HDS 2022 Dean's Report

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ADVANCING

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MODELING

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Student Profiles

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Message of Thanks from Lori Stevens

Something Deeper than Hope

A Legacy of Support

TRADITIONS LISTED ON THE FRONT COVER REPRESENT SOME OF THE RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS OF CURRENT AND RECENT HDS STUDENTS, AS WELL AS SOME OF THE MANY TRADITIONS TAUGHT BY HDS FACULTY.

It takes a certain kind of care to explore religion, spirituality, culture, conflict, and the nuances found throughout some of our most deeply ingrained identities—and that care requires the work of both our hearts and our minds. I fully recognize that these past few years have left many of us feeling tender, if not abjectly raw. The disruptions to our everyday routines, to our sense of security, to the fabric of our society, can be jarring at best, dangerous at worst, and I know how exhausting it can be to persevere through ongoing challenges. Yet, we have. And my persistent hope is that lessons learned through adversity will provide a stronger foundation for a better future.

As I write this, we have just celebrated Harvard Divinity School’s 207th Convocation. Held on a beautiful late summer day, it was our first such gathering in three years—years marked by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, tumultuous events at home and abroad, and at last, our own careful return to a renovated and renewed campus. As I have shared in the

past, and perhaps even more relevant these days, we gather at Convocation as a community to learn from our origins and our roots, to take a careful look at where we are, and to lay out a promising path to where we may go.

Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study delivered a moving Convocation Address on the report Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery that she guided to publication in spring 2022. She keenly observed: “We are an institution that values the search for truth through our scholarship and our teaching. It is not enough to focus our scholarly lens on those beyond the gates; we must look at ourselves, and we must do so even if what we learn is unsettling to our professional or our personal identities.” Dean BrownNagin’s brilliant insights are a testament to why reckoning with our past—the tragedies and the triumphs—is not just a noble pursuit but is necessary to bringing the ideals of peace and justice to fruition.

The Imperativeness of Open Inquiry Change is not only possible; it is vital to the mission of our School. Honest inquiry, deep questioning, and thoughtful action grounded in what we learn is how we keep HDS strong, viable, and relevant—and change is certainly what we have experienced in the past year. New faculty have arrived to strengthen and deepen our academic pursuits. New staff have arrived, with fresh perspectives that add to our diversity on campus. New research efforts were launched, such as the Center for the Study of World Religion’s Transcendence and Transformation

As I reflect on this past year, with all our community has done to keep the spirit of Harvard Divinity School alive and well, I find myself deeply moved. We often center the rigor and restless pursuit of excellence in our work within academia, but I also want to take this moment to genuinely appreciate the heart with which this work is done.

Initiative. And the new master of religion and public life degree program brought its first cohort of creative and accomplished professionals to campus, adding their own voices and experiences to HDS. Our continued efforts to expand our international reach bore fruit as an impressive 25 percent of incoming students came to Cambridge from abroad.

For me personally, the academic year was framed by two opportunities to reflect on the role of religion in society worldwide. The first came in October 2021, when I had the privilege of delivering the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, Scotland. The principal question I explored throughout the lectures, titled “Networks, Nodes, and Nuclei in the History of Christianity, c. 1500–2020,” was: What difference would it make to reimagine the history of Christianity in terms of transnational networks, nodal junction boxes of encounter and transmission, and a greater sense of the core memes and messages of religious traditions and expressions?

The second opportunity came in June 2022, at the annual meeting of the European Academy of Religion in Bologna, Italy. The Academy asked that I reflect on the value of studying religion in a multifaith setting, as we do at HDS. “From Nonsectarian to Multifaith: An Educational Experiment in Religious Diversity at Harvard c. 1800–2020” allowed me to focus on this core part of our academic identity—why teaching and learning about the world’s great faith traditions in a nonsectarian, deliberately heterogeneous environment is so important to appreciating the deepest tenets and mysteries of spiritual life.

Reflection can often seem passive in nature. However, starting and ending the academic year with these retrospectives offered a keen reminder that honest, informed inquiry provides the opportunity to hold ourselves accountable as we explore new ways of thinking. Truth, in an academic sense, is an unfolding paired with reflection. Each discovery, each iteration, each moment of alchemy when one thought meets another unencumbered by presumptions—this is the foundation of education.

Academic Expertise and Reach

Before I introduce our newest faculty members for the 2022–23 academic year, I want to acknowledge two luminaries who have retired from active teaching as of 2022.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity, is a pathbreaking scholar of biblical interpretation and feminist theology. She was the first woman president of the Society of Biblical Literature and has served on the boards of major biblical journals and societies. In 2001, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has published over a dozen works, including In Memory of Her, which has been translated into 13 languages.

Michael D. Jackson, Senior Research Fellow in World Religions, is an anthropologist and writer whose academic work has been strongly influenced by critical theory, American pragmatism, and existential-phenomenological thought. He has written numerous books, including the prize-winning  Paths Toward a Clearing and At Home in the World. He has also published seven works of fiction, a memoir, and nine volumes of poetry.

Both Elisabeth and Michael have been instrumental in expanding HDS’s academic reach and deepening connections within our community. My thanks and admiration to both of them for their many years of service. I look forward to seeing how their influence in teaching and research continues to inspire new waves of leaders.

In the spirit of building our academic expertise, this year we welcomed five leading scholars to our exceptional Faculty of Divinity:

Benjamin Dunning, PhD ’05, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity

Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies

Tracey E. Hucks, AM ’95, PhD ’98, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies and Suzanne Young Murray Professor (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)

Terrence L. Johnson, MDiv ’00, Professor of African American Religious Studies

Annette Yoshiko Reed, MTS ’99, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity

Ben and Annette have returned to Harvard to deepen our faculty expertise in early Christianity and its connections to Judaism. Ben, a former WSRP Research Associate, teaches primarily in the areas of early antiquity, critical theory, and gender studies. Annette’s research spans Second Temple Judaism, as well as Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity, with a special concern for retheorizing religion, identity, and difference. Both Ben and Annette are back in Cambridge after spending time teaching in New York (Fordham University and New York University, respectively.)

Building on the School’s growing expertise in African and African American religious studies, Ahmad, Tracey, and Terrence were welcomed to the HDS community after robust faculty searches last year. Joining us from Northwestern University, Ahmad is a social historian and theorist whose research interests include critical Black studies, Black Atlantic religions in the Americas, and race, queerness, and sexuality in the context of African American and Caribbean religious

histories. Tracey, a nationally known and esteemed scholar of Africana studies and American religious history, is returning to Harvard from her leadership role as Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Colgate University (you can read more about her exceptional experience in the “Advancing Knowledge of Global Religion” section of this year’s report). Terrence is joining fellow alumni returning as faculty to bring his expertise in African American political thought, ethics, and the role of religion in public life to HDS. Terrence was most recently teaching in Georgetown University’s Department of Government.

In just the few short months that our new faculty members have been on campus, we have already seen the benefits of building upon our strong academic foundation. From expanded course offerings, such as “Judaism and the Making of Christianity” to “The Book of Baldwin,” to new publications advancing the field of religion, to a wider range of areas of study to interest current and prospective students, we are witnessing pluralism in action. I offer my heartfelt thanks to each of our teachers and researchers for establishing such a foundation and helping us grow with continued strength.

In addition to expanding our faculty this year, we bolstered our student community. With thanks to our admissions, communications, and financial aid teams for their concerted efforts, we welcomed an exceptional number of international students in the 2022–23 class. A quarter of our newest students joined the HDS community from abroad, representing 20 countries and 5 continents. We also expanded our financial aid offerings to make an HDS education more accessible, an effort I hope to continue in the coming years.

Building an Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive HDS

Harvard’s report on the legacy of slavery was not a culmination of intense research, but rather the beginning of a new, shared understanding of how much more needs to be done. In my address to the European Academy of Religion, I discussed this report and what it means for not just Harvard but for the world. Going back to some of the challenges mentioned earlier, increased access to information and expanded audiences has also brought issues related to representation, equity, and justice into clearer focus for many of us. Whose voices have been centered and whose voices have been subjugated? What perspectives have dominated the narrative and what perspectives have been underrepresented? And it’s not enough to simply recognize subjugation and injustice. Rather, a genuine look at our past must also involve meaningful action to do better now and build a just future for all.

In the words of our School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, the Rev. Melissa Wood Bartholomew, this is both hard and heart work. I mention Melissa because she has deftly offered her expertise in actively building an anti-racist and anti-oppressive Harvard Divinity School, which means that our students, staff, faculty, alumni, supporters, and anyone who engages with the community are learning valuable lessons about how to address bias, promote equality, and understand intersectionality. This year’s Common Read and Reorientation program led by the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging will center the Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery report. In doing so, we will bear witness to this history and engage with one another to ensure that no such reports are needed in the future.

I also want to thank the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, and the many others who are helping us grapple with the difficult dichotomy shared by institutions within higher education— institutions that simultaneously represent truth and knowledge while steeped in histories entangled with injustice. The care our community has taken with building an anti-racist and antioppressive HDS is just one example of actively working toward a just world at peace.

Connections across Harvard and across the Globe HDS creates connections across the University and across the globe in a number of ways—most notably through our research and our network of exceptional leaders. We could quadruple the length of this report and still not have enough room to cover all the events and intellectual exchanges that took place in the last year. That said, I want to recognize the many fellows, research associates, and visiting monastics brought into the HDS community by way of the Center for the Study of World Religion, Religion and Public Life, the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, the Office of Ministry Studies, and one of our newest initiatives, the Yang Visiting Scholars of World Christianity. These community members expand the reach of the School while building strong academic networks with their home institutions throughout the world.

Our programs also create learning opportunities across Harvard, such as the Spiritual Lives of Leaders course (offered in partnership with Harvard Business School) and our Professional and Lifelong Learning programs (giving more people the opportunity to benefit from the teaching

and learning at HDS). Building on our success with virtual and in-person events, this past year also saw the creation of Weather Reports, a series of conversations about the climate crisis. This new effort is perhaps the quintessence of cross-collaboration. A conversation that started between HDS Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams and colleagues Diane Moore, Charles M. Stang, and Sam Myers (from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) grew into a series of events with authors, artists, and activists that garnered over 3,000 unique audience members (an average of 1,011 registrants for each event). In just the first session, audience members joined from Ghana, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and all corners of the United States. We also had guest speakers from around the globe, including Bernadette Demientieff from the Gwich’in community in Northern Alaska and Wanjira Mathai from the World Resources Institute in Kenya. I encourage you to read more about how religion and climate are connected in the “New Resources for Teaching and Learning” section.

From the Swartz Hall opening and Preston N. Williams Chapel renaming celebrations in the fall to in-person Gomes Honors and Commencement events in the spring—I cannot fully express the joy of seeing our community together again. I also want to share my appreciation for the School’s volunteer leadership groups, such as the Dean’s Council, the Global Task Force, and the Alumni/Alumnae Council, who graciously offer their guidance throughout the year. By helping us think about the best ways to connect with prospective students, engage with graduates, and strengthen our international networks, the support offered by HDS alumni and friends brings our work to fruition.

The Future of Multireligious Education

One of the main points from my address to the European Academy of Religion is that the idea of multireligious education, at least at Harvard, is very much a present-tense evolution. HDS is still an educational experiment, and only time will tell where the future of religious diversity in education will take us. That said, we do know there is truth to be found in reckoning with our past and important questions to explore for the future. Notably, what were the engines driving the transition from nonsectarian to multireligious at HDS, and what were the major characteristics and limitations?

To answer the first question, we must pay attention to the profound cultural shifts in the post–Second World War era, including deep unease over colonialism and the impact of decolonization, the rise of feminism and women’s participation in higher education, the influence of multiculturalism and

pluralism, the growth of international travel and experiences of globalism, and the widening of educational opportunities to different social groups. The School, to my knowledge, never set out with a clear ideological agenda or institutional plan to become a multifaith institution. As much driven by student demand as by institutional strategy, the multireligious move was episodic, pragmatic, and contested. The trajectory was nevertheless consistent in an increasingly diverse direction throughout the decades, with cardiograph-like spikes around the formation of some of our biggest initiatives, the Center for the Study of World Religions (1950s), the Women’s Studies in Religion Program (1970s), the Pluralism Project (1990s), and Religion and Public Life (2020s).

The second question about characteristics and limitations is easier to figure out, if not always straightforward. HDS grew out of settler colonialism, religious independence and a progressive bent that has always been part of its tradition.

There are some obvious ironies. HDS has always been better at critiquing other people’s empires than paying attention to the religious traditions of native or enslaved peoples, or even the religious consequences of America’s own imperial entanglements in places like the Korean peninsula. There is still no established chair at HDS on the religions of Indigenous people, and only recently could one say that Africana diasporic and African American religious traditions have been treated with the seriousness they deserve.

What one can say with certitude from this brief survey of an important educational experiment is that the categories for studying religion have steadily expanded over the past two centuries. If current trends continue, HDS will be enrolling more and more students who self-identify as religiously unaffiliated, or as spiritual but not religious, and who have growing interests in religious traditions beyond the conventional paradigm. As the climate crisis becomes more urgent, there will be a special interest in religious traditions, ancient and modern, that have wisdom to offer a burning and flooding planet. As ever, students and the wider culture will help determine this evolution, and we will continue to explore how the concept of multifaith has changed from encountering other traditions in order to missionize them, to learning about them out of curiosity, to learning from them out of epistemic humility, and, inexorably, to learning with them.

Reckoning genuinely with the past, using the present day to serve our mission faithfully, being mindful that we can do better in the future—this is the work of HDS today. We have an important job at Harvard and in the wider world: to foster ethical leadership, to train the compassionate and committed graduates of the future, and to bear witness to truth as we learn through deep inquiry. This work is a responsibility. It is a privilege. And it is not possible without the wise, honest engagement of our larger community.

Thank you for all you do for Harvard Divinity School.

David N. Hempton Dean of the Faculty of Divinity Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity

JULY

MATTHEW POTTS BEGAN ROLE AS PUSEY MINISTER AT MEMORIAL CHURCH MATTHEW ICHIHASHI POTTS, A PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND LITERATURE, AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST, AND AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF THE HARVARD COMMUNITY, HAS BEEN NAMED PUSEY MINISTER IN THE MEMORIAL CHURCH AND PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS, EFFECTIVE JULY 1.

AUGUST

TEDDY HICKMANMAYNARD JOINS HDS AS ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR MINISTRY STUDIES

TEDDY HICKMANMAYNARD HAS BEEN NAMED ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR MINISTRY STUDIES AT HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL, STARTING AUGUST 2. IN THIS ROLE, HICKMAN-MAYNARD WILL OVERSEE THE SCHOOL’S MASTER OF DIVINITY PROGRAM.

SEPTEMBER

DIVINITY SCHOOL LAUNCHES NEW DEGREE PROGRAM HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL, LONG FOCUSED ON PREPARING RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND SCHOLARS, THIS FALL ADDS A THIRD MISSION. IT IS LAUNCHING ITS FIRST NEW MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAM IN MORE THAN 50 YEARS, THE MASTER OF RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE. UNDER THE DIRECTION OF DIANE L. MOORE, FACULTY DIRECTOR, AND COUPLED WITH A CERTIFICATE PROGRAM FOR MTS AND MDIV STUDENTS, HDS HAS EMBARKED UPON A COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAM OF TRAINING PROFESSIONALS FOR PRACTICE IN OTHER REALMS.

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER

INAGURAL YANG VISITING SCHOLARS OF WORLD CHRISTIANITY JOIN HDS COMMUNITY PROFESSORS

OLUWAKEMI ABIODUN ADESINA AND CHANDRA MALLAMPALLI, THE THE TWO INAUGURAL YANG VISITING SCHOLARS IN WORLD CHRISTIANITY, JOIN HDS FOR THE THE 2021–22 ACADEMIC YEAR.

THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WORLD RELIGIONS LAUNCHES TRANSCENDENCE AND TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVE THIS NEW INITIATIVE STUDIES RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES THAT AIM FOR THE TRANSCENDENCE OF OUR NORMAL STATES OF BEING, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND EMBODIMENT— EXPLORING TRADITIONS EXCLUDED BY THE FRAMEWORK OF WORLD RELIGIONS, SUCH AS INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS, AND THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, GROUPED UNDER SUCH CATEGORIES AS ANIMISM, PAGANISM, SHAMANISM, AND FOLK RELIGION.

OCTOBER

RENEWAL OF BUILDING REFLECTS EVOLUTION OF DIVINITY SCHOOL HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL’S SWARTZ HALL REOPENS ITS DOORS AFTER A MULTIYEAR RENEWAL, WELCOMING MEMBERS OF THE HDS AND HARVARD COMMUNITIES SEPARATED SINCE THE START OF THE PANDEMIC TO A RENEWED BUILDING, ONE THAT REFLECTS A CHANGED (AND CHANGING) DIVINITY SCHOOL, WITH ADDED MULTIFAITH SPACE, IMPROVED ACCESSIBILITY, AND UPDATED CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY.

WEATHER REPORTS WITH TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS KICKS OFF A SERIES OF CLIMATE CHAOS CONVERSATIONS ENVIRONMENTALIST, AUTHOR, AND HDS WRITER-INRESIDENCE TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS

LEADS A SERIES CALLED WEATHER REPORTS: THE CLIMATE OF NOW, ASKING THE QUESTIONS: HOW MIGHT WE RECAST THIS AS A TIME OF MEANING RATHER THAN DESPAIR? HOW DO ARTS AND ACTIVISM COMBINE TO LET US SEE POSSIBILITY INSTEAD OF PESSIMISM? AND WHERE DO WE FIND THE STRENGTH TO FACE ALL THAT IS BREAKING OUR HEARTS?

HDS DEAN HEMPTON DELIVERS PRESTIGIOUS GIFFORD LECTURES OVER THE COURSE OF ITS 133-YEAR HISTORY, THE PRESTIGIOUS GIFFORD LECTURES, DELIVERED ANNUALLY IN SCOTLAND, HAVE DEVELOPED DEEP TIES TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HDS DEAN DAVID N. HEMPTON FURTHER CEMENTED THOSE TIES BETWEEN HARVARD AND SCOTLAND AND JOINED THE CLASS OF WORLD-RENOWNED SCHOLARS WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT.

NOVEMBER

ANDOVER CHAPEL RENAMED IN HONOR OF PRESTON N. WILLIAMS, PHD ’67 TO RECOGNIZE HIS REMARKABLE LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE, ANDOVER CHAPEL IN THE NEWLY RENOVATED SWARTZ HALL WAS RENAMED THE PRESTON N. WILLIAMS CHAPEL. FURTHER REFLECTING PRESTON’S AND CONNIE’S LEGACY, THE  CONSTANCE W. AND PRESTON N. WILLIAMS SCHOLARSHIP FUND WAS ESTABLISHED TO SUPPORT HDS STUDENTS FOSTERING BELONGING, INCLUSION, AND ANTI-RACISM WORK THROUGH THEIR STUDIES AND ACTIVITIES.

JANUARY

APRIL

MAY

A JUST WORLD AT PEACE HARVARD PRESIDENT LAWRENCE BACOW SHARES HIS REFLECTIONS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL IN HIS “VIEW FROM MASS HALL” SECTION OF HARVARD MAGAZINE

AT HDS; DEREK VAN BEVER, HBS SENIOR LECTURER; NIEN-HÊ HSIEH, HBS PROFESSOR; AND HOWARD KOH, SPH AND HKS PROFESSOR.

APRIL

HDS STUDENTS CREATE EXHIBIT ON BLACK CHURCH ARSON STUDENTS IN PROFESSOR TODNE THOMAS’S COURSE “BLACK CHURCH BURNING” CURATED AND CREATED ITEMS FOR THE EXHIBIT ON DISPLAY AT THE HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY, WHICH INCLUDE ORAL HISTORIES FROM THE REV. ROBERT TURNER, SENIOR PASTOR OF VERNON A.M.E. CHURCH IN TULSA, OKLAHOMA, WHICH WAS BURNED DURING THE 1921 TULSA RACE MASSACRE.

THE HARVARD AND THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY REPORT IS RELEASED A REPORT ISSUED BY A COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY HARVARD PRESIDENT LARRY BACOW AND LED BY LEGAL SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN, AND RADCLIFFE INSTITUTE DEAN TOMIKO BROWN-NAGIN DETAILS THE UNIVERSITY’S DEEP CONNECTIONS TO SLAVERY IN THE 17TH, 18TH, AND 19TH CENTURIES AND TO LEGACIES OF SLAVERY WELL INTO THE 20TH CENTURY. HARVARD HAS PLEDGED TO PROVIDE LONG-TERM FUNDING TO ADDRESS THE INITIATIVE’S FINDINGS.

INAUGURAL “ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITIES” CONFERENCE THE NEW PROGRAM FOR THE EVOLUTION OF SPIRITUALITY AT HDS HOLDS ITS INAUGURAL CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE THE EVOLUTION OF EARTH-BASED SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS AND HIGHLIGHT INNOVATIVE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES THAT ARE EMERGING IN RESPONSE TO THE PAINFUL REALITIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE, MASS EXTINCTION, BIODIVERSITY LOSS, AND THE DISRUPTION OF LOCAL AND GLOBAL ECOSYSTEMS.

MAY

HARVARD CELEBRATES FIRST IN-PERSON COMMENCEMENT

SINCE 2019 HDS CELEBRATES THE CLASS OF 2022 DURING COMMENCEMENT, WITH AN ADDED EVENT RECOGNIZING THE CLASSES OF 2020 AND 2021.

DURING THE UNIVERSITY’S COMMENCEMENT CELEBRATION, LINDSAY SANWALD, MDIV ’22, DELIVERS THE GRADUATE STUDENT ADDRESS.

JUNE

NATURAL LEADERS THE HDS ALUMNI/ALUMNAE COUNCIL (AAC) RECOGNIZES COMMUNITY

DEAN HEMPTON DELIVERS KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO THE EUROPEAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION THE EUROPEAN ACADEMY OF RELIGION INVITES DEAN HEMPTON TO BOLOGNA, ITALY, TO GIVE A KEYNOTE ADDRESS, TITLED “FROM NONSECTARIAN TO MULTIRELIGIOUS: AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AT HARVARD CA. 1800–2020.”

MEMBERS WHO EXPLORE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NATURE AND HUMAN FLOURISHING WITH THE 2022 PETER J. GOMES, STB ’68 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI HONORS.

THE SOUL OF HARVARD CHARLOTTE MCADAMS, MTS CANDIDATE, SHARES HER EXPERIENCE WITH THE JANUARY TERM COURSE “THE SPIRITUAL LIVES OF LEADERS.” THE CLASS WAS CO-TAUGHT BY: JOHN P. BROWN, PRACTITIONER IN RESIDENCE AT HDS; LAURA TUACH, ASSISTANT DEAN FOR MINISTRY STUDIES AND FIELD EDUCATION

MEET THE 2022–23 WSRP RESEARCH ASSOCIATES ONE RETURNING SCHOLAR AND FIVE NEW RESEARCH ASSOCIATES WILL JOIN THE WOMEN’S STUDIES IN RELIGION PROGRAM AT HDS TO WORK ON BOOK-LENGTH PROJECTS DURING THE 2022–23 ACADEMIC YEAR.

Peter J. Gomes, STB ’68 Distinguished Alumni Honorees

Each year, the Alumni/Alumnae Council (AAC) honors the legacy of Reverend Peter J. Gomes, STB ’68, by recognizing graduates and a Friend of the School whose excellence in life, work, and service pays homage to the mission and values of Harvard Divinity School.

For the 2022 awards, the AAC recognized community members who explore connections between nature and human flourishing. Brief bios for each of the recipients are below, and more information can be found at hds.harvard.edu/2022DeansReportGomes.

Marcus Briggs-Cloud, MTS ’10

Marcus Briggs-Cloud is co-founder and co-director of Ekvn-Yefolecv Maskoke ecovillage, an Indigenous off-grid, climatepositive, income-sharing community of Maskoke persons who, after 180 years of displacement from ancestral homelands, have returned to revitalize the Maskoke language and culture. An author of several academic publications, he serves as a consultant to endangered language programs worldwide. HDS recognizes Marcus Briggs-Cloud as a Gomes Honoree for ensuring the survival of Maskoke culture by championing native language regeneration, economic sovereignty, and ecological justice.

Katherine Collins, MTS ’11

Katherine Collins is head of sustainable investing at Putnam Investments and the founder of Honeybee Capital. She is an author, beekeeper, and member of several nonprofit boards, including Harvard Divinity School Dean’s Council, Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Wellesley Centers for Women. HDS recognizes Katherine Collins as a Gomes Honoree for leading sustainable business practices and reconnecting investing with the world it is meant to serve.

Tori Murden McClure, MDiv ’89

Tori Murden McClure is an explorer, author, and president of Spalding University. She is perhaps best known as the first woman and first American to row a boat solo across the Atlantic Ocean, having accomplished the feat in 1999 after 81 days at sea. A decade earlier, she became the first woman and first American to ski to the geographic South Pole during a 50-day, 750-mile expedition. HDS recognizes Tori Murden McClure as a Gomes Honoree for exploring the farthest bounds of the earth and connecting lessons learned from nature to ethical leadership in education.

Kareema Scott, MTS ’04

Kareema Scott is a memoirist, teacher, lawyer, and urban gardener. From a young age, she recognized that food was far more than sustenance; meals were threads that sutured her to her ancestors, cultures, and history. Scott now works with Boston Public Schools, where she helps lead a learning/ teaching garden with the intention to present farming, gardening, and homesteading as a viable, dignified, and empowering vocation. HDS recognizes Kareema Scott as a Gomes Honoree for celebrating ancestral heritage and cultivating community through urban gardening, education, and respecting food as a love language that connects generations.

Dr. Rosalyn LaPie r

Roslyn LaPier is an award-winning Indigenous writer, ethnobotanist, and environmental activist, who is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis. LaPier is currently a professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. LaPier shared her expertise with HDS as a 2016–17 Women’s Studies in Religion Program Research Associate and has continued to offer her knowledge through events such as the widely attended Intersections of Spirituality, Social Justice, and Climate Change discussion in 2021.

Dean’s Distinguished Service Award 2022

Ram Sudireddy

The Dean’s Distinguished Service Award recognizes exemplary service to—and support of—Harvard Divinity School. Recipients have a deep understanding of HDS and serve as visible advocates for the School, helping to advance its mission and the priorities of the dean.

In May 2022, Dean David N. Hempton presented the citation to Ram Sudireddy with gratitude for his ongoing support and guidance.

You understand.

Through your words and deeds, you demonstrate your appreciation of the Harvard Divinity School’s mission and the value of multireligious scholarship, education, and community. You hold the core conviction—central to this endeavor—that knowledge of religion makes efforts to address the world’s greatest challenges more effective and empowers people everywhere to live better lives.

With the creativity that fostered your success in business, you advanced the groundwork for an important area of study—bringing reflection and ethical reasoning from a religious perspective to business and economics.

As co-chair of the Campaign for HDS, you accepted a critical leadership role at a significant moment for the School, helping to raise those resources that would further Harvard Divinity School’s twenty-first-century mission and set the course for its third century.

Whether as an engineer at the legendary Bell Laboratories, an innovator creating ways to make technology more environmentally sustainable, or an entrepreneur sharing wealth and success with those around you, you display devotion to something greater than yourself. You are a shining example of what it means to be an altruistic leader who brings people together.

You have become one of Harvard Divinity School’s most steadfast and loyal friends. Your wisdom and advice have been, and will continue to be, invaluable for years to come. Therefore, it is my great pleasure to present the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award to you, Ramakrishna Sudireddy, on this twelfth day of May 2022.

Faculty Appointments

Mohsen Goudarzi, AM ’14, PhD ’18 , who earned his PhD in the study of religion from Harvard, joined the Faculty of Divinity as Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies on July 1, 2021. Before joining HDS, Goudarzi was an assistant professor in the Program in Religious Studies and Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the intellectual and social aspects of Islam’s emergence, with particular focus on the Qur’an’s relationship to late antique literature and its textual history. His current book project proposes a new reading of major elements of the Qur’anic worldview, including the Qur’an’s conception of scriptural and prophetic history.

Teddy Hickman-Maynard, AB ’00, joined Harvard Divinity School as the new associate dean for ministry studies on August 2, 2021. Hickman-Maynard graduated from Harvard College in 2000 and earned both his MDiv and PhD from Boston University School of Theology. Previously, he was the associate dean for student and community life and Assistant Professor of Black Church Studies at Boston University, where he taught courses on social justice, church renewal, and practices of ministry in the Black Church tradition. He has over 20 years of ministry experience and is currently the associate minister at Bethel AME Church in Lynn, Massachusetts, where his spouse, the Rev. Bernadette Hickman-Maynard, AB ’02, EdM ’03, MDiv ’07, is the pastor.

Faculty Awards and Honors

Highlights of faculty awards and honors for academic year 2021–22

Ann D. Braude, Senior Lecturer on American Religious History and Director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, wrote The Art of Inclusive Excellence, together with Maisie Luo, MTS ’22, on behalf of the Swartz Hall Art Committee, for a $15,000 grant from Harvard Culture Lab to commission a work of ceramic art from Wampanoag artist Ramona Peters for installation in the newly renovated Swartz Hall at HDS.

Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, was awarded the Best Book Award, Society for Hindu-Christian Studies, for Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics (University of Virginia Press, 2019).

Cheryl Giles, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling, was a finalist for Religion Reporting Excellence of the Religion News Association, for her publication Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom (Shambhala Publications, 2020).

HDS Dean David N. Hempton, a historian of Christianity, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures, titled “Networks, Nodes, and Nuclei in the History of Christianity, c. 1500–2020,” in October at the University of Edinburgh. The lectures have been delivered since 1888 and have featured scholars who have contributed to the advancement of theological thought and have broken new ground in the studies of religion, science, and philosophy.

Ousmane Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), was recognized with the accelerator workshop award from the Radcliffe Institute to fund the sixth Islam in Africa conference (scheduled for February 5–6, 2023). He also received an award from the Alwaleed Program to support the Islam in Africa lecture series (2021–22) and from the Center of African Studies to support research on the transformation of the pilgrimage tradition in West Africa (2021–22).

David C. Lamberth, HDS Professor of Philosophy and Theology, helped design a November 2021 Pew Research Center study on Americans’ attitudes regarding suffering and faith.

Jon D. Levenson, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at HDS, marked the 10-year anniversary of his book Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam with a discussion on the figure of Abraham and how his story has been interpreted by various religious traditions. He also presented a named lecture, titled “Recovering Biblical Love from Emotionalism and Eroticism,” as the Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. Memorial Lecture, Harvard Catholic Forum, Cambridge, MA.

Harvard Divinity School renamed the main chapel in the renovated Swartz Hall the Preston N. Williams Chapel in honor of Preston Williams, Houghton Professor of Theology and Contemporary Change Emeritus at Harvard Divinity School, the first tenured African American member of the HDS faculty and the first African American to lead the School, as acting dean from 1974–75.

Jacob K. Olupona, Professor of African Religious Traditions with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was awarded an honorary DLitt from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and served as convenor of the Ife Summer Institute, Nigeria, during the summer of 2021.

Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, continues to serve as president of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

Teren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, was awarded the Harry J. Benda Prize by the Association of Asian Studies for his book Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

YEAR IN REVIEW

Faculty Books

Highlights of 2021–22 printed publications authored by Harvard Divinity School faculty

Jocelyne Cesari WE GOD’S PEOPLE: CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM AND HINDUISM IN THE WORLD OF NATIONS (Cambridge: University Press, December 2021)

Francis X. Clooney, S.J. ST. JOSEPH IN SOUTH INDIA: POETRY, MISSION AND THEOLOGY IN COSTANZO GIOSEFFO BESCHI’S TĒMPĀVANI, Publications of the de Nobili Research Library Series, ed. by Gerhard Oberhammer and Karin Preisendanz, vol. 39 (Vienna: Verein “Sammlung de Nobili—Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Indologie und Religionsforschung,” 2022)

E.J. Dionne 100% DEMOCRACY: THE CASE FOR UNIVERSAL VOTING, with Miles Rapoport (New York: The New Press, 2022)

Amy Hollywood DEVOTION: THREE INQUIRIES IN RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION, with Constance Furey and Sarah Hammerschlag (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)

Tracey E. Hucks OBEAH, ORISA & RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN TRINIDAD, VOLUME I, OBEAH: AFRICANS IN THE WHITE COLONIAL IMAGINATION (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022)

Terrence Johnson BLACKS AND JEWS IN AMERICA: AN INVITATION TO DIALOGUE (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2022)

Ousmane Kane ISLAMIC SCHOLARSHIP IN AFRICA: NEW DIRECTIONS AND GLOBAL CONTEXTS (London: James Currey, 2021)

Kevin Madigan THE POPES AGAINST PROTESTANTS: THE VATICAN AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN FASCIST ITALY (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021)

Todne Thomas KINCRAFT: THE MAKING OF BLACK EVANGELICAL SOCIALITY (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021)

The following translations were also published in 2021–22

Charles Hallisey POEMS OF THE FIRST BUDDHIST WOMEN: A TRANSLATION OF THE THERIGATHA (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)

Ousmane Kane ERUDITION ISLAMIQUE EN AFRIQUE. NOUVELLES PISTES DE RECHERCHE ET CONTEXTE MONDIAL (Dakar: CERDIS, 2021)

The Faculty of Divinity

As of Fall 2022

LAWRENCE S. BACOW, President

DAVID N. HEMPTON, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity

GIOVANNI BAZZANA , Professor of New Testament and Editor of Harvard Theological Review

ANN D. BRAUDE , Senior Lecturer on American Religious History and Director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program

CATHERINE BREKUS , Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion (FAS)

DAVÍD CARRASCO, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, with a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology (FAS)

FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology

BENJAMIN DUNNING , Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity

DIANA L. ECK , Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society (FAS), and Member of the Faculty of Divinity

CHERYL A. GILES, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling

MOHSEN GOUDARZI, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

AHMAD GREENE-HAYES, Assistant Professor of African American Religious Studies

JANET GYATSO, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs

CHARLES HALLISEY, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures

TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD, Associate Dean of Ministry Studies and Lecturer on Ministry

DAVID F. HOLLAND, J ohn A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History

AMY HOLLYWOOD, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies

TRACEY E. HUCKS , Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies and Suzanne Young Murray Professor (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)

TERRENCE L. JOHNSON , Professor of African American Religious Studies

OUSMANE OUMAR KANE , Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), and Counselor to Muslim Students

KAREN L. KING, Hollis Professor of Divinity

DAVID C. LAMBERTH, Professor of Philosophy and Theology

JON D. LEVENSON, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies

KEVIN J. MADIGAN, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History

DAN MCKANAN, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity

DIANE L. MOORE , Director of Religion and Public Life, Lecturer in Religion, Conflict, and Peace, and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions

JACOB K. OLUPONA , Professor of African Religious Traditions, with a joint appointment as Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS)

KIMBERLEY C. PATTON, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion

STEPHANIE PAULSELL , Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies

MATTHEW ICHIHASHI POTTS , Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church

ANNETTE YOSHIKO REED, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity

MAYRA RIVERA , Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies

MICHELLE C. SANCHEZ , Associate Professor of Theology

TEREN SEVEA , Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

CHARLES M. STANG, Professor of Early Christian Thought and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions

D. ANDREW TEETER , Professor of Hebrew Bible

TODNE THOMAS, Associate Professor of African American Religious Studies

MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY EMERITUS AND RESEARCH PROFESSORS

LEILA AHMED, Victor S. Thomas Research Professor of Divinity

JOHN BRAISTED CARMAN, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Religion, Emeritus

HARVEY G. COX, JR., Hollis Professor of Divinity, Emeritus

FRANCIS SCHÜSSLER FIORENZA , Charles Chauncey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies

WILLIAM A. GRAHAM, Murray A. Albertson Research Professor of Middle Eastern Studies (FAS) and Dean of Harvard Divinity School (2002–12), Emeritus

DAVID D. HALL , Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, Emeritus

PAUL D. HANSON, Florence Corliss Lamont Professor of Divinity, Emeritus

MICHAEL D. JACKSON , Senior Research Fellow in World Religions

BABER JOHANSEN, Research Professor of Islamic Religious Studies

MARK D. JORDAN, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity

PETER MACHINIST, Hancock Research Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages (FAS)

ELISABETH SCHÜSSLER FIORENZA , Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity

PRESTON N. WILLIAMS, Houghton Professor of Theology and Contemporary Change, Emeritus

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

Religion

and the Gender Revolution The Past, Present, and Future of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program

Reclaiming the Sacredness of African and Africana Religions

Faculty Profile: Tracey E. Hucks, AM ’95, PhD ’98

Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies

The Call of the Qur’an

Faculty Profile: Mohsen Goudarzi, AM ’14, PhD ’18 Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

Religion and the Gender Revolution

The Past, Present, and Future of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program

BY SUZANNAH LUTZ, ALM ’21 & AMIE MONTEMURRO

The history of women at Harvard Divinity School is relatively brief, but the Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP)—founded in 1973—has ensured that the roles of women and gender will always have a prominent place within academia. While some women began receiving undergraduate instruction at the “Annex” at Harvard (later known as Radcliffe College) as early as 1879, women’s education at the Divinity School wouldn’t officially arrive until the mid-1900s.

“The question of women’s participation does not go back to the founding of the School,” says Ann Braude, director of the

WSRP and Senior Lecturer on American Religious History. “It was not discussed before the Civil War. From what we know, none of our founding luminaries gave it a thought or a wink.” Braude credits students and alumni for pushing Harvard to be more inclusive throughout history—pointing out that in 1893, it was alumni of the Divinity School who petitioned the Board of Overseers to admit women as students. “It’s not surprising that Unitarians, who were most of our alumni at this time, and who had worked on this proposal, were also discussing ordination of women in their own ranks,” Braude says. While the University of Chicago had opened that year as a fully coeducational university and Hartford Seminary had been admitting women students for almost a decade, Harvard President Charles William Eliot firmly opposed the presence of women in Harvard classrooms, where men of the College outnumbered Divinity School men. The petition was then rejected by the Board of Overseers.

Over 60 years later, in 1955, long after its peer institutions, HDS admitted its first women students—after the Corporation accepted a recommendation made by HDS faculty. In 1957, Emily Thornton Gage, BD ’57, a transfer student from Union Theological Seminary, would be the first woman to receive an HDS degree. By 1969, a total of 23 women had graduated, never more than three in a single year.

In 1970, 35 women enrolled at the Divinity School—almost as many

The Carriage House is home to the Women’s Studies in Religion Program.

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

as had graduated during the past 15 years. “The women’s liberation movement of the 1970s was heating up—and HDS was one of its cauldrons,” Braude says. A group of women students, staff, and HDS community members began meeting weekly, forming the Women’s Caucus. Modeling itself after the Black Caucus—which critiqued racism in every aspect of HDS education, including its curriculum, financial aid, faculty, and field placements—the Women’s Caucus asked fundamental questions about why women were absent from the HDS curriculum, faculty, and student body.

In one of many examples of on-campus activism, students brought national attention to the gendered language of the divine. When Harvey Cox asked his students to write a paper on a major issue his course “Eschatology and Politics” failed to raise, two students from the Women’s Caucus submitted a proposal to devote two weeks to women’s liberation and to halt the use of masculine pronouns “to refer to all people or to God” in class discussions. Cox liked the idea and wanted input from the class, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of the experiment. Members of the class blew kazoos when they heard gender-exclusive language in discussions. “We chose kazoos because it made the class as a whole responsible,” one student recalled. “Nobody wanted to be the language police, and everyone loved the phallic symbolism.” E.J. Dionne, AB ’73, a student in the class, wrote an article about the experiment for The Harvard Crimson, and from there the story was picked up by Newsweek, sparking a national conversation about the extent to which shifts in language can shift societal understanding and systems of power.

The cauldron was boiling over—and there was a dire need to transform theological education to reflect the many concerns that the unprecedented presence of women brought to the study of religion.

Waves of Progress

The Women’s Caucus continued to shape the early years of women’s studies at HDS—including forging spaces for women scholars. In 1972, Jean MacRae, MTS ’73, was appointed the first coordinator of women’s programs at HDS. In response to proposals from the Caucus, several feminist scholars visited HDS.

1893

Alumni of Harvard Divinity School petition the Harvard Board of Overseers to admit women as students to HDS. The petition is soundly rejected.

1955

Women students are first admitted to HDS, including eight degree candidates.

Alice Hageman, together with students, published a volume titled Sexist Religion and Women in the Church: No More Silences, based on 14 guest lectures that took place that year. Rosemary Radford Ruether offered the first course in feminist theology.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the student proposal that emerged from those experiences—what has since evolved into the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. The proposal, which was authorized by a faculty vote on February 16, 1973, called for a program initially known as the Research-Resource Associates in Women’s Studies that brought five scholars to the School each year to revolutionize the sources, methods, and conclusions of the fields of study that made up the curriculum. Inherent to its design was racial diversity, as the proposal also provided that “the group will be interracial in order to represent the experience of both black and white women.” As the decade continued, the growing student body, faculty, and curriculum at HDS became more diverse. M. Brinton Lykes, MDiv ’73, another Women’s Caucus participant, coordinated the first iteration of the program from 1973 through 1977.

In 1977, Constance Buchanan was appointed the first director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, where she guided scholars and championed women’s studies for the next two decades, developing the WSRP into an internationally recognized center for research. During that time, she was a member of the faculty and associate dean of HDS, also serving six years as special assistant to Harvard President Derek Bok for his University-wide initiative on improving the quality of teaching and learning at Harvard.

Most notably, Buchanan helped ensure that women’s studies would always have a home at HDS, embarking on a capital campaign and cultivating a network of philanthropists to establish a permanent endowment for the program. By 1980, Buchanan had secured initial funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, building a financial foundation for the program and shaping the WSRP into what it is today. One of the endowment funds for the WSRP—established with the generosity of longtime friends and supporters in Colorado and New York—was later named in Buchanan’s honor.

1957

1968

Krister Stendahl, affectionately known as “Sister Krister” by female students, begins his deanship, which lasts until 1979.

1970

Thirty-five women enroll in Harvard Divinity School, almost as many as had graduated during the previous 15 years.

Bachelor of divinity student Emily Thornton Gage, BD ’57, becomes the School’s first woman graduate.

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

For the last 25 years, Ann Braude, a scholar of the religious history of American women, has been at the helm of the WSRP, continuing to support the scholarship of women around the world and thoughtfully researching and presenting the history of HDS. In 2005, she inaugurated the School’s year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to HDS with the Convocation Address titled “A Short HalfCentury: Fifty Years of Women at Harvard Divinity School.” For the bicentennial in 2016–17, she curated a School-wide photo exhibition, “Faces of Divinity: Envisioning Inclusion for 200 Years.”

“Endowing the WSRP’s Research Associate positions has been crucial to the continued success of the program,” says Braude. Five full-time WSRP Research Associates are appointed to the faculty each year to work on a book-length project using both religion and gender as central categories of analysis. Providing space for this scholarship has been vital to advancing knowledge of global religion with a more inclusive understanding of the field.

Pluralism in Theory and in Practice

Over the decades, WSRP scholars have advanced knowledge of global religion from a more intersectional approach, while also building deeply personal connections with one another. The Carriage House, WSRP’s home, is one part intellectual hub for scholarly research and one part quaint, book-filled haven for authors seeking a retreat to delve into their writing. Along with Braude, Tracy Wall, the WSRP program coordinator, is instrumental in creating this welcoming space and organizing the many opportunities related to sharing new research.

The literature published by WSRP scholars alone has created an academic foundation that did not exist 50 years ago. The WSRP library, archived by Wall, is comprised of over 130 books on gender, sexuality, and religion from a stunning variety of perspectives. Topics cover numerous world religions (including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam), as well as faiths that have been previously subjugated within the field, including Indigenous traditions and African American and African diaspora religious studies. In the words of Braude: “We’re talking about generations and generations of literature that’s not just read at Harvard, but all over the country, all over the world.” Intellectual pursuits explore how religion and gender connect with everything from climate to queerness, ecstasy to ethics, and social justice to sacred texts. But for Braude, it’s the interpersonal connections that stand out as some of the most meaningful exchanges. With tenderness, she recalls scholars from different backgrounds who have shared traditions, meals, and holidays with each other—the Chinese New Year, the Passover Seder, Eid al-Fitr. Braude was especially moved when several Research Associates who had never been able to visit a Jewish place of worship in their home countries came to her synagogue for the national “Show Up for Shabat” event after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Temple in Pittsburgh. “These personal connections also have an impact on scholarship,” observes Braude.

Creating Space for Diversity in Religious Studies

“In the academy, the study of religion has been revolutionized,” Braude asserts. “There’s no field of religious studies that has not had to reckon with the religious treatment of gender, with religion as a source and as a solution to problematic gender

1971

The

1972

1973

1977

“From the founding of WSRP, students have been instrumental in shaping the program. They serve on our search committee, they take classes and WSRP Research Associates consistently reference input from students in their classes as part of the formative experience that really advances their intellectual development while at HDS.” Ann D. Braude, Director, WSRP

Women’s Caucus, consisting of women students, staff, and wives of faculty and students, begins meeting weekly at HDS.

Jean MacRae, MTS ’73, is appointed the first coordinator of women’s programs at HDS.

The initial student proposal for what would become the WSRP is authorized by faculty vote on February 16, 1973, and M. Brinton Lykes, MDiv ’73, takes over as coordinator of women’s programs at HDS.

Constance Buchanan joins the faculty at HDS, becoming associate dean at HDS and the first director of the WSRP.

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

roles...a source of the oppression and empowerment of women. Scholars continue to delve into the study of religion as we imagine a world beyond gender limitations.”

While the original 1973 proposal for the WSRP focused on the inclusion of women in the study of religion, the proposal also called for more attention to racial diversity within the field. The very first WSRP Research Associate, Sheila Walker, joined Harvard Divinity School to focus on African and African American religions. This space—and Walker’s leadership— helped set the stage for the growing study of womanist theology.

Prior to the 1980s, feminist theology centered white women, while Black liberation theology was led primarily by men. Building on Alice Walker’s definition of “womanism” in her 1983 book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, scholars began using this lexicon when exploring perspectives of theology and ethics that center Black women.

Several of the scholars who were instrumental in developing the field of womanist theology joined the Harvard community as some of the first WSRP Research Associates. Dr. Jacquelyn Grant, Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Dr. Delores Williams, the late Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, and the late Dr. Nellie McKay found space to develop their ideas through the WSRP in the 1970s and 1980s—amplifying research that would provide the foundation for this important area of study.

In addition to creating space for more diverse voices within academia, WSRP also brings scholars together in a community that transcends the bounds of time and physical distance. Part of the program’s success is how the full range of higher education is represented by the Research Associates—both where they come from and where they continue their careers. From state and private universities across North America to institutions throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, WSRP scholars deepen our understanding of the vast array of faith traditions while also building networks of academics around the globe who are dedicated to diversity within religious education.

“When you look at all the people who’ve been in the program,” Braude reflects, “it’s very moving. Some of them are a blessed memory now that they have passed, and we have started to see

1980

Buchanan secures initial funding for the WSRP from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.

