The Veritas Forum is a non-profit organization that works with Christian students on college campuses to host forums centered on the exploration of truth and its relevancy in human life, through the questions of philosophy, religion, science, and other disciplines. The organization, named after the Latin word for truth, aims to "create university events engaging students and faculty in exploring life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life." The first Veritas Forum was held at Harvard University in 1992. By 2008, 300,000 students had attended over 300 forums at 100 campuses across the US, Canada, France, England, and the Netherlands. In the 2010–2011 academic year, Veritas Forums were held at over 50 institutions of higher education. Veritas Forums are available for viewing online, and the organization has published several books with InterVarsity Press.
Forums To plan a Forum, Veritas partners with Christian student groups, who organize and host the Forum, typically co-sponsored by other student organizations and academic departments. Typical events include evening keynote addresses, workshops, debates, and discussions. Common topics include the existence of God; the relationship between science and religion; social justice work; questions of social ethics; feminism and women's issues; questions of meaning or purpose in human life, evil, or beauty; human sexuality and relationships; the existence of objective truth; religion and art; Christianity and popular culture; and the historical validity of the Bible. Kelly Monroe Kullberg founded the organization, The Veritas Forum, but has not had any affiliation with it since 2016. The Veritas Forum has hosted several discussion events with prominent speakers representing secular or non-Christian points of view, including Peter Singer, Steven Pinker, Antony Flew, Christopher Hitchens, Shelly Kagan, Alan Lightman, and Jeffrey Sachs. Recent discussion events include the following: the 2009 Veritas Forum at MIT with atheist philosopher Peter Singer, Christian philosophical theologian John E. Hare, and philosopher and religious scholar Eric Gregory; the 2010 Veritas Forum in the Sheldonian Theatre of the University of Oxford, with atheist and journalist Christopher Hitchens alongside Catholic philosopher and ethicist John Joseph Haldane; and the 2010 Veritas Forum at UCLA with Christian mathematician and apologist John Lennox being interviewed by UCLA Law Professor Daniel Lowenstein.
History
The first forum took place at Harvard University in 1986, and was organized as an academic conference in Christian apologetics. Peter Gomes, Harvard's campus minister, participated in the forum in 1986. The Forum's name derives from Harvard's motto, Veritas, meaning Truth. Harvard's motto reflects the school's Christian heritage: although it is popularly trimmed to the one word Veritas, it officially reads "Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae," or Truth for Christ and the Church. With this name, Veritas seeks to remind the university community of the centrality of Christ to its founding. At the first Veritas Forum writers of the book Finding God at Harvard gathered to share their own questions, sufferings, journeys, and discoveries with the Harvard community. After its first forum at Harvard, Veritas Forums spread to the University of Michigan, Ohio State, the University of Virginia, Yale and eventually across the country to Berkeley, Stanford, UC Davis, and UCLA. France had its first Veritas Forum in 2006; England and the Netherlands in 2007; Macedonia in 2010. In the academic year 2010-2011, Forums were held at over forty American institutions of higher education. To date, over 400 speakers have presented at a Veritas event, representing a variety of disciplines and worldviews.
Past speakers
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