Interfaith Resources to Navigate Religious Differences on College Campus
February 9, 2023
On January 31, Interfaith America hosted a public conversation, “Art, Religion, and Academic Freedom: Lessons from the Hamline/Prophet Muhammad Controversy.”
A group of expert panelists advised on ways any professional on any campus can be prepared to productively lead what Middlebury College President Laurie Patton calls “civic spaces” from colleges to communities: When is it appropriate to make blanket statements about religion? What is the balance between academic freedom and respect for students’ religious views? And how do we prepare religiously diverse institutions for “eruptive civil spaces,” spaces in which conflicts about religion are inevitably going to occur?
Interfaith America Founder and President Eboo Patel convened a distinguished panel of educators that included Patton; Maria Dixon Hall, Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Professor of Organizational Communication at Southern Methodist University; and Omid Safi, professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, to address some of these questions, as well as the inevitable conflicts that will emerge in a religiously diverse democracy.
