The Keynote Speakers of the Festival of Faiths are Dr. Judea Pearl and Dr. Akbar Ahmed.  They are appearing November 13, 2007 at 7 PM at Village Presbyterian Church, 6641 Mission Road, Prairie Village, KS.  To order tickets, click here

Dr. Judea Pearl
Dr. Judea Pearl is the father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org), which he co-founded in April 2002 to continue Daniel’s life-work of dialogue and understanding.  Dr. Pearl and his wife, Ruth, are co-editors of the book “I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl,” winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award for Anthologies, which provides a panoramic view of how Jews define themselves in the post 9/11 era.

Dr. Pearl is a professor of computer science and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA.  He is a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and is internationally known for his contributions to artificial intelligence, human reasoning and philosophy of science.  He received his PhD from the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, his Masters degree in Physics from Rutgers University, and is a graduate of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.  He was born in Tel Aviv.

Dr. Akbar Ahmed
Dr. Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC and is “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” according to the BBC.  Dr. Ahmed is a former Pakistani Ambassador to Great Britain and the author of several books including Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization and Islam Under Siege.

 Dr. Ahmed has been Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and a visiting professor at Harvard and Cambridge Universities.  He is presently Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, a member of the “Incident Management Team” for the Department of Homeland Security, and a trustee of the World Faiths Development Dialogue set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the President of the World Bank.  He is a trustee on the Board of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Hasan Family Foundation, and was a Senior Fellow of the Case Foundation.

Dr. Ahmed received the 2004 Professor of the Year Award for Washington DC by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, the first Gandhi Center Fellowship of Peace Award, the First Annual Bridge Builder’s Award from the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, and the Humanitarian Award by the Chapel of Four Chaplains.  He and Dr. Pearl were Finalists in the “Most Inspiring Person of the Year 2005” poll conducted by BeliefNet.