Reorienting to Restore

October 11, 2022
Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
Melissa Wood Bartholomew, Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging / Photo by Caroline Cataldo

How Harvard Divinity School is working toward the vision of becoming a restorative anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS

When the country, and the world, was reacting to the horrific murder of George Floyd and calling for racial justice, Harvard Divinity School cast a vision. In July 2020, less than two months after Floyd’s death, HDS established the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) with the hiring of Melissa Wood Bartholomew, MDiv ’15, to serve as the Associate Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

As Dean Bartholomew began her tenure, one of her first initiatives that July was to develop and chair the Racial Justice and Healing Committee (RJH) comprised of faculty, staff, and students, and to create a structure to help these groups strengthen their connection and capacity to work together to advance racial justice and healing.

 

The RJH Committee’s aim was—and continues to be—to collaboratively develop and implement programs and opportunities for engagement that allow for the important intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic work needed in advancing racial justice and healing within the HDS community and beyond. Shortly after the RJH Committee was formed, the committee cast a vision for building an anti-racist and anti-oppressive Harvard Divinity School, which would later be revised to building a restorative, anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS.

 

“I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of casting a vision in this work, so that was a high priority when we began,” Dean Bartholomew explains. “This vision reflects our school’s awareness that dismantling racism and oppression is at the heart of the work of advancing diversity, inclusion and belonging, and equity and justice.”

 

The RJH Committee wrote a statement supporting this vision.

 

“It is so important to highlight that this committee is a collaborative effort that brings together faculty, students, and staff,” Bartholomew notes. “We engaged in critical discussions over the course of several meetings to develop the statement supporting the vision we cast.” This committee is an offspring of the HDS Racial Justice and Healing Student Initiative that HDS students established in 2014.

 

From this early beginning, the aim of every initiative through the Office of DIB is to advance the vision of a restorative anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS, which contributes to the vitality of the HDS community while cultivating an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and can flourish. Through Dean Bartholomew’s leadership, the Office of DIB’s approach to this work is heart-centered.

 

“Our heart-centered approach is rooted in a relational epistemology that operationalizes love through healing and connection and is carried out through a restorative justice framework rooted in indigeneity,” Dean Bartholomew explains. “Carrying out this work within the HDS context allows us to intentionally connect the head and the heart and harness the power of our religious and spiritual resources. In our rich, pluralistic container, restorative justice circle practices provide a way to harness this power and build connections across faith lines, including those who do not claim a faith. The circle holds us all.”

 

The Office of DIB’s primary initiative for advancing this vision is the Reorientation and Common Conversation program. It began as the Reorientation and Common Read program in the fall of 2020 and was reframed as the Reorientation and Common Conversation in the fall of 2021 to include a broader range of experiences. The Common Read remains the anchor initiative. The Office of DIB coordinates this collaborative, School-wide initiative that was launched in the fall of 2020 by the RJH Committee and is supported by the Standing Committee of Diversity and Inclusion that Bartholomew also chairs.

The Reorientation is a community-wide, year-long series of engagements aiming to help members of the community reorient themselves around their shared HDS values and commitments including respect, dignity, mutual understanding, and trust with a particular focus on dismantling and healing from racism and oppression. The hope is that the personal and community engagement with each book will foster a deeper understanding of the historical roots and manifestations of systemic racism and oppression in the United States.

All of the Reorientation sessions as well as both the RJH Committee and Standing Committee on Diversity and Inclusion were—and continue to be—facilitated through a restorative justice approach. Whether in person or on Zoom, each session, planning meeting, and committee meeting begins with music, a grounding, and a meaningful check-in, and concludes with a meaningful check-out. These indigenous principles and practices are central to restorative justice and creating conditions in which we can build trust and community and be in right relation, where racial justice and healing can occur.

As Steph Grayson Gauchel, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging notes, “Our intentional use of a restorative approach centers the importance of taking the time needed to create a container in which we can build trust and identify our shared values and community agreements. This intentional container helps us collectively hold and tend to the grief, pain, and conflict that is bound to occur during difficult conversations such as these; in circle, we hold the belief that truth-telling, healing, repair, and reconciliation is possible.”

These practices are all by invitation—meaning one may always pass—and are engaged with the purpose of always centering our humanity and interconnectedness. This is so crucial as the Office of DIB and members of its committees and the broader HDS community know that the work of achieving the vision of a restorative, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive HDS is a deeply personal as well as systemic issue. This work has and will continue to include challenges and moments of pain, but achieving our vision is possible, and necessary.

The practice of reorientation in a community is not an easy or comfortable journey to step into,” explains Carla Arevalo Carbajal, second-year MDiv candidate and member of the DIB @Divinity Lab. “My experience in being part of small group common conversations made me realize it is needed to feel the discomfort and pain of injustice found in Harvard’s past.”

The first year of the Common Read, the RJH Committee selected The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice: Black Lives, Healing, and US Social Transformation by Fania E. Davis as the text for the HDS community. There were four large community-wide virtual sessions that included members of the HDS community in conversation with people outside of the HDS community covering the themes of the book. The final session was a conversation between Davis and students, faculty, and staff. There were also four small group sessions where students, faculty, and staff were able to engage in more personal conversations regarding the book.

