What's So Special About Religious Freedom?

November 17, 2011
10:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST
Location: Copley Hall Copley Formal Lounge Map

Religious freedom has been called America’s “first freedom.” But does it warrant such a special status? What, if anything, distinguishes religious freedom from other protected rights like the freedom of speech or assembly? Is religious freedom a right that stands on its own, or is it a subset of a broader freedom of conscience?

How such questions are answered carries profound consequences for the treatment of religion in American public life and in American foreign policy. The Religious Freedom Project hosted a keynote debate at Georgetown University on the question of the uniqueness of religious freedom. Debating this critical issue were Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell.

Coinciding with the debate, the event featured two related panels to examine the meaning and reach of religious freedom. The morning panel explored the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular influences on religious freedom in the West. The afternoon panel addressed the universality of religious freedom and its compatibility with non-Western cultures.

SCHEDULE

Panel 1: The Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Secular Sources of Religious Freedom in the West | Brad Gregory, David Little, David Novak, Dorinda Outram

Keynote Debate: Is Religious Freedom an Independent or Derivative Human Right? | Noah Feldman, Michael McConnell

Panel 2: The Universality of Religious Freedom and its Compatibility with Non-Western Cultures | Peter Danchin, John Finnis, Mona Siddiqui

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What's So Special About Religious Freedom?

Featured Participants

Noah Feldman Toggle

About Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in constitutional studies, with an emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. Feldman is the author of three books: Divided By God: America’s Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). Feldman has also been on faculty at the New York University School of Law. In 2003, he served as a senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law. He is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Feldman holds degrees from Harvard University, Oxford and Yale Law School.

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Other Participants

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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John Finnis Toggle

About John Finnis

John M. Finnis is Biolchini Family Professor of Law at Notre Dame University and Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at Oxford University. Finnis has worked in the realms of moral, political, and legal theory and is also a noted scholar of Constitutional law. An Australian by birth, he received his JD from Oxford and is a member of the English Bar. Prior to Notre Dame, he has held positions at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Malawi, and Boston College Law School. Outside of the academy, Finnis has served as governor of the Linacre Centre for Health Care Ethics since 1981, the Catholic Bishops' Joint Committee on Bioethical Issues from 1981-1988, the International Theological Commission from 1986-1992, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from 1990-1995, and the Pontifical Academy Pro Vita since 2001.

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David Little Toggle

About David Little

David Little, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center, is a leading authority on the history of religious freedom, ethics and human rights, and religion and conflict resolution. Little retired in 2009 as T.J. Dermot Dunphy Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict at Harvard Divinity School and as an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Until summer 1999, he was senior scholar in religion, ethics, and human rights at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). From 1996 to 1998, he was member of the Advisory Committee to the State Department on Religious Freedom Abroad. Little’s publications include several volumes in the USIP series on religion, nationalism, and intolerance, as well Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective (2007, with Donald K. Swearer), and Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution (2007). Little was also a part of the Christianity and Freedom Project headed by the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project.

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David Novak Toggle

About David Novak

David Novak has held the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as professor of the study of religion and professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. From 1997 to 2002 he also was director of the Jewish Studies Programme. Previously, Novak taught at the University of Virginia, Oklahoma City University, Old Dominion University, the New School for Social Research, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. Novak was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project from 2011 through 2013. He is the author of 16 books, including The Sanctity of Human Life (2007) and In Defense of Religious Liberty (2009). From 1966 to 1969 he was Jewish chaplain to St. Elizabeth's Hospital and the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C.

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Dorinda Outram Toggle

About Dorinda Outram

Dorinda Outram is Clark Professor of History at the University of Rochester. She specializes in European history from 1648-1848, with particular emphasis on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, history of the body, history of science and the history of geographical exploration. More recently, she has begun to study religious conversion in the 18th century as well. Prior to assuming the Clark Chair in History at Rochester in 1998, Professor Outram was educated at Cambridge University. She is the author of five books to date; a sixth, on religious conversion in the Enlightenment that will relate to current religious controversies, is currently in progress.

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Mona Siddiqui Toggle

About Mona Siddiqui

Mona Siddiqui joined the University of Edinburgh’s Divinity School in December 2011 as the first chair in Islamic and interreligious studies. She is also assistant principal for religion and society and international dean for the Middle East at the University of Edinburgh. Siddiqui previously worked at Glasgow University directing the Centre for the Study of Islam. Her research areas are primarily in the field of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and ethics and Christian-Muslim relations. Her recent publications include Hospitality in Islam: Welcoming in God’s Name (2015), My Way: A Muslim Woman's Journey (2014), and Christians, Muslims and Jesus (2013). Siddiqui is a member of the Global Agenda Council on Faith for the World Economic Forum; she was an associate scholar with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project from 2011 through 2013. In 2011 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to interfaith services. Siddiqui received her Ph.D. from the University of Manchester and holds four honorary doctorates.

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Related Publication

Report September 1, 2012

What's So Special About Religious Freedom?

On November 17, 2011, the Religious Freedom Project conducted its first public symposium. In keeping with its objective of exploring the meaning and value of religious freedom, the RFP’s first symposium began at the beginning with the theme “What’s…

Berkley Center