Rethinking Religion

A transcript from a public conversation with journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, who directed Restrepo, an Academy Award-nominated documentary about a platoon of U.S. soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Junger is a journalist and author of the books The Perfect Storm and War. Hetherington was an award-winning photographer and author of Infidel and Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold. He was killed shortly after this conversation, in April 2011, while covering the conflict in Misrata, Libya. Moderated by Paul Elie, senior editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Paul Elie: Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Sebastian and Tim, for being here. It’s a powerful and arresting and truthful film. It was really something to stand on the other side of the doors while the film played a few minutes ago and hear the sounds of war and know that you brought them back from Afghanistan to this room just through sheer effort. When I look at the two of you, I think these are two people who’ve really gone and done it. (more…)

David Shipley is executive editor at Bloomberg News and former op-ed editor of the New York Times. Below is an edited transcript from the public discussion Shipley had with Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and co-director of the Institute of Religion, Culture & Public Life (IRCPL), as part of the “Covering Conflict” series sponsored by the IRCPL.

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George Rupp served as President of Columbia University from 1993 to 2002.  He is the President of The International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the author of Globlization Challenged: Conviction, Conflict, Community.  On February 16, 2010, Rupp spoke with Mark Taylor, co-director of IRCPL, in a public conversation sponsored by the IRCPL.

Mark Taylor: Welcome. I’d like to thank all of you for coming on this snowy evening. My name is Mark Taylor. I’m Chair of the Religion Department and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

This is the second year of the Institute’s operation, and we take as our mission to create structures of support for communication within the academy, but also take very seriously the responsibility for creating dialogue beyond the walls of the academy. And I can think of no one who better brings together, religion, culture and public life than our guest this evening, George Rupp, known to many of you here of course as the former President of Columbia.
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Eliza Griswold is an award-winning journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation. Her recent book is The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (2010).

Below is the edited transcript of a public conversation with Randall Balmer, Professor of Religion at Barnard College, on November 15, 2010, at Columbia Journalism School. “Shop Talk and God Talk” is a yearlong series of conversations with professionals working on how the study of religion shapes their work and their global perspectives, organized by Lisa Miller, senior editor of Newsweek. (more…)

Terry Eagleton is an influential literary theorist and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster. He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), and, most recently, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (2009).

Terry Eagleton: The reason I write so much is, actually, I don’t share this habit of reading other people’s books, which I’ve always found extraordinarily intrusive, to peer into people’s private space.  If I want to read a book, I just have to write one, you see, so this is why Ajaz can’t keep up with me.  I can’t keep up with myself, either.  It’s delightful, always, to be back in Columbia, and I’m very grateful to Akeel Bilgrami in particular for inviting me here, rescuing me from Notre Dame for a couple of precious secular days, as it were.  There we are.

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Below is an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion on the future of black churches in America. Speakers include Reverend Otis Moss III, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago; Reverend Eboni K. Marshall, Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York; Josef Sorett, Columbia University; Anthea Butler, University of Pennsylvania; Eddie Glaude, Princeton University; Fredrick C. Harris, Columbia University; Obery Hendricks, Jr., Columbia University.

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Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times. Twice he has won the Pulitizer Prize, the first in 1990 for his reporting on China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement and the second in 2006 for his commentary on the conflict in Darfur. His most recent book is the bestseller Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Below is an edited transcript from the public discussion Kristof had with Sheila Coronel, Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia Journalism School, as part of the “Covering Conflict” series sponsored by IRCPL.

Sheila Coronel: Welcome, Nick, to the journalism school.

Nicholas Kristof: Thank you.

Coronel: Let’s start with your book… The book is on the bestseller list and it’s in its seventh printing.

Nicholas Kristof: Twenty-first, actually.

Sheila Coronel: Oh, my information is obviously dated.

Nicholas Kristof: It tapped a market that nobody—neither we nor the publisher—really knew existed. It really struck a chord.
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