Harvard Ramps Up Interfaith Programming Amid Effort to Strengthen Religious Literacy on Campus

Harvard has ramped up its interfaith programming in recent months, as administrators, chaplains, and faculty seek to strengthen religious literacy across campus amid growing political debate rooted in religious differences.

The push has taken shape through new events, expanded collaboration with Harvard’s chaplaincy, and the Presidential Initiative on Interfaith Engagement — a University-backed effort to foster dialogue across religious and nonreligious communities at Harvard.

Last month, more than 175 students, faculty, and staff attended an interfaith dinner that drew participants from Harvard’s schools and a wide range of religious and ethical traditions.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, addressing the gathering, reflected on how unfamiliar religious traditions can appear even to well-educated outsiders. He recalled an experience from his own life as a high school senior studying religious texts while living with his brother at a yeshiva in Chicago.

During a college interview in an apartment lined with Hebrew books, Garber said the interviewer seemed surprised by the shelves of books.

“I didn’t know so many books were written in Hebrew,” Garber remembered him saying.

The moment stayed with him, Garber said, because of how deeply religion shapes identity.

“Interfaith work must be careful work grounded in curiosity, generosity and sincerity, nurtured by openness and patience,” Garber said. “We must meet each other eager to explore and to discover, to learn and understand.”

“I can think of no better place to undertake that work than any university,” he added.

The dinner was one of several recent events organized through the Initiative on Interfaith Engagement as Harvard looks to create more spaces for discussion across religious differences.

Rabbi Getzel Davis, the initiative’s director, wrote in a statement that the program seeks “to promote religious literacy and meaningful dialogue across diverse faith and non-faith traditions” while collaborating with University offices to support religious and spiritual communities.

“These efforts are fundamental to the academic and social mission of the University as they support the cultivation of cultural competency,” Davis wrote. “There has been increased demand across the University for interfaith community building opportunities, and we have responded by offering new programming that meets students’ religious, spiritual, and ethical development while encouraging student leadership.”

Harvard chaplains said the initiative reflects a broader shift in Harvard’s approach to religion on campus.

“The biggest change for me is actually in the administration, so they’re all in support of this,” said Tammy J. McLeod, president of the Harvard Chaplains. “And I think October 7 helped with that.”

McLeod said Harvard’s 47 chaplains collectively work with roughly 13,000 students, faculty, and staff through services, discussion groups, and interfaith events. The chaplaincy is now exploring ways to expand those conversations within undergraduate residential life, including assigning teams of interfaith chaplains to College upperclassman neighborhoods and freshman yards.

Faculty members said strengthening religious literacy has also become increasingly important as many students arrive on campus with limited familiarity with religion.

“The university should try to help people — both students, but also faculty and staff — understand the complex and multifaceted impact of religious traditions on all of the other things that we study,” said Daniel P. McKanan ’89, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School.

At the same time, some faculty warned that universities can struggle to navigate religious debates without recognizing the diversity within religious traditions.

“When Harvard engages with claims about religious discrimination, it can be easy to lose track of the internal diversity of religious traditions,” he said.

Much of Harvard’s interfaith work also takes place outside the classroom through chaplaincies and student groups that host meals, services, and conversations across traditions.

Rev. Rita Powell, chaplain for the Harvard Episcopal Community, said those encounters help students understand religion as a lived part of campus life.

“One of the strongest aspects of Harvard, as a university, is its diverse culture and viewpoints that it gets to celebrate and nurture,” she said. “In that context, religious literacy is one of the important aspects of understanding what a diverse community is.”

Still, some chaplains said discussing religion openly can feel increasingly difficult in the current campus climate.

“People have sort of backed off of wanting to speak,” said Jeffrey K. Barneson, a Harvard chaplain who leads InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. “They feel like it’s too risky to speak.”

But McLeod said universities depend on exactly those kinds of conversations.

“I think it’s really important before a student graduates,” she said, “that whether it’s through the academics in the classroom or through connecting with people who have different faith traditions and learning from them that everyone who graduates from Harvard would just have a literacy that would help them to engage the biggest issues in the culture today.”

—Staff writer Andrew R. Levy can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @andrewlevy312.

—Staff writer Alexandria J. Villasenor can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ajv.03.