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Tag Archives: Social Justice

What’s at Stake? Important Questions to Consider at DivEx, HDS, and Beyond

26 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in Considering HDS

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Applying, Community, DivEx, MDiv, Ministry, Prospective Students, Social Justice

Post by Nathan Samayo

Editor’s Note: This week at HDS we are hosting our annual Diversity and Explorations (DivEx) event, which is a 3-day introduction to Harvard Divinity School and the programs we offer. DivEx is geared towards current undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in exploring divinity school. In this post, former DivEx participant and current HDS student, Nathan Samayo, reflects on his personal and academic background and how participating in the DivEx program has impacted his journey at HDS. 

What a critical time it is to be applying to Harvard Divinity School. A contentious election creeps around the corner whose result could either continue America’s dissonance to its long history of anti-Black racism and xenophobia, or a result that will, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “let our democracy live another day.” We see on our local and social medias the uprisings from marginal communities and allies who denounce state-sanctioned violence, white supremacy that has seeped into every facet of public life, and the legacy of colonialism that altered the land that white America now occupies. We are becoming products of a historical moment where a pandemic has and continues to alter our ordinary lives, bringing to light how broken America’s systems of education, economy, and healthcare have been operating. All these issues and realities ask a similar question—what is at stake? What values and ethics guide us as we advocate and protest for new tangible conditions in hopes of a reconciled world? These questions will be asked to you if you decide to come to Harvard Divinity School, a community committed to transforming you into the change agent you want to be. 

Photo Courtesy of Nathan Samayo
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Introducing the 2020-2021 HDS Admissions Graduate Assistants: Meet Jessica!

07 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in HDS Interviews

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Admissions, Graduate Assistants, Higher Ed, Social Justice

Post by Jessica Cantos 

Hello! I am a new Graduate Assistant (GA) for the HDS Admissions Office. I am a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) pursuing a master’s degree in Higher Education and I am so excited about joining the HDS Admissions team this year. 

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. I’ve lived in LA all my life other than the four years I spent in the small town of Hanover, New Hampshire where I attended Dartmouth College. I graduated in 2018 with a degree in Government, however, I have since realized my passion for working in higher education.  

Jessica and Luigi taking a drive // Photo Courtesy of Jessica Cantos
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Interview with Margaret Okada-Scheck, Associate Director of Admissions

01 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in HDS Interviews

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Admissions, Advice, Alumni, ask students, Career, Community, Diversity, DivEx, Social Justice

Post by Margaret Okada-Scheck, Associate Director of Admissions 

Editor’s Note: Meet Margaret, the HDS Associate Director of Admissions! Margaret has a wide range of responsibilities in the office, including leading the planning for our Diversity and Explorations Program, an opportunity for current undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to learn more about the programs offered at HDS. Below you can read about Margaret’s dedication to supporting students, her professional experiences and about her dog, Bingo!

Photo courtesy of Margaret Okada-Scheck

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you want the HDS community & prospective students to know about you?  

Hello! My name is Margaret Okada-Scheck (she/her/hers) and I’m the Associate Director of Admissions in HDS Admissions. I’m originally from Queens, New York, and got my BA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. I am Asian American (of Japanese descent), married to a German man, and we have a 15-month-old boy whom we adopted last year.  

I’ve been working in graduate admissions for about 12 years and have been in my role at HDS for 2 years. My primary responsibilities include recruiting prospective students, running the communications and marketing for HDS Admissions, and managing the Diversity and Explorations (DivEx) program. 

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Interview with Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life

04 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in HDS Interviews

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chaplaincy, Community, HDS People, Hear & Now, Interview, Ministry, Noon Service, Religious Pluralism, Social Justice, Spiritual Practices, Spirituality, Student Life

Post by: Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) 

Kerry Maloney has served the HDS community since 2004 as HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life and, prior to this role, as the Associate Director of Ministry Studies. In this particular moment, we thought it would be helpful to hear from the HDS Chaplain about the different ways the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life has responded to the challenges present in the work of our community today. If you are in need of some spiritual resources, we encourage you to explore the “Spiritual Resources During the COVID-19 Pandemic” created by RSL. 

Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) 
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Reflections on Activism, Organizing, and Angela Davis

13 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in Student Life

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Activism, Community Organizing, Experiential Learning, Harambee, HDS People, HDSSA, MTS, Praxis, Social Justice, Student Life, Summer

Post by Eboni Nash, MTS ‘21  

Eboni Nash is a second year MTS student, who recently interviewed professor and activist Angela Davis. In addition to her academic pursuits at HDS, she serves as Social Justice Chair for the HDS Student Association (HDSSA), the Office of Student Life Ambassador for Diversity & Inclusion, an Organizer for the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign, and Vice President of Events/Organizing for Harambee, the HDS student organization for students of African descent. 

Where were you when it happened? I imagine this question, much like 9/11, will be asked of us by the younger generation. Where were you when the COVID-19 pandemic struck? For me, I was on a plane heading back to my mother’s house for spring break. I decided to go early to be able to celebrate my niece’s birthday, when I received the email notifying me not to come back to campus.  

Just like that, 2020 took another unexpected turn that forced us to adjust quickly. During our stay-at-home orders, I found myself wondering what I could do and how I could still be useful so far from my networks. After weeks of contemplating and eating entirely too much, I realized that organizing was still very possible.  

For the past three years, I have considered myself an organizer and activist. Starting with food justice, I directed a local nonprofit in Nebraska that helped feed low income families of elementary school students over the weekend. This exposure to food-insecurity, education surrounding the poverty-line, as well as hot zones for food deserts, really took hold of my heart. I eased deeper into social justice soon after when I spent a summer interning at Sunshine Enterprises in Chicago. 

Eboni Nash (MTS ‘21) // 
photo courtesy of Eboni Nash 
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Freedom School

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in Academics

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Academics, Classes, Community Organizing, Social Justice

Post by: Najha Zigbi-Johnson, MTS ‘20, African and African American Studies Concentrator, Freedom School Founder and Leader 

Editor’s Note: For the first time, students at HDS have gathered to create the collaborative, student-led seminar “Freedom School,” which encourages students to bring Black studies into social justice issues in the community. In this blog post, HDS student and Freedom School founder Najha Zigbi-Johnson discusses the goals and pedagogy of Freedom School. 

Freedom School community members 
Photo Courtesy of NAJHA ZIGBI-JOHNSON, MTS ‘20 

Last spring, I had the opportunity to learn alongside a group of incredibly talented and action-oriented students in the seminar, Faith in the Fire: Religious Public Intellectuals, led by Professor Cornel West. Each week, students prepared engaging presentations, and guided our class through animated conversation. I found myself wrestling with the notion of public intellectualism and also the moral responsibility of progressive thinkers to engage in work fundamentally rooted in political activism and cultural change. It was the brilliance of my peers who continue to be engaged in justice-oriented work, the legacy of radical public intellectuals like Pauli Murray and Professor West, and the urgent necessity to involve myself fully in movement building that fueled the creation of Freedom School. In partnership with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, I was able to bring this course to fruition in my desire to engage contemporary Black studies with projects committed to systems-change and equity work.

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HDS <3 HUDS: HDS Students support the Harvard University Dining Service Workers

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in What's It Like at HDS?

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Harvard, Social Justice

“In seeking the long-term welfare of all, we endeavor to accept responsibility for the impact of our actions on our community, our environment, and the world. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our behavior and our use of resources.” –HDS Community Values

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HUDS workers gather with undergraduate and graduate students in front of the John Harvard Statute in Harvard Yard. Photo Credit: Brittany Landorf

On Wednesday, October 5, the Harvard University Dining Service workers went on strike after months of contract negotiations fell through with the university. The HUDS workers are protesting a cut to their health care plan, one that would raise their co-pay and make it prohibitive to seek services and seeking a $35,000 annual salary with a guaranteed stipend during the summer months. Currently, HUDS workers are required to be on call during the summer months and are not allowed to collect unemployment benefits. While the average hourly wage is above minimum wage, this does not take into account how many hours workers are allotted during the year as well as the lack of employment they experience during the summer months. In addition, it is not sufficient for the high living costs of Cambridge, Boston and the surrounding areas.

