The 10th Cambridge Roundtable on Science, Art & Religion, Tuesday, March 31, 6:30 - 9:30 PM, presents dinner (provided) and discussion at the MIT Faculty Club featuring Day of Empire author and Yale University Law Professor Amy Chua on the topic:  Connecting Religious Tolerance and Prosperity: among Nations and in the University.

As the most powerful and prosperous hyperpower nations throughout history have advanced or declined with respect to their attitudes toward religious expression (a premise of Chua's book), so also a hyperpower university will advance or decline with respect to its attitudes toward Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other religiously devout faculty and students. What kind of religiously-based expression can be permitted in the life-blood of the university - manifested in scholarship, in the classroom, and in faculty-student relationships - that will lead to the advancement and prosperity of the university, above and beyond the shallow tolerance of permitting extracurricular privately exercised religious activity?

"Amy Chua smartly condenses the complex histories of the Persian, Mughal, Dutch, and other empires into an irresistible argument: that empires expand through toleration and contract through close-mindedness. As with any shrewd and elaborate argument, the getting there is half the fun." - Robert D. Kaplan

"Chua unfolds an agreeably plausible case with clarity and insistent simplification, like a lawyer pacing before the jury box, hitting the same points (tolerance, diversity, inclusion) for emphasis as she clicks off centuries and civilizations. Always in the back of her mind is the drama of America." - Lance Morrow, The New York Times Book Review

"Chua's lively writing makes her case studies interesting in themselves. And her convincing presentation of their relevance to the contemporary scene adds meaning to this timely warning." - James Hoge, The Washington Post

Amy Chua is the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She came to Yale in 2001 after teaching at Duke and serving as a visiting professor at Columbia, Stanford, and NYU.  Her expertise is in international business transactions, law and development, ethnic conflict, and globalization and the law. Her recent books include Day of Empire and New York Times Best Seller, BusinessWeek Best Seller, and Economist magazine Best Book of the Year: World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. Professor Chua has an A.B. (1984) and a J.D. (1987) from Harvard University.

Light refreshments will be served at 6:30 PM, followed by brief remarks from Professor Chua. We will provide dinner immediately afterwards, allowing for our evening to focus on roundtable discussion; first by table, and then by all of the participants together. The number of participants will be limited in order to create an atmosphere conducive to conversation.

By invitation only.  For questions, please contact the Roundtable Coordinator:  dave@cambridgeroundtable.org

The Roundtable is chaired by:
Owen Gingerich, Astronomy, Harvard University

The Roundtable Committee of Invitation:
Rosalind Picard, Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peter Gomes, Minister and Professor, Memorial Church, Harvard University
David Thom, Director, The Leadership Connection

The Roundtable does not sponsor presenters in order to endorse or promote a narrow religious point of view.  To date, hundreds of Harvard, MIT and BU scholars from a wide variety of perspectives on faith have engaged in Roundtable faculty seminar dinner discussions, and have experienced the potential to bring added depth to their work as scholars and educators. Roundtable seminars are dedicated to fostering dialogue that explores - given the roots of our nation's consciousness - the intersection of contemporary academic thought and Christian thought on issues related to science, art and religion at MIT, Harvard and BU. The Roundtable does not expect faculty participants to be aligned with any particular religious or non-religious perspective; and the result has been that a wide diversity of views are represented.

November 2008 The Roundtable presented:
Evangelicals and the Academy
Michael Lindsay
Rice University, Sociology
Christopher Winship
Harvard University Diker-Tishman Professor, Sociology

March 2008 The Roundtable presented:
Faith, History, and Reason:  all in the Pursuit of Truth?
Charles Freeman
Royal Society of the Arts Fellow
Anne McCants
MIT History Faculty Head

October 2007 The Roundtable presented:
Religious Literacy
Stephen Prothero
Boston University Religion Department Chair

February 2007 The Roundtable presented:
What ought the university teach?
George M. Marsden
Notre Dame University's Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History
Marc D. Hauser
Harvard University Professor of Psychology

October 2006 The Roundtable presented:
Moral Leadership in the University
Harry R. Lewis
Former Dean of Harvard College, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Paul C. Vitz
New York University Professor of Psychology, Emeritus

March 2006 The Roundtable presented:
God, Time, and Relativity Theory
William Lane Craig
Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology

February 2006 The Roundtable presented:
Should "Intelligent Design" be taught as Science in the Secular University?
Michael J. Behe
Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box
Edward J. "Ned" Hall
Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University

October 2005 The Roundtable presented:
Faith and Religion in the Classroom
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Deputy Taste Editor at The WSJ, author of God on the Quad

March 2005 The Roundtable presented:
The Self-Disclosure of Ultimate Reality
Sir John Polkinghorne
Fellow of the Royal Society, Former President of Queens' College, Cambridge