Center Announces 2010 Undergraduate Fellows Report

As China emerges as a superpower alongside the United States and bilateral cooperation extends into new areas, religion will likely remain a source of friction between both countries. Differences over religious freedom, rooted in different histories and political systems, are not about to vanish.

"This is 911. What is your emergency?"

"Someone is trying to break into my house."

"What is your address?"

"1234 Palm Street in Phoenix."

"Let me check for an available officer. Let's see, I can have someone come by tomorrow between 9 a.m. and noon."...

One of South Africa's leading papers, The Mail & Guardian, announced last Friday that it had underestimated "the depth of anger ignited' by a cartoon it published earlier. It depicted the Prophet Muhammad lying on a psychiatrist's couch, with a thought bubble over his head that said, 'Other prophets have followers with a sense of humor!'...

What's a nice Irish American priest like Séamus Finn doing on The Daily Show? The answer is not what you might think: he's squirming to avoid nasty questions and jokes about abuse scandals...

My grandmother, a very wise woman, gave me a piece of advice that sticks in my mind to this day: "A gingerbread he went to Rome, a gingerbread he came home." She was urging that, going into any new adventure or faced with any new idea, I should not be stuffy and stuck in the outlines of the way I understood things, because if I did, I would miss the chance to learn and change...

On Monday, May 24, Etienne De Jonghe, a research fellow at the Berkley Center, reflected on his nearly 30 years as secretary-general of Pax Christi International. His experiences include interaction with Eastern Europe during the cold war, and peacebuilding and development work in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

On Tuesday, May 18, Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), gave a briefing and answered questions about his new report, "Afghanistan's Religious Landscape," which provides a way forward on many of the region's challenging issues.

Ela Bhatt began her career as a labor organizer, a métier that lends itself more to conflict than to peace. She does not have any formal religious affiliation. And yet last week in Japan she was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize, which highlights the positive roles that faith and religion play in world affairs...

In airports nowadays it's quite common to see groups of people, young and old, heading overseas as part of a church group. They are part of a large, totally decentralized American engagement with other parts of the world: short mission trips to dig wells and build stoves and help orphans and engage in other good works...

Interreligious dialogue is a sensitive area. A source of individual and collective identity and value commitments, faith is laden with emotion. Experienced practitioners of dialogue emphasize the importance of careful agendas, repeated interactions, and the building of trust over time.