Robert Anthony Orsi (born 1953) is a scholar of American history and Catholic studies who is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair professor at Northwestern University.
He majored in religion and sociology at Trinity College in Connecticut and graduated salutatorian in 1975, receiving both a Danforth and Watson Scholarship.
He attended graduate school in religion at Yale University where his prize-winning dissertation formed the basis of his first book, The Madonna of 115th Street.
This controversy centered on a rather polemical exchange between the two, with Orsi referring to McCutcheon's book, The Discipline of Religion, as "chilling".
[5] Orsi also made the comment, "the assumption appears to be that the scholar of religion by virtue of his or her normative epistemology, theoretical acuity, and political knowingness, has the authority and the right to make the lives of others the objects of his or her scrutiny.