Eboo Patel, Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, presented a lecture, "Acts of Faith: Interfaith Leadership in a Time of Religious Crisis," on Thursday, April 2 at 7:00 p.m. in McCosh 10 on the Princeton University Campus. This was the second lecture in the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations Spring Lecture Series.

Patel is the founder and currently the Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and pluralism among religiously diverse young people by empowering them to work together to serve others. He is also on the President's Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships. He is the author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. He holds a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship.

Patel writes "The Faith Divide," a featured blog on religion for The Washington Post and has also written for the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, Chicago Tribune, The Clinton Journal, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, The Journal of College and Character, and for National Public Radio.  He serves on the Religious Advisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation USA, the Advisory Board of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center, and the National Board of the YMCA.  He has spoken at the TED Conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum and at universities around the world. 

Patel is an Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world; was named by Islamica Magazine as one of  ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America; was chosen by Harvard’s Kennedy School Review as one of five future policy leaders to watch; and was given an honorary doctorate from Washington and Jefferson College.