Caring for the Other: Refugees and Displaced Persons
Practitioners and scholars explored faith-based responses to forced migration through a series of panels focused on interreligious dialogue about refugee support and policy.
Through research, teaching, and outreach, the Berkley Center seeks to build understanding and promote dialogue and cooperation around issues of religion, peace, and world affairs.
Two premises guide the center’s work: that religion is a critically important but poorly understood force in world affairs, and that the open engagement of religious and cultural traditions with one another can promote peace.
At a time of rapid international change and deep global divides the Jesuit higher education network is a vitally important resource—for Georgetown, the Berkley Center, and the world.
As the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States, Georgetown is an active member of the International Association of Jesuit Universities (IAJU), which was founded in 2018 to promote collaboration across almost 200 Jesuit institutions of higher learning worldwide.
Since our founding almost two decades ago, the Berkley Center has worked closely with Jesuit partners abroad in support of our teaching, research, and dialogue mission. Support for students has been central to that effort. Since 2010 the center’s Education and Social Justice Project has sent cohorts of students over the summer to conduct research and share reports about innovative educational initiatives unfolding around the world, with a focus on Jesuit partners in the Global South.
In 2021 the center launched the IAJU Global Citizenship Curriculum Project, which links faculty and students at Jesuit institutions around the world. A two-week module on global citizenship developed at the center has been taught in more than 180 classes in 55+ institutions around the world so far. More than 1,900 student participants have engaged in Zoom conversations about global issues with their peers worldwide. And smaller cohorts of Global Citizenship Fellows have had the opportunity to deepen their dialogues in person and participate in study tours in Boston, Rome, and Bogotá.
The global Jesuit network has also been a focus of Berkley Center faculty research. In 2016 the Georgetown University Press published The Jesuits and Globalization, the culmination of a multiyear research project on the international impact of the Jesuits across the centuries. Center faculty have published in Jesuit journals and presented at conferences hosted by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. And over the past several years the center has hosted conferences in Rome at Villa Malta, home to the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, as part of a multiyear Culture of Encounter Project centered on one of Pope Francis’ key ideas. This past June the Georgetown Global Dialogues, a university-wide initiative organized by the center, brought leading writers and critics to Villa Malta to engage with Francis and his legacy.
As globalization founders amid an upsurge of nationalism and a worldwide crisis of democracy, Georgetown and the Berkley Center remain committed to intercultural and interreligious dialogue for the common good—core Jesuit principles. Participation in and support for the global Jesuit network will continue to animate our work going forward.
Thomas Banchoff
Director
Michael Kessler
Executive Director
Over the 2024-2025 year, the center organized 50 events, fostering dialogue on key issues.
The center's online presence grew, with over 400,000 visits to our website over the past year.
Over 13,000 people receive our newsletters and other updates via email.
The center has 7,000+ X followers, reflecting our expanding reach and influence.
Experts in their respective fields contributed 22 thought-provoking essays to the Berkley Forum.
Since its inception, the Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs minor has attracted a steadily growing cohort of students. In the 2024-2025 academic year, there were 32 REWA minor students.
The Culture of Encounter Project Slider
This two-day conference marked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ seventy-fifth anniversary by revisiting Georgetown’s 1964 “Freedom and Man” gathering and exploring theology’s role in shaping global human rights discourse.
The Berkley Center’s new SRE Hub aims to strengthen capacity for strategic engagement with religious actors in diplomacy, development, and defense, preserving expertise and fostering collaboration amid evolving institutional landscapes.
From July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, the center hosted events that ranged from book talks and panel discussions to multi-day, international conferences.
Our library of over 1,600 event videos from the past 19 years continued to garner attention.
Major Series Slider
Events Video Player
In fall 2024, Georgetown hosted five bishops from the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). Building on recent gatherings in Rome and Canterbury, the bishops discuss ways to strengthen Anglican-Catholic collaboration and shared initiatives.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eliza Griswold discussed her new book, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church (2024), in conversation with Berkley Center Senior Fellow Paul Elie. Their conversation covered religion, journalism, and Griswold’s new role directing Princeton University’s Program in Journalism.
Monsignor Anthony Ekpo, author of The Roman Curia: History, Theology, and Organization (2024), spoke with Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff about Pope Francis’s reforms of the Vatican’s central administration, reflecting on their significance, impact, and the challenges of institutional change.
Journalist Anton L. Delgado discussed his Pulitzer Center-supported investigations into environmental issues in South East Asia with Berkley Center Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall. He highlighted recent reporting on forest crimes, collaborative projects, and forthcoming research on the impact of gold mining on rainforest ecosystems.
Leading scholars from theology, philosophy, politics, and sociology explored how Jewish thought, identity, and practice engage with the challenges of pluralism in a globalized world.
