Keynotes

Commencement Keynote Speaker

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His next book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect, will be published by Zondervan in Spring 2024. He is also the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012) and Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020).

Inazu is the founder of The Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and a Senior Fellow at Interfaith America and the Trinity Forum. He holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His teaching and scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory. 

Inazu’s next book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect, will be published by Zondervan in Spring 2024. He is also the author of Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012) and Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020). 

Inazu is the founder of The Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship. He a Senior Fellow at Interfaith America, where he co-directs (with Eboo Patel) the Newbigin Fellows and Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy. He serves on the boards of The Carver Project, the John Burroughs School, and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the advisory boards of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center at the University of Texas School of Law and the Honors College at the University of Tulsa, and is a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum.

Inazu holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.

His weekly newsletter, *Some Assembly Required, can be found at https://johninazu.substack.com/.