In April 2008, Professor Suheil Bushrui, Director of the Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace Project, and Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, was invited to an event entitled: Peace Our Hope: An Interreligious Gathering with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, hosted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Approximately 100 religious leaders and scholars met with the pope from 3:30pm to 8:30pm to engage in a lively exchange of ideas regarding need for interfaith dialogue. His Holiness the Pope met with the group from 6:30pm to 7:30pm, and delivered a message of hope and peace, emphasizing the importance of religious cooperation in today’s world.

Understanding and preserving humanity’s religious and spiritual traditions is necessary for everyone who aspires to be a citizen of the world and is an important goal of Professor Bushrui’s a program promoting both interreligious and interfaith dialogue. This program, called “The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race” has existed at the University of Maryland for the last 12 years, and the University of Southern Maine (USM) has recently adopted the course as part of its undergraduate general education curriculum. Professor Bushrui’s textbook, also entitled The Spiritual Heritage of the Human Race. is currently in press, and will be published towards the end of 2008. An Arabic translation of it will appear in 2009.

In addition to his efforts to promote the spirit of interfaith reconciliation, Professor Bushrui is also dedicated to promoting peace and conflict resolution. He is a founding member of the International Dialogue on Transition to a Global Society, and serves as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Al Madad Foundation. He also serves on the board of Al-Hewar: the Arab-American Dialogue Center; the Board of Governors of The Temple of Understanding, and he is an International Fellow of the Temenos Academy in London. In September 1999, he joined the Advisory Council of the International Program on Religion and Conflict Resolution of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (located in New York City).