Our primary activities revolve around a core set of faculty members whose research agendas drive all other center activities, from teaching and student programs to public outreach. Faculty programs do not merely manifest in the form of publications and a few public events, but connect to a vast set of global networks that shape academia, national and international policymaking, and public opinion.
Center senior fellows and senior research fellows authored commentary pieces placed in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and La Civiltà Cattolica, among other outlets.
Berkley Center fellows published books on topics ranging from faith and art in the 1980s to the history of religious illiberalism in the United States.
The center released several reports, policy briefs, working papers, and white papers from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.
Faculty Scholarship Slider
From the Berkley Forum Slider
The Berkley Center offers a number of ways for students to get involved, including conducting research through our global fellowship programs, taking courses through our minor, working as graduate fellows at the center, and participating in experiential learning through the Doyle Engaging Difference Program.
Our approach to student programs at the Berkley Center is grounded in the Jesuit value of caring for the person (cura personalis), a central tenet of the Georgetown University education. Our programs are animated by the center’s mission of bringing together scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students to build understanding and promote dialogue and cooperation around issues of religion, peace, and world affairs through research, teaching, and dialogue.
Our student offerings are also deeply informed by the Doyle Engaging Difference Program’s mission to equip students and faculty with the skills necessary to thoughtfully engage matters of difference in integrated spaces of teaching and learning, in and outside the classroom. As campus collaborators on the Doyle Program, the Berkley Center seeks to implement this vision through guided academic and professional mentorship and extended learning opportunities that transcend the classroom, helping students connect their Georgetown experiences to local and global communities.
Show evidence of global awareness, particularly interreligious and intercultural competencies, by engaging in discourse and practice on matters of political, religious, social, economic, and racial differences.
Demonstrate analytical skills and the ability to clearly articulate complex issues in research and digital scholarship.
Illustrate interdisciplinary knowledge integration and intellectual curiosity in traditional and experiential learning spaces.
Center faculty taught courses across the Georgetown campus, from the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Foreign Service to Georgetown Law.
The 2024 ESJ Cohort conducted research on Jesuit educational initiatives in Poland and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Doyle Global Dialogue provides a platform for Georgetown students to reflect on interreligious and intercultural engagement while studying abroad.
Graduate fellows are integral to the work of the center, where they contribute to faculty research projects and support communications and outreach efforts.
The Doyle Dialogue Fellows program cultivates a culture of dialogue at Georgetown by training students to engage constructively across lines of difference. Through workshops, mentorship, and experiential sessions, fellows develop skills in dialogue facilitation, reflective listening, and leadership—applying these to campus-based projects that foster inclusive, collaborative conversation and community.
The Doyle Global Dialogue (DGD), formerly the Junior Year Abroad Network, has supported over 690 students studying abroad in more than 65 countries since 2006, providing a platform for interreligious and intercultural reflection and dialogue. DGD students write reflections and create social media content about their experiences of religion, culture, politics, and society in their host countries, and they share their reflections among small peer cohorts.
This map highlights where the members of the 2024-2025 DGD cohort studied abroad. The cohort included 6 students studying at the Georgetown University campus in Qatar and 14 students based in Washington, DC.
DGD Student Reflections Slider
Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs Minor Video Player
The Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs (REWA) program offers a minor for Georgetown Main Campus undergraduate students administered through the Berkley Center. The REWA minor gives students an opportunity to explore the role of faith and values across topic areas including international relations, comparative politics, and history and cultures. The Hoya Paxa Student Symposium 2025 was held on April 12, 2025.
Read more about how the symposium showcases students’ international and interreligious research.
Faculty-Led First-Year Seminars Slider
2024 ESJ Fellows Slider
The IAJU Global Citizenship Fellows Program is an initiative of the Berkley Center and the International Association of Jesuit Universities that empowers students from Jesuit universities around the world to become leaders in global citizenship. The fellows participated in a series of online dialogues leading up to an in-person dialogue and study tour in Bogotá, Colombia, from June 30 to July 3, 2025, during the IAJU International Assembly. The program’s goal is to navigate the challenges and opportunities for promoting global citizenship across various university and country contexts, inspiring the creation of innovative, actionable proposals.
The Human Fraternity Fellows program began during the 2023-2024 academic year, building on the success of the Human Fraternity Dialoguesand inspired by the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Grand Imam Al-Tayeb in 2019 to advance interreligious solidarity worldwide. Through virtual sessions and a week-long study tour in Jakarta, the Human Fraternity Fellowship equips participants with practical skills to advance peace, justice, and interreligious solidarity in their communities—on campus and beyond.
Each year, the Berkley Center nominates one student for the prestigious Pulitzer Center International Reporting Fellowship. This year, Nicole Abudayeh (SFS'26) has been selected for that honor. Her reporting will focus on the role of faith-based social activism in protecting migrant populations from human trafficking in Ceuta, Spain.