The University’s second biennial conference on religion and the state, to be held on April 24-26, 2009. Our theme this year is “Religion and the State in Islam and the West,” a theme intended to include points of contact, cooperation, and conflict between Western and Islamic cultures as well as scholarship that addresses religion/state matters in either of these cultural areas individually.

Please join University faculty presenters and many others from the community at three keynote lectures by internationally recognized speakers.

Christopher Hitchens
Opening Speaker
God is not Great - "How Religion Poisons Everything"
Thursday April 23, 2009
5:30 p.m. Campus Recreation Center (Reserve free tickets: 254-3067)

Christopher Hitchens is a book reviewer for The Atlantic Monthly, and author of more than ten books, including, most recently, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (2003), Why Orwell Matters (2002), The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), and Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001). He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and has written prolifically for several prominent American and English periodicals. He is also a regular television and radio commentator.

Alan Wolfe
Keynote Address
"Who's Afraid of American Religion"
Friday April 24, 2009
7 - 8 p.m. (School of Law, Room 283)

Alan Wolfe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, and currently chairs a task force of the American Political Science Association on “Religion and Democracy in the United States.” A contributing editor of The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, Commonwealth Magazine, and In Character, Professor Wolfe writes often for those publications as well as for Commonweal, The New York Times, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and other magazines and newspapers.

John L. Esposito
Keynote Address
"Islam & the State: Theocracy or Democracy?"
Saturday April 25, 2009
7-8 p.m. (School of Law, Room 283)

John Esposito is Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, and Founding Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding: History and International Affairs in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. A consultant to the Department of State as well as corporations, universities, and the media worldwide, Esposito specializes in Islam, political Islam, and the impact of Islamic movements from North Africa to Southeast Asia. He is the author of more than thirty books, and served as Editor-in-Chief of the 4 volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Oxford History of Islam, a Book-of-the-Month Club and History Book Club selection, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam and The Islamic World: Past and Present.