Support for the strikers has poured in from the students in the undergraduate college and graduate schools. At Harvard Divinity School, the HDS Student Association has connected the Divinity School’s community values with the HUDS worker’s plight, standing in support of the strike, “In voicing our support for HUDS workers, we draw on those moral teachings shared by many of the world’s spiritual and ethical traditions which emphasize compassion, dignity, and justice for all people. Burdening workers with unsustainable incomes and unaffordable health care coverage directly contradicts the values of equity and social justice we believe Harvard must stand for – for its students, faculty members, and workers alike.”

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Top to bottom: Natalie Malter, Rod Owens, and Nestor Pimienta speaking at the interfaith spiritual service held by HDS students for HUDS strikers. Photo Credit: Angela Counts

Many HDS students have become personally involved in the strike, supporting the picket line, staging walk-outs, and providing spiritual and material services to the HUDS workers.  HDS students held an interfaith spiritual service for the HUDS workers before a student-led walk-out at the beginning of this week. And, on Tuesday, students led a walk-out from Community Tea, a weekly opportunity for HDS students and faculty to socialize over food and tea, to bring food and beverages to the HUDS workers.

First-year MTS candidate Madeline Kinkel has been at the forefront of organizing HDS students to provide support to the workers. She created a Facebook page “HDS  ❤ HUDS,” and has helped coordinate an HDS petition and food drives for the workers. Madeline is the daughter of a union family and has a deep understanding of the important roles unions play in negotiating living wages, health care, and other benefits. Madeline spoke with HDS Admissions GA, Brittany Landorf, the other day about what it means to support the HUDS workers to her, “When I heard about the negotiations between the union and the university, it felt personal. As a first year student at HDS, I didn’t know any of the workers involved, not at first anyway. That didn’t matter. Thinking of how stressful it is to not have affordable health care, to avoid going to the doctor when you’re sick, and having to try to take care of a family and children on top of that, I couldn’t even imagine. Beyond this gut reaction, raising the standard of working conditions for one group of people can help raise them for everyone. Joining the struggle for fair pay and health care coverage felt like I was joining the fight for my family.”

Madeline became more involved with the strike after helping set up a petition with other HDS students to show support of the HUDS workers. She has since met several of the HUDS workers and union leaders, “About a week after the [HDS] petition was public, I was introduced to Aaron D., one of the HUDS workers. Aaron is not only incredibly kind, but also knows all the ins and outs of the conflict between the university and the HUDS workers. From what I’ve heard, Harvard has begun to offer marginally better wages, and an infinitesimal summer stipend, if the workers agree to drastically cut health care. So, they want their workers to just keep running, hoping that they won’t trip and get sick, that their children won’t get sick.”

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MTS Candidate Madeline Kinkel photo credit: Brittany Landorf

She connects her service and support of the strikers with the HDS mission statement, “The HDS mission statement reads that we are training people to build a more equitable world. It seemed to me that as HDS students, with all the privileges that come with that title, we were and are called to stand alongside families and people desperately fighting for a chance to live, a chance to live without that constant anxiety and fear.

For Madeline and many other HDS students, supporting the strike is not a choice; it is a direct reflection of the academic, community, and spiritual values that motivated them to apply to HDS in the first place, “And so I, and a solid group of HDS students, have been shirking our scholarly duties and organizing, and going to the picket lines to stand with the workers. In part because we are called to fight for an equitable world, and in part because, personally and selfishly, I think of my mother working a non-union, minimum wage job and driving in her broken car in the winter with no safety net if the frozen wind makes her sick, and I need to stand with the striking workers.”

Where the Classroom Meets the World: Discovering Vocation in Field Education

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by smejiahds in Experiential Learning

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Academics, Classes, Field Ed, MDiv, Social Justice, UU

As I prepare to begin my last semester of the Master of Divinity Program at HDS I can’t help but think back to what has made the last two and a half years so significant. My time at HDS has been truly transformative. Although it has been special because of professors, courses, and other students, the part that has been most important for my vocation have been my field education experiences. A major component of the MDiv program is completing at least two field education placements in non-profits, hospitals, churches, community organizations, government agencies—or anywhere where ministry happens. Through field education placements and other volunteer experiences I have been able to discover my passion for prison ministry and particularly for teaching in prisons. I first began to think seriously about prison ministry through a course called “Ethics, Punishment and Race,” taught by Professor Kaia Stern. This course allowed to me discover the ways society has deemed a caste of people guilty and punishable and that justice in this country does not look the same for everyone. As Lawyer Bryan Stevenson says, “in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.” After that course, I realized that incarcerated people had been invisible to me—not only because prisons and people who are incarcerated are made invisible, but also because I had not considered their suffering and experiences worthy of empathy.

