Inaugural lecture
Speaker: | Professor Eric Kaufmann, Birkbeck, University of London |
Date: | Wed, Jun. 13, 2012 | Time: | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Venue: | Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7JL |
Free event open to all: | To register please go to erickaufmann.eventbrite.com/ |
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Details: | On February 22, 2012, the secular-dominated Israeli Supreme Court overturned a longstanding law permitting ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jewish religious students to avoid military service. This comes in the wake of mounting religious-secular conflict in Israel. Religious fundamentalism, he proposes, is poised to extend its influence, especially in the West. The reason for this is demographic: shifts in birth rates and global migration patterns are altering the balance between seculars, moderates and fundamentalists within nation-states and ethnic groups. Israel, Kaufmann suggests, is a paradigm case. Taking the growth of the Haredim in Israel and the diaspora as his starting point, Kaufmann will go on to explore wider global trends. Professor Kaufmann will argue that at a time when religion is supposed to be fading in the West, the rise of religious fundamentalist sects challenges many of our assumptions about the inevitability of secularization, the future of progress and the idea of secular liberalism as an ‘End of History’. Introduced by: Professor David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck, University of London Vote of thanks: Professor David Feldman, Director, Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London |
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