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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
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Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contact: William C. Gallaher (609) 258-1460
University Center for Human Values
Date: March 29, 1999
Bill Moyers to Lead Roundtable on "Mind, Faith, and Spirit"
PRINCETON, N.J. -- The Princeton University Center for Human Values will host a roundtable discussion on "Mind, Faith, and Spirit," led by broadcast journalist Bill Moyers, on Thursday, April 8. The James A. Moffett '29 roundtable will take place at 4 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall on the Princeton University campus.
The roundtable will include William F. Buckley Jr. (National Review), the Rev. Dr. James Forbes Jr. (Riverside Church, New York City), Rabbi Laura Geller (Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills), Joan Halifax (Upaya, Santa Fe), Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr (George Washington University), and Professor Tu Weiming (Harvard University).
During his 25 years in broadcasting, Bill Moyers has sustained the highest quality of broadcast journalism. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has recognized his work with more than 30 Emmy Awards. Before establishing Public Affairs Television in 1986, Moyers served as executive director of the Bill Moyers' Journal on public television, senior news analyst for CBS Evening News, and chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In addition to his 1971 best-selling book Listening to America, four of Moyers' books based on his television series have also become best-sellers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, A World of Ideas I and II, and Healing and the Mind.
Moyers is a graduate of the University of Texas, and he holds the master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was deputy director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration and special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He left the White House in 1967 to become publisher of Newsday, was for 12 years a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and now serves as president of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation.
William F. Buckley Jr. is a distinguished Roman Catholic author, editor, lecturer, and host of the television show "Firing Line." A graduate of Yale University, he founded National Review in 1955 and the syndicated column "On the Right" in 1962, which now appears in 300 newspapers across the country. He has received an Emmy Award, the Shelby Cullom Davis Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. serves as senior minister at the Riverside Church, an interracial, interdenominational, and international church built in New York City by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1927. The 2,400-member church is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ. Forbes is the first African-American to serve as senior minister of one of the largest multicultural congregations in the nation. A graduate of Howard University, he is considered one of the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world because of his charismatic style.
Laura Geller is senior rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, and the first woman to be selected to lead a major metropolitan synagogue. She previously served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, Pacific Southwest Region, and director of Hillel at the University of Southern California. A graduate of Brown University, she gave the baccalaureate speech there in 1986. Among her many honors, Geller has received the A.C.L.U. of Southern California Award for Fostering Racial and Cultural Harmony.
Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, author, and social activist. For the past 25 years, she has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions around the country. Trained as a medical anthropologist, she has held faculty appointments at the University of Miami School of Medicine, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia University. In 1990, she founded Upaya, a Buddhist study and social action center in Santa Fe, where she works with people who have catastrophic illnesses. She is director of the Upaya Prison Project, which develops contemplative practice among prisoners in a maximum-security penitentiary.
Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born in Iran to a family of educators and scholars. He received his doctorate in Islamic cosmology and science from Harvard University in 1958. He has held teaching positions at the University of Utah, Temple University, and George Washington University. He was a visiting professor at Princeton in 1975, and has lectured widely throughout the United States, Europe, India, Australia, Japan, and the Islamic world. Nasr is the author of more than 20 books in Islamic studies, comparative philosophy and religion, philosophy of art, and the philosophical and religious dimensions of the environment.
Tu Weiming joined the Harvard faculty as professor of Chinese history and philosophy in 1981, having previously taught at Princeton University and at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests span Confucian humanism, Chinese intellectual history, and the philosophies of East Asian religions. He is currently working on the interpretation of Confucian ethics as a spiritual resource for the emerging global community. Born in China and educated in Taiwan, he has conducted research and given lectures on Confucian thought in China regularly since 1978. In 1996, he assumed the directorship of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.
The April 8 James A. Moffett '29 Roundtable Discussion is open to the general public, which is cordially invited to attend without admission charge. The event in Richardson Auditorium will be simulcast at McCosh 10 and on the World Wide Web at http://www.princeton.edu/RealMedia. For more information, please email vjkanka@wws.princeton.edu or call (609) 258-4798.
* * * Media representatives planning to cover the roundtable are asked to contact the Office of Communications at (609) 258-3601 by 5 p.m. April 7. Due to space constraints, still photography will be limited to the balcony after the first few minutes of the program.