The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs is an academic research center at Georgetown University in Washington, DC dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of religion, ethics, and politics. Through research, teaching, and service, the Center explores global challenges of democracy and human rights, economic and social development, international diplomacy, and interreligious understanding. Two premises guide the Center’s work: that a deep examination of faith and values is critical to address these challenges, and that the open engagement of religious and cultural traditions with one another can promote peace.[1] Conceived as part of Georgetown's "Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Peace" in 2004, the Berkley Center emerged as an independent organization in 2006 under a gift from William R. Berkley, a member of Georgetown's Board of Directors. The center is headed by Thomas Banchoff, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown.
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The Center has made headlines for a number of events, including hosting the controversial Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan for a series of teleconference speeches on Islam-West relations.[1] Additionally, the center hosts an annual conference on religious pluralism, which has led to the publication of two compilations from Oxford University Press: Democracy and the New Religious Pluralism (2007)[2] and Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights (2011).[3]
In addition to hosting live events, the Berkley Center has a Knowledge Resources website that acts as a digital resource on religion and world affairs.[4] The Knowledge Resources site serves as a destination for students, scholars, policymakers, and citizens who want to learn more about religion and world affairs. The fruit of collaboration between Center faculty and students, the Resources consist of:
The Berkley Center also directs initiatives engaging Georgetown students on issues relating to the center's mission of studying the interplay of religion and politics. These initiatives have given the Berkley Center a diverse portfolio of opportunities for student engagement with religious-political issues, in addition to the scholarship contributed by the Center's faculty and fellows. Three of these initiatives — the Undergraduate Fellows Program, the Junior Year Abroad Network, and the Undergraduate Learning and Interreligious Understanding Survey — have been active since the Berkley Center's establishment in 2006 and have, since 2009, been part of the Doyle Engaging Difference Initiative, a campus-wide collaboration between the Berkley Center, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), and Georgetown College, designed to promote tolerance and intellectual engagement with diversity in the curriculum and in co-curricular activities. The initiative is made possible through the support of William J. Doyle, a member of the Georgetown University Board of Directors.
The Undergraduate Fellows Program combines a four-credit seminar with a collaborative research project that addresses issues at the intersection of religion, culture, society, and politics. Along with the in-depth reading, writing, and dialogue typical of an upper-level seminar, student fellows conduct original research and formulate policy recommendations culminating in a written report. Undergraduate Fellows Reports have included: Transcending Traditional U.S. Foreign Policy: Track-Two Diplomacy and the Challenge of Global Religious Diversity (2011), Bridging Babel: New Social Media and Intercultural and Interreligious Understanding (2010), When Diversity Meets the Global Market: Forging a New Generation of Business Leaders (2010), A Leap of Faith: Interreligious Marriage in America (2008), Religious Advocates: A Force in U.S. Politics? (2008), and Secular and Religious Approaches to Global Development (2006).
In 2006, the Berkley Center created the Junior Year Abroad Network to take advantage of the large number of Georgetown students who study abroad during their junior year. Through the network, students post letters online with their observations about the intersection of religion, culture, society, and politics in their host countries. On their return, they get together to share their experiences and publish a report on their findings. So far, more than 240 students in more than 50 countries have participated in JYAN. In 2011, the Berkley Center introduced a new web-based feature facilitating student and faculty comments on student letters in order to help advance student-faculty dialogue on critical issues in today’s world.
The Berkley Center and Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) conducted a five-year longitudinal study to track student attitudes towards religious diversity and their evolution in response to experiences at Georgetown in and outside the classroom. The project aims to help educators at Georgetown, throughout the United States, and around the world identify best practices in building tolerance. In 2010-11, final interviews and a comprehensive senior survey were administered to the students who were graduating. Insights from their four years at Georgetown will be analyzed and then outlined in a project report to be prepared for publication in 2012.
Beginning in Fall 2011, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service has offered a Certificate on Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs in collaboration with the Berkley Center. The certificate, the equivalent of a minor, gives students an opportunity to explore these issues across three thematic areas: Faith and Ethics in International Relations; Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective; and Religion in History and Culture. The certificate program culminates in a capstone seminar organized around student research and an annual spring colloquium.