As the community engaged with this text, it also began incorporating restorative justice principles and practices in various ways throughout the School.

The Racial Justice and Healing Committee at HDS is bringing the ethical practices of restorative justice into the functioning of the School at many levels—in the classroom, among students, among faculty, among staff, and all the spaces in between,” explains Janet Gyatso, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and a member of the RJH Committee. “Not only has it sponsored events of common intellectual engagement around the serious theoretical and historical legacy of racism in higher education. It is also establishing enhanced ways of relating to each other in ways that respect the precious diversity of our community, both systemically and personally.”

The impact of the restorative approach was so significant after the first year that the RJH Committee decided to revise the original vision to include the word restorative changing the vision to “building a restorative anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS.”

Last year’s Common Read book was Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation by Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, & David Correia. This book helped the community build on the foundation laid the first year. The community engaged with Red Nation Rising in the same way it approached Race and Restorative Justice through multiple community-wide sessions and small group discussions.

Additionally, a new feature was added: Common Read Walks. The walk provided another way to process and metabolize the themes of the text. (An important note in the Office of DIB’s own growth and learning, the 2022-23 version of this will remove “walk” and reflect a title and practice that is more inclusive of all the ways we move through our campus and world.) The year’s conversation concluded with a session on April 26, 2022, that included all four authors of the book in conversation with a group of HDS staff, students, and faculty.

This year’s Common Read text is The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard: Report & Recommendations of the Presidential Committee. The report was released on April 26, 2022, on the day—and at the time—HDS was holding the final session discussing Red Nation Rising. The community’s reading of Red Nation Rising and Race & Restorative Justice laid the groundwork for its engagement with this report. The community’s goal is to read the report together with the intention of working toward furthering its vision of a restorative anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS, helping the University implement and expand upon the recommendations in the report, and ultimately advancing a vision of a world healed of racism and oppression. (The Common Read of The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard report will also work to incorporate the Report of the Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections, released by the University on September 15, 2022.)

The Office of DIB hopes to see the work continue to deepen throughout the school this year.

“As we read together this year, we want to encourage each department, student group, and faculty member to identify at least one goal that they will commit to that shows how they will contribute to advancing our school’s vision of a restorative anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS, and we encourage each person to set a personal goal as well,” Dean Bartholomew explains. “The goal can be specifically tied to the report, but it doesn’t have to be. Our office will facilitate ‘Common Read Check-ins’ throughout the year to provide support and we will share updates through our DIB newsletter and other outlets.”

This year’s Common Read text and its focus on Harvard’s role in developing race science calls every member of the Harvard community to reckon with this tragic history. The Common Read program is designed to provide the structural support to help members of the community engage with this difficult material in a way that inspires self-reflection and action.

The opening session for this year’s Reorientation & Common Conversation, “Common Read: HDS Community Circle Conversation,” and the launching of the Common Read program will be held on Tuesday, October 18, from 11 am to 1 pm, in the Braun Room in Swartz Hall. As in the previous years, there will be four small group sessions where members of the HDS community can discuss the material in a more intimate setting. All of the sessions will be facilitated through a restorative approach.

The RJH Committee has been an avenue for members of the HDS community, including staff, who are called to help advance the work of the Office of DIB in a tangible way.

This unique process of anchoring the community around a text helps reinforce the RJH Committee’s vison and provides an opportunity of a safe space for healing,” shares Rachael Walker, data and reporting systems coordinator in the HDS Office of Student Services. As an African American woman, the work of diversity, inclusion and belonging is something I am very passionate about. I make it a point to be involved in initiatives that reflect this work, in both my personal and profession life. I can honestly say that being a part of the Racial Justice and Healing Committee at HDS is the most amazing and moving DIB experience I’ve had in a professional environment.”

Also, HDS faculty support of this work has been critical.

“It has been personally transformative for me to watch the Racial Justice and Healing Committee take up its essential work to confront historical legacies of harm and pursue the redress of ongoing systemic inequities,” explains Professor David Holland, member of the RJH Committee and co-facilitator of the small group sessions this year. “Its approach has dispelled many of the myths that too often impede progress in these areas of urgent concern. The Common Read programming, for instance, has demonstrated that an unflinching engagement with the darkest corners of our institutions’ complicity in white supremacy and colonialism—when informed by a shared commitment to restorative justice—can have a cohering rather than a divisive effect. The work of the RJH Committee is simultaneously strengthening our experience of community while leading us to live up to our own expressed values. I am profoundly grateful to be a part of it.”

This is hard work, but Bartholomew is excited about the road ahead for HDS.

“We’re building something new. Every year our reorientation marks our recommitment to our vision. The common reads are helping us to develop a shared language and consciousness, which is required for restoration and rebirthing. We are engaging in the work of restoring back to a place where ancient communities have been—to a place of community where everyone experiences connection and belonging, but where HDS has not yet been. We have to hold that vision,” Bartholomew explains.

The community is holding the vision.

As HDS student Carbajal notes,Having a Common Read at the Divinity School created and will continue to create a space where the labor pains of injustice are welcomed and needed to envision healing. As a community, we push for the birth of a new life where anti-racism and anti-oppression at HDS becomes a commitment to embodied liberation and accountability.”