School Notes: Yale Divinity School
May/June 2010

Gathering sees youth as pivotal to improving U.S.–Muslim relations

If U.S.–Muslim relations are to improve, a key element will be to engage Muslim and American youth. That is one of the points to emerge from a series of intense workshops and speeches at a February 21–23 gathering hosted by Yale Divinity School. The three-day workshop, held at Yale’s new Greenberg Conference Center, included prominent scholars, policy makers, activists, and public figures from throughout the U.S. and the Middle East. The goal of the workshop, which tied into YDS’s Reconciliation Program aimed at Christian-Muslim bridge-building, was to develop a common format and agenda for a major international conference in Egypt June 16–18. The conference will be held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria and is intended to build on the speech President Barack Obama gave in 2009 in Cairo, where he called for a “new beginning” in relationships between the United States and Muslims the world over. Sallama Shaker, visiting professor of Islamic studies at Yale and a leading coordinator of the workshop, said, “This conference provides a human touch to President Obama’s speech. The fact that we can succeed and make a difference—that will be our job.”

Notre Dame scholar appointed to senior ethics position at YDS

Jennifer Herdt, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, will join Yale Divinity School July 1 as professor of Christian ethics, filling the senior faculty position that was vacated when Margaret Farley retired in 2007. Herdt’s primary interests are in the history of moral thought since the seventeenth century, classical and contemporary virtue ethics, and contemporary Protestant social ethics and political theology. Harold Attridge, the Rev. Henry L. Slack Dean of YDS, called Herdt an “outstanding teacher and scholar” who “can bring to bear onto the life of believers today the profound riches of the tradition of Christian ethical reflection.”

Earthquake in Haiti: YDS engages the tragic aftermath

Six days after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, Sam Owen ’12MDiv and Chris Corbin ’12MDiv attended a Sunday service at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in lower Manhattan where prayers were devoted to Haiti. After the service, Owen and Corbin got to talking about how moved they were, and the next day they boarded a Haiti-bound chartered plane carrying humanitarian aid. “We were called by the Holy Spirit to go down there,” says Owen, who with Corbin spent six days in Port-au-Prince organizing a pharmacy and working in Hospice Saint Joseph. The YDS community responded in a number of ways to the ongoing human tragedy. Leslie Brown ’10MDiv played a key role on the broader Yale campus by coordinating fundraising and educational efforts. At a packed Woolsey Hall benefit concert for victims, Kyle Brooks ’05, ’12MDiv, read his quake-inspired poem, “A Letter to Haiti,” and students Andy Barnett ’12MDiv and Justin Haaheim ’10MAR played with the Theodicy Jazz Quartet. During worship services in Marquand Chapel, Haiti was a daily focus of public prayers. International Relief and Development, founded and headed by Arthur Keys ’73MDiv, sent a shipment of nearly $7 million in medical aid in the days following the earthquake. George Rupp ’67BD is CEO and president of another organization helping in Haiti, the International Rescue Committee, and Joseph Cistone ’90MAR heads up International Partners in Mission, also involved in providing relief to the island nation.