Posted on April 7, 2008

Carnegie Corporation Awards $10 Million to Expand Public Dialogue on Islam, Muslim Societies

The Carnegie Corporation of New York has announced grants totaling $10 million to nonprofits working to enrich the quality of America's public dialogue on Islam and Muslim societies.

Over the past six months, the corporation has worked to integrate a focus on Islam into many of its long-term programs, supporting innovative publicly accessible research by individual scholars; efforts to address Islamic religious and political thought in the media; outreach by universities to connect their research to the public; and efforts to inform specific audiences, including members of Congress, about the complex and rapidly changing landscape of contemporary Islam.

Grants announced during the latest round of funding include $1 million to the Educational Broadcasting Corporation to produce, promote, and distribute the twelve-episode Charlie Rose: Conversations in Islam series; $800,000 to the Aspen Institute to produce a series of seminars on contemporary Islam for members of Congress; $400,000 to National Public Radio to report on the state of Islam in the U.S. and internationally; $50,000 to the Washington National Cathedral to convene an international meeting of religious leaders; and $50,000 to the ADC Research Institute to disseminate information on civil rights and civil liberties violations affecting Arab and Muslim Americans post-September 11, 2001.

"There is a disconnection between many of our public conversations about Islam and our knowledge of it," said Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian. "Carnegie Corporation has worked to help remedy this disconnect by contributing to a more fundamental comprehension about a religion of diverse expressions and cultures with 1.3 billion practitioners worldwide. We hope that our work will better equip Americans to make informed decisions about, and engage with, various Muslim communities in our midst as well as those abroad."