#  Fellows Breakfasts 

 





April 06, 2015

 

 

 Much of the programming of the Center is public, and we are delighted when our audience includes visitors from the wider community. Some events, however, are by invitation, for select groups, and aim at cultivating longer term conversations, along with the community connections arising as we meet and talk about issues of substance and interest.

 The *Fellows Breakfasts* are an example of this. Most years — depending on numbers and interest — the Center hosts bi-weekly breakfasts for visitors: our own Center fellows, fellows and post-docs at the Divinity School and, this year, also from the Committee on the Study of Religion and the Harvard Law School. When they have times, fellows in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, our neighbors across the back lawn, also stop in.

 Sometimes we just have conversations around an topic in the news — religions and the elections, or some good or bad news making the headlines – but most often fellows take turns presenting work in progress. Whether the themes are contemporary or classical, literary or about current events, etc., depends on the fellows any given year. Some recent themes include:

 From Judaism to Judaisms, Critical Thinking on Contemporary Jewish Life.

 Europe’s Muslim Question;

 The Fate of Religion in E. O. Wilson’s *The Meaning of Human Existence*;

 The Clash Between Free Exercise of Religion and Secularism in the Context of Turkish Legal System;

 The Axial Age and New Religious Politics;

 Antigone, Irony and the Nation State: Case of Laal Masjid (Red Mosque) and the Role of Militant Feminism in Pakistan

 The formal discussion goes for an hour, but fellows – often gloriously on sabbatical – have been known to linger for another hour or more, discussing the topic and branching off into related matters. Our series for this year concludes on May 4, and we anticipate starting it again when the new academic year begins in September.

 —By Francis X. Clooney, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions