Harvard Divinity School's membership in the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium (HTIC) may be young, but it is already having tremendous impact as HDS's first HTIC fellow, Roberto Mata, graduated last month.
Mata received a master of divinity degree from HDS in 2006, and in May received a doctor of theology, concentrating in New Testament and early Christianity. He received a 2014 Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE) fellowship for Latino/a, Asian, and First Nations doctoral students and he was recently offered a position as assistant professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University in California. Mata credited the networking and mentoring he received through HTIC, and other organizations such as FTE, as being instrumental in helping him land the job.
When he started at HDS as a master's student more than 10 years ago, Mata was one of only a handful of Latino/a students, he said. Mata was proactive and helped create a resource for the Latino/a community at HDS by cofounding the student group Nuestra Voz. Part of the group's mission at the time was to help incoming Latino/a students transition effectively into the academic life at Harvard, and to work with other students groups, faculty, and staff to advocate for a more ethnically diverse school.
"Today, HDS is a place that students from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds can call a home, a place where diversity is valued and its plurality of voices embraced. Today, it is no longer unusual to encounter students from underrepresented communities contributing to classroom discussions," says Mata. "I am encouraged to see the School taking concrete steps to recruit more students who are racial and ethnic minorities, but to also provide the resources and support they need to succeed at HDS."
As examples, Mata points to two key efforts: the School's collaboration with HTIC and its unique Diversity and Explorations Program. DivEx is a three-day, all-expenses-paid educational opportunity for college undergraduates who have a commitment to diversity and social justice and who are considering careers in ministry or other areas of religion, theology, and ethics. DivEx and the School's membership in and support for HTIC, are just two of the important steps it has taken to demonstrate how serious HDS is about increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds.
"As statistics will show, minorities are underrepresented in academic fields, and the fields of religious studies and theological studies are not the exception. In my view, both HDS and HTIC share common goals," says Mata. "I leave HDS confident that the relationship will continue to flourish and other students coming after me will continue to benefit from it."
HTIC has already identified its second fellow at HDS, Emmanuel Hernandez. Hernandez, who received a master of divinity degree in May, will this fall begin studying as a doctoral student at Harvard.
He said he chose to stay at HDS because of the relationships he formed with the faculty and because of his experience in hospital chaplaincy and providing academic services for those on probation or parole.
Hernandez was also able to cross-register in courses within other Harvard University departments. Courses he took helped him develop his doctoral project, which will focus on the ways in which Caribbean literature and theology can learn from each other.
"Sometimes I think of the work as a practice of translation and ask: what are the tools available in academic spaces that can translate into Latino ministry?" he says. "And vice versa, what are the practices that have been developed in Latino ministry that academic spaces can think more about?"
In addition to its students, HDS also has ties to HTIC within its faculty. Mayra Rivera Rivera, Associate Professor of Theology and Latina/o Studies, was an HTIC fellow during her master degree and doctoral work.
"When I became part of HTIC, I had just moved to the U.S., which meant I had a lot to learn about being seen as 'Latina,' (I had until then been 'Puerto Rican') and how that would impact my scholarship," she says. "HTIC helped me find the resources I needed both through formal presentations of scholarship and through informal discussions."
Rivera Rivera, who joined the HDS faculty in 2010, is the author of several books. Her latest, Poetics of the Flesh, which explores the connections between theological, philosophical, and political metaphors of body and flesh, will be published in this fall.
The most valuable element of the initiative for her was the connections with her colleagues – both students and faculty – working at the intersection of Latino/a studies and religion. She says the relationships formed then are still an important part of her life as a scholar.
"As someone who benefited from the program, I deeply value what HTIC does and hope more students can benefit from it," she notes. "I am glad HDS sees it as part of its mission to diversity to help strengthen a program that has a proven record of helping Latina/o students succeed."
–by Michael Naughton