Happy Holidays to those of us celebrating special religious observances these days. And Happy New Year to all in a couple more weeks. Despite the busy-ness of the holiday season, we just wanted to share a few brief announcements--along with our warm Season's Greetings--from the staff and board of the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance at Rice. We have a couple of coming events to announce during January and February. And we also wanted to share news of two programs for high school students that we'll launch in early 2011.

One of these programs is our Embracing Tolerance Essay Contest, open to all 9^th - 12^th grade students throughout greater Houston. Please see our Embracing Tolerance webpage  for more information about that. Our other new initiative set to begin in January is our Sacred Sites Quest for a select group of interested teens. Further updates about this quest will be forthcoming-both on our website and via our next newsletter.

Our second Bridge Builder series lecture this year will feature Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC. Dr. Ahmed's lecture on "Contemporary Islam and America" will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, February 21^st in the Baker Institute's Doré Commons. This event is being cosponsored by the Baker Institute Student Forum (BISF). Additional information about Professor Ahmed is available on the Boniuk Center's website, as well.

Thanks for your continued interest in and support of the Center's activities.

Yours truly, Mike Pardee

Executive Director