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Speakers: Yale professors Seyla Benhabib (Political Science), Jon Butler (History), and Lamin Sanneh (Divinity School)

Jon Butler is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History and Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, where he has taught since 1985 and where he currently chairs the Department of History. He grew up in rural Minnesota and received both his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Professor Butler has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. With his colleague Harry S. Stout, he is co-director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale and also co-directed the Pew Program in Religion and American History, which together have received $5.5 million in grants from The Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia. He served as chair of the American Studies Program, 1988-1993, chaired the search for the Yale Librarian in 1993-1994, served as Director of Humanities, 1997-1999, and has chaired the Department of History since 1999.
Professor Butler is married to Roxanne Deuser Butler, who teaches in the Hamden Public Schools. They have two sons, Benjamin, who graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2001, and Peter, an Americorps volunteer in Boston who graduated from Wheaton College (Massachusetts) in 2000.

Lamin Sanneh, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was educated on four continents. He went to school with chiefs' sons in the Gambia, West Africa, and subsequently came to the United States on a U.S. government scholarship to read history. After graduating he spent several years studying classical Arabic and Islam, including a stint in the Middle East, and working with the churches in Africa and with international organizations concerned with inter-faith and cross-cultural issues. He studied classical Arabic and Islam for his M.A., and subsequently received his Ph.D. in Islamic history at the University of London. He was a professor at Harvard University for eight years before moving to Yale University in 1989 as the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity, with a concurrent courtesy appointment as Professor of History at Yale College. He is Honorary Research Professor in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He was Chairman of Yale's Council on African Studies. He is a member of the Board of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, an editor-at-large of the ecumenical weekly, The Christian Century, a contributing editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals and encyclopedias. He has served as consultant to the Pew Charitable Trusts. He is listed in Who's Who in America. He is the author of over a hundred articles on religious and historical subjects, and of several books. He was an official consultant at the 1998 Lambeth Conference in London. For his academic work he was made Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Lion, Senegal's highest national honor.

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