"From division to dialogue: Should religion have a voice in the university?"
The next Faculty Roundtable at Yale will be held on Thursday, February 13, 2020. Nicholas Wolterstorff and Harry Lewis will discuss the place of religion in the university. How might the religious voice influence academic conversations among peers and between disciplines? What might it contribute to the quest for educational excellence?
Nicholas Wolterstorff is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University where he taught for thirteen years (1989-2002), and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree from Calvin College and his doctorate from Harvard University. In 1978, with Alvin Plantinga, he helped found the Society of Christian Philosophers, a large affiliate group of the American Philosophical Association, of which he is a past president. He has been awarded numerous honors and prominent lectureships, including the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford, and the Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary. A few of his more than twenty books are Reason with the Bounds of Religion, Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Lament for a Son, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Art Rethought, Acting Liturgically, and a memoir entitled In the World of Wonders, published in January 2019. His most recent book, Religion in the University (Yale, April 2019) will inform much of the content of this Roundtable discussion.
Harry Lewis is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University where he has taught since 1974. He served as the dean of Harvard College from 1995 to 2003 where he oversaw the undergraduate experience from residential life and academic advising to athletics and intercultural and race relations. He served as interim dean of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the spring of 2015. He has published numerous articles and books on various aspects of computer science. His several books include Excellence Without A Soul (2006), Blown to Bits: Your Life Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion (2008), and What is College For? (2013). Excellence Without a Soul was a Boston Globe best-seller and received favorable reviews in the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal. It has been translated into Chinese and Korean. From 1996 to 2012, he contributed regularly to Talks at Morning Prayers (https://lewis.seas.harvard.edu/pages/morning-prayers). He is also a devoted Red Sox fan.
The Faculty Roundtable is sponsored by the Rivendell Institute at Yale University.
Images downloaded from www.unsplash.com. Public Domain. (men seated, Photo by Kevin Bluer; man reading book, Photo by Rumman Amin; synagogue, Photo by Marie Bellando-Mitjans; stone cross, Photo by DDP)