Eugene Rivers

Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III is a widely published writer, diligent community activist, and renowned worldwide speaker. As an activist for over 35 years, Reverend Rivers has worked on community development, faith-based initiatives, and domestic and foreign policy issues. He also advised both Bush Administrations and the Clinton Administration on their faith-based initiatives and in the foreign policy arena regarding the AIDS crisis in Africa. As a highly sought-after speaker, he has provided commentary for ABC (Prime Time, Nightline, and ABC Morning News), NBC (Hardball and MSNBC), CBS (CBS Evening News, Sixty Minutes II), PBS (Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers Show) and Fox Television (The O’Reilley Factor).

Reverend Rivers received international recognition for violence prevention strategies developed in Boston, variations of which are being adapted in cities all across the US, in Toronto, the United Kingdom, South America and in the Caribbean. He was featured in a CNN documentary, A Question of Accountability, with Bernard Shaw and Frank Sesno and an Ed Bradley special: Street Stories. Other documentaries involving Reverend Rivers include three Bill Moyers’ specials: one on violence reduction, one on the book of Genesis, and one on Black America. He has also been featured on the BBC and on French, Italian, German, Brazilian and Chilean television. He has been featured on Meet the Faith on BET and was the subject of a one hour profile, Exalted, on the same station.

Reverend Rivers’s work was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in June 1998. His work has attracted extensive coverage in the print media, leading to cover features in Christianity Today, Sojourners, The New Yorker, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Ford Foundation Report, Reconciliation, and Impact Magazine. In addition, his work has been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, the Economist, the New Republic, The Boston Globe, the Times of London, Books and Culture, America, and numerous books and other magazines and newspapers in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, and South America. His work and that of his colleagues has been cited in over 40 different books to date.

Reverend Rivers’s activism on the AIDS epidemic in Africa has led to appearances on South African, Zambian, Zimbabwean, and Ghanaian national television programs. His work in Africa also led to another Newsweek cover story in January 2000, and a four part series, AIDS and the African, published in The Boston Globe in October 1999.

Reverend Rivers has published articles in the Boston Review, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Sojourners, Charisma Magazine and in numerous books. He lectured at Harvard University, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Bookings Institution, Calvin College, London School of Economics, Hailie Selassie University in Addis-Ababa, universities in South America, in Belfast, Ireland, and over three hundred other venues nationally and internationally.