University of New England

Boston College author Alan Wolfe to speak on 'Who's Afraid of American Religion?' April 4th

BIDDEFORD, Maine - Boston College scholar Alan Wolfe will present the 2008 Featherman lecture, "Who's Afraid of American Religion?,” at noon on April 4, 2008 at the Campus Center Multipurpose Rooms at the University of New England's campus in Biddeford.

Alan Wolfe, Ph.D., is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

His most recent books include Does American Democracy Still Work? (Yale University Press, 2006), Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What it Needs to Do to Recover It (Princeton University Press, 2005), The Transformation of American Religion: How We actually Live our Faith (Free Press, 2003), and An Intellectual in Public ( University of Michigan Press, 2003).

He is the author or editor of more than ten other books including Marginalized in the Middle (1997), One Nation, After All (1998), Moral Freedom: The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice (2001) and School Choice: The Moral Debate (editor, 2002). Both One Nation, After All and Moral Freedom were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year.

Professor Wolfe attended Temple University as an undergraduate and received his doctorate in political science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. He has an honorary degree from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Wolfe currently chairs a task force of the American Political Science Association on “Religion and Democracy in the United States.” He serves on the advisory boards of Humanity in Action and the Future of American Democracy Foundation and on the president’s advisory board of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. 

He is also a Senior Fellow with the World Policy Institute at the New School University in New York.  In the fall of 2004, Professor Wolfe was the George H. W. Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He served as an advisor to President Clinton in preparation for his 1995 State of the Union address and has lectured widely at American and European universities.

The Featherman Lectures
The Featherman Humanities Lecture was established by University of New England President Emeritus Sandra Featherman, Ph.D., and her husband, Bernard Featherman.

Committed to promoting humanistic values and to enriching the learning experience at UNE, the Feathermans have created a permanent forum for exciting dialogues on diverse and provocative topics by thoughtful and renowned speakers.

The lecture is co-sponsored by UNE Political Science Students Club.

For more information, contact Professor Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, coordinator of the Featherman Fund Distinquished Lectures on the Humanities aahmida@une.edu

(Press release posted Feb. 21, 2007)