Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee Lecture  

The Annual Durfee Lecture was initiated in 2007 by a generous gift from Harold A. Durfee and Doris G. Durfee. Held every spring, the series provides our students and American University community with the opportunity to meet distinguished scholars in religious studies.

Blessing America First: Religion, Populism and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Trump Administration(s)

Thursday, February 27, 5:30 p.m.
Butler Boardroom

Abstract

How did the first Trump Administration change the place of religion in U.S. foreign policy? And what can this teach us about the relationship between religion and democracy in an age of global populism? Drawing on firsthand experience in the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs during the Obama-Trump transition, Buckley explores populism’s effect on the substance and structure of offices related to religion and in the foreign policy bureaucracy. His analysis points to religion’s role in fueling populism around the world, as well as potential religious contributions to democracy’s stabilization.

Bio

David Buckley is Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville, where he serves as the Director of the Center for Asian Democracy. From 2016-2017, he served as Senior Advisor in the U.S. State Department’s Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. His first book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines, received the International Studies Association’s 2018 Book Award for Religion and International Relations.

Past Lectures

1. Seeing and Believing: Social Media and Social Justice, 2024
   Ellen T. Armour
   Professor and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair of Feminist Theology
   Vanderbilt Divinity School
   Watch the 2024 Durfee Lecture

2. God and Hip Hop, 2023
   Alex Nava
   Professor of Religious Studies and Classics
   University of Arizona
   Watch the 2023 Durfee Lecture

3. Postcolonialism, Interreligious Engagement, and Peacebuilding, 2022
   Kwok Pui Lan
   Dean's Professor of Systematic Theology,
   Emory University, Candler School of Theology 

4. The Pre-Monastic Ascetic Landscape of Mesopotamia: Marcionites, Manichaeans, and Other Conversation Partners, 2021
   Father Columba Stewart, OSB
   2020 Phi Beta Kappa Fellow, Benedictine Monk, and Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)
   Saint John's University
   Watch the 2021 Durfee Lecture

5. Prophets, Profits, and Pain: The Politics of Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria, 2019
   Anthea Butler 
   Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies and graduate chair of Religious Studies
   University of Pennsylvania

6. Reading The Qur'an In America, 2018
   Jane McAuliffe
   Inaugural Director of National and International Outreach
   Library of Congress

7. Rest, Bullet: Ritual Homecoming Practices among Combat Veterans, 2017
   Kathryn McClymond
   Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies
   Georgia State University

8. Locating Contemporary Spirituality: New Thoughts on the Changing American Religious Landscape, 2016
   Courtney Bender
   Professor of Religion
   Columbia University

9. Religious Difference Without Religious Conflict, 2015
   Stephen Prothero
   Professor of Religion
   Boston University

10. The Religious-Secular Binary as a Space of Pluralism, 2014
    Slavica JakelicAssistant Professor of Humanities and Social Thought
    Valparaiso University
    Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
    University of Virginia

11. God's Fifth Abode: Entrepreneurial Faith in the Hindu Himalayas, 2013
    Brian K. Pennington
    Chair, Division of Humanities; Professor of Religion
    Maryville College

12. Islam and Human Rights: Religious and Secular in Conversation, 2012
    Abdulaziz Sachedina
    Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies
    University of Virginia, Charlottesville

13. A for Antigone: Reading Derrida's Difference Again, 2011
    Amy Hollywood
    Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies
    Harvard Divinity School

14. Sheep Gone Astray: The Tragic History of the Religious Right, 2009
    Randall Balmer
    Professor of American Religious History
    Bernard College, Columbia University

15. Religion and National Conflict: Reflections on Myanmar, Iraq, and Other Current Examples, 2008
    David Little
    Professor of the Practice in Religion, Ethnicity, and International Conflict, Harvard Divinity School;
    Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
    Harvard University

16. Parmenides in the 21^st Century, 2007
    Harold A. Durfee
    Professor Emeritus
    Department of Philosophy and Religion
    American University