Public Relations and News

Press Releases

Pepperdine Faculty Attend World Conference on Religious Dialogue

Three Pepperdine faculty members participated in the prestigious World Conference on Dialogue, held July 16 to 18 in Madrid, Spain, at the invitation of the king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Bin-Abdul Al-Aziz al-Saud.

Khalil Jahshan, director of the Seaver College Washington, D.C. program; Rick Marrs (pictured), dean of Seaver College and professor of religion; and Tim Pownall, associate director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the School of Law, were among the 288 distinguished guests at the three-day conference.

Hosted by the Saudi Arabian embassy, the conference was held to discuss the need for global dialogue among the major world religions. It was a follow-up to an earlier conference the king hosted in May in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

During the conference, Jahshan, who is fluent in Arabic, participated in several television and radio interviews for European and Middle Eastern stations and in a televised panel discussion.

"I think the conference was a unique event in that it's the first high-caliber interface in which different cultures, religions, and ethnicities were able to come together under one roof and attempt to communicate with each other," Jahshan says, noting that no other university had as much representation at the conference as Pepperdine. "Pepperdine was invited in part due to the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, which has been recognized nationally for the fourth year in a row as the best of its kind in the country."

The conference was organized by the Muslim World League and consisted of panel discussions on various facets of dialogue among the major world religions. The opening ceremony featured a presentation by the king of Saudi Arabia, King Juan Carlos of Spain, and the prime minister of Spain, followed by a royal luncheon in the palace of the king of Spain.

For more information, visit the World Conference on Dialogue Web site.