MOUNT VERNON — Social philosopher and author Michael Novak will speak on “Islam and Democracy” at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons at Cornell College.
Novak’s visit is for the Earhart-Cornell Lecture series, “The Liberal Arts and the Public Square,” funded by the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Mich. Admission to the lecture is free.
Novak, a prolific author who once intended to join the priesthood, currently holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the
American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., where he is director of social and political studies. His books include “On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding,” “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism” and “The Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations is not Inevitable,” published last fall. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including the National Review, the New Republic and the Atlantic.
During his career, he has been a college professor at Stanford, the State University of New York College at Old Westbury and Syracuse; an adviser and speechwriter for Democratic candidates including R. Sargent Shriver, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern; and chief of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 1981 and 1982. He joined the American Enterprise Institute in 1978.
In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, a nearly $1 million award at the time. Other Templeton honorees have been Mother Teresa and the Rev. Billy Graham.
Novak’s is the sixth lecture in the Earhart-Cornell series, which previously has featured U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould; Yale University law professor and author Stephen Carter; Harvard University legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon; and Walter Williams, economist, columnist and commentator.
