Introduction | Plenary Speakers | Papers by Conference Track | Papers by Author | Samford University | Lilly Fellows Program National Research Conferences

Plenary Speakers

Robert F. Drinan, S.J., is a professor of law at Georgetown University , priest, lawyer, politician and activist. He served as dean of the Boston College Law School . During the 10 years between his deanship and joining the Georgetown University law faculty in 1981, he served in the U.S. Congress as a representative from Massachusetts. He is author of The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (Yale University Press, 2001); The Fractured Dream (Crossroad, 1991); Stories From the American Soul (Loyola University Press, 1990); Cry of the Oppressed: The History and Hope of the Human Rights Revolution; God and Caesar on the Potomac: A Pilgrimage of Conscience; Beyond the Nuclear Freeze; Honor the Promise: America's Commitment to Israel; Vietnam and Armageddon; Democracy, Dissent and Disorder; The Right to be Educated (ed.); and Religion, the Courts and Public Policy. He is also author of the forthcoming Religious Freedom and World Law (Yale University Press). Drinan serves on the Board of Directors of the International League for Human Rights, the Lawyer's Committee for International Human Rights and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Rockefeller professor of social and political ethics at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, is also a professor in the Department of Political Science and a member of the Committee on International Relations. Her books include Faith Matters: Religion and Public Life in America; Democracy on Trial; Augustine and the Limits of Politics; Real Politics: At the Center of Everyday Life, Who Are We? Critical Reflections; Hopeful Possibilities; and But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War. Her most recent book is Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic Books, 2003). She is co-chair of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

John Witte, Jr., is the Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, director of the Law and Religion Program, and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University . He is the author of 12 books, including Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective (two volumes), Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia, and Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment.

James Waller, is a professor of psychology and Edward Lindaman chair at Whitworth College . He is the author of Prejudice Across America and Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America . His most recent book is Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford University Press). He is under contract for two additional books on social evil.