Lund-Gill Chair
Eboo Patel, PhD, founder and the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement, will serve as the Lund-Gill Chair for the 2011-2012 academic year. The chair is named for former Dominican University President Sr. Candida Lund, OP, and former English professor, Sr. Cyrille Gill, OP.
Each year, the Lund-Gill Chair in the Rosary College Arts and Sciences brings to campus an individual of the highest moral and intellectual reputation who can address themes and issues at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences.
Dr. Patel was recently appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives, where he is working to realize the president’s priority of interfaith cooperation.
He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of An American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Dr. Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He writes “The Faith Divide”, a blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Sunday Times of India and National Public Radio.
Dr. Patel serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA and the National Board of the YMCA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. Dr. Patel is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica magazine as one of the 10 young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was most recently selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic forum.
Dr. Patel will teach an honors class – Interfaith Literacy Cooperation, which will explore the importance of interfaith literacy and interfaith cooperation in a world fraught by religious diversity and explore the practical application of this knowledge through skills-based trainings on interfaith cooperation and by planning and leading interfaith cooperation projects on campus.
Dr. Patel will also give two public lectures:
Tuesday, September 13 at 11:30 a.m. Dr. Patel will speak to the freshmen class.
Tuesday, November 1 at 7 p.m., Lund-Gill Lecture, Rosary Chapel. Dr. Patel’s lecture is titled Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in a Time of Global Religious Crisis. A leader defines reality. In a world too often convinced of the inevitable clash of civilizations, how do we lead our communities of faith to work with people from different religious and philosophical backgrounds and serve the common good? From Martin Luther King Jr. to Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day to Abraham Joshua Heschel, the answer was clear: interfaith leadership.
2010: Father Richard Woods, OP, professor of theology and former chair of the Ekhart Society
2009: Stephen Kinzer, a prize-winning journalist with the Boston Globe and New York Times
2008: David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago
2007: Leon Lederman, Nobel prize-winning physicist who was the inaugural chair
Each year, the Lund-Gill Chair in the Rosary College Arts and Sciences brings to campus an individual of the highest moral and intellectual reputation who can address themes and issues at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences.
About Dr. Eboo Patel
Dr. Patel was recently appointed by President Obama to the Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives, where he is working to realize the president’s priority of interfaith cooperation.
He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of An American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Dr. Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He writes “The Faith Divide”, a blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Sunday Times of India and National Public Radio.
Dr. Patel serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA and the National Board of the YMCA. He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. Dr. Patel is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica magazine as one of the 10 young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was most recently selected to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic forum.
Dr. Patel will teach an honors class – Interfaith Literacy Cooperation, which will explore the importance of interfaith literacy and interfaith cooperation in a world fraught by religious diversity and explore the practical application of this knowledge through skills-based trainings on interfaith cooperation and by planning and leading interfaith cooperation projects on campus.
Dr. Patel will also give two public lectures:
Tuesday, September 13 at 11:30 a.m. Dr. Patel will speak to the freshmen class.
Tuesday, November 1 at 7 p.m., Lund-Gill Lecture, Rosary Chapel. Dr. Patel’s lecture is titled Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in a Time of Global Religious Crisis. A leader defines reality. In a world too often convinced of the inevitable clash of civilizations, how do we lead our communities of faith to work with people from different religious and philosophical backgrounds and serve the common good? From Martin Luther King Jr. to Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day to Abraham Joshua Heschel, the answer was clear: interfaith leadership.
Past Lund-Gill Chairs
2011: Chia-Feng Chang, PhD, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence and expert in Chinese science and medicine.2010: Father Richard Woods, OP, professor of theology and former chair of the Ekhart Society
2009: Stephen Kinzer, a prize-winning journalist with the Boston Globe and New York Times
2008: David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago
2007: Leon Lederman, Nobel prize-winning physicist who was the inaugural chair
