Zutshi-Smith Memorial Lecture: The Pragmatic Case for Freedom of Religion or Belief
Dr. Brian Grim will give the third Zutshi-Smith Memorial Lecture on The Pragmatic Case for Freedom of Religion or Belief at 5 pm on Monday 13 October 2014 in Room 4.10, Helen Wodehouse Building, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol.
The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion and open question-and-answer session. Panel members include Baroness Elizabeth Berridge of the Vale of Catmose, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom, and Professor Roger Trigg, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick and Senior Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford.
Refreshments will be served afterwards
Free to attend but booking is required, please click here to book your place
Please find here below additional information on the speaker and the Zutshi-Smith events:
Brian J. Grim, PhD in Sociology, Penn State. Formerly, directed the Pew Research Center's cross-national data project. Currently, President, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. Leading expert on international religious demography and the socio-economic impact of restrictions on religious freedom. Scholar, Georgetown and Boston Universities. TEDx and UNAOC speaker. Author of numerous works including: The Price of Freedom Denied; World Religion Database. Work history includes 20 years living in the former Soviet Union, China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
The Zutshi-Smith Lecture Series
The late Derek Zutshi (1930-2007) studied medicine at the University of Bristol before embarking on a glittering medical career. His long-standing and tireless support of the university culminated in a number of endowments in memory of his, and his wife’s, parents, including the one memorialised in this lecture series. His will established a series of public lectures or symposia to take place biennially, given by persons of international reputation, on the subjects of the improvement and understanding of current international relations, the promotion of religious tolerance and understanding, and the reasons for and possible solutions to conflicts with a religious character. The first memorial lecture was given in 2009 by Professor the Lord Plant of Highfield on ‘Religion in a Liberal State’ and was followed by an interdisciplinary academic symposium on the lecture, the proceedings of which were published as D’Costa, Evans, Modood and Rivers, eds., Religion in a Liberal State(Cambridge University Press, 2013). The second Zutshi-Smith memorial lecture was on the topic of religious toleration. Professor the Lord Parekh spoke on ‘A Comparative Perspective on Religious Toleration’, and the lecture was followed by an expert panel discussion offering Islamic, Christian and Buddhist perspectives.