ニューイングランドの母校から、創立200年の知らせ

Harvard Divinity School's bicentennial is finally here!

This year, while pursuing our customary work of academic excellence and public service, we'll also take time to remember our proud past, reflect on our role today, and think boldly about what HDS could be in the future. I hope you'll join me for a series of outstanding events open to all including:

•The Bicentennial Convocation: On August 30, we kick off the bicentennial with President Faust and a keynote address delivered by George Rupp, former dean of HDS and a past president of the International Rescue Committee and Columbia University.

•Our Religion, Our Earth, Our Future: In one of the high points of the fall semester, the Center for the Study of World Religions will convene leading scholars to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the 1996 conference on ecology and religion.

•Bicentennial Party: The bicentennial culminates in April with a two-day celebration on the HDS campus. Novelist Marilynne Robinson - winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize - gives the School's Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality on April 27. The next day, April 28, will feature conversations with leaders including International Justice Mission CEO and founder Gary Haugen. In the evening, the entire HDS community will come together for a once-in-a-century party you won't want to miss.

Throughout the year, HDS will be the site of "Faces of Divinity," an extraordinary exhibition produced under the direction of Professor Ann Braude. The installation, which launches on August 30 and is sited throughout the School's campus, charts HDS's opening to new voices and new ideas across the decades. Additionally, HDS will hold alumni celebrations across the country in the months ahead, as well as a special alumni reunion to mark the bicentennial here on campus on Saturday, April 29.

I invite you to participate in these and the many other special events in the months ahead. See the complete schedule of the year's festivities on the HDS website.

The bicentennial is an extraordinary opportunity to look back at our School's heritage and ahead to a third century of leadership in the study of religion. It promises to be quite a year.