Empowering Memory and Movement: Thinking and Working across Borders

3. Fostering Diversity Studies at Harvard Divinity School

3 Fostering Diversity Studies at Harvard Divinity School Diversity Troubles: Difference, Privilege, and Power The term diversity invites celebration.1 Describing the great variety of life in the universe, Bishop Desmond Tutu speaks about our glorious diversity and elaborates why we should celebrate difference: We are constantly being made aware of the glorious diversity that is written into the structure of the universe we inhabit, and we are helped to see that if it were otherwise, things would go awry. How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns? . . . We belong in a world whose very structure whose essence is diversity, almost bewildering in extent.2 Yet, while celebrating the diversity of creation, Tutu is also well aware that the kyriarchal social-structural differences of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, age and many more engender a type of diversity that provokes anxiety, strife, prejudice, and even murder and war. Often, 1. In the following, I combine two different texts that seek to articulate the importance of diversity studies at Harvard Divinity School. One was written in collaboration with my colleagues Jacob Olupona and David Carrasco, and the other for incoming students. The first section was part of the 2011–12 Harvard Divinity School Convocation (available online at http://www.hds.harvard.edu/multimedia/ video/convocation-2011-diversity-troubles-difference-privilege-and-power.html). 2. Desmond Tutu, “Our Glorious Diversity: Why We Should Celebrate Difference,” n.p., online at http://www. huffingtonpost.com//desmond-tutu/our-glorious-diversity-wh_b_874791.html (cited May 7, 2013). 65 the rhetoric of diversity and difference does not mention but obscures these structures of domination that cause so much suffering and injustice. For instance, when at HDS the Standing Committee on Diversity was established, it replaced the Committee on Race, since diversity includes race. However, this change of name also derailed us from exploring racism as a structural component of HDS. The proverbial “elephant in the room”—racism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, classism, or colonialism, to mention a few isms—is no longer visible. People who use these terms tend to be seen as unscholarly, unsophisticated, malcontent, or ideological. Human beings differ from each other in innumerable ways, but we are also divided by these social-structural differences of domination. Such structures of domination privilege some people, cultures, races, and religions while they negatively label and discriminate against most others. They are so powerful because they have engendered experiences and histories of discrimination and still do so today. We are all born and socialized into them and have internalized them through education, culture, and religion. Diversity invites not only celebration but also critical reflection, lest the powers of our privileges at HDS blind us to the troubles of which we are a part. A rich array of “diversity studies” as well as research on privilege and power has been developed in the past forty years or so, but they have not yet found their way into the center of the HDS research profile and curriculum.3 Women/gender/feminist studies, African, African-American, Latin- and MesoAmerican , queer, or postcolonial studies in religion are found at the borders and margins of the curriculum and are not central to the research and educational ethos of the academy. They are seen as important for wo/men, blacks, gay, disabled, or foreign students but not for white straight American men. They are discussed as perspectival opinions but not as serious scholarship, which is still defined as universal, that is, Euro-American. To give an example: Introduction to the N*T is the scientific heart of my field of study. To change its Eurocentric frame, I have taught it assigning not only Euro-American but also African American, feminist, queer, postcolonial, Latina, or Asian essays and commentaries. Although I emphasize throughout the semester the perspectival character of all interpretation, because of their internalized objectivist understanding of true scholarship, some students still say in their course evaluation that too much time was spent on perspectives and not enough on objective scientific commentary. I don’t need to worry about such evaluations, but junior colleagues are at risk if they try to teach a multiplicity 3. William M. Timpson, Silvia Sara Canette, Evelinn Borrayo, and Raymond Yang, eds., Teaching Diversity: Challenges and Complexities, Identities, and Integrity (Madison, Wis.: Atwood, 2003). 66 | Empowering Memory and Movement of approaches...