For Sonya Soni, MTS '12, the intersection of social justice and spirituality is more than a passion—it is the constellation that illuminates her present by connecting to her past. Her great grandmother was a freedom fighter alongside Gandhi in India's fight to abolish caste oppression and a staunch advocate for gender equality, founding a girl's orphanage Sonya and her family continue to be involved with to this day. With her ancestry informing and inspiring her work, she uses her anthropological lens to remind policymakers how personal narratives shape their public service work, which, Soni believes, should be grounded in our shared humanity.
As an ethical leader working toward structural equality, Sonya strives for representation to be embedded within policymaking, while extending hope as an indispensable tool when navigating the prolonged bureaucratic processes often associated with legislative change. We sat down with Sonya Soni to learn more about her kinship with social justice, her advice on how to remain hopeful in the face of adversity, and what is bringing her back to the Boston area.
HDS: You are passionate about youth rights—from your family's orphanage in India that brought you to HDS 10 years ago to your most recent role with the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare systems in Los Angeles County. How does your understanding of spirituality inform your work?
SONI: In social justice movements, I'm most inspired by leaders who engage in moral imagination. Like my great-grandmother, I've been fascinated by those who live at the intersection of spirituality and social justice. She was a part of the Hinduism sect called Arya Samaj, where she rallied and mobilized her community, especially women, to be a part of India's nationalist movement during the fight against British colonialism. This work happened under Gandhi's leadership and relied on spiritual principles of nonviolence, such as ahimsa (respect for all living things, as taught in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist traditions).
HDS: As a policy architect, you understand that change is about radical ideas and building consensus around them to achieve shared goals. What role does religion or spirituality play in this process?
SONI: We cannot work in policymaking if we don't even understand who we are and how our communities are affected by our worldviews. While in LA, I hosted poetry workshops to better understand the intersection of the personal and the political, where policymakers and youth from the foster care system met and learned from one another. I wanted policymakers to be aware of their identities, their structural biases, and how their policy work is informed by their positionality. I also wanted the youth to have a medium to express their identities, since most of these young people moved between 16 foster homes, on average. It's interesting that in policy and government, you almost become the system, you become the bureaucracy, and you become so removed from who you are because you're told that policy has to be apolitical. It has to be removed from the person, which doesn't make sense to me because policy defines and dictates so much of the lives that we lead.
"Legislators are always instructed to make policy that's apolitical or impersonal, but they often forget that their biases play a part in their decision making and that the outcomes of their decisions must support the people they serve."
HDS: It is a difficult time for everyone—especially those directly affected by critical issues, like housing instability or structural inequality (to name two). What would you say to someone who may feel overwhelmed with the state of the world right now?
SONI: One of my favorite abolitionists, Mariame Kaba, always says, "hope is a discipline." It isn't easy in today's political climate to hold hope. Yet I believe hope is not this abstract ideology that gaslights communities and marginalizes them to think that something better is always on the horizon. Hope is an intentional mindset and a set of practices to get policymakers and those in power to understand the community's needs on the ground and bring them along in the journey. I've lived and experienced real moments of people seeking and making positive change. As one example, I witnessed hope in action while working with the LA County Youth Commission, the first youth-led governing body comprised of members who were affected by foster care, juvenile detention, or homelessness. One of the young leaders said something beautiful that has stayed with me to this day: "My job is to infuse humanity into bureaucracy." She was keenly observing that humanity was the subversive spiritual principle that transformed the commission's formal power into well-informed decisions that directly improved the lives of countless young people. Perseverance like that is a testament to hope as a discipline.
HDS: What brings you back to Boston, and what are new ways you envision applying your Divinity School education here on the East Coast?
SONI: I am the new advocacy program director at the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, founded in 2020 by Professor lbram X. Kendi. The center's mission is to bridge academia and advocacy to solve racial inequity and injustice. For example, when we're publishing any research, we want to make sure community leaders have the opportunity to co-author and/or review this work because we talk about their lives, but seldomly do they get a say in the narration, a historical precedent our office strives to correct. There are multiple teams outside the director's office: research office, policy office, narrative office, and the advocacy office. One of my tasks is to develop the antiracist campaign tracker, an online tool where synthesizing information strengthens movements on the ground. Organizers can come together in one place and see the methodologies of how others are organizing, building collective power, supporting each other, and learning from activists carrying out this work in the world. As a descendant from a line of freedom fighters and abolitionists, I want to honor my legacy and continue fighting white supremacy. What I learned from Harvard Divinity School about the importance of bridging cultural and religious divides will strengthen my work with the Center for Antiracist Research and ideally help build a just world for all of us.
—by Melín A. Sotiriou Droz, MTS '23
A Week in the Life
MONDAY
Meet with community partners.
TUESDAY
Attend young professional spirituality and social justice group.
WEDNESDAY
Practice yoga for self-care.
THURSDAY
Volunteer with Rep. Ayanna Pressley's office.
FRIDAY
Volunteer with the South Asian group, Subcontinental Drift, which connects art and actvisim.
SATURDAY
Read* and write for personal reflection.
SUNDAY
Visit museums and/or go on a hike to unwind.
*Recommends that everyone spend some time reading Love and Rage by Lama Rod Owens, MDiv '17.