In our increasingly polarized society, how do we speak to one another about our deepest beliefs? Can we even bring our personal religious and political convictions to bear in the university and other public spaces? And how does pluralism contribute to greater flourishing in our society? Join us as two of our nation’s leading voices on pluralismdiscuss their own beliefs and what it means to bring one’s whole person (including one’s religious, political, and ethical convictions) into the public square with confidence and humility.

Presented by the Veritas Forum at the University of Chicago, Cana, Cru, the Christian Legal Society, Hyde Park Church (UBF), Intervarsity, Living Hope Church, the Lumen Christi Institute, Navigators Chicago, and the Vineyard Church.

Cosponsored by the Institute of Politics, the International House Global Voices Program, the Office of Spiritual Life, the Law School, the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Relgion, the Department of Political Science, the St Thomas More Society, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and the University of Chicago Press.

John Inazu is Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor John Inazu’s scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. His first book, Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012), seeks to recover the role of assembly in American political and constitutional thought. Professor Inazu's work is also published or forthcoming in the Cornell Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Law and Contemporary Problems, and a number of other law reviews and specialty journals. Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Inazu was a visiting assistant professor at Duke University School of Law and a Royster Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.

Professor Inazu received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and his J.D. and B.S.E. in from Duke University.

Eboo Patel founded Interfaith Youth Core on the idea that religion should be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division. He is inspired to build this bridge by his identity as an American Muslim navigating a religiously diverse social landscape.

For over 15 years he has worked with governments, social sector organizations, and college and university campuses to help make interfaith cooperation a social norm. Named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council and is the author of Acts of Faith, Sacred Ground, Interfaith Leadership: A Primer, and Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise. He holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.

These days, Eboo spends most of his time on the road, doing what he loves: meeting students, educators, and community leaders to talk about the complex landscape of religious diversity and the power of interfaith cooperation in the 21st century.