In early 2010, the Berkley Center collaborated with the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, and with Rodney Jacob, a member of the Georgetown University Board of Regents, to create the Education and Social Justice Project to engage students and build knowledge about the deep connections between global challenges of poverty and education. The project provides students with summer research fellowships to travel abroad and conduct in-depth examinations of innovative initiatives, with a focus on the work of Jesuit secondary and post-secondary institutions. Under faculty supervision, the students gather information through interviews, analyze best practices, and share their reports and conclusions with a wider global audience. In the program’s first year, three students were hosted by St. Aloysius Gonzaga School in Nairobi, Kenya; Ateneo de Manila University in Manila, Philippines; and the Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. Their report brings together the main results of the field work, including background and analysis of each of the initiatives and excerpts from extended interviews with educators and activists in each country.
The Berkley Center has partnered with numerous other organizations to pursue its work in different areas related to the interplay of religion, politics, culture, development, and the economy.
Established in 1998 by World Bank President James Wolfensohn and Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey, the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) is an NGO based at the Berkley Center bridging the worlds of faith and secular development and supporting research and dialogue on global policy challenges. Katherine Marshall, who leads the Berkley Center’s Program on Religion and Global Development, serves as Executive Director.
Since 2006, the Berkley Center and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) have worked closely with the Henry Luce Foundation. The Luce/SFS Program on Religion and International Affairs has supported two program areas — Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy and Religion and Global Development — as well as the Center’s outreach to government and other academic centers and institutes around the world.
In 2007, the Berkley Center began a collaboration with the Geneva-based World Economic Forum around issues of faith, values, and the global agenda. In January 2010, the Center co-produced a report on the topic released at the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. In September 2011, Georgetown and the Forum convened a conference at Georgetown to explore efforts to close values deficits in business and government.
In January 2011, the Berkley Center received a grant from the Templeton Foundation to create a Religious Freedom Project. Led by the Center’s Thomas Farr and Timothy Shah, the project seeks to advance the study of religious freedom as an interdisciplinary field. A series of conferences and publications will examine its significance for efforts to advance human rights, democracy, and economic and social development.
Georgetown/On Faith is an online partnership between the Berkley Center and the Washington Post designed to provide knowledge and inform debate at the intersection of religion, politics, and society. It features faculty blogs as well as links to the Center’s online Knowledge Resources. In July 2007, the Berkley Center partnered with On Faith to provide the Muslims Speak Out Forum, featuring some of the Islamic world's most influential leaders, including Ali Gomaa, Mustafa Ceric, Gus Dur, Mohammad Fadlallah and others. Non-Muslim participants include John Esposito, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Paul Heck, Jon Meacham, and Sally Quinn.[2]
The Berkley Center has seven major areas of academic research, each led by a member of the Berkley Center's faculty. The http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/programs/religion-and-ethics-in-world-politics Religion and Ethics in World Politics Program], led by Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff, examines the political and policy significance of religion and ethics, with an emphasis on democratic institutions and value conflict. The Program in Globalization, Religions, and the Secular, led by José Casanova, brings together leading scholars across disciplines to explore questions related to the intersection between globalization and the resurgence of public religion. The Religion, Conflict, and Peace Program, led by Eric Patterson, examines the intersection of religion with other cultural, social, and political factors in the generation and resolution of conflict in order to produce critical case studies and develop knowledge resources for government professionals. The Program on The Church and Interreligious Dialogue, led by Chester Gillis, examines the Catholic Church’s interaction with other religious traditions as well as the challenges posed by increasing cultural and religious pluralism worldwide. The Program in Law, Religion, and Values, led by Berkley Center Associate Director Michael Kessler, supports teaching, research, and scholarly conferences that explore how religion and values legitimate, shape, and conflict with global political, cultural, and legal systems in transnational and comparative perspective. The Religion and Global Development Program, led by Katherine Marshall, tracks the engagement of religious communities around global policy challenges and brings together stakeholders to examine best practices and advance collaboration. The Program in Religious and U.S. Foreign Policy, led by Thomas Farr, explores the role of religion in U.S. foreign policy, with special attention to issues of human rights and international religious freedom.
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