The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies have organized a conversation between two prominent philosophers, both of whom locate their thinking on the margins of the West: one a Latin-American Christian and the other Islamic. Enrique Dussel, professor of philosophy at the Universidad Autsnoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa and at the Universidad Nacional Autsnoma de Mixico, is the founder of Liberation Philosophy and Theology of Liberation in Latin America. He has published widely on, among many subjects, Latin American church history, ethics, and Marxist theory. Tariq Ramadan, a professor of philosophy at the College of Geneva and of Islamic Studies at Fribourg University, is a leading Islamic thinker among Europe's second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants. The grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, he is especially well-known for his articulations of an independent European Islam.
The dialogue between these two scholars will range from the present clash of fundamentalist ideologies, alternatives to the monologic global design of Western modernity, Eurocentrism vs. fundamentalism, and Islam's future evolution.