HDS Conference on Truth and Reconciliation Experiences in the U.S.

Esther Anne (she/her), MSW, is a Passamaquoddy from Sipayik who lives at Penobscot Nation where she dabbles in many forms of art, grows flowers, and hugs trees with her granddaughter.  She had a primary role in the creation and establishment of the historic Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Wabanaki REACH.

Melissa Wood Bartholomew is the associate dean for and Lecturer on Community and Belonging at Harvard Divinity School. She is a Christ-centered minister and Ifa practitioner committed to a multifaith, multidisciplinary, Afrocentric approach to healing justice rooted in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, restorative justice, and love. An attorney with nearly a decade of experience practicing public interest law, Melissa holds an MSW and PhD in social work. She focuses her research on the impact of racism and other systems of oppression on the mental health of Black people and the role of religion, spirituality, and culture in their spiritual resistance.

Paul Bermanzohn, son of two Holocaust survivors, grew up in the Bronx and attended City College of NY. A lifelong activist, he founded the NC Brown Lung Association to advocate for textile workers and organized campaigns against the Ku Klux Klan. At an anti-Klan rally in November 1979, he was shot in the head and arm, leaving him partially paralyzed. He later helped establish the US's first Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the incident.

Sally Avery Bermanzohn grew up in Port Washington, NY, and attended Duke University, where she joined the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation Movements. On November 3, 1979, she was present at an anti-KKK rally in Greensboro, NC, where Klansmen opened fire, killing five people and seriously wounding her husband, Paul. The couple later helped organize the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Commission. Sally earned a PhD and taught at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Penthea Burns, a Wabanaki REACH co-founder, has served as a staff member, board member, and volunteer facilitator. She was part of the convening group that established the truth commission. She is retired from the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University of Southern Maine, where she established the Indian Child Welfare Act Workgroup in partnership with Wabanaki Tribal Child Welfare programs and the State of Maine DHHS, developed the nationally recognized Youth Leadership Advisory Team, established Camp To Belong Maine, and worked on the Capacity Building Center for Tribes. 

Fania E. Davis is a leading voice on racial and restorative justice — activist, civil rights attorney, author, and educator with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. Raised in Birmingham, Alabama, the 1963 Sunday School bombing that killed two childhood friends shaped her lifelong commitment to justice. She is Founding Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and author of The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice.

The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, PhD, is Visiting Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 academic years. From 2017 to 2023, she was Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Douglas currently serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Anglican Communion Canon at Newcastle Cathedral in Newcastle, England. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, racial justice issues as well as sexuality and the Black church. Her current research interest involves expanding the moral imaginary in fostering a more just future.

Marla F. Frederick is Dean of Harvard Divinity School, John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity, Professor of Religion and Culture at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS). She is a leading ethnographer and scholar focused on the African American religious experience. Frederick employs an interdisciplinary approach to examining the ways religion, race, and politics impact our everyday lives. She focuses on the study of religion and media, religion and social activism in the U.S. South, and the sustainability of Black institutions in a “post-racial” world.

Steph Grayson Gauchel (he/him; Citizen Muscogee Creek Nation) serves as associate dean of student services at the Harvard Divinity School where he oversees the Offices of Student Life, Career Services, and Religious and Spiritual Life. Across all of his professional roles, he has supported students around concerns of access, equity, and discrimination and interests related to personal and academic development; created and provided educational training, workshops, and events; and served on committees and working groups related to local and University-wide policies and procedures. Adding to his experience, he earned a Doctorate of Education in Higher Education Administration in 2017 from Northeastern University. 

Eduardo González is a leading global expert on transitional justice, focusing on truth commissions, memory, and reparations. A native of Peru, he served on the managerial team of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and has since contributed to similar processes in about 20 countries. He has taught at several universities, including the New School for Social Research and Brooklyn College. He currently serves as the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights in Mali.

