Noted Author Os Guinness to speak April 12, 2007

Author Os Guinness will deliver a lecture April 12, 2007 at the College of William and Mary on “World Safe for Diversity: living with our deepest differences in age of exploding pluralism.”

The lecture, which is the second in a series hosted by the William and Mary Committee on Religion in Public University, will be held at 6 p.m. in Millington Hall Auditorium room 150. A question-and-answer session with Guinness will follow the talk.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

The great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer, Guinness has written or edited more than twenty five books, including The American Hour, Time for Truth, The Call, Invitation to the Classics, and Long Journey Home. His latest book is Unspeakable: Facing up to the challenge of evil, which was published by Harper San Francisco in January 2005. Previously, Os was a freelance reporter with the BBC.

Os was born in China in World War II where his parents were medical missionaries. A witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, he was expelled with many other foreigners in 1951.

Since coming to the United States in 1984, he has been a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies and a guest scholar and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1986 to 1989, Os served as Executive Director of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, a bicentennial celebration of the First Amendment. In this position he helped to draft the Williamsburg Charter and co-authored the public school curriculum Living With Our Deepest Differences. From 1991 to 2004 he was a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, and a frequent speaker and seminar leader at political and business conferences in both the United States and Europe.

The religion committee, which is made up of alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends of the College, was appointed earlier this semester by William and Mary President Gene R. Nichol to explore the role of religion at a public university, including the use of the College’s historic Wren Chapel. The committee will be inviting other speakers to campus throughout the remainder of the semester and in the fall.