‘We don’t need to agree on everything to work together’
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, moderated an open, free-flowing, and at times amusing 90-minute interfaith dialogue among “three remarkable American leaders”: Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl, senior rabbi-designate at New York City’s Central Synagogue; Sheik Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute; and the Rev. J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. The panel discussed, among other things, the role of religion in public life, the challenges of interfaith dialogue, and the critical nature of religion in making the world better. The Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Initiative on Religious Freedom and Its Implications, which sponsored the event, is a joint program of Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom. It was established to explore the causes, processes, and...