The Charles Malik Institute

Throughout his career in academia and politics, Charles Malik served as a calm and charismatic leader in uncertain times. Confronting seasons of adversity, he turned to his faith for wisdom and courage. He integrated his Christian convictions with his public duties, engaging the political world without succumbing to its vices.

A century later, Malik remains a powerful example for young Christian leaders and political actors.

Charles Malik believed in universal values, such as freedom, human dignity, and the value of pluralism, that cut across time and permeated all civilizations and cultures. Malik saw these values manifest most clearly in the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, and broader Western tradition.

Best known for his work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, Malik authored the Declaration's Preamble with its philosophical underpinnings and the text of Article 18 on religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and the freedom to change one's religion.

When he offered a friendly critique of America and the West, Malik did so by constantly calling the West, should it stray, to return, and to remain faithful to its bedrock values.

As a Middle Eastern Christian, Malik experienced the sorrows and joys that defined his community and empathized with the challenges facing native-rooted Christians across the Muslim world. Throughout the 20th century, he defended the freedoms of beleaguered Christians in his ancestral home of Lebanon, which meant little to Malik without its free Christian community.

Malik sought to preserve the cultural and spiritual connections between Lebanon's Christians and the wider Christian world. When the occasion for tangible world Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement presented itself in the 1960s, Malik found himself in a unique position to help mediate and facilitate this ecumenical openness, given his special proximity to the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul.

In addition to his peace-making efforts between Christian traditions, he also believed Christians and Muslims could flourish together in reciprocal appreciation for one another's differences– celebrating and fortifying their shared values while remaining true to their cherished beliefs.