Beth Hurd is Professor of Politics and Religious Studies and the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University. She studies religion and politics in the U.S., in U.S. foreign policy, and in international relations. She also studies the history and politics of U.S-Middle East relations, particularly Turkey and Iran. Hurd currently is writing a book on the politics of religion on the American border, with the latter understood both as an empirical reality and as a powerful political theoretical and theological construct.

Download a current CV.

Hurd’s books include The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), both published by Princeton. She is co-editor of Theologies of American Exceptionalism (Forthcoming, Indiana, 2020), Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago, 2015) and Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age (Palgrave, 2010).

She co-directed, with Winnifred Sullivan, a 3-year research project “Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad,” also supported by Luce, and co-directs, with Brannon Ingram, “Talking Religion: Publics, Politics, and the Media,” supported by the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs. In 2019 this project hosted a symposium on Reporting Islam. The website features student reporting on American Muslim life in the Chicago area.

In 2015 Hurd received a 3-year “Big Ideas” grant to create and co-direct, with Brannon Ingram, a Faculty Research Group on Global Politics & Religion. She oversees a graduate certificate program in Religion & Global Politics and is a core faculty member of the MENA Program. At Northwestern she teaches courses on America and the world, religion, race and global politics, and the Middle East in international politics. She enjoys writing for public audiences about religion and US foreign policy.

Hurd was Visiting Faculty at Sciences Po, CERI in Paris in spring 2019. In 2019-20 she is a Luce/ACLS Fellow in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs.

Beyond Religious Freedom is a study of the full-court press by the United States and others to promote religious freedom, religious engagement, and the rights of religious minorities. In exploring the blurred boundaries and dizzying power dynamics that characterize relations between expert religion, governed religion, and lived religion, it challenges the assumption that the legalization of freedom of religion, engagement with faith communities, and protections for religious minorities will emancipate societies from tyranny, terrorism, and discrimination. These programs generate social tensions by making religious difference a matter of law, enacting a powerful divide between the ‘religion’ of those in power and the ‘religion’ of those without it.

Interview with the author on New Books Network here

Interview with the author on E-IR here

Q & A with the author with Princeton Univ. Press here

“Why I wrote this book” here

Short post illustrating book’s argument here

Discussion series on The Immanent Frame here

Discussion series at Syndicate Theology (fall 2016) here

Review in Boston Review here

Review in The Nation here

Discussion series at Religion in American History blog here

Discussion forum in Religion, Politics & Ideology: (PDFs): Birnbaum, Ibrahim, Jansen, Rees, and Hurd response

Review in the TLS here

Review in Muslim World Book Review here

Review in Religious Studies Review here

Hurd also co-directs, with Brannon Ingram, a project called “Talking Religion: Publics, Politics, and the Media,” funded by the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs. This project establishes a framework for collaboration between faculty in the humanities and social sciences and faculty in journalism, and between both faculties, scholars at other local institutions, and the public. Activities include a workshop on “Reporting Islam: Media, Policy, Politics,” a team-taught undergraduate course, and religion and media fellowships.

In 2012-15 Hurd co-organized the Politics of Religious Freedom: Contested Norms and Local Practices research project.  She co-edited a series on The Immanent Frame that considers the multiple histories and genealogies of religious freedom which became the volume Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago, 2015).

At Northwestern Hurd co-directs the Global Politics & Religion Faculty Research Group (to learn more click here), is a core faculty member in the Program on Middle East and North African Studies and created an interdisciplinary graduate certificate program in Religion & Global Politics. She teaches courses on religion and global politics, the US and the world, religion and international affairs, the politics of religious diversity, the Middle East in international politics, and religion, race and international relations. Hurd consults on projects involving religion and world affairs and lectures on topics related to her research interests. She has served on the editorial board of The Immanent Frame and as content consultant on a public radio series on “God and Government”. Her opinion pieces have appeared in Boston Review, Public Culture, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Globe and Mail, and Al Jazeera America.