 The work of the Center has profoundly impacted the way I think about projects in two distinctly different ways. First of all, it's forced me to address projects that I otherwise wouldn't have thought about. But more significantly than that, the process of working in an interdisciplinary perspective causes one to reflect on your own narrow tradition in a much broader analytic way. The best example of internal change in my own thinking occurred in the course of the article on proselytism, where the perspective of the Jewish tradition on proselytism changes how it's thought about when you compare it to other religions. It looks differently and behaves substantively differently than the other two religions we compare it to, and asking why is the Jewish tradition different is not a question the Jewish tradition would ask in a vacuum. In a vacuum, the tradition assumes it's perfectly normal because it's the center of its own conversation. The center works differently because it's in a law school than, let's say, a department of religion. In a law school, we all teach an illegal tradition that we believe in. So law schools are used to the notion that I teach something that I actually believe in. When you step into, for example, a department of religion, it's much more common to find that everybody in a department of religion works in the faith that they don't, in fact, believe in, and they're distant from it. Precisely because we are located in a law school where the antitrust lawyer believes in American antitrust law and the administrative lawyer believes in administrative law and the feminist legal theory person believes in feminist legal theory the notion that the Jewish law professor professes faith in Jewish law is perfectly normal. In a department of religion, it's not unusual to find somebody working in Hindu studies who's Catholic or Catholic studies who's Hindu. But in a law school environment, it would be very unusual to find somebody who's an avowed Cuban Marxist teaching American antitrust law or an avowed American antitrust law lawyer teaching Cuban Marxism. People in law schools believe what they teach in. So I think it is relevant. I think it's one of the reasons why we are both successful and unique. There are some fields where we simply dominated the scholarship of the field like proselytism or religious human rights, where by dint of the fact that we've undertaken to examine an area in the systemic, unique and complete way that our success has caused many other law schools to enter this field. So what used to be a desert has become a blossoming field where we are not alone. We've built a vision of the study of religion outside of the department of religion. And that too is a trend-setting activity. We are not narrow historians looking incessantly and uniquely backwards. We are this unique blend of lawyers working in the field of religion who look backwards in order to look forwards and that we are attempting not to map out the past but to predict the future. As each of us has become successful scholars, each of us has stepped forward into the limelight in various different ways. And this is a tribute to the center and its support staff and the structure that John has built that allows us each to both contribute to the whole and do our own thing. And some of us have an agenda that's very public. Some of us have an agenda that's less public. But all of us hope that our scholarship impacts on the world around us. And we're not simply building castles in the air that only we care about for sure. I don't think you could reasonably describe us as conservative or liberal or reform or traditional. Each of us has our own agenda which the center facilitates. But I don't think the center has an agenda. I believe over the next ten years issues of family, whether it's marriage, divorce and children and sexuality will be front and center in the interplay between law and religion in the United States. And that this is a central issue that our secular society needs to come to grips with. I think the center should work on two additional short term projects. One of which is religious perspectives on military ethics or war. And the second I think is more tightly addressing freedom of religion in the United States. We've never focused most intensely on the bread and butter First Amendment issues. And more focus on the bread and butter First Amendment issues of which John is really an expert in. But he's a reticent expert who loaths to speak publicly about it. Would be good for the center and will keep the agenda relevant. To me one of the most prized events of the program was Hal Berman's 80th birthday. Because it was an opportunity to both mark somebody's scholarship and analyze it as only we do and reflect on it while not forgetting where we come from. To a great extent Hal Berman is the father of this program. Although he never served as the director of the law and religion program, his presence created this program. And the events surrounding his 80th birthday were a quite remarkable series of events. And the scholarship that was generated from it was a quite remarkable series of scholarships. Before I came to Emory I had done some work on a piece of scholarship that Hal Berman had worked on in 1946. He wrote a piece. And here I found myself in the year 2002 writing on a piece that Hal Berman had written on as a law student at Yale Law School. And just reflecting on the chain that produces these kinds of events caused me to realize how successful a program we are. Hal Berman writes an article in the Yale Law Journal in 1946. And 55 years later I'm writing a Jewish gloss on something he wrote that neither he or I would have ever imagined we would be colleagues engaging in this activity.