
Scandal broke out upon George's remarriage, still in 1999, when his daughter-in-law, Lissa Jackson Roche, claimed to have had an affair with him spanning 19 years.
She threatened suicide, and her husband found her in the college arboretum with a handgun and her blood still warm; he was unable to prevent her self-inflicted death.
The 2000 book Hillsdale: Greek Tragedy in America's Heartland explores the events and questions whether Lissa Roche's death was actually suicide.