Presenters

Bruce Russett

Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Yale, received his B.A. in Political Economy from Williams College in 1956, a Diploma in Economics from King’s College, Cambridge, in 1957, and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1961.

He is Director of United Nations Studies at Yale, and has edited the Journal of Conflict Resolution since 1973.  A past president of the International Studies Association and of the Peace Science Society (International), he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was principal advisor to the U.S. Catholic Conference in writing their 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, and with Paul Kennedy staffed the Ford Foundation’s 1995 report, The United Nations in Its Second Half-Century.

"Accountability in the Church: Miles to Go"

Renewal in the Church requires far more than addressing the sexual abuse scandals. It is fundamentally a matter of finding how to strengthen means whereby more decisions in the Church are made in a more transparent manner and that those who take actions to implement those decisions are ultimately more accountable. Current Church structures are by both historical and contemporary standards too centralized and hierarchical to make transparency and accountability easy to achieve. The solution is not the caricature of democracy-by-plebiscite as sometimes implied, wherein everybody gets to vote on everything. But any solution will require more elements of accountable governance: checks and balances, financial responsibility, some devolution of authority, civil dialogue and true listening from both above and below, and establishment of mutual trust between laity and hierarchy. Love for the Church impels us all to both loyalty and voice.