Boniuk Center’s new executive director to focus on outreach
Pardee takes on new role Aug. 1

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Mike Pardee is on a mission to promote religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence.

	MIKE PARDEE

As the new executive director of Rice University’s Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, he is gearing that mission toward three audiences: Rice undergraduate students, the Houston community and middle- and high-school youths.

“Religious illiteracy remains pretty high among many people,” Pardee said. “It’s an element in many, perhaps most, of the cultural conflicts and international conflicts that we have in the world today. Many people are underinformed about their own faith traditions. Helping develop religious literacy is part of the Boniuk Center’s charge.”

He readily admits that issues related to religious tolerance are “knotty and complicated,” but the challenge motivates him. “It’s a fascinating tension,” he said.

Pardee comes to Rice from Houston’s Kinkaid School, where he has served as the school’s first director of character education since 2003. During his seven years there he developed experiential curricula in the new fields of secondary school leadership training and character development. “I was like a secular chaplain at a nonsectarian school,” he said. “I worked with parents, teachers and coaches to reinforce Kinkaid’s core values — honesty, kindness, responsibility and respect — to the kids through arts, academics, athletics and extracurricular activities.”

He had previously served as executive director of the leadership initiative at Suffield Academy in Connecticut and taught history and English at Concord Academy in Massachusetts and Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico. And he spent six years in graduate school working on his master’s degrees in educational administration from Columbia Teachers College and in American and New England studies from Boston University. He also has a bachelor’s in English from Princeton.

“I’ve had one foot in higher ed or secondary ed throughout my professional career,” Pardee said.

His extensive curricular and secondary school experience helped him realize that dealing with religious tolerance in public schools, nonsectarian private schools and religious private schools can be a sensitive matter – especially when there is disparity between what kids are being taught at home and in the classroom.

”The tricky thing about multigenerations is that youngsters often follow the messages they get from parents and their faith, but they’re just as likely to rebel against those messages,” said Pardee, who has presented sessions on youth leadership development and character education at National Association of Independent Schools conferences.

“Some secondary schools are weary and afraid of engaging in religious issues because of controversy,” he said. “The approach needs to be educational, not indoctrinating.”

Working with college students is a whole different experience. ”College is an exciting time for them, and the students are developing their identity,” Pardee said. ”At the college level there are more opportunities for people to explore.”

Discussing religious tolerance with adults in the general community has to be done ”delicately and respectfully,” Pardee said. But society’s increasing religious mobility should facilitate people’s willingness to accept others’ differences. ”A large percentage of American adults are members of a different faith than they were brought up in,” he said.

Pardee considers himself a ”spiritual mongrel.” He was raised as an Episcopal, attended Quaker school and converted to Judaism as an adult. Pardee, his wife and two teenage sons are members of the Houston Congregation for Reform Judaism.

Part of Pardee’s strategy for promoting religious tolerance is to strengthen communitywide collaborations with organizations like Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston, Interfaith Youth Core and the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education. ”These organizations can help us reach our target audiences,” he said.

The Boniuk Center was founded in 2004 with a $5 million endowed gift from Milton and Laurie Boniuk to promote conditions conducive to sustainable peace among persons of different religions.

Pardee thinks Houston’s diversity can complement the Boniuk Center’s mission. ”A number of interfaith cross-congregational initiatives are bubbling up around the city,” he said. ”Some people might not embrace others’ values and traditions, but at least they might make an effort to understand others’ beliefs.”

Pardee said he is ”psyched” about his new role and optimistic about the Boniuk Center’s chances of success working with teenagers and young adults.

”The next generation of interfaith discourse is going to be more tolerant and understanding of differences,” he said.