Teddy Hickman-Maynard is associate dean for ministry studies, where he oversees the School's master of divinity program, as well as a Lecturer on Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. He has served for over 20 years in a variety of ministry roles and currently serves as associate minister at Bethel AME Church in Lynn, MA. His research and teaching interests include social justice, church renewal, and practices of ministry within the Black Church tradition. He has led several projects on identifying creative callings and innovative ministries, as well as bringing trauma-responsive chaplaincy to bear on ministry in urban settings.

Tracey E. Hucks is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Suzanne Young Murray Professor at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a scholar of Africana Studies and American Religious History. Some of her research interests include Africana religious cultures, African diaspora, and African American religious nationalism. Hucks's most recent publication is Obeah, Orisa and Religious Identity in Trinidad, Volume One: Africans in the White Colonial Imagination (Duke University Press, 2022). 

Joyce Hobson Johnson's activism began in the 1960s civil rights movement and deepened at Duke University. A retired business professor at NC A&T State University, she co-established the groundbreaking Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation process following the 1979 Klan murders of five organizers. A founding leader of the Beloved Community Center, she currently helps lead a statewide North Carolina Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission process.

Gloria Korsman is associate librarian for research services at the Harvard Divinity School Library and serves on the HDS Truth & Healing Steering Committee. She is also a member of First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist, where she works with the Racial Equity Team to advance truth and healing by examining institutional practices and creating opportunities for education, dialogue, and action.

Dan McKanan is Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. He studies religious and spiritual movements for social transformation in the United States and beyond, with particular emphasis on environmental activism, intentional communities, and socialism. He is the author of six books, most recently Camphill and the Future: Spirituality and Disability in an Evolving Communal Movement (University of California Press, 2020). He serves as the faculty director for the Divinity School’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality.

Cass Morales is an MTS candidate whose research is focused on religions of the Americas at the Harvard Divinity School. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Cass came to the Boston area to study anthropology and Latinx studies at Wellesley College. 

Majel Peters is a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She comes from a culturally and politically engaged family who have maintained focus on the continued survival and sovereignty of the Mashpee Wampanoag. Majel has spent over 20 years as a communications professional building campaigns and visual narratives for organizations including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Enterprise Community Partners, and All On The Line. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the Massachusetts College of Art and an MA in Digital Humanities from The CUNY Graduate Center. Majel currently serves as the chair of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Historic Preservation Commission.

Dr. David Ragland is a writer, scholar, and activist with a focus on racial justice, transitional justice, reparations and abolition. He is a co-founder and former executive director of the Truth Telling Project of Ferguson. He has served as the founding director of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign.  David is also the co-founder of Kibilio community farms and collective, a Black and Queer Centering Intentional Community. Currently David is board member of the Peace Development Fund & completing a manuscript on Reparations as Spiritual Practice and working on the Truth Telling Project podcast on Reparations, Truth and Reconciliation.

David Weeden is a member/citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and has worked with the Tribe since 2015. David first served as the deputy tribal historic preservation officer (THPO) before ascending to the lead THPO position in 2019, a job about which he is extremely passionate. Past professional accomplishments are working as an independent contractor, draftsman/detailer, cultural educator, union laborer foreman, and museum interpreter before taking his recent positions. In his present role as THPO and director of the MWT THPD he consults on federal, state and local projects to ensure regulatory compliance.

Kabi Wilkerson (they/them) is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation (Bourassa & Muller families; Bear Clan) and is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at Harvard University. Their scholarly interests examine the evolving contradictions in U.S Indian policy from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries as shifting forms of imperial, state-building practices. Kabl has also written and presented about Northeastern (Great Lakes) Indian Removal policy, practice, and resistance. They received their B.A. from Texas Tech University in 2019 (summa cum laude & highest honors) and their A.M. in History from Harvard University in 2023.

Michele Wright is a first year MTS candidate at Harvard Divinity School with a focus area in Religion, Ethics, and Politics studying Black Atlantic religious formation and the relationality between Indigenous religions of the Americas in the context of settler-colonialism and slavery.