William M. Shea, Director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross, graduated from the Columbia University School of Philosophy in 1973. He taught at Catholic University of America (1972-1980), at the University of South Florida (1980-1991), and at Saint Louis University (1991-2003). He was president of the College Theology Society (1984-86), and has been a resident fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center at the Smithsonian (1986-87) and of the Ecumenical Institute at St. John's University in Collegeville (1999).

His book, Naturalism and the Supernatural, was published by Mercer University Press (1984), and he has edited several collections of papers, including The Struggle Over the Past: Religious Fundamentalism in the Modern World for University Press of America (1994), Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought for Cambridge University Press (1995), and Trying Times: Essays on Catholic Higher Education in the 20th Century for Scholars Press (1999). His book, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2004. He has also published fifty essays and articles in scholarly and professional journals He assumed the directorship of the Center at Holy Cross in July, 2003.