Religious Freedom and the Common Good: A Symposium of the Religious Freedom Project

November 15, 2016
9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. EST
Location: Copley Hall Copley Formal Lounge Map

This conference explored the wide-ranging political, economic, and social dimensions of religious freedom and their enduring impact on the global common good. The RFP's 13 associate scholars and other experts from across the academy addressed a range of key questions about the broader implications of religious freedom.

Our symposium explored the following: To what extent is religious liberty critical for human flourishing? When and how does it contribute to economic prosperity, democratization, and peace? What challenges face religious communities living under repressive governments or hostile social forces? How is the persecution of religion related to other infringements of basic human rights? What is the relationship between religious freedom and violent religious extremism, and is there a role for religious freedom in efforts to undermine radicalization and counter violent religious extremism and terrorism over the long term?

Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) delivered a keynote address on the promotion of international religious freedom as an urgent global imperative.

Schedule

9:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. | Welcome
Thomas Banchoff, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs
Thomas Farr, Religious Freedom Project

9:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. | Religious Freedom and Human Flourishing
Byron Johnson, Baylor University (moderator)
Thomas Berg, University of St. Thomas
Rebecca Shah, Religious Freedom Project
Brad Wilcox, University of Virginia
Robert Woodberry, Baylor University

10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. | Faith and Finance: A Productive Partnership?
Brian Grim, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (moderator)
Ilan Alon, University of Agder, Norway
Anthony Gill, University of Washington
Timur Kuran, Duke University
Rachel McCleary, Harvard University

12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. | Keynote Address: International Religious Freedom Promotion as a Moral, Economic, and Geopolitical Imperative
The Honorable Ben Sasse, United States Senator, Nebraska

1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. | Authoritarianism, Majoritarianism, and Religious Repression
Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom Project (moderator)
Peter Danchin, University of Maryland School of Law
Karrie Koesel, University of Notre Dame
John Owen, University of Virginia
Ani Sarkissian, Michigan State University

2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. | Religious Freedom as an Antidote to Violent Religious Extremism
Thomas Farr, Religious Freedom Project (moderator)
Sahar Aziz, Texas A&M University School of Law
Allen Hertzke, University of Oklahoma
William Inboden, University of Texas
Daniel Philpott, University of Notre Dame

4:00 p.m. | Closing Remarks
Timothy Shah, Religious Freedom Project

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Timur Kuran and Rachel McCleary discuss faith and finance

Featured Participants

Allen Hertzke Toggle

About Allen Hertzke

Allen Hertzke is the David Ross Boyd Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and faculty fellow in religious freedom for OU’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage. He is also a distinguished senior fellow with Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Hertzke has written extensively on religious advocacy in politics, particularly faith-motivated activism in foreign policy. His publications include Christianity and Freedom: Volume 1 Historical Perspectives and Christianity and Freedom: Volume 2 Contemporary Perspectives (2016, ed. with Timothy Samuel Shah), Religious Freedom in America: Constitutional Roots and Contemporary Challenges (2015, ed.), The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges (2012, ed.), and Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (2004). He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. From 2011 to 2016, Hertzke was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project and co-chair of its Christianity and Freedom Project steering committee from 2012 to 2013.

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William Inboden Toggle

About William Inboden

William Inboden is executive director of the William P. Clements, Jr. Center for National Security, associate professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas-Austin. Inboden is a non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and senior advisor with Avascent International. Previously he served as the Legatum Institute's senior vice president and senior director for the White House’s Strategic Planning on the National Security Council. Inboden also worked at the Department of State as a member of the Policy Planning Staff and special advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom. He is the author of Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960: The Soul of Containment (2008) and Foreign Policy magazine contributing editor. From 2014 to 2016, he was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. Inboden received his Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. degrees from Yale University and A.B. from Stanford University.

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Daniel Philpott Toggle

About Daniel Philpott

Daniel Philpott is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Philpott specializes in religion and global politics, with emphases on reconciliation, religious freedom, and theories of religious actors' political behavior. He has also participated in faith-inspired reconciliation efforts in some of the world’s worst conflict zones, including Kashmir and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Philpott's publications include Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (2012); God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (2011, co-authored with Monica Toft and Timothy Shah); Strategies of Peace: Transforming Conflict in a Violent Word (2010, edited with Gerard F. Powers); The Politics of Past Evil: Religion, Reconciliation, and Transitional Justice (2006); and Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations (2001). From 2011 to 2016, he was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project and is currently a senior associate scholar with the Religious Freedom Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

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Ben Sasse Toggle

About Ben Sasse

Ben Sasse is the junior U.S. senator representing the state of Nebraska. He was elected in 2014. From 2009 to 2014, Sasse served as the fifteenth president of Midland University. As one of the youngest chief executives in American higher education, he is credited with rebranding the university, instituting new policies to improve academic performance, and embarking on a prodigious fundraising campaign. Prior to Midland, Sasse worked as the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and a B.A. in government from Harvard University.

