Abstract
Featuring Thomas Berg, University of St. Thomas; Andy Koppelman, Northwestern University; and Asma Uddin, Catholic University of America
Join us for our first program of the 2023-24 year featuring a panel of leading religious-liberty scholars in conversation on themes from the recently released Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age by St. Thomas School of Law Professor Thomas Berg. Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern University) and Asma Uddin (Catholic University of America) will join Professor Berg to discuss topics including the foundations of religious liberty, its potential use in reducing or managing cultural/religious conflict, the importance of protecting religious liberty for all and also protecting other significant interests, the specific challenges of balancing LGBTA rights and religious liberty, and more. This event is co-sponsored by the Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing.
Speakers
Thomas Berg teaches constitutional law, religious liberty, intellectual property courses, and the religious liberty appellate clinic. In the clinic he supervises students in writing filing briefs in major religious liberty cases, drawing on his experience drafting nearly 60 briefs on issues of religious liberty and free speech in the Supreme Court and lower courts.
Berg combines advocacy with scholarship as one of the nation's leading experts on religious liberty and law and religion. He is the author of six books, including a leading casebook, Religion and the Constitution (with Michael McConnell and Christopher Lund, Aspen Publishing), and The State and Religion in a Nutshell (West). He has written approximately 75 book chapters and journal articles and dozens of op-eds and shorter pieces on religious freedom, constitutional law, and the role of religion in law, politics and society. His work has been cited multiple times by the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals.
Berg grew up in Chicago and received a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University, an M.A. in philosophy and politics from Oxford University, and both an M.A. in religious studies and a J.D. from the University of Chicago. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.
Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Affiliated Faculty at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin award in legal philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. His scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law and political philosophy.
Asma Uddin is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. She is the author of When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom (2019) and The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America (2021). Professor Uddin is also a Fellow with the Aspen Institute's Religion & Society program, where she is leading a project on Muslim-Christian polarization in the U.S. She was formerly legal counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and has held academic fellowships at Harvard, Georgetown, and UCLA. Professor Uddin served two terms as an expert advisor on religious freedom to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and was a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was a member of The University of Chicago Law Review.
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