Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program, the Eurasia Club, and the Initiative on Religion, Law and Diplomacy at The Fletcher School for a dinner conversation with Professor Cole Durham of Brigham Young University on the repressive policies of Central Asian governments toward religious expression and current opportunities for advancing religious freedom and human rights in the region. Dinner will be provided. Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite. Please only register if you know you can attend, as spaces are limited.

W. Cole Durham, Jr., Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law at Brigham Young University, is Founding Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. Professor Durham holds an AB degree in Philosophy magna cum laude from Harvard College, and he joined the faculty at BYU Law School in 1976, just one year after he received his own juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School, where he was a Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review and Managing Editor of the Harvard International Law Journal.

Professor Durham has been involved in constitutional drafting projects in Nepal (2011 and 2009), Thailand (2007), and Iraq (2005-2006). He has worked on constitutional and statutory drafting projects throughout Eastern Europe and in most former Soviet bloc countries. He served from 1997-2013 as a member of the Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. He is a Vice President of the International Academy for Freedom of Religion and Belief and serves as a board member of church-state centers at DePaul and Baylor Universities, of the International Religious Liberty Association, and of the International Advisory Board of the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He has also been active in work on laws governing the civil society sector, having served as Chairman of the Board of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law in Washington, D.C. (and as a member of its board for many years).

He has authored numerous law review articles dealing with religious liberty and other comparative law themes. Professor Durham has testified before the U.S. Congress in hearings on religious intolerance in Europe and on the Religious Liberty Protection Act. In 2010, he testified via teleconference before the Indonesia Constitutional Court concerning the constitutionality of the Indonesian blasphemy law.