Alumni
Profiles of Success
Dr. William F. Vendley
Secretary General
World Conference of Religions for Peace
BS Biology 1971, Purdue
As Secretary General of Religions for Peace, Dr. William Vendley
has traveled around the world resolving conflicts, promoting human rights,
and protecting children. The projects he has led include convening a historic
summit of Iraqi senior religious leaders and facilitating the creation of
the first-ever Interreligious Council of Iraq to work towards Iraqi self determination.
He co-directed a collaborative initiative to address the needs of orphans
of HIV/AIDS in Africa. He developed a program designed to engage the Indonesian
religious communities in programs in support of democratization. In addition,
at the request of UNICEF, he convened a senior religious scholars’ consultation
on children in situations of violent conflict.
Dr. Vendley’s work as an international peace negotiator and human rights advocate may seem far from the field of biological sciences. However, he says that his B.S. degree in Biology from Purdue “provided an outstanding foundation for my current work.” Studying biology allowed him “to inquire in a more philosophical way about the intelligibility of science itself. These questions quite naturally led to the perennial pondering of the human mind about the meaning of existence and moral responsibilities to one another and the earth we share. The combination of quality courses in science with an equal number of other reflective inquiries about the meaning of science for humanity provided a most helpful foundation.”
From Purdue Dr. Vendley continued his education in the field of religion. While still an undergraduate, he traveled to Sri Lanka to study as a Special Student of Buddhism in 1968. He then obtained an M.A. in Religious Studies from Maryknoll School of Theology in New York State (1976). In 1978 he received a Certificate of Fluency in Japanese from a language school in Kamakura, a Buddhist center outside of Tokyo. He then returned to Maryknoll to teach theology from 1979 to 1984 while pursuing a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Fordham University. Upon graduating in 1984, Dr. Vendley became a Dean and Professor at the Roman Catholic Major Seminary in Huntington, Long Island.
In 1989 Dr. Vendley began to direct interreligious organizations fighting for peace around the world. From 1989 to 1992 he served as Executive Director of the United States Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace and then Interim Secretary-General of the International Chapter (1992-1994). In 1994 he assumed his current position as the Secretary General of the World Conference of Religions for Peace.
The driving principle of Religions for Peace is that the world’s religious communities are uniquely suited to address the world’s problems. Dr. Vendley states, “Today, the major challenges that humanity faces cut across all national, ethnic or religious boundaries. Violent conflicts, poverty, the absence of human rights and good governance and disease pandemics are cross-border realities…. I found the prospect of the world’s oldest and largest communities working together on areas of shared care to be of enormous interest.”
Directing an international peace organization requires a wide range of competencies and experiences. To develop those skills Dr. Vendley has consistently sought out cross-cultural experiences. He said, “Working in another culture on a major problem that cuts across community boundaries has been the best on-the-job training for me, and I would recommend it to others wishing to work in a field similar to mine.”
Dr. Vendley’s accomplishments were recognized by the Purdue Department of Biological Sciences when he was named a Distinguished Alumnus in Spring 2005.