John Inazu Bio

2026 Boniuk Institute Senior Scholar

John Inazu

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. His teaching and scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and related questions of legal and political theory.

Inazu’s latest book is Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024). He is also the author of Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and co-editor (with Tim Keller) of Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference (Thomas Nelson, 2020), among others. Inazu is the founder of The Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and a Senior Fellow at Interfaith America.

Inazu holds a B.S.E. and J.D. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served for four years as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.

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Mailing Address

Boniuk Institute
6100 Main Street, MS350
Houston, TX 77005
boniukinstitute@rice.edu
rplc.rice.edu

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