Each year since 1999 the Greenberg Center has named as Greenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow an accomplished scholar, religious leader or public figure who has made a significant contribution to public understanding of religion in public life. The Greenberg Visiting Fellow spends a week on campus meeting students and faculty, participating in the life of the Center and delivers talk to the campus community.
Each year, the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life selects a leading scholar to spend a week on campus engaging with faculty, students, and members of the community in a variety of settings.

2023    Professor Taylor is one of the world’s leading scholars in the field of religion and nature, and a core faculty member in the University of Florida’s Graduate Program in Religion and Nature.

2020    Roger Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic University and a leading scholar on the spiritual response to our environmental crisis.

2019    Frances Fitzgerald, is a writer on the New Yorker

2018    Shaun Casey is director of the Berkley Center and a professor of the practice in Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service

2017    Marc Stern is chief legal officer at the American Jewish Committee

2016    Jonathan Sarna, is University Professor, Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University

2015    David Hollinger is Preston Hotchkiss Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

2014    Mark Massa, S.J. is professor of theology and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

2013    Laurie Maffly-Kipp is the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University

2012    Robert Orsi ‘75, is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies in the Religion Department at Northwestern University

2011    Sarah Barringer Gordon is the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania Law School

2010    Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University Divinity School

2009    Jan Shipps is professor emerita of history and religious studies at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis

2008    Steven Warner is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago

2007    Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York

2006    Catherine Albanese is professor of religious studies emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara

2005    Emilio Gentile, is professor of Contemporary History at the University of Rome La Sapienza

2004    John C. Green, is interim president, director of the Roy Bliss C. Bliss Institute for Applied Politics and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron

2003    Roy Mottahedeh is Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus at Harvard University

2002    Edward Linenthal is professor of history at Indiana University

2001    Ram Cnaan, is professor of social work and program director of the Program for Religion and Social Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice

2000    Eileen Vartan Barker is professor in sociology emerita at the London School of Economics.

1999    Marc Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress