Interview with Peter Phan

In 2017 the Center of Theological Inquiry launched a five year project on religion and global concerns, examining such issues as migration, economic inequality, religious violence, and the environment. The senior fellow in the current resident seminar on religion and migration is Peter Phan, a renowned theologian based at Georgetown University. Peter C. Phan, a native of Vietnam, emigrated as a refugee to the U.S.A. in 1975. He obtained three doctorates, the Doctor of Sacred Theology from the Universitas Pontificia Salesiana, Rome, and the Doctor of Philosophy and the Doctor of Divinity from the University of London. He was also awarded the honorary Doctor of Theology from Chicago Theological Union and the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the College of Our Lady of the Elms. He began his teaching career in philosophy at the age of eighteen at Don Bosco College, Hong Kong. In the United States, he has taught at the University of Dallas, Texas; at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, where he held the Warren-Blanding Chair of Religion and Culture; at Union Theological Seminary, N.Y.; at Elms College, Chicopee, MA; and at St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI. and at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where he is currently holding the Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Catholic Social Thought. He is the first non-Anglo to be elected President of the Catholic Theological Society of America. In 2010 he was given the John Courtney Murray Award, the highest honor of the Catholic Theological Society of America, in recognition for outstanding and distinguished achievement in theology. Prof. Phan is on the podcast to discuss his scholarly work on the issue of migration and its connection to the current residential seminar at CTI.