1985

The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion is founded by HDS professor Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and WSRP alumna Judith Plaskow. Many RAs have published WSRP work in the journal throughout the years.

1995

CURRENT HARVARD SCHOLARS WHO WERE WSRP RESEARCH ASSOCIATES

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, WSRP ’81, Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Afsaneh Najmabadi, AB ’81, AM ’70, WSRP ’89 , Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Emerita

Karen King, WSRP ’95 , Hollis Professor of Divinity, HDS

Amy Hollywood, WSRP ’00, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies, HDS

Benjamin Dunning, PhD ’05, WSRP ’10, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, HDS

1998

WSRP begins a capital campaign to raise an endowment to ensure that research related to gender and religion will have a permanent place at Harvard Divinity School.

The WSRP library of RA publications is on display at the Carriage House.

Ann Braude joins the faculty at HDS and becomes director of the WSRP.

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

their students come into the program. We’ve started to see some academic granddaughters, the students of the students, who now join the program to build on the generations of academic knowledge that we did not have formalized before the program existed.”

Looking Forward to the Next 50 Years

When asked about the progress and challenges from the past five decades, Braude offers a pithy reflection: “A lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same.”

Many denominations now welcome leadership by women and other marginalized genders in positions traditionally held by cisgender men though, as Braude explains, there was hope that the Catholic Church would expand their criteria for ordination when the program was first founded, and that seems unlikely these days.

Looking at politics, we have also seen more diverse leadership over the decades. Yet, religion’s influence within the US government has grown more complicated. Braude notes that the need for serious scholarship on gender and

religion is as important as ever. As a point of reference, the WSRP was coming to fruition around the same time the US government enacted Title IX (1972) and the Supreme Court protected federal abortion rights with the Roe v. Wade decision (1973). Fifty years later, discrimination toward students by way of gender (particularly transgender youth) and federal protections for abortion are still being grappled with—this time with the internet acting as both a blessing and a curse when it comes to public discourse.

Thinking about the future of the program, Braude shares: “While well established in the United States, Europe, and a number of other regions, there are still places where the study of gender and religion is appearing for the first time. Scholars who don’t have generations of this work in their home countries need the support of Harvard’s program to help build their academic community and explore their research interests freely.”

She also sees the WSRP continuing to expand not just by region but also by areas of expertise, noting that religious diversity will remain the guiding force for this work. “When the program first started, it was a narrow spectrum of faith traditions that were included, with an emphasis on broadening perspectives beyond the traditional views of the men who led, taught, and wrote about religion. We have since committed to exploring new religious arenas and the many ways that gender studies intersect with a multitude of traditions.”

With existential issues in the news seemingly every day (including, but certainly not limited to, armed conflict, state violence, the climate crisis, threats to reproductive justice, and food and housing instability), this commitment to the capaciousness of academic pursuits has the WSRP poised to lead the next wave of progress—equality across the full spectrum of humanity.

2005

The School hosts a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to HDS. The WSRP celebrates the 25th anniversary of the 1980 funding milestone.

2013

Supported by the WSRP, the landmark book, Practicing Shariah: Seven Strategies for Achieving Justice by Hauwa Ibrahim, WSRP ’11–13, is published by the American Bar Association. The WSRP sponsors distribution of 5,000 copies to local bar associations in Nigeria.

2014

The New Yorker publishes Anne Carson’s poem “Pronoun Envy,” which was inspired by HDS students.

2021

The Constance Buchanan Endowment reaches $1 million dollar goal with the leadership of WSRP supporters in New York and Colorado.

WSRP welcomes its newest cohort of Research Associates in 2022.

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION WSRP Research Associates through the Years

A selection of scholarship from the more than 200 WSRP Research Associates since 1973

1970s

Sheila Walker, WSRP ’73

Research Project: African religions; African and African American spiritualism

Judith Plaskow, WSRP ’74

Research Project: Sex, Sin and Grace: Women’s Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich

Clarissa Atkinson, WSRP ’75, ’76

Research Project: Place of women in conversion of Western Europe, 500–900 CE; Women, marriage and sexuality in sixteenth-century thought Jacquelyn Grant, WSRP ’78, ’79 Research Project: Critical examination of the feminist analysis of the theological problem, with the development of a constructive alternative from a Black woman’s perspective; women and ministry in the Black Church; emerging Christian African Theologies

Bernadette Brooten, WSRP ’79 Research Project: Status of women and their official roles in the synagogue in ancient Judaism; the status of women in antiquity

1980s

Delores Williams, WSRP ’80, ’81 Research Project: Black Church Women and a Theology of Relation Paola Di Cori, WSRP ’83

Research Project: Religious Rituals, Body Symbols, and Female Gender Identity: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Twentieth-Century Italy and the United States

Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, WSRP ’84 Research Project: Resources for a Constructive Ethic: The Black Woman’s Literary Tradition

Dr. Nellie McKay, WSRP ’87 Research Project: Narrative and Identity in Contemporary Black Women’s Autobiographies

Teresa Amott, WSRP ’89

Research Project: Women, Poverty, and Economic Justice: Theological Foundations and Ethical Action

1990s

Francis Foster, WSRP ’92

Research Project: The African Methodist Episcopal Canon of Frances E.W. Harper

Tal Ilan, WSRP ’93

Research Project: Jewish Women in TannaiticRabbinic Literature: An Historical Approach

B. Sree Padma, WSRP ’95

Research Project: Origins and Transformations of Goddess Cults in Andhra Pradesh (India)

Amina Wadud, WSRP ’98 Research Project: Alternative Notions of Family and Current Muslim Personal Law Codes

Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, WSRP ’98 Research Project: Healers of the Cinnamon Tree, Priestesses of the Moon: Women’s Spiritual Empowerment among the Chilean Mapuche

2000s

Oyeronke Olajubu, WSRP ’01 Research Project: Veritable Vehicle of Traditions: Women in Yoruba Christianity and Indigenous Religion

THEN AND NOW The HDS community in 1895 and 2022.

Kecia Ali, WSRP ’04

Research Project: Wives, Husbands, and Islamic Law: The Consolidation of Male Marital Authority in Early Muslim Jurisprudence

Nicola Denzey, WSRP ’05

Research Project: Uncovering Women’s Lives in Early Christianity: The Catacomb Evidence Gannit Ankori, WSRP ’06

Research Project: A Faith of Their Own: Women Artists Re-vision Religion

Ping Yao, WSRP ’09

Research Project: Good Karma Connections: Buddhist Women in Tang China (618–907)

2010–Present

Yakir Englander, WSRP ’15

Research Project: Within and without the Walls: The Status of Ultra-Orthodox Women in the Jewish Public Sphere (1980–2010)

Rosalyn R. LaPier, WSRP ’17

Research Project: Plants That Purify: The Natural and Supernatural History of Smudging

S. Zahra Moballegh, WSRP ’19

Research Project: From Being to Becoming Woman: Decoding the Meaning of Femininity in the Qur’anic Stories

Monique Moultrie, WSRP ’20

Research Project: Hidden Histories: Faith as a Site of Black Lesbian Activism

Swasti Bhattacharyya, WSRP ’22

Research Project: The Freedom to Always Love: Interweaving Sustainability, Spirituality, and Sarvodaya

Reclaiming the Sacredness of African and Africana Religions

BY AMIE MONTEMURRO

One of the highest priorities for HDS in recent years has been expanding faculty expertise. This year, Dean Hempton welcomed Professors Tracey E. Hucks, AM ’95, PhD ’98, Terrence L. Johnson, MDiv ’00, and Ahmad Greene-Hayes to the HDS community. Their remarkable strengths as researchers and teachers will greatly enhance the School’s curricular offerings, scholarship, and support of African diasporic and African American religious studies. In collaboration with leading scholars across the School, this wave of new faculty members will have a major influence on the next generation of HDS students and the future of education.

Professor Tracey E. Hucks, a nationally known and esteemed scholar, has returned to her alma mater with a joint appointment as the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at HDS and the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Before joining the Harvard faculty this fall, Hucks served as Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Colgate University, where she was the James A. Storing Professor of Religion and Africana and Latin American Studies. She also held the inaugural Africana Studies Department chair role at Davidson College, taught for 17 years at Haverford College, and has conducted research in several countries, including Brazil, Cuba, England, France, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Trinidad. Her most recent book, Obeah, Orisa & Religious Identity in Trinidad: Volume One, was published in September 2022, with the second volume published by Dianne M. Stewart, MDiv ’93.

Expanding the Boundaries of Religious Studies

A graduate of Colgate University, Hucks earned one of her master’s and a doctoral degree from Harvard. She credits her academic journey to a number of influential professors, and it was her first undergraduate course in the study of religion that sparked a lifelong interest in the field. “The class was taught by Dr. Lewis Baldwin, who was most recently named among

the ‘25 Influential Black Religious Studies Scholars from the Last 30 Years.’” Hucks remembers: “In my first semester, I was also taking a course with Dr. Manning Marable, who was just starting to formalize the Africana and Latin American studies program and later established the Institute for Research in African-American studies at Columbia University. So, what you see today is an intersection between religious studies and Africana studies, which became the foundation for the subfield Dr. Dianne Stewart and I would eventually name Africana Religious Studies.”

“Most of my classmates were studying the Black Church or African American religion in the United States; exploring the religions of the wider African diaspora was fairly novel back then,” says Hucks. “Those who forged the field at that time were cultural anthropologists. It was kind of a new moment in religious studies when we began to do this work of expanding the boundaries and excavating the history of religious meaning and practice across the African diaspora.”

While in Cambridge as a doctoral student, she met another influential scholar. “I am the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies, and what’s important about that distinction is that one of my mentors, Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies here at Harvard,” Hucks explains. “I was thrilled to return to Harvard for this role, and I’m honored to share that particular title with her.”

On Being Back at Harvard

After strengthening the foundation her mentors put in place at Colgate, leaving full-time administration was not an easy decision. Yet Hucks was ready for this next step in her career. “I’m looking forward to building a world-class curriculum in Africana and Latinx religious studies. I’m looking forward to Harvard being a beacon and working with other colleagues and scholars to help support this vision. I’m looking forward

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

to training brilliant graduate students and researchers. And I’m looking forward to what this next phase of HDS brings to light and its impact on the future of the discipline.”

Hucks notes that Dean Hempton’s leadership—especially his commitment to multireligious education—drew her back to Harvard. “Many divinity schools or seminaries are often connected to one single Christian denomination. HDS’s pluralistic approach encourages students to see beyond that model and envision the many different traditions they can explore and the many different vocations they can pursue.”

Additionally, Harvard’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging align with her values and scholarly interests: “What a time to come here, when the University is launching its legacy of slavery project...what a time to be here, given the work that I do. This is a historic moment for Harvard—and I wanted to step into that historic moment and see how I could be of service to my alma mater.”

Reckoning with the Colonization of Ancient Traditions

When asked about teaching and learning in a multireligious Divinity School, Hucks says that it’s precisely the respect for pluralism that HDS espouses that allows her area of study to advance. “Respect for diversity creates space to expand the boundaries and definitions of religion—to reimagine and redefine what we mean by sacred texts and practices.”

As her research shows, African and Africana traditions have all the ethos and artifacts respected in other world religions, but they were demonized by colonists and subjugated by white supremacy for centuries. Hucks’s newest book, Obeah, Orisa & Religious Identity in Trinidad: Volume One: Africans in the White Colonial Imagination, is the first half of an expansive two-volume, five-century examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. The book is a project Hucks took on with Stewart (a fellow alum) to identify the dangers of white colonial imagination and reclaim the sacredness of religions that have been marginalized throughout history.

Hucks is currently working on her next book, which will focus on the Africana healing wisdom and clandestine religious traditions practiced throughout the period of slavery and into the present day. As a historian of religion, her commitment is to excavate and rescue from obscurity those lived practices that often remain hidden in archives and Africana folk traditions.

Obeah, Orisa & Religious Identity in Trinidad is an expansive two-volume examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. Analyzing their entangled histories and systems of devotion, Tracey E. Hucks and Dianne M. Stewart articulate how these religions were criminalized during slavery and colonialism yet still demonstrated autonomous modes of expression and self-defense. In Volume I, Obeah, Hucks traces the history of African religious repression in colonial Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she documents the persecution and violent penalization of African religious practices encoded under the legal classification of “Obeah.” A cult of antiblack fixation emerged as white settlers defined themselves in opposition to Obeah, which they imagined as terrifying African witchcraft. These preoccupations revealed the fears that bound whites to one another. At the same time, persons accused of Obeah sought legal vindication and marshaled their own spiritual and medicinal technologies to fortify the cultural heritages, religious identities, and life systems of Africandiasporic communities in Trinidad.

“This meticulously researched book is a model of methodological scholarship. Its nuanced analyses of the slight traces of Obeah in the colonial archives of the Caribbean illuminate the marks of colonialism in religious and racial identities, as well as what escapes the grasp of colonial authorities. A truly extraordinary contribution!”

— Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies at Harvard University and President of the American Academy of Religion

“I came back to Harvard asking: how can the work that I do—the research that I produce and the classes that I teach—contribute to this vision for a just world?”

RELIGION

The Call of the Qur’an

BY SUZANNAH LUTZ, ALM ’21

register. The beauty of the language and the recitations are part of what drew me to this text,” Goudarzi says.

After high school, Goudarzi studied computer engineering, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in the growing field—but kept finding himself drawn back to the humanities and religious history. To honor this lifelong passion, he decided to pursue a master of arts in religious studies from Stanford University. It was this pursuit that further developed his interest in multireligious education and ultimately brought him to Harvard.

Delight in Difference

At Harvard, Goudarzi admired the approaches of Professor Ali Asani, the late Professor Shahab Ahmed, and the late Professor Ahmad Mahdavi-Damghani, which underscored the diversity of the Islamic tradition—the many different centuries, geographic areas, and thinkers who have contributed to its rich tapestry.

He says two courses offered through HDS widened his academic interests, “Early Christian Texts: The Greek Tradition,” with Professor Charles M. Stang, and “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,” with Professor Andrew Teeter.

Reading the Bible closely from literary and historical perspectives resonated deeply with Goudarzi, sparking a delight in multireligious education: “Many of the same concepts and concerns that we find in the Qur’an we also find in the Bible and related texts—in different ways, with different historical actors and contexts—but still so many overlaps. And what binds many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian readers of these ancient scriptures is that they are all trying to reconcile their experiences and theological commitments with belief in an omniscient and omnipotent God.”

Mohsen Goudarzi, AM ’14, PhD ’18, heard the call of the Qur’an at a young age. Now, in his first year as Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies at HDS, he continues to delight in uncovering new understandings within the sacred text’s complexities.

Growing up in Tehran, Goudarzi remembers listening to a young boy his age reciting the Qur’an on a nationally televised competition: “He was a virtuoso—it sounded so beautiful. And I knew that was something I wanted to do,” he says. With his grandmother’s encouragement, young Goudarzi delved into the techniques and grammar of Qur’anic Arabic, spending hours listening to and emulating professional Qur’anic reciters.

His curiosity didn’t end there. As a teenager, Goudarzi immersed himself in literature—especially the poetry of popular Persian writers like Hāfez and Rūmī. He notes a similar literary quality in the Qur’an.

“The Qur’an is a poetic work. It tells us that it’s not poetry. But it is very poetic. It rubs shoulders with poetry in a literary

God Knows Best: Exploring the Mysteries of the Qur’an Goudarzi’s research focuses on the intellectual and social aspects of Islam’s emergence and the ways Muslims have understood the Qur’an over the centuries.

“I’m trying to understand the Qur’an on its own terms as a text. But I’m also trying to understand some of the ideas that it raises or some of the debates it participates in, which can have long and tortuous genealogies.”

What motivates him the most is solving some of the puzzles that still remain. Goudarzi says that there are many aspects of the Qur’an—like the mysterious letters that appear at the beginning of some of its surahs—that are not fully understood.

Goudarzi is currently writing a paper on a word in Surah 5 of the Qur’an that is used in an unexpected way: dīn, which is “generally understood as religion,” appears in the middle of a passage discussing food prohibitions.

