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15 years have now passed since Samuel Huntington proposed his theory of the Class of Civilizations, in a 1983 article in Foreign Affairs. It is seven years since the United Nations took up the phrase of Muhammad Khatami and declared 2001 the year of Dialogue among Civilizations. It is obvious to all of us, whether we are liberal or conservative, whether we are from “the West” or from “the Rest,” whether we are Jews, Christians, or Muslims, of no religion or some other religion, that things have not gone well in the years since these concepts were first enunciated. It’s inevitable that we ask our selves “Where are we headed” and “what control do we have over the direction our world is taking.” Where can we plug into history and make a difference?

I’ve been asked to speak this evening about the role of the universities in confronting the question of clash or collaboration of civilizations. I know that at the end of a long day and having just completed a delicious dinner that you are probably not in the mood for a long theoretical discussion on the role of universities. So I promise to keep my remarks brief and to have them grounded in my own experience.

I should tell you something about the way I got involved in what we might call “dialogue and collaboration of civilizations. Almost 40 years ago, in 1969, I left the United States and began teaching English in a teachers’ college in Indonesia. There I joined the Catholic religious order of the Jesuits. Since I was still a young man, I hoped to do further studies and discussed this desire with Indonesian friends. Some Muslim friends suggested that I study Islam. “That way,” they said, “you can help Christians to understand Islam better, and you can help Muslims to know more about Christianity.” It sounded like a good idea, something I would like doing. I got permission from my superiors and went to Lebanon and Egypt for Arabic and Islamic studies; eventually I got my degree from the University of Chicago and returned to Indonesia.

Obviously, one of the things a university can do is to bring about better knowledge and information about one another’s religions. In the theology faculty of our Catholic university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, we inaugurated an annual “Bulan Islam,” or Islam Month. For four weeks out of the year we suspended the usual curriculum and took up themes connected with the religion of Islam. We had a good number of Islamic universities and institutes in the city, so we had no trouble finding Muslim professors to lecture on every aspect of Islamic faith and practice. All the students followed this program of lectures on Islam every morning, and in the afternoon we gathered together as Christians to reflect on what we had learned.

Today we have moved beyond this to have a program of the study of religions and cultures which is jointly sponsored and operated by the State University, Islamic University, and Christian University in Yogyakarta. In this case, the early limited cooperation led over the course of time to the establishment of sufficient trust whereby we could actually inaugurate a joint program.

A second way the universities can promote understanding and cooperation among civilizations is by giving people a chance to know one another better. I came to appreciate this function of the university when I was transferred from Indonesia to Rome and became connected with the Jesuits’ Gregorian University in that city. In 1986, the Gregorian signed an academic agreement with the theology faculty of Ankara University in Turkey. This agreement, which stipulates the exchange of professors and students and the undertaking of joint seminars and workshops, is still continuing after 22 years and has been the model for similar agreements that the university signed with Hebrew University in Jerusalem, University of Tunis, and Tehran University.

In the context of that agreement, every year a Turkish professor comes to Rome to teach some aspect of Islamic studies, and someone from Rome teaches Christian theology in Turkey. This agreement has brought me about ten times to Turkish theological faculties.