Harvard Divinity School

Willie Jennings, Yale Divinity School, opened the Christianity, Race, and Mass Incarceration Conference as the keynote speaker. The conference gathers scholars of various disciplines, activists, organizers, and formerly incarcerated persons to study carceral punishment, especially as it relates to questions of Christian thought and practice, and to provoke awareness and activism around incarceration in America. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Panelists Glenn Martin, JustLeadershipUSA; Kaia Stern, Harvard University; Rahsaan Hall, Massachusetts ACLU; Bev Williams, Criminal Justice Reform Campaign, GBIO; and Karlene Griffiths Sekou, Founder and Principal Consultant at The Dignity Project International, discuss carceral punishment in relation to activist strategies and the study of religion. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

On October 12, 2017, alumni spoke about their experience participating in the protests at Charlottesville or who support this protest in their own context. These alumni, including Willie Bodrick II, MDiv ’14; Tracy Howe Wispelwey, MDiv ’12; and Jalane Schmidt, MDiv '96, AM ’05, PhD ’05, will share their observations in order to open up a larger conversation on the important topic of public voice. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Catherine Brekus, HDS Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America, discusses her recent publication, Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings. David Holland (HDS) and Margaret Bendroth serve as respondents. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

This session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium dinner series explores restorative justice, its spiritual dimensions, and the potential contributions of its approach to advancing sustainable peace in our communities and our world. The session features presentations by Fania Davis, J.D., PhD, Co-Executive Director, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY); and sujatha baliga, J.D., Director, Restorative Justice Project; Vice President, Impact Justice; Just Beginnings Fellow. Fania Davis presents “The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice: Resources for Cultivating Peace in Our Communities,” and sujatha baliga delivers a talk entitled “Have You Been Angry Long Enough? Faith, Forgiveness, and Restorative Justice”. The event is moderated by Janet Gyatso, PhD, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Harvard Divinity School. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

This year's Dudleian Lecture is presented by Dr. Paul C.H. Lim, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

MDiv candidate Tim Gallati is studying experiences of “silence” in nature and contemplative practice with applications in virtual and augmented realities. This piece is titled "Retreat," and is the sound captured during the walk from Gallati's apartment in Central Square, through Cambridge, and into and within the retreat house of Society of Saint John the Evangelist. Headphones recommended. Read more here: https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2017/09/25/listening-ear-heart Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life and Richard Higgins, author of Thoreau and the Language of Trees to discuss Thoreau's life and work. Respondents include Barry Andrews, a Unitarian Universalist minister, who is the author of several books on Transcendentalism and a longtime participant in the Thoreau Society, and Terry Tempest Williams, author, conservationist, and activist who will be a writer-in-residence at HDS during the 2017–18 academic year. This event took place on September 14, 2017 and is a part of a series of events to honor the life of Henry David Thoreau in the year of his 200th birthday. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

How do our views of land and landscape influence our religious imagination, and vice versa? The panelists were: Matthew L. Potts, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature and of Ministry Studies; Charles M. Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions; and Terry Tempest Williams, Writer-in-Residence.

Delivered on September 7, 2017, by Brad S. Gregory, Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair at the University of Notre Dame. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) Research Associates discuss the courses they'll be teaching during the 2017-18 academic year, and share their thoughts on the ethical responsibility of scholars to be engaged in the study of gender. Each year, WSRP brings five scholars in gender from around the world to pursue research on women and religion and to enrich the experience of our students. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.

On August 29, HDS Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy Cornel West delivered the 2017 Convocation address. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

Congratulations to the Harvard Divinity School class of 2017, who received their diplomas during the HDS Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25, 2017. David Price, MDiv ’17, gave the student address. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

The 2017 Multireligious Commencement Service was held on Wednesday, May 24, at Memorial Church. Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies Stephanie Paulsell was the faculty speaker. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, this presentation by Center for the Study of World Religions Visiting Fellow Sasha Dehghani provides an introduction to the life and writings of Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892), with a focus on the principle of unity in its diverse forms of expression. Bahá'u'lláh's teachings on unity have not only earned the appreciation of some of the leading thinkers across different religions and races, such as Leo Tolstoy, E. G. Browne, Muhammad Iqbal, Mahatma Gandhi, and W.E.B. Du Bois, but have also encouraged the Bahá'ís to strive toward peaceful and coherent models of community life, and enabled them to withstand oppression in a spirit of constructive resilience. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Harvard Divinity School Professor Harvey Cox delivers the talk, "Whatever Happened to Secularization?" The talk took place during HDS's bicentennial celebration and alumni reunion on April 29, 2017. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

Harvard President Drew Faust spoke during HDS's bicentennial celebration on April 28, 2017. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at hds.harvard.edu/.

At a time when the White House proposes to increase military spending by $54 billion while slashing funds for social programs at home and humanitarian aid abroad, we recall the warning of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that a nation spending more money on the military than on social uplift "is approaching spiritual death." What role can religious communities play today in resisting war and militarism and working for social and economic justice? Speaker David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies and the Peace Accords Matrix, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame; Special Adviser for Policy Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame Moderator and respondent J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Secretary of Health Care and Social Services, Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and

The Islamic tradition and Muslim communities have rich and long legacies of teachings, practices, and precedents for prioritizing nonviolent approaches to conflict transformation. Two leading scholar-practitioners discuss theological, spiritual, and practical resources for peace in Islamic scripture and tradition, historical cases, and implications for our contemporary world. Dr. A. Rashied Omar speaks on “Justice and Compassion: Embodying the Core Values of Peacebuilding in Islam” Afra Jalabi speaks on “In Search of the Lost Hero: The ‘Muslim’ as a Peace-Maker: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Islamic Nonviolence and its New Possibilities” Moderated by Prof. Jocelyne Cesari Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

This discussion will consider social scientific research shedding light on religion’s role in advancing cooperation within groups, as well as its complex role in competition and cooperation among groups. Speakers: Omar Sultan Haque, MD, PhD, MTS, Program in Psychiatry and the Law; Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University; and Joseph Henrich, PhD, Professor, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard; codirector of the Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture and the Cultural Evolution of Religion Consortium, University of British Columbia. Moderator and Respondent: Jeff Seul, JD, MTS '97 HDS, LLM '01 HLS, Lecturer on the Practice of Peace, Harvard Divinity School; cochair, Peace Appeal Foundation. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.