Through field education placements and other volunteer experiences I have been able to discover my passion for prison ministry and particularly for teaching in prisons.

After that semester, I decided to work with people who had been incarcerated and were transitioning out of incarceration. My first field education experience was during the summer of 2014 at Span, Inc., a Boston-based non-profit organization founded in 1976. Span works with returning citizens to provide them with assistance finding housing, employment and provides them with counseling and support. I collaborated with the Director of Operations in projects of data and planning in preparation for grants.  I also worked with their Training to Work program where I taught two cycles of an intensive computer skills class. My experiences at Span, envision myself working in the non-profit sector in the future. I gained skills in both direct-service work and the management side of non-profit work.

The following academic year I decided to work with Renewal House, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. As part of the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry this shelter engages residents in restorative justice circles, art therapy groups and other innovative work, which was incredibly formative for my work. During my time at Renewal House I worked teaching an English as a Learning Language class and collaborated with the leadership of Renewal House to design and facilitate domestic violence training for clergy and faith leaders. We facilitated one of these trainings at HDS in March 2015 and received positive feedback from students. The connection between domestic violence and the American punishment system motivated me to do this placement. Nearly all women who end up incarcerated have been survivors of domestic violence. Interrupting this cycle of abuse in shelters may keep many people from incarceration and further traumatization.

Divinity Hall Sign

Photo by Caroline Matas

During the Fall of 2014, I had the opportunity to co-teach an English course in a Massachusetts prison through the Boston University Prison Education Program. It was a rewarding experience and taught me about the challenges of teaching in a carceral environment and whether my ministry should be more focused on people currently incarcerated or returning citizens as they resettle back into their lives.

I am grateful for the opportunities I have had during my time at HDS. My vocation as I see it now will be to continue this work.  How can those outside of prison work for people to recognize the dignity and humanity of those in prison?  I hope to work in collaboration with community organizations, especially those that are faith-based, in order to change perspectives and advocate for prison reform, to make liberation a reality.

“Congratulations!”

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Dorie Goehring in Why I Chose HDS

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Academics, Catholic, Christianity, Community Tea, Family, Harvard, Islam, LGBT, Social Justice

Memorial Hall. Photo by Chris Alburger

Memorial Hall. Photo by Chris Alburger

“Dear Ms. Goehring, Congratulations!…”

Memories crash over me.

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J-Term in Nicaragua: See, Judge, Act

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Eboni Haynes in Experiential Learning

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Catholic, Faith, Liberation Theology, Nicaragua, Opportunities, Paulo Freire, Poverty, Public Health, Social Justice, Solidarity, Study Abroad

Nicaragua

Nicaraguan village. Photo by Nola Haynes

“January term at HDS is an opportunity for the HDS community to engage in studies and specially designed programs that offer enrichment, knowledge, service to the community, or experiences outside HDS’s normal offerings…HDS faculty and students traveled to Latin America for “Spirit of Resistance,” a course that provided a firsthand look at the legacy of faith, solidarity, and social action in Nicaragua. The group talked about liberation theology and social justice with Nicaraguan environmental activists, Jesuit priests, advocates for women’s health, and rural peasants.”

In order to paint the most vibrant portrait about my experience in Nicaragua, I feel a quick stop in my past texturizes my sentiments and passions about the trip. I grew up in the 80s in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans is popular, famous or infamous for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are rooted in folklore around voodoo, great cuisine, Mardi Gras, vampires, and most recently all the negative and horrible truths (some fabricated) revealed during and following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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  • Most accounts of war treat women solely as victims of violence, but Georgette Ledgister knows there is more to the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago
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