About the CSWR

The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) is an academic community for interdisciplinary, international, and interreligious exchange, learning, research, and dialogue. Through conferences, symposia, film series, public lectures, and faculty research projects, it brings the rich intellectual resources of faculty and students across the schools and departments of Harvard University to bear on the forms and issues of the world's religions in today's complex, global, and changing world.

The study of the world's major religious and spiritual traditions at Harvard, especially at the Divinity School, has been guided by the CSWR since it opened its doors in the fall of 1960, funded initially by a group of anonymous donors in 1957. Over 600 graduate students, CSWR fellows, and visiting professors representing the world's major religious traditions have been affiliated with the Center, many of them as residents. 

The goals set forth in the first of several gifts—the appointment of a professor of world religions, the creation of graduate and undergraduate programs in the study of religion, the support of research and publications, fellowships for study and travel, and communication among peoples of different faiths—have been realized far beyond the expectations of the donors. Recent appointments in world religions at the Divinity School have greatly enlarged the faculty who specialize in the religions of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, six of whom have offices at the CSWR. Through its faculty grants program, the CSWR supports a broad range of research by Harvard religion faculty: the role of madrassahs as interpretive authorities in Pakistan; case studies for teaching pluralism; medical ethics and multicultural pastoral care; Ifa divination in West Africa and the African diaspora; and religious leadership in Central European democracies. The CSWR also brings one international visiting scholar to the Divinity School to co-teach and conduct research with a member of the faculty.

The CSWR sponsors a rich fare of diverse educative programs, much of which is centered around a yearly programming theme. The organizing theme for the 2006-07 academic year was "Whose Religion? Which Morality? Conflict and Authority in World Religions." The series included seven luncheon seminars on historical and contemporary issues in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. It concluded with a conference titled "Visions of Peace and Reconciliation: Historical and Contemporary Patterns," co-sponsored by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame; the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University; the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School; and the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. The program focus for 2007-08 will be Rethinking the Human.

Over the years the CSWR has created a wide network of affiliations through its links with the Divinity School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard's professional schools, and institutes and universities in the United States and abroad. For example, in June 2007, the CSWR was one of several sponsors of the international conference, Religion and Culture, held at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In light of the increasing prominence of religion in conflicts globally, the CSWR's mission of promoting a broad, sympathetic understanding of the world's religions in cooperation with individuals and institutions in the United States and internationally has assumed a special and compelling urgency.