“It is surprising that this word appears there in the third verse. The verse lays out a list of food prohibitions, then declares the perfection of dīn, and again goes back to finish its

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE OF GLOBAL RELIGION

ways of looking,” he says. “Each one of us brings a unique set of experiences, backgrounds, talents, and skills to the study of a tradition, text, or community.”

His first class, Exploring the Qur’an, has already attracted a variety of students—Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and a number of other faiths (including those who identify with multiple traditions or none at all).

“I couldn’t have imagined a better cohort of students—they were very generous with each other. Sometimes I felt that some non-Muslim students were looking at the Qur’an almost from the perspective of Muslims—trying to understand or empathize with how Muslims would look at the text—and vice versa.”

In the classroom, Goudarzi brings comparative texts, as well as ideas from other traditions, to place the Qur’an within a broader context of religious history. He says it helps to underscore the complexity of the text itself and helps his students relate to the time period in which it was first promulgated.

“I think it’s really important to maintain a balance between how the Qur’an has served as a cornerstone and a fountain of meaning for Muslims over the past 14 centuries—and how it is profoundly connected with the biblical tradition and the broader historical context of the late antique Near East.”

dietary legislation by saying that in an emergency, people can eat the forbidden items. We think we understand the word, but maybe we don’t because it appears in a context that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m arguing that it doesn’t mean religion exactly. It refers to serving God through cultic rituals, and if we recognize that, then it makes perfect sense why the word appears in that context. That’s something that scholars of the Qur’an do often: we try to revisit some of the concepts that we think we have understood and argue that if we look at them in a new way, then we can make better sense of a certain passage or surah and understand aspects of its coherence that we didn’t understand before.”

That openness to greater understanding and multiple viewpoints is also found in the Islamic exegetical tradition, which is characterized by “epistemic humility,” Goudarzi says.

“There is not an urge to quickly close the door and say definitively ‘this is what the text means.’ There’s this catch phrase in the commentaries: God knows best,” Goudarzi says. “That’s a phrase that oftentimes scholars will use to close a discussion. It’s a way to say, ‘I don’t know. I’m just a mere mortal, and these are God’s words. I don’t want to say that this is what they mean exactly. God knows best.’”

Teaching in a Multireligious Setting

As a professor, Goudarzi brings that humility into his classroom.

“If one is insistent on a very specific understanding of the text, then they risk closing the door on learning from other

As a scholar who has read the Qur’an in full countless times, Goudarzi delights in what new understandings his students can bring to the study of the text.

“What I tell all my students is: ‘Do not think that because you are not experts in this tradition that you do not have worthy ideas to share. Each one of you is going to notice things that maybe no one else has seen before.’”

“The pen of creation did not go awry at all,” proclaimed our master. Kudos to his pure and forgiving (“wry-covering”) vision!

“I have never imbibed alcohol, but I wonder if the experience may be similar to reading the poetry of Hāfez—a kind of elation and intoxication. Poetry is something that you can find solace in from the outside world, from an economic meltdown or political instability. Hāfez himself was writing poems when much of the world around him was grappling with the consequences of the Mongol invasions, and Tamerlane’s similarly disruptive conquests were underway. But when you enter his poetic world, it is incredibly serene. It’s like you are walking in a beautiful, peaceful garden filled with delight. Hāfez in particular is a cherished poet dear to my heart.”

—Mohsen Goudarzi on the power of Hāfez’s poetry (excerpted above in Persian and English)

The Tomb of Hāfez in Shiraz, Iran, honoring the famous fourteenth-century Persian poet.

MODELING

On Containing Multitudes: Multifaith Ministry at HDS

BY AMIE MONTEMURRO

The Rev. Teddy Hickman-Maynard, AB ’00, Associate Dean for Ministry Studies

Harvard Divinity School can be described in many different ways: multireligious, multifaith, pluralistic. Just as Swartz Hall features historical Gothic architecture and new light-filled rooms like the Multifaith Space, the School also shares a deep connection to both tradition and progressive thinking. While nearly impossible to summarize in one pithy phrase, the multifaceted nature of the School shines through the people and places of HDS. Students are as likely to be studying ancient languages in the library as they are creating art to decry the dangers of climate change. Ordained clergy in collars, visiting monastics in traditional robes, and community members quietly meditating on the campus green—Harvard Divinity School practices the ideals of pluralism espoused in the classroom.

While multifaceted, three pillars of HDS have emerged over time to correspond with the School’s main degree programs: ministry (MDiv), academics (MTS), and religion and public life (MRPL). The education of learned ministers has been central to Harvard since its founding in 1636. Today, the members of the HDS community reflect an extraordinary diversity of backgrounds and ambitions, which has expanded the study of ministry from the nonsectarian (but largely Christian) beginnings of the Divinity School. Recognizing that the world is a religiously pluralistic place, students, faculty, and visiting scholars of many traditions (as well as those who are unaffiliated ) study side by side to foster a greater understanding of religion in the context of others. Interreligious engagement is essential to the HDS approach.

“I don’t know of any other school that has the multifaith and multivocational approach to ministry studies that we do at HDS. And my personal mission is to tend to this idea of becoming—to serve people who are interested in ethical leadership and help them along their journey to serve others.”

Ven. Mahayaye Vineetha, a Buddhist monk (right), and Sadhak Vandan, a visiting Hindu monastic (left), talk outside of the newly renovated Swartz Hall.

“There are plenty of religious studies programs out there, but they are essentially interested in producing professors. In addition to that academic focus, Harvard also trains leaders in ministry, chaplaincy, nonprofit leadership, advocacy, and all different spiritual vocations to support the entire range of the human condition.” Monica Sanford, Assistant Dean for Multifaith Ministry

Defining Multifaith Ministry

UNDERSTANDING A CHANGING WORLD

As the demographics of religion continue to shift, a concerted effort to support the future of ministry has become more important than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 64% of Americans, including children, identified as Christian in 2020. People who are religiously unaffiliated (sometimes called religious “nones”) accounted for 30% of the U.S. population. Adherents of all other religions—including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—totaled about 6% of the U.S. population. Depending on whether religious switching (or conversion) continues at current rates, these projections show affiliations with the Christian faith shrinking from 64% to somewhere between 54% and 35% of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” could rise from the current 30% to upwards of 52% of the U.S. population, and the percentage of Americans who identify as Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or other non-Christian faiths could double.

MINISTRY

Evolving with the changing demographics of religion and the growing number of traditions represented by the HDS community, the Office of Ministry Studies (OMS) has recently expanded its leadership team. After the retirement of beloved HDS community members Dudley Rose and Emily Click in 2021, the Rev. Teddy Hickman-Maynard, AB ’00, became HDS’s associate dean for ministry studies. Longtime OMS colleague the Rev. Laura S. Tuach, MDiv ’01, took on the role of assistant dean for field education. Soon afterward, OMS welcomed the Rev. Monica Sanford (one of the first fully trained Buddhist practical theologians in the US) in a new role, assistant dean for multireligious ministry. With new team members and positions, the Office of Ministry Studies has been building on a long history of excellence while also offering more support for an increasingly pluralistic study of religion.

When asked how to define multifaith ministry, HickmanMaynard offers both a lesson in linguistics and a capacious understanding of a word that carries a predominately Christian connotation: “The etymology of the word comes from the Latin ministre, which means to serve. So, on a fundamental linguistic level, “minister” does not have to be truncated into the American, Christian, clerical paradigm that has dominated the use of that word.”

In fact, Hickman-Maynard cautions against a narrow definition: “I think it’s wise that we expand our understanding of ministry beyond the bounds of one faith. The task of being a person who reckons with the significance and meaningful nature of life, in the face of all kinds of forces that seek to dehumanize our human experience, necessitates a connection to service and to each other regardless of our personal metaphors.”

When asked about her perspective, Sanford adds: “I think of ministry as service to others grounded in how we understand our spiritual, religious, existential, and philosophical values— values that are in some sense sacred or transcendent. And, for me, that definition leaves a lot of room for people of all backgrounds to come into the practice of ministry.” And here is where Sanford offers a word of caution: “As Buddhists and as non-Christians, we do have to be on the lookout for colonization within the study and practice of religion. Sometimes it’s accidental and linguistic, and sometimes it’s intentional and destructive. Within the field, there can be a bit of vigilance around words like ‘ministry,’ ‘chaplaincy,’ and ‘pastoral,’ but the truth of the matter is, when you look at the roots of these concepts, you’ll find similarities across many different traditions and cultures throughout history.”

The term “ministry” may run the risk of being reductive, but Harvard Divinity School has been instrumental in challenging that reductionism and trying to reclaim the more multifaceted and expansive meaning—ministry defined as dedication to a life of service.

Integrating Theory and Practice

Another concept that has become increasingly important to the work of multifaith ministry is multivocational training. “The work of imbuing our lives with meaning and helping people think through the significance of their lives...that work

is happening by way of leaders in all facets of life,” HickmanMaynard says. “Whether they’re training to be chaplains, doctors, politicians, educators, journalists, artists, activists— I want the next generation of storytellers to have the kind of formation and groundedness that religious and theological education can provide.”

The Office of Ministry Studies supports a range of students, fellows, and visiting scholars interested in a vast array of vocations, including traditional ordination, chaplaincy, nonprofit leadership, and academic careers. Moreover, each vocation can be approached from a number of traditions and ambitions. For example, the call to chaplaincy can be grounded in different beliefs (e.g., Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, or no specific affiliation) and shaped by different settings (such as hospitals, military bases, and universities).

One of the fundamental ways this multifaith and multivocational approach comes to fruition is through the School’s field education program. Through on-the-ground learning opportunities, students become reflective practitioners integrating the theoretical perspectives discussed in the classroom with the practical experience gained by working in ministry settings. This process is cyclical in that students bring their site experiences back into the classroom, as well. Under the guidance of Laura S. Tuach, the School now has connections to over 100 field ed sites in the Greater Boston area. Congregations, educational institutions, communitybased social justice agencies, hospitals, and other health care

facilities all provide HDS students with ministry experience alongside their coursework. Additionally, students have the option to imagine and plan an independent placement to deepen specific areas of study.

“Our community partnerships are crucial to student learning. We work closely with the organizations who host HDS students in field education placements and train supervisors in a year-long, graduate-level course on supervision for ministry,” Tuach explains. “Students are empowered by the leadership roles afforded them at their field education sites. They learn through intentional reflection with a skilled supervisor not only to do ministry but to become a reflective practitioner. This is a crucial component of the HDS field education program.”

The Buddhist Ministry Initiative: A Retrospective

Ten years ago this fall, the first Buddhist Ministry Initiative International Fellows arrived on campus, and the work of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative started quite a bit earlier. As assistant dean for multireligious ministry, Sanford leads this effort today. When asked about the history, she observes: “In Buddhist traditions, we like to talk about causes, conditions, and the interactions needed for something to arise. The causes and conditions for the Buddhist Ministry Initiative really started to be put in place in the late 1950s with the founding of the Center for the Study of World Religions.”

Much like the evolution of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, the study of Buddhism at HDS was also largely driven by students pushing throughout the decades for a more inclusive divinity school. Another major milestone for the field was in the early 2000s when Janet Gyatso joined Harvard as the Divinity School’s first Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies. “Through Professor Gyatso’s unrelenting interest and work with Buddhist students who wanted more of the ministry aspect in their training,” Sandford says, “she was able to make an important connection with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. With their generosity, we were able to formalize the Buddhist Ministry Initiative—the first of its kind at a divinity school within a research university in the United States.”

Drawing on the strengths of Harvard’s faculty resources in the academic study of religion, the initiative coordinates a range of courses for students and visiting scholars on the history, thought, languages, and practice of Buddhism, as well as Buddhist

Sadhak Akshar Parsana (left), Brahmacharini Shweta Chaitanya, and Swami Sarvapriyananda were the three Hindu monastics in residence at HDS in 2019. To learn more, see the Harvard Gazette article “Hindu Monastics at Harvard.”

arts of ministry. As part of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, the International Fellows program affords an opportunity for individuals who are deeply engaged in Asian Buddhist communities to do coursework focused on Buddhist ministry at Harvard Divinity School for one year. A major aim of the program is to increase the exchange of knowledge and understanding among students of Buddhist ministry in Asia and in the United States. Additionally, the Buddhist Ministry Initiative convenes international conferences to connect leaders in Buddhist organizations who are engaged in ministerial and educational initiatives relating to Buddhism in the modern world. Held at HDS (with opportunities to join virtually, as of 2020), the regular conferences invite Buddhist clergy and ministers from both Asia and the United States and serves to forge lasting relationships across geographical divides.

In the decade since establishing this pathbreaking effort, the field of Buddhist studies has expanded exponentially. Prior to 2013, news stories and publications about Buddhism from the HDS community were few and far between. In recent years, a number of influential publications have made their way into the world, including Poems of the First Buddhist Women, translated by Charles Hallisey, Black and Buddhist, a series of essays co-edited by Cheryl Giles, and a new e-book, Mapping Buddhist Chaplains in North America, co-authored by Cheryl Giles and Monica Sanford.

In addition to bringing 23 visiting fellows to Cambridge, another added benefit to the initiative is that roughly 50 percent of the visiting fellows who join the HDS community for a year apply to full degree programs, strengthening the field of Buddhist studies by way of student and alumni communities.

One such scholar is Ven. Mahayaye Vineetha (pictured on page 25), a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka. He received his monastic education from the Sri Dhammananada Center in Naula, where he studied Pali language and Buddhist studies to pursue a bachelor’s degree in his home country. “I was then fortunate enough to join the one-year Buddhist Ministry Initiative program at Harvard Divinity School in 2018. The following year, I started the master of Buddhist studies program at the University of Hong Kong, and later returned to Cambridge to complete a master of divinity degree at HDS.” Trained in the Theravada tradition, Ven. Vineetha wanted to study other Buddhist traditions and religious beliefs to inform his own practices.

“Studying at Harvard Divinity School would have been just a dream without the Buddhist Ministry fellowship opportunity,” he reflects. “In Pali Canon, it says ‘Sabba dānam dhamma dānam jināti,’ which means ‘the gift of Dhamma (teachings) excels all other gifts.’ Support for this program is to give the gift of Dhamma (teachings) to Buddhist monks like me so that I can share Dhamma with the world. That is the highest gift that one can offer, according to my understanding.”

Noon Service is hosted each Wednesday by a different religious community at HDS. It is often held in the Preston N. Williams Chapel, which also offers gathering space for other multireligious and School events throughout the year.

The Multifaith Space, added during the Swartz Hall renovation, provides a space to pray, reflect, and engage with the HDS community.

faculty.

alchemy

community

The Rev. Teddy Hickman-Maynard

A Strong Foundation for New Possibilities

With the success of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, a natural question is: what’s next?

Just three years ago, the Nagral Family helped establish a fund to begin to bring visiting Hindu monastics to campus, much like the Buddhist Ministry Initiative’s International Fellows program. Despite the logistical challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the first few cohorts of visiting Hindu monastics made big changes on campus. The burgeoning program, led by Fr. Frank Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, captured the attention of audiences here in Cambridge and around the globe; event series with the visiting monastics (that shifted to online programs in the wake of the pandemic) garnered thousands of views, journalist interest in the Divinity School has piqued, and students are clamoring for more connection with these spiritual leaders. Now we seek to continue and expand it.

Sanford observes: “I just sat in on the Hindu Spiritual Care class with Clooney and Swami Tyagananda (Harvard’s Hindu chaplain). The room was filled with dozens of people, including students from Harvard College and Harvard’s engineering

school, one postdoc fellow, and two alums who wanted to take the class because it wasn’t offered while they were here. Most of the students were not Hindu (several were) but had a connection to Hinduism (through family, a yoga practice, as a chaplain, etc.). This is just one example of the clear and growing interest in the topic of Hindu studies from diverse, multireligious perspectives.”

