Religion and Spirituality (Video)

Father Gregory Boyle, Jesuit priest and bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. He shares what three decades of working with gang members has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. Series: "Burke Lectureship on Religion and Society" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 32868]

David Murphy is Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) San Diego office. In this lecture Murphy shares his insights into the moral and logistical challenges posed by the current world-wide refugee crisis, based on his extensive experience working with the IRC in Africa and Afghanistan. Series: "Burke Lectureship on Religion and Society" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 32144]

For 15 years, Edina Lekovic has served as a leading voice on American Muslims and an inter-community builder between diverse faith traditions. She explores the negative portrayal of American Muslims in the Media. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32401]

For 15 years, Edina Lekovic has served as a leading voice on American Muslims and an inter-community builder between diverse faith traditions. She explores the way in which the treatment of American Muslims under the Trump administration could serve as an advanced warning of danger to our very democracy. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 32099]

Bernard-Henri Levy visited the UCSB campus to discuss his new book The Genius of Judaism. In this provocative book he demonstrates that anti-Semitism, constitutes the greatest danger to Jews and non-Jews alike, and to liberal democracies. And, at the same time he offers a challenging argument that the nature or essence of Judaism is located in Talmud and its interpreters, not as an on-going discourse about norms of behavior and structures of belief, but of critical engagement, on-going inquiry, of intellectual, philosophical, and moral challenges, in which Judaism and Jewish identity is to be realized in an obligation to the other, to the dispossessed, to the marginalized. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31923]

How did Zionist immigrants to early 20th century Palestine conceive of their new Arab neighbors, and how did the Arab natives make sense of the Jews arriving on Palestine’s shores? Drawing on his book Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter, Jonathan Marc Gribetz argues that this fateful encounter was initially imagined very differently from the way it ultimately developed. The Late Ottoman period in Palestine was no utopia, but exploring this moment reveals that today’s hardened dividing lines are far from timeless; they have a fascinating history. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 31660]

Robert Jones, Director of the Public Religion Research Institute in Washington, D.C., is a well-known commentator on religion and politics. He discusses the upcoming presidential election. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 31622]

The multimedia Journey of the Universe project explores some of mankind's most persistent existential questions: What is our purpose? How have the universe, our planet and humanity evolved? Mary Evelyn Tucker proposes that cosmology is the necessary basis for an in-depth examination of the human condition and that useful tools may be found at the intersection of science, art, and humanities, where recent scientific discoveries are leavened and informed with wisdom gleaned through the ages. Series: "Burke Lectureship on Religion and Society" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31039]

Bashar Matti Warda, a Chaldean Catholic cleric and the current Archbishop of Erbil, speaks on the role that the Christians of northern Iraq are playing in removing ISIS and fostering peace and forgiveness in this long-troubled region. Archbishop Warda is presented by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. Series: "Peace exChange -- Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 31463]

One of the few constants throughout Jewish history is that Jewish identity has never been simple, and the answer to the question of “Who is a Jew?” – far from clear-cut. Rabbi Donniel Hartman, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, says that at key moments over the last 3,000 years, Jews have reinvented or reimagined themselves in the context of their unique reality. Due to the cultural, historical, and psychological transformations that have taken place in the 20th and 21st centuries, this identity is once again at a crossroads. He explores how individual and collective identities throughout the millennia have been understood; how these earlier conceptions shape our understanding of who we are now and who we ought to be in the 21st century. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31308]