Joseph Runzo
Executive Director
Global Ethics and Religion Forum
Joseph Runzo, internationally recognized for his work in comparative religious worldviews, global human rights, and the ethics of war, is the founding Executive Director of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum. His vision was to create an organization that would bring together outstanding scholars from around the world in a variety of disciplines including ethics, international law, economics, business and management, health and medicine, history, science, philosophy and religion to address the ethical challenges facing our world today. The Forum brings these scholars into dialogue with community members, both to facilitate deeper understanding of ethical challenges in a global context, and to move toward creative solutions.
Dr. Runzo has lectured extensively around the world, and his publications include more than 50 articles, 36 photographs, and 10 books including Ethics, Religion and the Good Society (1992), The Meaning of Life in the World Religions (2000), Global Philosophy of Religion (2001), Ethics in the World Religions (2001), and Human Rights and Responsibilities in the World Religions (2003). He is currently working on 3 books, War and the Destruction of the Soul, War and Reconciliation, and Global Medical Ethics. Among his recent articles are the entry on “The Meaning and Value of Life” for the Encyclopedia of Philosophy; “Love” for the Oxford Handbook on Religion and Emotion; “Religious Pluralism” for Blackwell’s Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues; and “War and the Role of Religion in a Global Society” for the Routledge volume Civil Society, Religion, and Governance. He has initiated a five-year international project to revise just war theory for the twenty-first century, and he is the Producer/Director of a film on the environmental crisis entitled “The Sacred Planet,” being shot on location in Southern California; Japan; Cambridge, England; and the Yukon, Canada.
Dr. Runzo is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Chapman University, California, is a Life Member of Clare Hall, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge, England. Trained in philosophy, ethics, religious studies and Asian culture, he received his BA from the University of California, Irvine, his MA and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, and an MTS in theological studies from Harvard University. He also studied South Asian religion and culture as a Fellow at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii and received a British Spalding Trust Award for research in India. The recipient of six awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is general co-editor with Dr. Nancy M. Martin of The Library of Global Ethics and Religion; Honorary Research Scholar at the Centre for the Study of World Religions, University of Wales, Lampeter; a member of the advisory board of the Citizen Peacebuilding Program, University of California, Irvine; and Consultant for Ethics and International Business to the ADOS Corporation of Japan. Dr. Runzo is also executive producer for the Global Ethics Films division of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum.
Dr. Runzo has been an invited speaker on human rights in China and at the Third Parliament of the World’s Religions in Capetown, South Africa, and was invited to organize a three-day symposium at the Fourth Parliament of the World Religions on religion and human rights in Barcelona, Spain. In recognition for his international leadership of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum and his work on the ethics of war, he was honored as the keynote speaker at the 72nd Congress of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2003). He has also spoken on the ethics of war as a plenary speaker at the 2004 international conference on “World Peace: Problem for a Global Era” in Gujarat, India; at the United States Military Academy, West Point; at the international conference on “Religion and Globalization” at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand; at the Fourth Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain (2004); at the University of Cambridge conference on “The Future of Warfare” for British military officers (2005); at the international conference on “The Ethics of Private Military Companies” in South Africa (2005), at the Global Congress for Religion after September 11th in Montreal, Canada (2006); at the 8th International Symposium on Military Pedagogy for leaders of the NATO Military Academies in Israel (2007); and at the Universities of Frankfurt and Mainz. Dr. Runzo has also been honored for his work on religion and science, delivering the McMannis Lectures at Wheaton College, and for his work on comparative ethics as the Lowell Lecturer at Boston University.
Contact: runzo@gerforum.org
Phone/Fax: 714-633-5504
For an extended Bio, please visit Dr. Runzo's Homepage