The Alliance for Civics in the Academy hosts "Building Civic Unity in a Religiously Diverse Democracy" with Eboo Patel, Robert George, Fr. Francisco Nahoe, and Josh Ober on March 18, 2026, from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PT.
Religious diversity is a defining feature of contemporary American democracy, yet it raises persistent questions about how civic unity is cultivated in shared public life. How can institutions of higher education prepare students to engage constructively across religious difference while sustaining common democratic commitments? This webinar explores the role of civic education in a religiously diverse democracy, examining pedagogical approaches, institutional frameworks, and normative principles that support civic unity without erasing pluralism.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Eboo Patel is a civic leader, speaker, and author advancing the notion that diversity is a treasure and cooperation across our difference is the key for everybody to thrive. Recognized as “one of America’s best leaders” by U.S. News and World Report, he is the Founder and President of Interfaith America, the nation’s leading interfaith organization.
Under Eboo’s leadership, Interfaith America has grown into a $20 million-per-year organization that partners with governments, universities, businesses, and civic organizations to transform faith into a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.
Eboo’s impact extends to serving on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council, delivering hundreds of keynote addresses, and authoring five influential books, including We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy. A Rhodes Scholar and Ashoka Fellow, Eboo earned a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University.
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has served as chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and before that on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds J.D. and M.T.S. degrees from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Council on Foreign Relations.
A friar and priest, Fr. Francisco Nahoe, OFMConv now works in campus ministry at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. Previously, he taught rhetoric and philosophy at Zaytuna College in Berkeley. He holds a PhD in Renaissance Literature from the University of Nevada, a ThM in Biblical Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. He earned bachelor’s degrees in theology at the Pontifical Seraphicum in Rome and in philosophy at Pomona College in California. His writing and research focus on Milton’s Italian verse, Anglo-Italian literary transactions, the rhetoric of science, Polynesian ethnohistory, and Easter Island Studies. He taught English Literature at Phillips Academy in Andover, and Medieval History and Italian at Dartmouth. An ethnic Rapa Nui, he acts on behalf of Te Mau Hatu, the Easter Island council of elders, for the recovery and repatriation of ancestral remains.
Moderator
Josiah Ober is the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, and Founding Director of the Stanford Civics Initiative. His primary university appointment is in Political Science; he holds a secondary appointment in Classics and a courtesy appointment in Philosophy. His most recent books are Demopolis: Democracy before liberalism (2017), The Greeks and the Rational: The discovery of practical reason (2022), and The Civic Bargain: How democracy survives (2023, with Brook Manville).
