Old Friends Visit the Center

One of the blessings of the Center's long history—approaching 60 years now—is that we have many friends around the world, and can welcome former residents who stop by to say hello. Just today, I had lunch today with Rory Lindsay, who was proctor here several years before moving over to Kirkland House, where he is now finishing his dissertation in Tibetan Buddhism. But from the more distant past, we've recently had some interesting visitors.

Sanaullah Kirmani (Professor Emeritus from American University) lived and studied at the Center as student of Wilfred Cantwell Smith in the late 1960s. He visited us on April 22, to be on a panel marking the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness; he spoke eloquently of encountering A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1969, when the Swami spoke at HDS.

M. David Eckel, who received his PhD here in the 1970s and was for a time Assistant Director of the Center, came over from Boston University in March, to be a discussant at our event on Professor Janet Gyatso's Being Human in a Buddhist World. Graham Schweig (Professor at Christopher Newport University), a Center resident in the course of his doctoral students in the early 1980s, was one of the lead organizers of the ISKCON conference that brought together leading Vaishnava academics from around the world.

John Ross Carter (Director Emeritus of Colgate’s Chapel House, the Center’s kindred institution) and a resident of the Center in the late 1960s and again during 1971-72, visited on May 11 at the invitation of Professor Charles Hallisey, to meet in the Center's Conference Room with students in the Buddhist Ministry Program.

Joseph Roccasalvo, Center resident in the early 1970s while he was working toward his PhD in Thai Buddhism, visited the Center on April 20, to give a lecture on religion and the fiction-writing, drawing on his experience in writing at least 13 books, including plays, short stories, and many novels. And, as reported elsewhere at this site, Vasudha Narayanan (Professor of Religion, University of Florida) gave the first annual Hindu View of Life Lecture on April 14; she had lived at the Center from 1974-1977, working with then Director John Carman who, we are happy to say, was in attendance at her lecture.

In the coming fall, Arvind Sharma (Professor at McGill University) will be visiting for a lecture, as will Guy Stroumsa (Hebrew University); both were Center residents, respectively in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In October, we will be hosting a small conference marking the 20^th anniversary of the Religions and Ecology conferences of 1996-1998, and surely many old friends of the Center will be in attendance then. More on their visits and the conference when we announce the Center’s fall calendar. For now, let me reemphasize that even as the Center engages in timely programming facing the issues of our times and delves into the great historical traditions of our many religions, it also lives on in its global community, often enough welcome visitors in the Center.

—by Francis X. Clooney, S.J., director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Parkman Professor of Divinity, Professor of Comparative Theology