Maurice Meyer Distinguished Endowed Lectureship

Past Lecturers

2007

Dr. Linda Zagzebski
Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma

Self-Trust and the Diversity of Religions

Dr. Linda Zagzebski is George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Philosophy and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma, where she has taught since 1999. A graduate of Stanford University, she received a Ph.D. from UCLA and taught for twenty years at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she chaired the Department.

She is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers and past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. She has given many endowed lectures, including the Romanell Lectures of Phi Beta Kappa and the McCarthy Lectures at the Gregorian University. Her books include The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, (Oxford University Press, 1991), Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Divine Motivation Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, 2007), as well as many articles in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtue ethics. She is a member of the National Research Council.

2006

Dr. Stephen Prothero
Professor of Religion at Boston University

Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know About Christianity and the World’s Religions

Dr. Steven Prothero serves as Chairman of the Department of Religion and Director of the Graduate Division of Religious and Theological Studies at Boston University. A historian of American religion, Prothero specializes in Asian religious traditions in the United States and regularly teaches courses on American religious history, Buddhism in America, Hinduism in America, Death and Immortality, and Jesus in America.

His first book, The White Buddhist: the Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (1996), was awarded the Best First Book in the History of Religions for 1996 by the American Academy of Religion. He has published articles in Journal of the American Academy of Religion and American Religion and Culture. He is also the co-editor, with Thomas Tweed, of Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 1998) and the author of Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (University of California Press, 2001).

His most recent book is American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (2003), which chronicles the distinctive “images of Jesus” cherished by the American people from crucified Lord to folk hero, from divinity to celebrity.

2005

Dr. Roland Fryer, Jr.
Assistant Professor at Harvard University

Toward a Unified Theory of Black America:The Racial Achievement Gap and What to Do About It

Dr. Roland Fryer, Jr., is a groundbreakingscholar whose work combines the fields ofeconomics and African-American studies.He has been hailed as a rising star in theacademic world for his application ofscientific and economic tools to candidlyaddress issues of race and inequality. FellowHarvard professor Henry Lewis Gates haspraised Fryer, noting that the 27-year-old scholar will “raisethe analysis of the African-American experience to newlevels of rigor and bring economics into the mainstreamarea of inquiry within the broader field of African-Americanstudies.”
Fryer earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from theUniversity of Texas-Arlington and a doctorate in economicsfrom Penn State University. In 2003, he joined the Society ofFellows at Harvard, one of academia’s most prestigiousresearch posts.

2004

Wilma P. Mankiller
Author, Activist, and Former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation

Critical Issues Facing Native People in the 21st Century

Wilma P. Mankiller, author, activist and former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was born in 1945 at Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah.
At age 10, her family moved to San Francisco as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Program where she lived for two decades before returning to Oklahoma.

In 1977, she returned to Oklahoma and began employment with the Cherokee Nation. In 1983, she was elected the first female deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation, and president of the tribal council.
In 1987, she was elected to serve as the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1991. She chose not to seek re-election in 1995.

During Mankiller’s tenure she met with Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton to present critical tribal issues. She is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She has written several books including “Mankiller: A Chief and Her People,” and co-edited “A Reader’s Companion to the History of Women in the U.S.”

2003

Dr. Joshua M. Landis
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History and Islam
University of Oklahoma

Islam and Christianity: A Clash of Civilizations or a Clash of Politics?

Dr. Joshua M. Landis is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History and Islam at the University of Oklahoma. He was educated at Swarthmore College (B.A., 1979), Harvard University (M.A., 1984) and Princeton University (Ph.D., 1997).

He has lived over 12 years in the Middle East. Brought up in Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1960s, he returned in the 1980s to teach in Beirut, study at the University of Damascus as a Fulbright Scholar, and learn languages at universities in Cairo and Istanbul.

Before coming to OU, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Wake Forest University, and Princeton University. He is fluent in Arabic and French and works in Turkish, Ottoman, and Italian. Prof. Landis is finishing revisions on his manuscript, “Nationalism and Leadership in Syria, 1922-1950,” which the Middle East Studies Association named the best dissertation of 1997. Oxford Press has contracted with him to write a history of Syria during the 20th century. He has also published a number of articles on Syria and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in scholarly journals and edited books.