As the Visiting Hindu Monastics program hopes to grow, there has also been a parallel interest in exploring other opportunities for more diverse ministry studies, including Islamic approaches to chaplaincy and more expansive thinking around interreligious care. Faculty and staff have been fostering the growing interest in this work, while seeking the support needed to ensure that new efforts are both effective and sustainable.

One of HDS’s

is the Reverend Bernadette HickmanMaynard, AB ’02, EdM ’03, MDiv ’07, who is the pastor of Bethel AME Church in Lynn, Massachusetts. Rev. HickmanMaynard is also an organizer for Essex County Community Organization (ECCO) and co-chair of the Lynn Racial Justice Coalition (of which ECCO is a member). You can read more about her work with ministry, coalition building, and social justice at hds.harvard. edu/2022DeansReportMinistry.

Centering a Culture of Care Building on the earlier definition, Hickman-Maynard offers additional context as to why the study of ministry has become more pressing in recent years: “The work of telling the stories, of inhabiting the values, of leading the communities that help to build a kind of bulwark against the atomizing nature of society is more important now than ever—particularly in a period of time where a lot of our institutions that defined our lives, that told us who we were and why we were here, are either crumbling or are under significant reevaluation.”

When asked about this shift in collective relationships to seemingly stalwart institutions, Hickman-Maynard explains: “We have a different relationship to the state than we used to. We have a different relationship to industry than we used to. We have a different relationship even to those social institutions that used to define who we are...institutions like school or even the family, right? All of these fundamental institutions that define who we are as humans are under significant reorientation, reevaluation, and reconstruction. In the midst of all of that, people are desperate for leaders who can help us better understand what it means to be thoroughly human...leaders who can help us think through big questions about how we can continue to be for one another within a context that so often trains us to be for ourselves. As such, I think a life of service—a life dedicated to mitigating suffering and centering a culture of care—is how ministry makes a difference in the world.”

“It can be hard to forecast the future, but I can say that HDS is poised probably better than any other institution of religious education because of the commitment to fostering a dynamic, talented, and diverse student body, staff, and

That

is what’s going to be important in preparing the religious, spiritual, and ethical

leaders that are going to build the world we’ll be talking about 50 years from now.”

many alums who exemplify ministry defined as dedication to a life of service

Ciara Moezidis, MTS ’24

BY SARAH RUBIN

As an undergraduate at Santa Clara University, Ciara Moezidis, MTS ’24, was intent on addressing matters of US domestic politics. It wasn’t until she wrote her thesis on Baha’i persecution that Moezidis recognized how intrigued she was by international human rights work. Growing up in a family with ties to several faiths, Moezidis reflects on how this “melting pot of cultures” influenced her academic career: “I felt called to focus on ethnoreligious minorities, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Now at HDS, Moezidis studies ethnoreligious persecution, apartheid, and genocide in the Middle East and North Africa. She is also one of more than 25 students enrolled in the Religion and Public Life certificate program (CRPL). “CRPL has been an avenue to take what I’ve learned and apply it in a practical setting,” Moezidis says, adding, “RPL staff have been incredible in helping me think through the theoretical nuances of my degree in an applied manner.” It was Susie Hayward, MDiv ’07, associate director of the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative, who told Moezidis about an internship opportunity with the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Moezidis was selected for the internship, ultimately working on a report that was presented to the UN Human Rights Council, including research on Baha’i treatment in Iran, Yemen, Egypt, and Qatar. The internship solidified Moezidis’s aspiration to advocate for those who are persecuted because of their identities.

Moezidis is also involved in HDS’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which examines the profound ways that religion can promote or hinder justice and peace. Through the initiative’s focus on Israel/Palestine, students gain an understanding of the political, religious, and social elements of this region while building professional skills in conflict transformation. Moezidis was part of a select group of students who enrolled in “Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/ Palestine,” a course which culminated in a two-week field experience in Israel and the West Bank. “During the trip, we met with around 30 organizations and individuals to hear from different voices, all of which centered peace,” she shares. “Many

people look the other way when it comes to Israel/Palestine because it is such a complicated space. Having the chance to learn on the ground is a serious privilege.” Following the trip, Moezidis interned as a human rights fellow at the Carter Center’s field office in Ramallah.

In fall 2022, Moezidis will begin a dual degree at The Fletcher School at Tufts University to pursue a master of arts in law and diplomacy. She expects that her studies at Tufts will nicely complement her education at HDS. Ultimately, Moezidis says, her education will empower her to take on the vital work of advocating for human rights, highlighting atrocities around the world, and lobbying the US government to use its power to help promote a just world for all.

“At HDS, I’m gaining critical thinking skills and qualitative understanding of religion and politics. And understanding religion in a more holistic manner has been eye-opening with regards to becoming a better leader.”

Jesus Murillo, MTS ’22

BY SARAH RUBIN

“Education, for me, has always been a tool of liberation,” says Jesus Murillo, MTS ’22. The youngest of five siblings, Murillo was born in a small mining town in New Mexico. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother moved their family to California’s Central Valley to give her children access to better educational opportunities. Eventually, Murillo’s mother remarried, to a man who migrated to the United States from Mexico and worked as an agricultural field worker. As a child, Murillo would help his family pick walnuts to generate additional income. “Growing up in that environment,” Murillo shares, “I was thinking, ‘how is it that we live in what is known as the greatest country on earth, but people who look like my family struggle to make ends meet?’ The social and economic issues that I experienced became entwined with wanting to be a contributor in solving them.”

When Murillo was navigating the college application process as a first-generation student, his guidance counselor tried to dissuade him from considering higher education. Murillo persevered: “Seeing how hard my mother worked to support me and my siblings, I thought, ‘I need to figure this out.’” After getting accepted to his local community college, he met representatives from Fisk University and was offered a full scholarship as a transfer student. Fisk stood out to Murillo as an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). Murillo, who is African American, Chicano, and Indigenous Mescalero Apache, wanted to explore his Black identity further, as well as his calling to do social justice work. “At Fisk, I really learned who I wanted to be, and learned more about my call, my purpose, and my passions, which led me to Harvard Divinity School.”

At HDS, Murillo studied religion, ethics, and politics, which brought his professional ambitions into sharper focus. He adds that HDS helped him learn about the importance of intersectional work in bringing resources to the communities that need them the most. Murillo is currently a 2022–23 John Robert Lewis Fellow at The Faith & Politics Institute and will be attending Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where he will study the intersection of social and national security policies.

“The work that I aim to do has been led, influenced, and guided by my time at the Divinity School,” he states— emphasizing that both HDS and his upbringing taught him to “maintain the humanity” in his work. “My studies at HDS have shown me that the issues we research and discuss in these elite spaces have real-world effects on folks that don’t even know these spaces exist. And as for me, growing up picking walnuts and now being in this academic arena, I recognize that I was constantly affected by the decisions made by leaders that come from schools like Harvard. That is going to 100-percent influence how I address policy, making sure that those most affected stay at the forefront. I’m grateful to HDS for offering me that humane lens to address real world issues.”

“I don’t think I would have understood the gravitas of my calling if I hadn’t come to the Divinity School; now that I’ve learned all this theory and history, I want to turn these teachings into practical solutions for communities in need.”

Julia Reimann, MDiv ’22

BY SARAH RUBIN

For Julia Reimann, MDiv ’22, music and spirituality have always been interconnected. Growing up in a tight-knit family in Minnesota, music was central to Reimann’s life, largely due to her mother’s role as the director of music and liturgy at their family’s Catholic church. As a student at Luther College, Reimann studied vocal performance and religion—singing in a choir that rehearsed every day. “Choir was one way I connected with people and could feel a sense of the divine,” she shares, “It was just the most joy-filled setting that was not about any one person; it was very deeply about the community.”

Reimann brought her love of music to HDS as she explored her call to ministry, and it was a field education placement with Harps of Comfort that helped her discern her career path. Co-founded in 2020 by Jennifer Hollis, MDiv ’03, a writer and music thanatologist, the group is comprised of therapeutic musicians who sing and play harp remotely for isolated patients nearing the end of life. Reimann began her placement during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the palliative care musicians as they brought solace to those who were hospitalized. Being mentored by Hollis and working with Harps of Comfort was a deeply formative experience: “I learned so much about how to be with people in a variety of states of consciousness and to think about what spiritual accompaniment means.”

This field education experience was one of many things that Reimann loved about her time at HDS. She also cites influential courses like “Women and Gender in Ancient Christianity,” taught by Professor Karen King and “Healing and Spirituality in Medicine,” taught by the Rev. Gloria White-Hammond.

Through HDS, Reimann also explored her aspiration to become a chaplain through a clinical pastoral internship at a hospital in Minneapolis, where she was placed in the NICU and labor and delivery units. During that time, she encountered people who were experiencing profound grief. This informed her HDS thesis, “Re-Riting Ritual for Reproductive Loss,” which she designed as an inclusive support resource for Catholic individuals and families. It invites them to reimagine

ritual and prayer in a way that honors their lived experiences of reproductive loss, including miscarriage and termination.

Reimann is currently in residency preparing for a career as a hospital chaplain. “I am interested in being able to do more in NICU and perinatal ministry in the future,” she says, “but I also could see myself doing hospice work. Overall, the health care setting is where I’m feeling drawn.” She also expects that music will continue to be woven throughout her life, from singing hymns and blessings at a patient’s bedside to playing music to care for herself. Reflecting on her time at HDS, Reiman shares: “I’m only starting to peel back the layers and process what the last three years have meant, but I think most meaningful were the conversations that I had with fellow students who are intently focused on justice and working for change.”

“Dr. White-Hammond so beautifully brought her lives as both pastor and physician into that class and modeled what it can look like to meld medicine and spirituality together.”

Phillip Picardi, MRPL ’22

BY SARAH RUBIN

Phillip Picardi, MRPL ’22, was not a stranger to the notion of religious literacy when he joined the inaugural cohort of master of religion and public life (MRPL) degree candidates in the fall of 2021. During his tenure as the chief content officer at Teen Vogue, he repositioned the magazine to cover not just fashion but also issues of social justice. “A lot of journalists don’t believe that journalism should be advocacy,” Picardi says. “I think they’re wrong. Journalists should be speaking truth to power.”

Matters of faith have also held a central place in Picardi’s personal life. Growing up gay and Catholic, he heard the same message time and again from his church, school, and family: that homosexuality was a sin. To be true to himself meant to “walk away from God.” Picardi went on to build an impressive, award-winning career in journalism. Yet, despite his success, he felt “spiritually adrift.” When a friend told him about Harvard Divinity School, he applied to the new degree program. What better place than HDS, he reasoned, to rekindle his relationship with religion and “give God back” to himself?

Led by Professor Diane Moore, Picardi’s cohort learned to contest certain normative assumptions about religion. One of RPL’s key tenets, Picardi explains, is that “avoiding flat or binary theological assertions and leaving room for complexities enables us to harness religion as a power that can be leveraged in the service of achieving justice and peace in the world.” Along with his cohort, Picardi learned how to apply this framework to his profession—observing how major publications often lack nuance or complexity when covering matters of religion. The MRPL program challenged Picardi to “see the world through a completely different lens,” an experience that gave him a new perspective on religion’s role in journalism.

The framework that taught Picardi to recognize the problems and opportunities within journalism also enabled him to reclaim Catholicism and, indeed, to “give God back” to himself. “I have not identified as a person of faith since I was a teenager who was afraid to come out of the closet. And now, for the first time in my life, I’m comfortable saying that

I am,” he shares. In addition to Professor Moore, he credits Professors Amy Hollywood and Stephanie Paulsell for helping him to expand his understanding of Catholicism through their courses, “Mystical Theology” and “Teresa of Avila,” respectively. “To understand and hold space for the complexity and internal diversity of religion allowed me to acknowledge that, although my Catholic upbringing may have taught me things about self-loathing, sin, and Satan, being raised Catholic also gave me a profound sense of what justice should look like,” he says, “which is why I view journalism from a vocational prism. Catholicism informed what my place is in the world, in seeking justice for others.”

“When you’re reading our nation’s leading newspapers, you’d think that white Christian evangelicalism is the most dominant religious force, and that is simply not true; we are a country of vastly different religious traditions. When publications only cover religion through a certain perspective, we allow them to own the narrative of what God is, or what religion is, writ large.”

ETHICAL

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

Alumni Q&A

Sonya Soni, MTS ’12

Advocacy Program Director at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research

BY MELÍN A. SOTIRIOU DROZ, MTS ’23

For Sonya Soni, MTS ’12, the intersection of social justice and spirituality is more than a passion—it is the constellation that illuminates her present by connecting to her past. Her greatgrandmother was a freedom fighter alongside Gandhi in India’s fight to abolish caste oppression and a staunch advocate for gender equality, founding a girl’s orphanage Sonya and her family continue to be involved with to this day. With her ancestry informing and inspiring her work, she uses her anthropological lens to remind policymakers how personal narratives shape their public service work, which, Soni believes, should be grounded in our shared humanity.

As an ethical leader working toward structural equality, Sonya strives for representation to be embedded within policymaking, while extending hope as an indispensable tool when navigating the prolonged bureaucratic processes often associated with legislative change. We sat down with Sonya Soni to learn more about her kinship with social justice, her advice on how to remain hopeful in the face of adversity, and what is bringing her back to the Boston area.

HDS: You are passionate about youth rights—from your family’s orphanage in India that brought you to HDS 10 years ago to your most recent role with the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare systems in Los Angeles County. How does your understanding of spirituality inform your work?

SONI: In social justice movements, I’m most inspired by leaders who engage in moral imagination. Like my great-grandmother, I’ve been

fascinated by those who live at the intersection of spirituality and social justice. She was a part of the Hinduism sect called Arya Samaj, where she rallied and mobilized her community, especially women, to be a part of India’s nationalist movement during the fight against British colonialism. This work happened under Gandhi’s leadership and relied on spiritual principles of nonviolence, such as ahimsa (respect for all living things, as taught in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist traditions).

HDS: As a policy architect, you understand that change is about radical ideas and building consensus around them to achieve shared goals. What role does religion or spirituality play in this process?

SONI: We cannot work in policymaking if we don’t even understand who we are and how our communities are affected by our worldviews. While in LA, I hosted poetry workshops to better understand the intersection of the personal and the political, where policymakers and youth from the foster care system met and learned from one another. I wanted policymakers to be aware of their identities, their structural biases, and how their policy work is informed by their positionality. I also wanted the youth to have a medium to express their identities, since most of these young people moved between 16 foster homes, on average. It’s interesting that in policy and government, you almost become the system, you become the bureaucracy, and you become so removed from who you are because you’re told that policy has to be apolitical. It has to be removed from the person, which doesn’t make sense to me because policy defines and dictates so much of the lives that we lead.

Meet with community partners Attend young professional spirituality and social justice group

Practice yoga for self-care

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

HDS: It is a difficult time for everyone—especially those directly affected by critical issues, like housing instability or structural inequality (to name two). What would you say to someone who may feel overwhelmed with the state of the world right now?

SONI: One of my favorite abolitionists, Mariame Kaba, always says, “hope is a discipline.” It isn’t easy in today’s political climate to hold hope. Yet I believe hope is not this abstract ideology that gaslights communities and marginalizes them to think that something better is always on the horizon. Hope is an intentional mindset and a set of practices to get policymakers and those in power to understand the community’s needs on the ground and bring them along in the journey. I’ve lived and experienced real moments of people seeking

and making positive change. As one example, I witnessed hope in action while working with the LA County Youth Commission, the first youth-led governing body comprised of members who were affected by foster care, juvenile detention, or homelessness. One of the young leaders said something beautiful that has stayed with me to this day: “My job is to infuse humanity into bureaucracy.” She was keenly observing that humanity was the subversive spiritual principle that transformed the commission’s formal power into well-informed decisions that directly improved the lives of countless young people. Perseverance like that is a testament to hope as a discipline.

HDS: What brings you back to Boston, and what are new ways you envision applying your Divinity School education here on the East Coast?

