David Hollenbach, S.J. is Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Senior Fellow of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, and affiliated professor in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. He previously held the University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice and was Director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College. In 2015 he held the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the John W. Kluge Center for Scholars at the Library of Congress. He teaches social ethics. His research deals with human rights, theories of justice, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises and refugees, and religion in political life. He approaches these issues in a way shaped by Catholic social thought, contemporary theology, and moral philosophy, as well as by social science approaches. He received a B.S. in Physics from St. Joseph's University, an M.A. and Ph.L. in Philosophy from St. Louis University, an M.Div. from Woodstock College, and the Ph. D. in Religious Ethics from Yale University in 1975. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010), Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy, and Africa (2008) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He works on human rights and humanitarian issues, largely in Africa, teaching regularly at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and also at the Jesuit Philosophy Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and at the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila, Philippines. He collaborates with the Jesuit Refugee Service on the human rights of displaced persons. He has conducted workshops for parliamentarians and for church leaders in South Sudan on human rights in their newly independent country. He is currently President of the Catholic Theological Society of America, and was President of the Society of Christian Ethics. He assisted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in drafting their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy. His awards include the Civitas Dei Medal from Villanova University and the Marianist Award from the University of Dayton for Catholic contributions to intellectual life. He received the John Courtney Murray Award for outstanding contributions to theology from the Catholic Theological Society of America, as well as a number of honorary degrees.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Research Professor, Provost