SPEAKERS
Plenary and Round Table Speakers:
Richard Cohen is Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
Paul Dumouchel is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences at Ritsumeikan University (Japan).
Emory Elliott is University Professor of the University of California, and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He is also the Director of the Center for Ideas and Society (CIS) at UC Riverside.
Isabel Capeloa Gil is Associate Professor of German and Cultural Theory and Dean of the School of Human Sciences at the Catholic University of Portugal (Lisbon).
James Gelvin is Professor of History at UCLA, specializing in the modern Middle East.
Sandor Goodhart is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Classics at Purdue University. He is a former president of COV&R.
Robert Hamerton-Kelly is Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, and is the president of Imitatio.
Toby Miller is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Chair of the department at the University of California, Riverside.
June O'Connor is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department at the University of California, Riverside.
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Institute for Systematic Theology and chair of the interdisciplinary research platform "World Order - Religion - Violence" at the University of Innsbruck. He is the current president of COV&R.
Cheyney Ryan is Robert Clark Honors College Distinguished Professor of Professor of Philosophy and Law, University of Oregon, and senior research fellow, Oxford University.
John Smith is Professor of German and Chair of the Department at UC Irvine.
Ivan Strenski is Holstein Family and Community Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside .
Peter Thiel is president of Clarium Capital Management. He was co-founder and CEO of Pay-Pal and holds a law degree from Stanford University.
Israel-Palestine Session Speakers:
Byron Bland is Associate Director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN) and research associate at the Center for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law. He is a founding member of COV&R.
Sandor Goodhart is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Classics at Purdue University. He is a former president of COV&R.
Wilhelm Guggenberger is Associate Professor in the department of Systematic Theology, Innsbruck. He has published books on mimetic theory (2007) and Niklas Luhmann (1998).
Wolfgang Palaver is Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Institute for Systematic Theology and chair of the interdisciplinary research platform "World Order - Religion - Violence" at the University of Innsbruck. He is the current president of COV&R.
Charles Selengut is a professor in the department of Religious Studies at Drew University, and is the author of Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence (2004) and the editor of Jewish-Muslim Encounters: History, Philosophy and Culture (2001).
Simon Simonse is an anthropologist and author working in Nairobi, Kenya, and has taught at universities in Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Indonesia, and Japan. He is the author of Kings of Disaster (Brill 1992). Since 1994 he has been working NGO as a conflict resolution expert in the Horn and Great Lakes of Africa.
Sheelah Treflé Hidden is preparing her doctorate on the possibilities of mystical traditions in controlling desire and thus as an antidote to extremism. She lives in Bradford, England where she is an activist in the Muslim Community.