Berkley Center

Dr. Iyad Abu Moghli is the founder and director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Faith for Earth Initiative. He has more than 35 years of experience with international organizations, the private sector, and scientific institutions. Dr. Abu Moghli’s expertise focus on strategic planning, sustainable development, natural resources management, knowledge and innovation, and interfaith collaboration. Before joining UNEP, he served for 14 years in the United Nations Development Programme.

His Eminence Cardinal Miguel Ayuso is president of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. Cardinal Ayuso has taught courses in interreligious dialogue in Cairo and Rome, participated in meetings and conferences on interreligious relations in various countries in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe, as well as written several important publications on issues related to Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein founded the first national Jewish environmental organization Shomrei Adamah ("Keepers of the Earth") in 1988. She has written numerous books on the intersection of Judaism, Bible and ecology, most notably The Splendor of Creation (2005) and The Promise of the Land (2020), an ecologically oriented Passover haggadah. She continues to write, teach and organize in the field of religion and ecology.

Dr. John Borelli, a historian of religions and theologian, is special assistant for Catholic identity and dialogue to President John J. DeGioia of Georgetown University. Borelli has been at Georgetown University since 2004, where he teaches, manages conferences and events, coordinates dialogues, facilitates workshops, and promotes university relations with offices and institutes of the Holy See.

The Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, was born in Australia, studied theology in Athens, and completed his doctorate in Oxford. He taught theology in Sydney and Boston, and currently serves as theological advisor to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on environmental issues. His latest book is Creation as Sacrament: Reflections on Ecology and Spirituality (2019).

John J. DeGioia is the forty-eighth president of Georgetown University. For nearly four decades, DeGioia has worked to define and strengthen Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. As the first lay president of a Jesuit university he places emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He has also been an advocate for interreligious dialogue. He continues to teach an Ignatius Seminar each fall, part of a program offering first year students the opportunity to encounter unique courses of study inspired by the Jesuit educational theme of cura personalis (“care for the whole person”). He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Before becoming president, DeGioia served at Georgetown as senior vice president, responsible for university-wide operations, and dean of student affairs. DeGioia earned his B.A. and Ph.D at Georgetown University.

Muhammad U. Faruque is Inayat and Ishrat Malik Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. He earned his PhD (with distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Exchange Scholar at Harvard University and as George Ames Postdoctoral Fellow at Fordham University. His current research explores modern and premodern conceptions of selfhood and identity and their bearing in ethics, aesthetics, religion, and literature.

John Grim is a senior lecturer and research scholar at Yale University, with appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Divinity School, and Department of Religious Studies. He teaches in the joint M.A. program in religion and ecology and is co-founder and co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale with his wife, Mary Evelyn Tucker. Mary Evelyn and John were executive producers of the Emmy Award winning film Journey of the Universe (2011) with Brian Swimme.