Berkley Center

In newly released essays published by The New York Review of Books, Ece Temelkuran, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, and Marina Garcés share reflections on weakness, violence, and solidarity at this moment in history, with an introduction by Thomas Banchoff and Pankaj Mishra, from the third installment of the Georgetown Global Dialogues.

In a National Catholic Reporter piece, Berkley Center Senior Research Fellow Erin Cline considers how changing religious demographics among college students have reshaped the role of required theology courses at Catholic universities. Drawing on her experience teaching at Georgetown University, Cline argues that these courses remain essential.

On August 3 Senior Fellow Paul Elie, author of The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s (2025), joined Clay Risen and Kevin Butterfield for a panel discussion about new takes on recent history at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff and Richard L. Woof of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern of California introduce a series of essays in Commonweal examining the relationship between Pope Francis' "culture of encounter" and democratic life. The essays grew out of a February 2026 symposium convened by the Berkley Center and the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, in collaboration with the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, The Georgetown Democracy Initiative, and Commonweal, with support from the Henry Luce Foundation.