Named one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009 by U.S. News & World Report, Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, will give a talk, “Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in a Time of Global Religious Crisis,” Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. at Vanderbilt University’s Langford Auditorium.
The event is free and open to the public and is part of the university’s Project Dialogue series, which is dedicated to creating opportunities for students, staff and faculty to engage in public discourse and dialogue in an effort to foster a transformative experience. By connecting classroom learning with larger societal issues, Project Dialogue seeks to generate reasonable debate in the hopes of finding common ground.
The university’s Office of Religious Life and Office of the Dean of Students is sponsoring Patel’s talk. Additional sponsors include Vine Street Christian Church’s Roger T. Nooe Lectureship for World Peace and Family of Abraham.
Interfaith Youth Core is a Chicago-based organization building the global interfaith youth movement. Patel is the author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith and is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, USA Today and CNN. He served on President Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Patel holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.