This is the bicentennial year of Harvard Divinity School, and in addition to high profile special events on campus, most of us are naturally taking the long view, placing our work in the light of that 200-year history.
The Center, though young by HDS standards — founded in 1960, and thus not quite 60 yet — is also mindful of the historical legacy of School and Center. We opened the year with a retrospective panel, “How We’ve Studied Religions at the Center (1960- )”. Peter Slater, son of founding director Robert Slater, and himself now a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto, came to present on the panel. You can read about the panel and see the video online.
Recently the Center hosted two of our annual lectures, and we were honored in both cases to have visit us distinguished senior scholars who were also, in the time of their studies at Harvard, residents of the Center.
On October 20, Professor Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, gave the second annual Hindu View of Life lecture. (The first was given last April by Professor Vasudha Narayanan, also a Center alumna. You can see her lecture here.) Professor Sharma lived at the Center in the early 1970s, while doing his doctoral studies on the commentary on the Bhagavad Gita by the great Hindu scholar Abhinavagupta. On October 20, he chose the timely topic, “Dharma and the Academy? A Hindu Academic’s View of the Recent Tensions between the Academic and Faith Communities.” In it, Professor Sharma reflected on the converging and differing values and purposes of scholars and non-scholar practitioners, and argued that clarity on the issues involved would help both the community and academy to appreciate what the other is up to, and in a much less confrontative way. His lecture was followed by a long period of conversation and questions, as the audience engaged the topic with great interest.
On November 3, Professor Guy Stroumsa gave the fifth annual Albert and Vera List Jewish Studies Lecture. He is the Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, University of Oxford. He too, like Arvind Sharma, lived at the Center in the early 1970s along with his wife, Sarah Stroumsa, also a distinguished scholar at Hebrew University. He wrote his dissertation on Gnosticism with special reference to the Sethian tradition. Professor Stroumsa chose for his topic, “Christianity and the God of Israel: Henri Bergson, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas,” and led us through a complex and subtle set of connections, showing how these three intellectuals and writers chose different stances toward Christianity in light of their Jewish heritage. As with Professor Sharma’s lecture, this lecture too drew in the audience and led to rich back and forth of questions and discussion.
We were happy to host both of these distinguished scholars, and enjoyed very much their insights on their themes. But it was a bonus for us that both were alumni of the Center, thus reminding me — and current Center residents in attendance — that the Center is part of the longer and richer academic and religious traditions that we study and learn from throughout our lives, each generation teaching the ones that follow.
—Francis X. Clooney, S.J., director of the Center for the Study of World Religions