Educational Background

B.A. in Mathematics: U. of St. Thomas, St. Paul. 1958.

Ordained Catholic Priest, St. Paul MN: 1964.

S.T.D (doctorate) . in Scriptural Theology: U. of St. Thomas (Angelicum), Rome 1970

S.S.L. (Licentiate) in Sacred Scripture: Biblical Commission, Vatican after studies at Catholic University, D.C. and the Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem.


Recent Writing
 
Understanding World Religins: A Road Map for Justice and Peace. (forthcoming, Rowman and Littlefield)
 

Significant Study Trips
 
Palestine-Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Greece during Biblical studies

Thirteen countries of Latin America?four months in 1988.

South Asia and Africa?nine months in 1997-98

Cuba, Iraq, recent Israel-Palestine.


Biography
 
Rev. David Smith, S.T.D., S.S.L., founding and former director of the justice and peace studies program, is a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.  A 1958 summa cum Laude graduate of the University (then College) of St. Thomas with a degree in mathematics, he has studied theology and Sacred Scripture in Washington D.C., Rome, and Jerusalem.      

In the fall of 1988 he studied poverty and development by traveling for four months through thirteen countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean.  From October 1997 through July 1998 he first taught a short course at the European Peace University in Austria, then investigated the way various religions deal with issues of justice and peace by traveling through South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines) and Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa) finishing his tour in Ireland.  In 2003 he joined other U.S. faculty to visit Iraq both before and after the U.S.-Iraq War.  He spent July 2005 with the Michigan Peace Team?three weeks in Gaza and one in the West Bank.

In 1991 he shared with Mary Rose O'Reilley the Sears-Roebuck Foundation Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award.  The consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development named him its national teacher of the year in 1994, and the St. Thomas faculty voted him Professor of the Year in 1995.  He served as treasurer on the board of directors of the national Peace Studies Association from 1995-1997 and was a member of the 6-person Transition Team from 2000-2001 planning the merger between the Peace Studies Association and the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development.  The newly merged organization is called the Peace and Justice Studies Association.

Besides published articles and book chapters, he has written textbooks for three of the program's courses, as well as for two courses in other programs.  He has a contract with Rowman and Littlefield to publish the first of those within the next year:
?           How Could You Think Such a Thing? (THEO 305)  Probably to be re-named: Understanding World Religions: A road map for justice and peace.
 
The others, informally published in Xerox form, are
?           Don't Just Stand There?Do Something! (JPST 250)
?           What Can You Do With a Justice and Peace Studies Major? (JPST 472)
?           God is Taking Over (THEO 215: New Testament)
?           Justice in the Bible (SS 725 at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity)

Fr. David regularly teaches JPST 250 and 472, THEO 305, and University and seminary courses linking Sacred Scripture with justice issues.