Donniel Hartman, an Orthodox Rabbi, is Co-Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The Institute is a leading innovator in the field of pluralistic Jewish thought, and Judaic research, and a major center for Rabbinic and lay leadership education, as well as interfaith learning. Rabbi Hartman founded and directs some of the largest and most extensive training and enrichment programs for senior educators and rabbis serving Israel and North America. He oversees and helps coordinate the Institute’s interfaith work bringing together Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars from around the world in order to develop new avenues of understanding. He is the author of The Boundaries of  Judaism, co-editor of a new anthology, Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life, and the co-author of Spheres of Jewish Identity, a new core curriculum in Jewish philosophy for secular Israeli high schools. Hartman holds degrees in Jewish and General Philosophy from Hebrew University, N.Y.U. and Temple University where he majored in Christianity and Islam. He earned a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy from Hebrew University.  

Click here to listen to Rabbi Hartman's 2009
Lecture at the Interfaith Dialogue Conference at GVSU

James Carroll, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University, is known for his writing and long work toward Jewish-Christian-Muslim reconciliation. He is the author of ten novels and five previous works of non-fiction, including the National Book Award winning An American Requiem.  His best-selling book, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews,  was honored as one of the Best Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. His recent book, Practicing Catholic, has been described as a historic, spiritual and aesthetic memoir recounting his own personal relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. He has contributed to numerous publications including the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The New Republic, and is a regular columnist for The Boston Globe. He is a fellow of the American Academy of  Arts and Sciences where he completed his book, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. He has been a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

 Vincent Cornell, a practicing Muslim, is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From 2000-2006, he was Professor of History and Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. From 1991-2000, he taught at Duke University. He is the editor of the five-volume set Voices of Islam, a comprehensive introduction to Islamic religion, thought, life, and civilization with chapters by 50 Muslim authors, including many of the premier scholars of Islamic Studies. Dr. Cornell’s interests cover the entire spectrum of Islamic thought from Sufism to theology and Islamic law. He has lived and worked in Morocco for many years and has spent considerable time teaching and doing research in Egypt, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. His other published works include over 30 articles, and 3 books including, The Way of Abu Madyan and Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. He is currently working on projects on Islamic ethics and theology in conjunction with the Shalom Hartmann Institute in Jerusalem and the Building Bridges Seminars hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.