Berkley Center

The Berkley Center's tenth anniversary year has been an opportunity to reflect on some of the high points since its 2006 founding and to look forward. Challenges at the intersection of religion, peace, and world affairs are as salient today as they were a decade ago. This report outlines some of the major activities and accomplishments of the center’s faculty, students, and staff over the past year, as well as selected work from our previous decade.

Key highlights include:

• In April former secretary of state Madeleine Albright's keynote lecture highlighted the role of religion as a catalyst for both conflict and peace. A symposium the following day featured prominent thought leaders, including Michael Gerson, Martha Nussbaum, and Miroslav Volf, as well as a conversation between Karen Armstrong and Georgetown’s president, John J. DeGioia. 
• The center released a commemorative volume, Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: The Challenges Ahead, with contributions from world leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu; the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab; and the first U.S. ambassador for global women’s issues, Melanne Verveer, who directs Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security. 
• Berkley Center Senior Fellow José Casanova moderated a conversation on secularism with two of the world’s leading philosophers, Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor.
• For the fifth consecutive year, the Berkley Center played a leadership role in the organization of President Obama’s Interfaith and Community Service Campus Challenge. 
• The Doyle Engaging Difference Program enjoyed another successful year with a series of seminars on topics ranging from prison reform to religion and the state, and a vibrant Junior Year Abroad Network, which joined 39 students in 21 countries in online reflection on their experiences abroad. At the annual Doyle Symposium in April, Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet addressed the organization’s new efforts to engage questions of religious and cultural diversity in its global work.