Professor Graziano Presents His Latest Book at the UN Headquarters in New York

Manlio Graziano was invited by the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) to present his latest book: Holy War and Holy Alliance: Religions and International Disorder in the 21st Century, published by Columbia University Press (2015). The event will take place at the UN headquarters in New York on June 17th. Introducing Prof. Graziano will be Brian Knowlton, retired New York Times correspondent based in DC.

Manlio Graziano's book addresses the relationship between religion and politics in world affairs, in the context of this troubled era of shifting balance of power. It shows how this relationship is often seen in a partial perspective emphasizing only Islam and some of its most fundamentalist versions, while over the past decades, all traditional religions have reentered the political arena. Various theories of international relations have been formed about this phenomenon, such as that of the “clash of civilizations.” The author demonstrates that the “holy war” is but one form of the interference of religions with politics, and questions the possibility of a “holy alliance” between the main global religions, aimed at bringing a “universal morality” in the heart of the polis. Prof. Graziano's book was published in Italian earlier this year, under the title Guerra Santa e Santa Alleanza: Religioni e disordine internazionale nel XXI secolo, by Italy's leading publisher of political works, Il Mulino (Bologna).

Manlio Graziano, PhD, teaches Geopolitics and Geopolitics of Religions at The University of La Sorbonne (Paris IV) and at the American Graduate School in Paris. He is a columnist for La Voce Di New York, an online news publication targeted at the Italian community in the US. He also collaborates with the national Italian daily Corriere della Sera, as well as the geaopolitics journal Limes in Rome, and the International Affairs Forum in Washington DC). He is the author of several books in English, Italian, French and Spanish, including The Failure of Italian Nationhood: The Geopolitics of a Troubled Identity (Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 2010), Il secolo cattolico. La strategia geopolitica della Chiesa (Rome, 2010; Barcelona, 2012), and Italie. Un État sans nation? Géopolitique d’une identité nationale incertaine (Toulouse, Eres, 2007). He is currently writing a book about the role of Catholics in American politics (In Rome We Trust, working title), which will be published in 2016 by Stanford University Press (in English) and by Il Mulino (in Italian).

Founded in 1948, the UNCA is the organization representing the United Nations press corps, and the Secretary-General is based on an agreement dated, September 16th, 1995 and embodied in the UNCA constitution. From its inception, UNCA worked to bring correspondents, members of diplomatic delegations and the Department of Public Information together by organizing press conferences, social functions, luncheons and an annual awards event.