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Other Participants

Ilan Alon Toggle

About Ilan Alon

Ilan Alon is professor of strategy and international marketing at the University of Agder, Norway. Previously he was the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Chair of International Business and director of the China and India centers at Rollins College. He was also a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Alon is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Emerging Markets; his numerous edited publications include China Rules: Globalization and Political Transformation (2009) and Globalization of Chinese Enterprises (2008). Alon’s education and consulting experiences in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America range from government institutions and multinational companies to small and medium enterprises and individual executives. Alon received the Chinese Marketing Award, a dual award from the Tripod Marketing Association (China) and the Society for Marketing Advances (USA). He was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project from 2014 to 2016. Alon holds a B.S. and M.B.A. from Farleigh Dickinson University, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. from Kent State University.

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Sahar Aziz Toggle

About Sahar Aziz

Sahar Aziz is a professor of law at the Texas A&M University School of Law and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. She specializes in national security, civil rights, and Middle East law. Aziz worked as a senior policy advisor for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M University; she was also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center from 2010 to 2011. Aziz has held associate positions with WilmerHale and Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll; she clerked for the Honorable Andre M. Davis when he served on the U.S. District Court of the District of Maryland. She received her J.D., M.A., and B.Sc. from the University of Texas.

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Thomas Banchoff Toggle

About Thomas Banchoff

Thomas Banchoff is director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and serves as vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University, where he is a professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

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Thomas C. Berg Toggle

About Thomas C. Berg

Thomas C. Berg is the James L. Oberstar Professor of Law and Public Policy and directs students in the Religious Liberty Appellate Clinic at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota. He is a religious freedom scholar whose numerous publications include approximately 60 briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts.

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Peter Danchin Toggle

About Peter Danchin

Peter Danchin is professor of law and co-director of the International and Comparative Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. His scholarship focuses on competing conceptions of the right to freedom of religion and belief in international legal theory and on tensions between liberal and value pluralist approaches. From 2000 to 2006 he served as director of the human rights program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He has also been a fellow at the Center for Theological Inquiry and University of Cape Town. Danchin's publications include, among others, Protecting the Human Rights of Religious Minorities in Eastern Europe (2002) and "The Emergence and Structure of Religious Freedom in International Law Reconsidered" (Journal of Law and Religion, 2008). He also is a scholar with the Henry R. Luce Foundation-funded "Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices" project. Danchin earned a B.A. and LL.B. from the University of Melbourne and LL.M. and JSD from Columbia Law School.

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Thomas Farr Toggle

About Thomas Farr

Thomas F. Farr is president emeritus of the Religious Freedom Institute, an NGO committed to achieving worldwide acceptance of religious liberty. Farr is also a senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. From 2006 to 2018 he was an associate professor of the practice of religion and world affairs at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior fellow at the Berkley Center; during 2017 and 2018 he was director of the Religious Freedom Research Project and from 2011 to 2016 director of the Religious Freedom Project, both at the Berkley Center. After a distinguished career in the U.S. Army and the Foreign Service—which included teaching at West Point and the Air Force Academy, serving as an advisor during U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva, and leading an interagency task force on verification provisions for the START II Treaty—Farr served as the first director of the U.S. State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2003.

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Anthony Gill Toggle

About Anthony Gill

Anthony (Tony) Gill is a professor of political science and adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Washington and a distinguished senior fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. He specializes in political economy and religion and politics, with an emphasis on church-state relations, religious liberty, and religious economies. Gill’s current research focuses on how governments regulate religious organizations and how this impacts the level of religiosity in society. He is author of The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (2007) and Rendering Unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (1998). In addition to numerous other publications, he runs a weekly free podcast series that seeks to make social scientific studies of religion more accessible to the public. From 2014 to 2016, he was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project. Gill received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles and B.A. from Marquette University.

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Byron Johnson Toggle

About Byron Johnson

Byron Johnson is the founding director of the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) and Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at Baylor University. Johnson is a leading authority on the scientific study of religion, the efficacy of faith-based organizations, and criminal justice. Johnson previously directed research centers at Vanderbilt University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of, among others, The Quest for Purpose: The Collegiate Search for a Meaningful Life (2017, with Perry L. Glanzer and Jonathan P. Hill), The Angola Prison Seminary (2016, with Michael Hallett, Joshua Hays, Sung Jang, and Grant Duwe), and More God, Less Crime: Why Faith Matters and How It Could Matter More (2011). In 2012 and 2013, Johnson served as a member of the steering committee for the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project (RFP); ISR was a strategic RFP partner. He was also a senior research fellow of the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Research Project from 2017 to 2018.

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