TheLeader VOLUME XXVI ISSUE1 Winter2025 - Flipbook - Page 32
G R A N T S
AT
W O R K
Grant to Orthodox Christian Studies Center
at Fordham University
Totals $200,000 in 2024
With payment in 2024, Leadership 100 support for
Affirming an Orthodox Christian Theology of Human
Rights at Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham
University totaled $200,000 of the $250,000 grant
($50,000 in February 2018, $50,000 in April 2019, and
$50,000 in June 2022, and $50,000 in January 2024).
The purpose of the grant was to provide supplemental
funding to a $360,000 grant from the Henry Luce
Foundation to conduct a major study of the potential
compatibility of Orthodox Christian theology and the
Western discourse of Human Rights. This project
involves 24 scholars, 6 journalists, and will operate for
five years.
As of September 2024, the Center has convened all four
planned annual meetings of scholars and journalists. The
first meeting was held on March 20-22, 2019, at
Fordham University Law School. The second meeting,
originally scheduled for March 2020, was first postponed
due to COVID-19 restrictions and then held virtually on
March 29-April 1, 2021. Due to ongoing travel
restrictions, the third meeting was held in hybrid format
on March 12-14, 2022, with six participants attending at
Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus and the
remainder attending via Zoom.
A major goal of the meetings is to bring scholars of
diverse backgrounds together to learn from each other.
One of the current dysfunctions of the academic world is
that scholars who work in different disciplines (e.g.,
political science, history, or theology) and scholars who
work on different geographic areas (e.g., the Middle East
or Russia) rarely have contact with each other or read
each other’s work. The real genius of this project is that it
brings these world-class scholars into conversation so
that they can learn from each other’s work and thereby
vastly improve their own output so that it speaks to a
broader, more diverse public.
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One of the purposes of the first meeting was to provide
comprehensive overviews of the current state of the field
regarding the intersection of Orthodoxy Christianity and
human rights in distinct geographic settings (namely
Eastern Europe and the Middle East). Sessions led by
Kristina Stoeckl of the University of Innsbruck, Michael
Hanna of the Century Foundation, Samuel Moyn of Yale
University acquainted participants with the state of the
field. The second meeting turned to focused discussions
of participating scholars’ individual writing projects.
Eight of the scholars (Slavica Jakelic, Lucian Leustean,
Ina Merdjanova, Fr. Philip LeMasters, Christopher
Sheklian, Mariz Tadros, Vasileios Syros, and Fr. Anthony
Rober) presented on pre-circulated drafts of current
writing projects on Orthodoxy and human rights,
following by extensive discussion and critique aimed at
strengthening the final drafts before publication. The
third meeting once again proved lively and productive
even though most participants could not be present in
person. As in the previous meeting, seven of the scholars
(Fr. Isidoros Katsos, Vasilios Makrides, Ezekiel Olagoke,
Kristina Stoeckl, Vera Shevzov, Nathaniel Wood, and
Andrey Shishkov) presented on current writing projects
related to project (including monographs and journal
articles) and received in-depth feedback from the other
participants (approximately 90 minutes of discussion per
project). This meeting also featured a 90-minute session
with the participating journalists, who offered the
scholars advice on writing and pitching pieces for
newspapers and other non-academic venues.
The fourth and final meeting returned to a full in-person
format at Fordham University on March 13-16, 2023.
Following the format of the previous two meetings, the
remaining six scholars (Effie Fokas, Candace Lukasik,
Davor Dzalto, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Elizabeth
Prodromou, and Pantelis Kalaitzidis) presented on their
current research projects. Several of these projects have
since been published or accepted for publication. The
