Social and Racial Justice

Morgan Curtis, MTS '23, in black and white, looks at the camera

How Family History Can Inspire Accountable Reparations and Foster Ancestral Healing

March 6, 2023
On Monday, February 13, 2023, Harvard Divinity School hosted an event, featuring HDS Professor Dan McKanan, on legacies of slavery at HDS as seen through stories of the School’s founders and early students. Following the event, Morgan Curtis and Emily Chaudhari, MTS candidates, sat down together to talk about it.
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Readying for a Reckoning

February 24, 2023
Sara Bleich, vice provost for special projects, stressed more localized efforts taking place within individual schools at Harvard to incorporate the Legacy of Slavery report and its recommendations. Harvard Divinity School has been holding a series of online public conversations, exploring religion and the legacies of slavery. “This type of work is so important,” Bleich said, “because for us to propel this work forward, we need to embed these activities in the DNA of the University.”
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Harvard, National Council of Churches, Reform Jews Seeking Reparations Blueprint

February 20, 2023
The Rev. Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting professor at HDS, and Harvard students are joining forces with prominent Christian and Jewish organizations to develop a faith-based blueprint to advance the possibility of reparations for African Americans.... Read more about Harvard, National Council of Churches, Reform Jews Seeking Reparations Blueprint
Video: Religion, Race, and the Double Helix of White Supremacy

Video: Religion, Race, and the Double Helix of White Supremacy

February 14, 2023

On February 6, 2023, HDS hosted the second installment in the the six-part series Religion and the Legacies of Slavery: A Series of Public Online Conversations. The featured speakers were David F. Holland, John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at HDS, and Kathryn Gin Lum, Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Stanford University.

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Jude Ayua, MTS '24

Interpreting Stories of Enslavement in the New Testament

February 13, 2023
On Monday, January 30, 2023, Harvard Divinity School hosted an event on the presence of enslavement in early Christian stories. The event was the first in a series of six public online conversations titled Religion and the Legacies of Slavery, which aims to build on the work of the 2022 Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery report. Following the event, Jude Ayua and Emily Chaudhari, both Master of Theological Studies degree candidates at HDS, sat down together to talk about it.
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Report Details History of Slavery in Roxbury

February 7, 2023
A report about the First Church of Roxbury, released Monday, brings new historical perspective about the presence of people of color and enslaved people in colonial Massachusetts. The report largely relied on the First Church of Roxbury records, which are currently located in the Harvard Divinity School library.

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