Berkley Center

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher, is among the world's leading public intellectuals. His scholarship explores connections between reason, modernity, and the public sphere. Habermas is the author of numerous influential works, including The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), and Between Facts and Norms (1996), in addition to many widely-cited essay collections. A recipient of many awards, Habermas has actively participated in public controversies linked with the crisis of the welfare state, the future of democracy, the challenges of biotechnology, and the legacies of Germany's Nazi past. Over the past decade he has increasingly addressed issues related to religion in post-secular societies. Habermas' conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was published as The Dialectics of Secularization (2007).

Charles Taylor is one of the world's leading scholars at the intersection of religion, secularity, and modernity. Taylor is professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University in Montreal. He was awarded the Templeton Prize (2007), the Kyoto Prize (2008), and the Kluge Prize (2015) for his philosophical and political writings.