Convocation of Harvard Divinity School Harvard University

Convocation of Harvard Divinity School Harvard University at the Opening of the 205th year Thursday, September 3, 2020 4 PM Link: HDS website, HDS Facebook page PROGRAM MUSIC Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, Harvard Divinity School, piano WELCOME David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity READING John 18: 1-11 New Revised Standard Version Eboni Nash, Masters of Theological Studies Candidate ‘21 INTRODUCTION OF PROFESSOR BROOKS Janet Gyatso, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies ADDRESS GEORGE AND JESUS: POLICING AN INSURRECTION OF HOPE Cornel William Brooks, Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations; Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice (KSG), Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership (HDS) DISMISSAL Dean David N. Hempton David N. Hempton Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity He was appointed Dean of Harvard Divinity School in July 2012. Before joining the Faculty of Divinity in spring 2007, he was University Professor and Professor of the History of Christianity at Boston University; and prior to that appointment, he was Professor of Modern History and director of the School of History in Queen’s University Belfast. Dean Hempton is a social historian of religion with particular expertise in populist traditions of evangelicalism in Europe, North America, and beyond. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In recent years, he has delivered the F.D. Maurice Lectures at King’s College London, held a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was HDS’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 2008. Dean Hempton’s most recent book is Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World (Oxford, 2017). Eboni Nash Masters of Theological Studies Candidate ‘21 Eboni was born and raised on the Southeastern plains of Colorado. Identifying as both Black American and Native American, descendent of the Muscogee Creek Tribe, Eboni remembered fully stepping into her identity through instances of racial tension and injustices throughout her childhood. She went on to receive her bachelors degree at Hastings College, triple majoring in criminology, psychology, and religion. It was there that she had focused her passion on social justice and prison abolition, transitioning her into an undergraduate thesis researching Black liberation theology and how it intersects with mass criminalization. During her undergraduate experience, Eboni was also able to serve three years as the director of a nonprofit called Food4Thought that provides food for low-income families located in the middle of a city-wide food desert. Currently, Eboni is serving as Harvard Divinity School’s Social Justice Chair and is also a Graduate Assistant for the Office of Student Life focusing on Diversity and Inclusion. She is an active member of the HDS’s Prison Education Project and the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign. Outside of HDS, Eboni also holds positions on the Fully Free campaign based out of Chicago as well as interning with a large nonprofit called DenverWorks. She has spent the summer working alongside faculty and staff at HDS as well as Radcliffe, to discuss ways social justice can be fully present on campus and within community. Eboni is dedicated to community building, local government organizing, and empowering individuals through mentorship and resources. She looks forward to a career of prison transformation and advocacy. Janet Gyatso Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies Dean Gyatso is a specialist in Buddhist studies with a concentration on Tibetan and South Asian cultural and intellectual history. Her most recent book, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015), focuses on alternative early modernities and the conjunctions and disjunctures between religious and scientific epistemologies in Tibetan medicine in the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. Gyatso was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies from 2000 to 2006, and co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion from 2004 to 2010. She is a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Committee on the Study of Religion, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, and is an active participant in the Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum. Cornell William Brooks is Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister Brooks was most recently visiting professor of social ethics, law, and justice movements at Boston University’s School of Law and School of Theology. He was a visiting fellow and director of the Campaign and Advocacy Program at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2017. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017. Under his leadership, the NAACP secured 12 significant legal victories, including laying the groundwork for the first statewide legal challenge to prison-based gerrymandering. He also reinvigorated the activist social justice heritage of the NAACP, dramatically increasing membership, particularly online and among millennials. Among the many demonstrations from Ferguson to Flint during his tenure, he conceived and led “America’s Journey for Justice” march from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C., over 40 days and 1000 miles. Prior to leading the NAACP, Brooks was president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where he led the passage of pioneering criminal justice reform and housing legislation, six bills in less than five years. He also served as senior counsel and acting director of the Office of Communications Business Opportunities at the Federal Communications Commission, executive director of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington, and a trial attorney at both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the U.S. Department of Justice. Brooks served as judicial clerk for the Chief Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Brooks holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law and Policy Review, and a Master of Divinity from Boston University’s School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. Brooks has a B.A. from Jackson State University. He is the recipient of several honorary doctorates including: Boston University, Drexel University, Saint Peter’s University and Payne Theological Seminary as well as the highest alumni awards from Boston University and Boston University School of Theology. Brooks is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. FACULTY OF DIVINITY Lawrence S. Bacow, President David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, and John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity Giovanni Bazzana, Professor of New Testament Ann D. Braude, Senior Lecturer on American Religious History and Director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America and Chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion (FAS) Davíd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, with a joint appointment with the Department of Anthropology (FAS) Emily Click, Assistant Dean for Ministry Studies and Field Education, and Lecturer on Ministry Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society (FAS), and Member of the Faculty of Divinity Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Charles Chauncey Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies Cheryl A. Giles, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures David F. Holland, John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History Amy Hollywood, Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies Michael D. Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions Mark D. Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity Ousmane Oumar Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), and Counselor to Muslim Students Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity David C. Lamberth, Professor of Philosophy and Theology Jon D. Levenson, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish

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