Wallace Keynotes Conference in Turkey
James C. (Jim) Wallace, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was the keynote speaker at a recent conference studying religion in Turkey and China.
“Religion and Secularism in Turkey & China” was held Nov. 6 -8 at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, the number one research university in Turkey. Wallace was the only American scholar invited to participate. His keynote address was entitled “Washington, Jefferson & Eisenhower: The conflicting origins and realities of American state secularism.”
“The purpose of my presentation was to deconstruct and explain the American concept of “separation of church and state” as a comparative foundation for the discussions between the Turkish and Chinese scholars on their respective models of religion-state relations,” Wallace said. “I spoke on the philosophical, political and religious foundations of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court rulings that have defined the concept of the “wall of separation” between church and state, and the roles that Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Eisenhower played in shaping the modern American narrative surrounding the “separation of church and state.”
Wallace said many of the concepts and history outlined in his presentation are ones that are presented in his Pardee School course, “Religion and American Foreign Policy” (IR/RN 318).
The conference event was jointly-sponsored by the Asian Studies Center and the Confucius Institute at Boğaziçi University, as well as the Center for Turkish Studies at Shanghai University.
Wallace is a Fellow with Boston University’s Religion Fellows Program under the aegis of the BU School of Theology and the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, an affiliated regional and thematic studies center of the Pardee School. He teaches and lectures regularly in universities in China including Fudan University and Shanghai University. Learn more about him here.