HAYDEN LIZOTTE
’15
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN DOOHER
RELIGION MAJOR FROM NORTH EASTON, MA
Nothing is stranger than sitting across from someone you know and pretending like you’ve just met them. Such was my conversation with Hayden Lizotte, a long-time friend and JUMBO’s latest person of interest. Given our friendship, I was initially a bit uneasy about the interview. But, in the name of journalism, I sat down with him, hoping to ask questions I felt confident I already knew his answers to. Boy was I wrong. A religion major and political philosophy minor, Hayden is, in a word, spiritual. And his thesis channels that spirituality into conclusions with important and widespread implications. You see, Hayden Lizotte is setting out to change the way we see religion. “Too often,” he says, “we view religion and reason as two separate entities.” A former yoga instructor, Hayden fell in love with the study of religion, specifically Hinduism, upon arriving at Tufts. Looking to expand his horizons beyond his upbringing in a mostly Catholic and Protestant environment, Hayden revels in studying traditions and religions that hold vastly different beliefs and deny many of the assumptions our society makes about the world. His senior thesis, which focuses on the writings of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and rising Hindu nationalism in India, strives to bridge the gap between religion and logic. “People’s faith,” he says, “is generally reasonable, even if you don’t
agree with it. The separation between faith and reason makes it very difficult to criticize religion, but it’s also about developing a respect for religion. It’s a two way road.” Specifically, Hayden is looking at how Hinduism is being used in modern India as a way to combat Western influence and express an Indian identity. Spanning from the Enlightenment to contemporary political theory, his research is expansive. But despite the daunting workload ahead of him, Hayden’s enthusiasm is far from drained. Not only is the spark of excitement evident whenever he talks about his thesis, he almost makes you want to conduct this research yourself! In fact, Hayden plans to go on and eventually get his PhD in this subject. After thirty minutes of recorded audio I had all the information I needed to write this profile, but at this point it didn’t feel like an interview anymore. Instead, we were having a conversation, like we would in the dining hall or in a dorm room, on a thought-provoking topic. Sure, I already knew Hayden was a yogi and an amateur beatboxer who gets a little too invested in the game of Risk, but I realized in this conversation that he’s also a serious researcher and a bit of a spiritual guru. —GRIFFIN QUASEBARTH ’15
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