2nd Annual Interfaith Institute Awards - Professor Diana L. Eck
Founder and Director, The Pluralism Project
Diana L. Eck is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and
Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University.
She serves on the Committee on the Study of Religion in the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences. She is also a member of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian
Studies, a member of the Faculty of Divinity, and Master of Lowell House,
one of Harvard’s twelve undergraduate residential Houses. She received her
B.A from Smith College (1967) in Religion, her M.A. from the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London (1968) in South Asian History,
and her Ph.D. from Harvard University (1976) in the Comparative Study of Religion.
Professor Eck’s work on India includes the books India: A Sacred Geography
(Random House, Inc. 2012), Banaras, City of Light (Knopf 1982) and Darsan:
Seeing the Divine Image in India (Anima 1981; Columbia University Press
1996.) With Devaki Jain she edited Speaking of Faith: Global Perspectives on
Women, Religion, and Social Change, a book which emerged from a jointly
planned interfaith women’s conference. With Francoise Mallison, she edited
Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India, essays honoring
the French Indology scholar Charlotte Vaudeville.
Diana Eck’s book, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras
(Beacon Press, 1993), studies the question of religious difference in the context
of Christian theology and the comparative study of religion. It addresses issues of
Christian faith in a world of many faiths and, more broadly, the issues of religious
diversity that challenge people of every faith. Encountering God won the 1994
Melcher Book Award of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the 1995 Louisville
Grawemeyer Book Award in Religion, given for work that reflects a significant
breakthrough in our understanding of religion.
Since 1991, Diana Eck has been heading a research team at Harvard University to
explore the new religious diversity of the United States and its meaning for the
American pluralist experiment. The Pluralism Project has been documenting the
growing presence of the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian
communities in the U.S. This research project has involved students and professors
at Harvard and in a dozen affiliate colleges and universities in research on
America’s new religious landscape. In 1994, Diana Eck and the Pluralism Project
published World Religions in Boston, A Guide to Communities and Resources
(now available online). The Pluralism Project’s interactive CD-ROM, On Common
Ground: World Religions in America, a multimedia introduction to the world’s religions
in the American context, was published in 1997 by Columbia University
Press. It has won major awards from Media &Methods, EdPress, and Educom and
is now available online.
Diana Eck’s book, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become
the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (Harper San Francisco 2001)
addresses the challenges for the United States of the more complex religious landscape
of the post-1965 period of renewed immigration.
In 1996, Diana L. Eck was appointed to a State Department Advisory Committee
on Religious Freedom Abroad, a twenty-member commission charged with advising
the Secretary of State on enhancing and protecting religious freedom in the
overall context of human rights. In 1998, Eck received the National Humanities
Medal from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work on American religious pluralism. In 2002, she received the American Academy of Religion Martin
Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. In 2003, she received the Governor’s Humanities Award
from the Montana Council for the Humanities in her home state of Montana. In 2005-06 Diana Eck served as
President of the American Academy of Religion.
Prof Diana Eck was the 2016 recipient of the Hofstra University Guru Nanak Award.
The Interfaith institute of the Islamic Center of Long Island is delighted to recognize Prof. Diana Eck with
its 2017 annual award for her seminal work in the field of religious pluralism in general and the religious
dimensions of America's new immigrants in particular- Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian
communities in the United States; and the issues of religious pluralism and American civil society.
Guest Speaker :
Stanley M. Bergman
Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council
Co-Chair
Stanley M. Bergman is the immediate past president of AJC (American Jewish Committee) and Chairman of the
Board and CEO of Henry Schein, Inc., a Fortune 500 company and the world’s largest provider of healthcare
products and services to office-based dental, animal health and medical practitioners.
Stan serves as a board member or advisor for numerous institutions including
New York University College of Dentistry; the University of Pennsylvania
School of Dental Medicine; the Columbia University Medical Center; the
World Economic Forum’s Health Care Governors, the Business Council for
International Understanding and the Metropolitan Opera, among others.
His awards include being the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Together
with his wife, Dr. Marion Bergman, Stan and Marion are active supporters
of organizations fostering the arts, higher education, cultural diversity
and grassroots health care and sustainable entrepreneurial economic development
initiatives in the United States, Africa and other developing regions of
the world.
Farooq Kathwari
Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council
Co-Chair
Farooq Kathwari is the Chairman, President and CEO of Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. He has been president of the
company since 1985, and Chairman and CEO since 1988.
Mr. Kathwari serves in numerous capacities at several nonprofit organizations: He is a member of the Board of
Overseers of the International Rescue Committee (IRC); a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); a
director and former chairman of the National Retail Federation (NRF); Director
Emeritus and former chairman and President of the American Home Furnishings
Alliance (AHFA); a member of the International Advisory Council of
the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); a member of the advisory board of
the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); Chairman Emeritus
of Refugees International (RI); an advisory member of the New York Stock
Exchange; and a director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at
Georgetown University. He also serves on the board of the Western Connecticut
State University Foundation, The Hebrew Home at Riverdale, and Arts
Westchester. He founded the Kashmir Study Group. Additionally, he served as
a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders from 2010 to 2014.
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