SONI: I am the new advocacy program director at the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, founded in 2020 by Professor Ibram X. Kendi. The center’s mission is to bridge academia and advocacy to solve racial inequity and injustice. For example, when we’re publishing any research, we want to make sure community leaders have the opportunity to co-author and/or review this work because we talk about their lives, but seldomly do they get a say in the narration, a historical precedent our office strives to correct. There are multiple teams outside the director’s office: research office, policy office, narrative office, and the advocacy office. One of my tasks is to develop the antiracist campaign tracker, an online tool where synthesizing information strengthens movements on the ground. Organizers can come together in one place and see the methodologies of how others are organizing, building collective power, supporting each other, and learning from activists carrying out this work in the world. As a descendant from a line of freedom fighters and abolitionists, I want to honor my legacy and continue fighting white supremacy. What I learned from Harvard Divinity School about the importance of bridging cultural and religious divides will strengthen my work with the Center for Antiracist Research and— ideally—help build a just world for all of us.

THURSDAY

Volunteer

FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY

Volunteer with the South Asian group, Subcontinental Drift, which connects art and activism

Read* and write for personal reflection

Visit museums and/or go on a hike to unwind

with Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s office

“Legislators are always instructed to make policy that’s apolitical or impersonal, but they often forget that their biases play a part in their decision making and that the outcomes of their decisions must support the people they serve.”

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

Alumni Q&A

Venerable Priya Rakkhit Sraman, MDiv ’17

Buddhist Chaplain at Emory University

BY MELÍN A. SOTIRIOU DROZ, MTS ’23

Questions and answers guide the Venerable Priya Rakkhit Sraman’s Buddhist ministry. He began his monastic studies at the young age of 11 years old, exploring the many facets of Buddhism before pursuing his master of divinity degree at HDS. As the new Buddhist chaplain at Emory University, his inquisitive nature creates space for students and community members to listen and question freely, encouraging pondering important questions rather than pursuing immediate answers. This approach elevates the transaction between a question and answer into a meditative practice that can lead to deep insights and forging strong relationships, which he hopes to foster through intentional conversations and meaningful introspection.

Curious about how Venerable Priya spans generations and geography with his ministry, we spoke with him about chaplaincy in higher education, the Buddhist community in the Atlanta area, and the nuances of mindfulness and meditation.

HDS: Congratulations on your appointment as Buddhist chaplain at Emory University! Can you tell us about your role as part of the multifaith chaplaincy team?

SRAMAN: As Emory’s Buddhist chaplain, I attend to Buddhist life on campus while expanding programs to enhance people’s understanding of practices from the Buddhist tradition. These programs are a mixture of current events and new initiatives, including the Emory Buddhist Club, the Full Moon Celebration, retreats, field trips to local Vietnamese temples, and other distant locations. I also revitalized Emory’s Living

A Week in the Life

with the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life Hold mindfulness and wellbeing circle and open Q&A on campus

Mandala Garden, originally planted in 2012 during Tibet Week, which celebrates Tibetan Buddhist culture at Emory. This restorative space is cared for by students in the Buddhist Club and other members of the Buddhist community on campus. Additionally, as an Office of Spiritual and Religious Life chaplain, I extend pastoral care to the full university community. Students, staff, and faculty may need additional support when dealing with anything from academic or work stress to mental health concerns to grief, and campus chaplains are here to help navigate the many challenges life can bring.

HDS: In the Buddhist community, including those from other faith traditions who are exploring tenets of Buddhism, what interests and/ or struggles have you seen with regard to practicing meditation and pursuing mindfulness?

SRAMAN: Among participants in our campus gatherings, I have witnessed an interest in expanding mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness, or the purposeful awareness of your actions, exists in many forms, such as focusing on your breath, walking with awareness, and paying attention to your physical and mental experiences to cultivate virtues. There are many forms of meditation, or contemplative practice. I believe active listening through purposeful questions and experience-based answers is a contemplative practice, where everyone can contribute and uplift one another.

When I first joined Emory, our weekly meetings reflected a panel format, where everyone waited their turn to ask me a question.

Pali Class Hold open office hours

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

However, I transformed the space from an independent consultation to a collaborative discussion. In an active Q&A, the community connects with one another. People pass their questions to the group, and peers do not offer an immediate response—but ponder the question. Those with similar experiences can then offer counsel, building confidence in their life’s path, which is acknowledged and validated through listening. Mindfully attending to the questions enables taking the speaker seriously and reflecting on our own experiences. Everyone is attending to themselves and each other through listening with intention and speaking with purpose and care, expanding meditation and mindfulness in community.

HDS: For people looking to explore more contemplative practices or different ways to engage with mindfulness, what might you recommend?

SRAMAN: Stay current with yourself. You do not need to subscribe to rigid forms of mindfulness. Anyone can be mindful in anything they do, from walking, sitting, lying down, and standing still. Paying attention to the activity, your surroundings and pondering is an excellent way to expand mindfulness, step by step.

HDS: In addition to your role as a chaplain at Emory, you also work with the Buddhist community in and around Atlanta. What is something you have learned from this work that you would like to share with others?

SRAMAN: Atlanta has many Vietnamese temples, where Englishspeaking children and youth accompany older family members to service. The ritualistic prayers are not translated, and the children who don’t understand what is going on may mentally distance themselves from the practice, even if they recognize its importance. In a recent interaction with some youth, I realized that no one had asked them what they liked or did not like about Buddhism until I encouraged a discussion. As adults, we often tell children what we think or what they should think, but we don’t always open a dialogue to reveal their wisdom and needs to us. The youth I spoke with knew that there are meaningful practices and positive things to take from Buddhism; however, much

can be lost without a shared language and meaningful conversations. Young people are eager to listen and learn if we let them. With a better understanding of the Buddhist practices, these bright young minds are inspired to contemplate the possibilities of enriching their lives.

HDS: How did studying Buddhism in a multireligious context at HDS help prepare you for the chaplaincy role at Emory?

SRAMAN: The multifaith experience at Harvard Divinity School enhanced my openness and receptivity to the world, enabling me to connect stories and experiences that seem far apart but, in truth, are very similar. As a Buddhist Ministry International Fellow and later student at HDS, it was enriching for me to explore a Buddhist text with non-Buddhists who were as serious as any Buddhist I know. Immersion in Buddhist and non-Buddhist communities within and beyond the classroom taught me to “just be” with others. This is now reflected in my chaplaincy work, where I am with people nonjudgmentally, with a keenness to find and attend to a connection, because all of us are connected in our experiences of being human.

THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY

Join Pali Class Hold meditations and open Q&A on campus

Hold open office hours Tend to Emory’s Mandala Garden

Go for long walks in nature (in addition to evening meditative walks)

Connect with family and friends

Take photos of local wildlife to practice photography skills and get to know the Atlanta area

*Note: Each week must include holding space for unexpected pastoral care and community support needs.

“My understanding of the Buddhist practice is that the practice has a purpose. We talk about enjoying the journey, right? If you look at the Buddhist path, it actually has a purpose. The path leads to somewhere, and if the path leads you there, then the path is successful.”

Alumni Q&A

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, MTS ’00

Mae and Benjamin Swig Chair in Jewish Studies and Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco

BY MELÍN A. SOTIRIOU DROZ, MTS ’23

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Professor Aaron J. Hahn Tapper grew up in multiple communities, something that helped him understand his own intersecting identities from a young age. Living in both South Philly and suburban Lower Merion, his diverse upbringing set the stage for the work that would define his career: how differences can both fuel conflict and foster connection.

One distinction had to do with the religious identities of his family. “My mom converted before she married my dad, so I grew up with two grandparents who were Jewish and two who were nominally Christian,” Hahn Tapper shares. “I attended Jewish day school through 12th grade, but it wasn’t until my time at HDS that I really explored the historical nature of Judaism, in large part by looking at how other religions developed.”

From his travels in the Middle East to his latest ethnographic work on Australia’s Indigenous peoples, Hahn Tapper’s research and teaching focus on marginalized communities, identity formation, and social in/justice. We sat down with Hahn Tapper to discuss comparative conflict analysis, social justice education, and how facilitating intentional conversations can expand a limited worldview to embrace our shared humanity.

HDS: With an undergraduate degree in psychology, a master’s degree focused on world religions, and a PhD in religious studies, how did your time at HDS help guide your curiosity and career?

HAHN TAPPER: Out of college, I spent a year in Jerusalem at a Jewish seminary, a year working in DC, and a year backpacking Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In Israel/Palestine, sectarian violence seemed to be getting worse. The intensity of the conflict, and a drive to help mitigate and transform things for the better, led me to graduate school. At HDS, along with four semesters of Arabic, I took classes in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. My newfound love of Arabic led me to spend a summer studying the language in Morocco, an opportunity that opened my eyes to Jewish Arab communities, largely unknown to me as a young man with an Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish background whose schooling had decentered such groups. My HDS studies taught me that all religious traditions and communities are varied and multilayered, most extraordinarily so.

HDS: Your PhD dissertation focuses on the relationship between power and the sociopolitical context of Israel/Palestine. Can you tell us about your research and how it informs your current work, particularly with the Center for Transformative Education?

HAHN TAPPER: My dissertation focused on how leaders from different religious traditions—rabbis, sheikhs, and imams—interpret law in relation to non/violence: Who is a combatant? Who is a civilian? What does self-defense mean? I traveled all over Israel and Palestine, including Gaza, interviewing religious figures, many of whom had nonmainstream ideas. In a roundabout way, this led to my book Judaisms (2016), which incorporates historically marginalized Jewish voices in an attempt to re-present the heterogenous nature of Judaism

Work on manuscript for current book (Drive kids to/from school)

Lead meetings focused on current and new projects of USF’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice *

Teach “Social Justice, Activism, and Jews” course Meet with students

* Prof. Hahn Tapper is developing a graduate certificate program at USF in Education, Jewish Studies, and Social Justice.

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

and Jews. (Note that the title of the book— Judaisms —was inspired by an HDS professor who, during his Introduction to Hinduism course, explained that it should really be called “Hinduisms,” noting the religion’s multiplicity.)

While studying for my PhD, I also founded a nonprofit, Abraham’s Vision (2003–13), a conflict transformation organization working within and between the Muslim, Jewish, Palestinian, and Israeli communities. This work gradually grew into another NGO, the Center for Transformative Education, whose mission is to educate participants about how to transform societies into their potential.

These pedagogical approaches continue to be central to my teaching at the University of San Francisco, where I direct the school’s Jewish Studies and Social Justice Program. For example, each fall I teach a course called “Social Justice, Activism, and Jews,” where I bring in speakers from the Jewish community who are activists working on issues related to specific social identities (e.g., race, gender). Aside from empowering students to embrace USF’s motto, “Change the World from Here,” the intention of this course is not to find a universally agreed-upon solution to a specific problem, but rather

to illustrate the vastness of possibilities when we expand our collective understanding of the world.

HDS: Can you tell us more about the intersection between identity formation, social justice, and marginalized groups and how understanding these dynamics inspired your recent work with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia?

HAHN TAPPER: Over the last decade, I’ve expanded my research to include Indigenous communities in Australia and the United States, peoples who have survived against all odds. In 2008, during an intergroup conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I saw a short film on the apology that former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered to Indigenous Australians on his first day in office. This sparked the idea that I might be able to apply my expertise in comparative conflict to what was happening in Australia. Thanks to a Fulbright grant, I was able to relocate with my family to Melbourne for six months, during which time I traveled throughout the country, interviewing activists, scholars, and politicians to better understand what they thought about the prime minister’s apology. Along the way, I couldn’t help but think about Indigenous people in the United States. The book I’m working on now connects the dots between these distinct—yet horrifically similar—genocidal histories, and points toward what reparations can and should look like for these groups.

HDS: From your perspective, how can we hold conversations about conflict and peacebuilding centered on our shared humanity?

HAHN TAPPER: It may seem counterintuitive, but emphasizing the complexities of situations can help students deepen their understanding of their own conflicts. For example, one of the flagship programs of Abraham’s Vision took Palestinian and Jewish university students to the Balkans for a summer. Because the Balkan conflicts are more stratified than many other regions, our students had a challenging time in not being able to simply “take a side,” which is but one example of how the human condition can rarely be understood through a binary lens. Once people begin to grasp life’s complexities, even if they are not directly affected by them, they can start comparing such intricacies to something more personal, which often helps expand their perspective. But this work isn’t just about embracing diversity, which goes without saying. It’s about confronting inequity, oppression, and disadvantage—challenging power. It’s about exploring the role each one of us plays in shaping injustice, how to take responsibility for it, and how to take action.

THURSDAY

Work on fundraising to endow Jewish and Queer studies roles at USF

FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY

Edit colleague’s book manuscript

Work on new academic article

Spend dedicated time with life partner and kids Play pick-up basketball Rest/Read/Watch Netflix

Meet and break bread with close friends (Drive kids to/from various activities)

NEW RESOURCES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING A MESSAGE OF THANKS

Dear friends,

Thank you for being a part of this wonderful HDS community. The community itself is a model much needed in the world today—people with a wide range of passionate beliefs and openhearted curiosity learning from and caring for one another. I am deeply grateful to be part of this community and for your investment in it—in many ways, including your financial generosity.

Religion, faith, and ethics shape every part of society, and now more than ever, there is deep need for ethical leadership—from the future ministers and scholars who hold space for the complexities of human existence to the future sector leaders in media, government, and humanitarian action facing issues that require a nuanced understanding of religion and faith. Your gifts address this need by creating new resources for teaching and learning, empowering ethical leadership, and deepening religious understanding that bridges cultural divides.

Your annual gifts create a cycle of support that sustains the good work of students, staff, and faculty. Your planned gifts make a long-term impact in financially prudent ways. Your gifts to the HDS Fund and beyond bolster key priorities of the School and allow the Dean to respond to new opportunities. Your gifts to financial aid enable students to come to HDS and alumni to pursue the pathways that call them. You give with intention. You give as a community. Every gift makes a difference.

Harvard Divinity School is poised to do so much more, and your giving makes so much possible. In the words of the poet Alberto Ríos—whose poem I leave with you here—I hope that together we can make “something greater from the difference.”

When Giving Is All We Have

By Alberto Ríos

One river gives Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us. We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us. We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it, We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet, Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails. Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too, But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand, Mine to yours, yours to mine.

Lori Stevens Associate Dean for Development and External Relations

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow. Together we are simple green. You gave me What you did not have, and I gave you What I had to give—together, we made Something greater from the difference.

With gratitude,

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice

Something Deeper than Hope

Reflections from Weather Reports: The Climate of Now

BY AMIE MONTEMURRO

The story of Weather Reports—one of the most expansive event series in HDS’s history—is a story of collective imagination. When asked about the origin, Terry Tempest Williams, HDS’s writer-in-residence who curated the project, points to the power of community and conversation: “The Weather Reports series borrowed from an old tradition, one the Divinity School knows best: how the sacredness of storytelling connects and inspires us.” This keen understanding of how to wield words as a force for good brought the Weather Reports series to fruition.

Natural Connections

Invited by Dean Hempton, Tempest Williams joined the HDS community as the School’s writer-in-residence in 2017. The position was created to emphasize the role humanities and ethics can (and should) play when navigating the climate crisis. While science, technology, and policy are necessary to address environmental issues, these fields have yet to mobilize the change needed to avert existential threats.

In her first few years at HDS, Tempest Williams noticed several threads of climate issues emerging across Harvard.

Students were desperate to give more attention to climate grief, friends and alumni of the School were showing more interest in the ethics of sustainability, and leaders across the University were looking to explore an array of intersecting topics. Noticing a growing need to make space for these conversations, she began asking trusted friends and colleagues about what the Divinity School could do to help.

