Tune in March 22 at 7pm EDT for our livestream of this event:

Join us for a Veritas Forum dialogue between Dr. Miroslav Volf and Dr. Vijay Pendakur discussing truth, tolerance, and safe spaces. The Veritas Forum invites students and faculty to ask life’s hardest questions. With a commitment to courageous discourse we put the historic Christian faith in dialogue with other beliefs and invite participants from all backgrounds to pursue Truth together. Refreshments will be provided.

Cosponsors:
Christian Union
Chesterton House
Cornell United Religious Work
CRU Cornell
Student Activities Funding Commission
Student Development Diversity Initiatives
Cornell LGBT Resource Center
Chinese Bible Study

Professor Volf is the founding Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. His books include Allah: A Christian Response (2011); Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (2006), which was the Archbishop of Canterbury Lenten book for 2006; Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996), a winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award; and After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (1998), winner of the Christianity Today book award. A member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. and the Evangelical Church in Croatia, Professor Volf has been involved in international ecumenical dialogues (for instance, with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity) and interfaith dialogues (on the executive board of C-1 World Dialogue), and is an active participant in the Global Agenda Council on Values of the World Economic Forum. A native of Croatia, he regularly teaches and lectures in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and across North America. Professor Volf is a fellow of Berkeley College.

Dr. Vijay Pendakur is the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students at Cornell. Before coming to Cornell, he served as Associate Vice President for Student Affairs at California State University – Fullerton (CSUF), where he led a large portfolio of units.  While at CSUF, he created elements of the institutional strategic plan, with special focus on the equity and graduation goals for low-income college students, first generation students, and students of color.  Prior to CSUF, he led a department at DePaul University dedicated to promoting student success for higher-risk and underserved college students, with special emphasis on graduates of the Chicago Public School system.  He started his higher education career at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, his alma mater, where he worked full-time as a diversity and social justice educator while running a new Multicultural Student Center focused on serving first year college students. In addition to being an experienced practitioner in student affairs administration, he is also a scholar of diversity and inclusion work.  For a sample of his scholarly publications, explore the book he recently edited, Closing the Opportunity Gap: Identity-Conscious Strategies for Retention and Student Success.  He has also published chapters and articles in New Directions in Higher Education: Reclaiming Higher Education’s Purpose in Leadership Development, Leadership Theory: A Facilitator’s Guide for Cultivating Critical Perspectives, Diversity & Democracy, The Leadership Exchange, as well as chapters in several books focused on Asian American college students.