Brought to you by Chesterton House and COLLIS Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture

Can We Talk About It? Why Faith Remains the Hardest Conversation on Campus

April 10, 2025
5:30 pm EST Physical Sciences 120 or via Zoom

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The university is meant to be a place where every idea can be discussed, debated, and tested. But does it always live up to that ideal? When it comes to faith, many students and faculty feel pressured to self-censor, avoiding ideas that might ruffle too many feathers. Yet, faith and religion have a profound impact throughout politics, science, mental health, and beyond. Is this self-censorship leaving crucial issues underdiscussed?

Author Mary Eberstadt ‘83, Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC, understands these challenges first-hand. A Cornell graduate, she will share with us her journey to becoming a Christian public intellectual, why faith remains such a difficult topic on many campuses that claim to champion open dialogue, and how to navigate these challenges in both truthful and winsome ways. Join us for a conversation about how to bring faith conversations back into academic and public discourse and why doing so matters.

Mary Eberstadt ’83; Panula Chair in Christian Culture, Catholic Information Center

Mary Eberstadt is an American writer, and author of several influential books including How the West Really Lost God; Adam and Eve after the Pill; and Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. She also authored a novel called The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism, which debuted as a stage-play in 2017. She has written for many journals and magazines, and her work has been translated into numerous languages.

Mrs. Eberstadt is a senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute, and she holds the Panula Chair at the Catholic Information center in Washington, DC. Her early career includes two years as a speechwriter to an American Secretary of State, George Shultz, and another year as speechwriter to a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. She holds honorary doctorates in humane letters from Seton Hall University in New Jersey and from Magdalen College, New Hampshire.

Mary Eberstadt is delighted to be appearing this week at her alma mater. She grew up in Central New York, and she enjoys several personal ties to Cornell, where she graduated magna cum laude with a double major in Philosophy and Government. Her senior paper, on Immanuel Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment, was supervised in part by a mentor who was one of the titans of
Cornell’s philosophy faculty, the late Norman Kretzmann. Mary resided throughout her undergraduate years in Telluride House, and she worked for four years as a special assistant in the Philosophy Department.

Finally, Mary is also embarking in 2025 on a new, five-year, multidimensional project, “Remembering Upstate New York,” dedicated to bringing the region’s extraordinary history and culture to new literary and theatrical life. Updates about the project, its team, and her other work can be found on her website, maryeberstadt.com