“One of the first discussions was with the Center for the Study of World Religions, led by Charlie Stang,” Tempest Williams remembers. “The very nature of the CSWR is about community, diversity, and shared knowledge, so there was a natural connection there. And then, Sam Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, and I started asking during weekly teas at the Center for the Environment: ‘How can we bring the sciences and religion together within the framework of the humanities and storytelling? How do we tell better stories about planetary health and spiritual life?’” These connections led to the creation of The Constellation Project, a cross-University effort dedicated to exploring deep questions about humanity’s relationship with nature across different academic fields.

“Conversation is the vehicle for change. We test our ideas. We hear our own voice in concert with another. And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought.”

Another big question built even more momentum. “The teaching and learning aspect of Weather Reports really started with Diane Moore, the director of Religion and Public Life, who called me to ask: ‘Do you want to team teach a class on climate change? We agreed this was not only a good idea, but necessary, and met every week for three months to create the Climate of Uncertainty curriculum, which we first taught in the Fall 2020 semester with 18 students.”

Continued conversations with Janet Gyatso, associate dean for faculty and academic affairs, other colleagues, and students across the School brought the need for more dedicated attention to climate change into clearer focus. But how this would happen was still a question. A new paradigm was needed to explore the crisis from a spiritual perspective that could ignite moral imagination in the face of destruction.

From Uncertainty to Urgency

In the summer of 2021, Tempest Williams returned to Utah and was stunned by what she saw: “20,000 acres in our community were on fire. The mountains were burning. We were engulfed in smoke. The sun was like a cigarette burning through fog. We were in the middle of a megadrought, not seen, scientists informed us, for over 1,200 years. The Great Salt Lake was disappearing. The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, 70,000 acres of wetlands that usually sparkle and sing, was a sunbaked playa. No birdsong, no birds. When my husband and I went to see how the refuge was faring, all we saw was a double-crested cormorant with its wings spread standing on a salt-encrusted fence post. It looked like a black crucifix against the salt flats. And, I’ll be honest with you, I was in despair.”

In a moment of deep vulnerability, she shares, “And on those days, the ones where I don’t even know how to get up in the morning, I am aware of the limits of my own imagination. But imaginations shared create collaboration, and collaboration creates community, and in community, anything is possible. So, I reached out to my community. For three months, I wrote very long letters to the people I loved the most and asked them the question: ‘What’s the weather report where you live?’ And that’s how the series really began to grow.”

Tempest Williams brought this idea of a curated series of conversations with her back to HDS. With the new resources on campus—such as updated technical capabilities and a fireplace on the Swartz Hall patio suited for outdoor gatherings—the potential to have weekly live-streamed events for the public (with follow-up fire-side salons for students) became a reality.

Expanded Reach and New Offerings

Weather Reports launched in September 2021, and the School’s new resources did more than expand the audience, which reached more than 3,000 participants throughout the series. These conversations also created connections with brilliant

WEATHER REPORTS: AT A GLANCE

In fall 2021, Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence and noted conservationist Terry Tempest Williams hosted a series of discussions, “Weather Reports: The Climate of Now.” Covering the spiritual, social, political, and environmental impacts of worldwide climate disruption, Tempest Williams interviewed writers, poets, researchers, filmmakers, and activists on the front lines of the climate crisis. The series explored how we might recast this moment in time as a moment of meaning rather than despair, asking how the arts and acts of imagination allow us to see the glittering edges of uncertainty as places of possibility instead of breaking points. Bearing witness became acts of conscience and consciousness. Held both online and in person, each evening began with a ceremonial tea-pouring to gather the community in an atmosphere of trust and intimacy.

Topics and conversation partners included:

• A Burning Testament to Climate Collapse with Lucy Walker, filmmaker

• The Climate of Sacred Land Protection with Bernadette Demientieff, Gwich’in activist

• The Climate of Relationships and Intersectionality with Morgan Curtis, MDiv ’24, climate activist, and brontë velez, Black-Latinx transdisciplinary artist

• The Climate of Compassion for all Beings with Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at HDS

• The Climate of Grief with Victoria Chang, poet

• The Climate of Consciousness with Michael Pollan, writer, Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer and Professor of the Practice of Non-Fiction at FAS

• The Climate of Resistance with Chloe Aridjis, novelist and organizer for Writers Rebel, and Wanjira Mathai, regional director for Africa at the World Resources Institute

• The Climate of Attention with Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker staff writer

• The Climate of the Future with Kim Stanley Robinson, novelist

• The Climate of Community with Brian Kirbis & Su Yimu, Theasophie

To read more about Weather Reports, see the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin at bulletin.hds.harvard. edu. To view the recordings, visit hds.harvard.edu/news/ weather-reports.

NEW RESOURCES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

people from around the world. From Bernadette Demientieff calling in to talk about sacred land protection from Gwich’in territory in the Arctic to Wanjira Mathai amplifying her mother Wangari Maathai’s story of resistance from Kenya and sharing what the Green Belt Movement was bringing to the climate crisis today, the series helped champion voices often marginalized in climate discussions. And the new building, new technology, and new shift to online events all helped one small idea develop into one of the most creative programs HDS has ever led.

The series engaged artists, activists, and scholars from a vast array of backgrounds, perspectives, and professions with conversations that were unscripted, poignant, and raw. “How might we recast this time as one of meaning rather than despair? How do arts and activism combine to let us see possibility instead of pessimism? Where do we find the strength to fully face all that is breaking our hearts?” These are just a few of the questions that guided each exchange of ideas.

The conversations delved into different elements and approaches to talking about climate. Filmmaker Lucy Walker discussed documenting the destruction of wildfires on the west coast. Poet Victoria Chang offered her thoughts on how poetry can both illuminate and embrace grief.

Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert imagined what a “good Anthropocene” might look like.

Novelists Chloe Aridjis and Kim Stanley Robinson discussed writing as a form of resistance and a source of optimism, respectively. Writer Michael Pollan expounded on expanding consciousness. Climate activist Morgan Curtis, MDiv’24, and transdisciplinary artist brontë velez emphasized the importance of understanding intersectional issues such as race and privilege and creating communities of care rather than conflict. And several members of the HDS community, including Janet Gyatso, Stephanie Paulsell, and Melissa Wood Bartholomew, offered insights on compassion for all creatures and the ethics of sustainability.

In tandem with the public series, Professor Moore taught the Weather Reports Seminar: Conversations in a Climate of Uncertainty. This course offered students another opportunity to explore different ways to address environmental concerns. The reading list was inspired by the guest speakers, and

students were encouraged to pursue creative projects geared toward public awareness for their final.

Tempest Williams also held informal fireside salons to create an open space for students to connect more personally after each public event. Gathering around the fireplace outside Swartz Hall, students delved further into what they had learned, bearing witness to their own grief alongside the grief shared by some of the guest speakers. Witness inspired engagement as students discussed and devised their plans for how to promote and protect a livable future for the planet. A community of trust developed, friendships were forged, and projects emerged that were transformative. These gatherings fostered some of the most moving examples of meaningmaking throughout the series.

The Epistemology of Emotions and Lessons Learned

When asked about the power of these conversations, large and small, Tempest Williams offers her insights like the writer and teacher that she is—by way of a metaphor: “Harvard has a tendency to look at the world through microscopes or telescopes, but perhaps what we need is to think about looking at the world through a kaleidoscope, where a turn of the wrist can bring an entirely different perspective into view.”

With such tendencies of a high-profile research institution in mind, Tempest Williams acknowledges that the whole Weather Reports concept was a risk. “This work is hard anywhere, but especially so at a place like Harvard, where we don’t privilege emotion. We privilege facts and evidence, but that goes back to my original concern. Politics have divided us. Science has not moved us. Logical and linear thinking has not yet solved the problem of climate change, and with Weather Reports, I knew we had to try something different. We needed to bear witness to the devastation before us in real time with real people and hear from those on the front lines of climate collapse, people who know something beyond the bounds of overly sanitized intellect. This work has to deal with emotion, grief, terror, love, imagination...And we have to honor the fact that storytelling has its own power and its own intelligence.”

The tremendous interest in the Weather Reports series has laid bare the growing need for time and space to intentionally be in community with one another. Bridging cultural and religious divides is not merely an aspiration but a survival mechanism. With voices ranging from The New York Times bestselling authors to new students trying to make sense of an in-progress catastrophe, Tempest Williams observed one lesson that emerged throughout the series—there is something deeper than hope: “What climate change has taught me, and what I hope it teaches our students, is that we can face crises with the shield of vulnerability and the sword of uncertainty. And all that is required to make a difference is to love this world fiercely in the present tense to protect the future.”

ARTWORK BY MARY FRANK

A Legacy of Support

Coutinho,

BY AMIE MONTEMURRO & KRISTIN PONTE

generation

Richard Coutinho generously attributes his success as a lawyer—and his passion for social justice—to his Harvard Divinity School education and the formative experiences of being a student here in the early 1990s. When he was first admitted to HDS, Coutinho originally intended to pursue a PhD and career in academia, but as he found his own voice, he also heard the undeniable call to help others do the same.

Decades later, Coutinho still finds himself guided by the drive to make a difference. In a recent interview, he offered insights on his dedication to helping the School fulfil its mission: educating students of religion for intellectual leadership, professional service, and ministry.

HDS: Can you tell us a little about your background and what drew you to Harvard Divinity School as a student?

COUTINHO: I was interested in Harvard Divinity School before I even heard of it. When I was 19, I took an undergrad course at McGill University on South Asian anthropology, and one of the required readings was Professor Diana Eck’s book, Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, about how divinity is perceived in Hindu tradition and culture.

Before then, I had never thought about studying religion. I come from a Roman Catholic background—in that my ancestors were colonized by the Portuguese in India and this is why my last name is Portuguese. So, Professor Eck’s book about the impact religion has on society struck me as undeniably important.

After taking more undergraduate religion courses, I applied to HDS, which I thought would be a stepping-stone to a glorious PhD program so I could go on and become a professor. Yet, the fascinating thing about divinity school for me was how the intellectual pursuit served as a mere starting point. My deepest learning revolved around meaning and identity, which I wasn’t expecting. HDS helped me find my authentic voice within an exceptional community of folks from all different backgrounds striving to do the same.

We were asked to think about more than objective facts and history lessons, which led me to wonder: whose voices aren’t being heard? And of course, this brought up my own background, which is my parents came to Canada as refugees from Uganda, after earlier generations of my family were colonized in India.

HDS FUND AT A GLANCE

Purpose By supporting key priority areas for the School, the HDS Fund helps create new knowledge of religion and prepare ethical, religiously literate leaders who work for a better world.

Fun(d) Facts

• 90 percent of HDS students rely on financial aid support

• 67 percent of HDS Fund donors are Harvard alumni

• $1–$50,000: the range of gifts contributed to the HDS Fund

Priority Areas Supported by the HDS Fund Empowering Future Scholars and Leaders  Financial aid increases access to an HDS education and helps our students discover pathways of purpose and global impact as scholars, practitioners,  ministers, advocates, and more, without the burden of educational debt.

Generating New Knowledge and Deeper Understanding

HDS faculty are leaders in the study of religion, continually generating new knowledge and a deeper understanding of the impact religion has on human society. Supporting their teaching and research helps expand scholarly expertise and multireligious education.

Stewarding Spaces That Build Community

By fostering reflection, exchange, and  spiritual practice, campus spaces (like those of the newly renovated Swartz Hall) play an integral role in shaping the learning experiences and community at HDS.

Inspiring Change and Meaningful Action Investing in new initiatives, while supporting the success of existing programs, promotes future growth in the study of religion and helps HDS adapt to changes in the field—a vital need for leaders navigating rapidly evolving religious, social, and political landscapes.

Richard

MTS ’94, LLM ’02, on the power of a Harvard education and his dedication to paying it forward for the next

NEW RESOURCES FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Additionally, these feelings around being different or being an outsider were multilayered: I am gay and had never really thought about what that meant until my time at Divinity School. What I started to notice was how marginalized, displaced, or quiet voices could be amplified with the right support and advocacy. That’s what was so formative—I arrived thinking I was going to be a professor, but left thinking: “How can I help amplify marginalized voices the way that HDS taught me to do through my own lived experience?” And that line of questioning led me to law.

HDS: How has your HDS education shaped your career and postgraduation pursuits?

COUTINHO: I did not think about law until I came to HDS, but both law and religion are concerned with how rules shape society and how said rules can either engage or exclude people. For me, the coherence is obvious, and I have strived to use my education from Harvard (both HDS and the Law School) to amplify the voices of people who might be otherwise pushed to the margins of society.

I began my practice representing individuals who had been found mentally incapable of dealing with their legal issues—a population that can be particularly vulnerable and in need of ethical legal guidance. This is where I first saw how caring for those who have been marginalized could make a real difference.

After many years practicing in that area, I started to think about what my next chapter might look like, and the Divinity School’s emphasis on service and justice yet again guided me. I now work for the Law Society of Ontario to address the concerns of people who have been taken advantage of by dishonest lawyers—people who have been marginalized by my own profession. When reflecting on whether I would have been drawn to this type of work if not for Harvard Divinity School, I must admit the answer is likely no. It’s HDS that’s in the back of my mind posing the question: “Richard, how can you make a difference?” That has stayed with me for the nearly 30 years since I’ve graduated, and I love Harvard Divinity School for that reason.

HDS: You have generously supported the HDS Fund every year for nearly a decade and have also made a planned gift to the School. Can you share your reflections on why that kind of unrestricted support is important and powerful?

COUTINHO: I think what’s important for anyone with a connection to the Div School to understand is that cherished places don’t just happen. They need support and they need involvement from others. And at the Divinity School, perhaps unlike other Schools at Harvard, significant lump-sum donations, though extraordinarily helpful, are rare. What I appreciate so much about the HDS Fund is that any amount helps support the Divinity School’s mission and creates a ripple effect for all the communities graduates go on to serve.

As for my planned gift, I must confess I waited until I was in my 50s to finalize my will (which goes against my own professional advice).

ON RETURNING TO A RENEWED CAMPUS

“Every time I visit the Divinity School, I feel invigorated. Just seeing how the students are engaged with what they’re learning—and the wonderful new spaces inside and out that encourage people to sit down and talk or quietly meditate—it really feels like a place of meaningful exchange. Invigoration, that’s why I come back so often. And even if it’s just walking around the labyrinth (we didn’t have that when I was here!) or sitting down in Divinity Chapel where Ralph Waldo Emerson made that historic speech, the calmness allows me to reenergize and return to my work with a renewed dedication to making a difference.”

That said, as I was reflecting on my life, I couldn’t help but think about the people and places that meant the most to me. Harvard Divinity School not only helped me find my career path, it allowed me to find my own voice so that I could help others do the same. I could think of no better way to honor that legacy than to gift a bequest to benefit future generations of scholars and leaders.

HDS: In addition to your financial support, you are also deeply engaged as an alum. What advice would you give to others who may want to deepen their connections with the HDS community?

COUTINHO: It’s the same advice I would give to a new student: discover everything that Harvard Divinity School has to offer.

There are multiple ways to make meaningful contributions, from making monthly donations, to learning about planned giving, to engaging with the Alumni/Alumnae Council, to attending one of the many events the School offers. Staying connected with the HDS community is also an opportunity to reflect again on motivations nurtured at HDS: “Am I doing something meaningful? Am I using my voice to make a difference?” And I hope these connections inspire you to use your voice as a force for good.

Photo Credits: Kwaku Alston, Danielle Daphne Ang, Wendy Barrows, John P. Brown, Caroline Cataldo, Creative Commons, David Hempton, Justin Knight Photography, Stephanie Mitchell, Emmanuel Monsalve, Barbara Ries, Sarah Sholes, Kris Snibbe, Kristie Welsh

Additional Images Courtesy of: Marcus Briggs Cloud, Katherine Collins, Richard Coutinho, Mohsen Goudarzi, Harvard University, HDS Archives, Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, Bernadette Hickman-Maynard, Teddy Hickman-Maynard, Tracey E. Hucks, RoslynLaPier, Ciara Moezidis, Tori Murden McClure, Jesus Murillo, JuliaReimann, Kareema Scott, Sonya Soni, Ven. Priya Sraman