Human Rights

On November 6, 1988, the Catholic philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian Jean Vanier delivered Harvard Divinity School’s inaugural Harold M. Wit Lecture on Living a Spiritual Life in a Contemporary Age. His topic for the first of two talks was “The...

"Fostering a sense of belonging requires context that allows students and faculty to be their authentic selves," says HDS Professor Mayra Rivera, chair of Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights. "We strive to keep that principle front and...

David Hysong, MDiv ’15, finished his master’s degree in intellectual history in 2011 and found himself with a year’s lag time before he planned to enter the U.S. Navy. He was young, good looking, and smart. Most people in his position would probably have...

Both secular and faith-inspired international humanitarian organizations would benefit from a higher level of religious literacy to understand the religious dimensions of the contexts in which they work, concludes a new report by researchers from Oxfam...

In 2002, two dozen Colombian army officers and former guerrilla fighters gathered at a hotel outside of Bogota. These leaders—representing the opposing sides of a conflict that has lasted 53 years and killed over 220,000 Colombians—arrived on the same...

Like many HDS alumni/alumnae who choose a different path than ordination, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, MTS ’84, shares her classmates' commitment to ethics and values. Donahoe came to the Divinity School to delve deeply into philosophical and moral...

What is the role of religious literacy in humanitarian action? Humanitarian practitioners and leading scholars involved in humanitarian efforts will discuss this question and others during the Symposium on Religious Literacy in Humanitarian Action. The...

There is a sacredness in tears," wrote Washington Irving, ". . . they speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues." Perhaps the greatest question of our age is whether or not the world's grown-ups will ever notice the tears of the world's children...

Join Karen Tse for this special bicentennial colloquium on “leading from within,” human rights as ministry, and how to leverage the HDS experience to effect global change. Listen on SoundCloud

Karen Tse had a vision. As a second-year student at HDS in the late 1990s, she imagined founding an organization that would end the use of torture by law enforcement around the world. She even made her dream the topic of her master of divinity thesis...