Eboo Patel, award-winning young leader of the global interfaith youth movement, speaking at Berea College March 18
2-11-2010
Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based organization building the global interfaith youth movement, and named by “U.S. News and World Report” as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, will speak at Berea College Thursday, March 18 on the College’s Convocation Series.
The 3 p.m. program in Phelps Stokes Auditorium is free and open to the Public. The event is the annual Robbins Peace Lecture sponsored by the Willis D. Weatherford Jr. Campus Christian Center.
Patel’s organization works to build mutual respect among young people of different religious traditions, building bridges by focusing on shared values and working together to serve others. Patel, a 34 year old American Muslim, founded Interfaith Youth Core in 1998. IFYC is now active on 75 college campuses.
Patel is the author of the award-winning autobiography “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation,” in which he describes his story as an Indian-born Muslim raised in America. It was his own sometimes frustrating experience that prompted him to eventually found Interfaith Youth Core.
He is a regular contributor to the “Washington Post,” National Public Radio and CNN. He also is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship.
Patel and the work of the IFYC have steadily gained attention and numerous awards. Patel won the 2010 Grawemeyer Prize in Religion for his book “Acts of Faith.” Awarded jointly by the University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, the Prize includes a $200,000 cash award. In 2009 he won the Roosevelt Institute’s Freedom of Worship Medal. He has been named by Islamica Magazine as “one of 10 young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America,” and was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of “five future policy leaders to watch.” He has spoken at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and universities around the world, and has written for the “Chicago Tribune,” the “Review of Faith and International Affairs” and the “Sunday Times of India.” He is a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow, a select group of social entrepreneurs who are implementing ideas with the potential to change the pattern of our society. For more information, visit www.ifyc.org
Berea College began partnering with Interfaith Youth Core several years ago as it developed interfaith programs through the Willis D. Weatherford Jr. Campus Christian Center (CCC) on campus. Recently, Berea’s IDEA Project, (IDEA stands for Interfaith Dialogue, Education and Action) received the IFYC’s 2009 Bridge-Builder’s Award for Best Campus Program nation-wide, for “engaging religious diversity positively and exemplifying interfaith leadership.” The program is directed by Katie Basham, coordinator of interfaith programming for the CCC. Interfaith programs at Berea grow out of the College’s unique commitment to an inclusive Christianity expressed in its motto “God Has Made of One Blood All Peoples of the Earth.”
