Chesterton House presents:
What are Universities For? The Gifts of a University at Its Best
Thursday, October 29th, 2026
5:30pm
Physical Sciences Building 120 or via Zoom
dinner reception to follow
Do Universities in the US have a future?
From some quarters the prognosis sounds bleak. Public trust is down. Federal support has waned. AI is rapidly changing patterns in the acquisition of knowledge and the art of teaching.
In such a time, many universities have begun to ask again, Why do universities actually exist? What are they for? What are their goods?
Join us for a public lecture by the Vice Dean of Faculty of Duke Divinity School, C. Kavin Rowe, who will be joined in conversation by Praveen Sethupathy, member of Cornell University’s Future of the American University committee and Professor of Physiological Genomics and Chair of the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences. Vice Dean Rowe believes that the Christian intellectual tradition offers resources to address some of these basic questions and to inspire academic institutions to remember many of the goods they have to offer.
C. Kavin Rowe; Ivey Distinguished Professor and Vice Dean, The Divinity School, Duke University
C. Kavin Rowe is vice dean for faculty and George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. The first of three volumes of his collected essays has recently been published as “Leading Christian Communities.” He also is the author of “Christianity’s Surprise: A Sure and Certain Hope,” “One True Life: the Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions,” “World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age” and “Early Narrative Christology.” He has published dozens of articles and essays, and co-edited “The Word Leaps the Gap” and “Rethinking the Unity and Reception of Luke and Acts.”
He is on the editorial board of several international peer-review journals. Rowe has been a Fulbright Scholar, Regional Scholar for the Society of Biblical Literature, chair of the Society’s Southeastern Region New Testament section, president of the Society’s Southeastern Region, and was elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He was awarded a Lilly Faculty Fellowship, a Christian Faith and Life Grant from the Louisville Institute, the John Templeton Prize for Theological Promise, the Paul J. Achtemeier Award, and a Distinguished Scholars grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation.
