Marshall Ganz Explores Deep Listening as a Tool for Community Organizing at HDS
A workshop at Harvard Divinity School explored deep listening as a foundation for leadership, organizing, and community building.
This spring semester, members of the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) community gathered not simply to discuss listening, but to practice it.
Hosted by students Paula Ortiz, MDiv ’26, and Lia Pikus, MTS ’27, leaders of the Deep Listening Workshop Series, and led by Marshall Ganz, the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at Harvard Kennedy School, the evening began with an introduction to the practice of deep listening, which Pikus framed as an invitation to notice more than spoken words. “Cultivating an openness to all sounds in our environment is the ethos of today,” Pikus said.
Ortiz expanded on that idea, describing deep listening as a practice that attunes participants to body language, affect, and silence. She emphasized the importance of these often-overlooked elements for communication, relationship building, and community building, and encouraged participants to think critically about the ways attention is shaped and directed. “Listening is not neutral,” Ortiz said. “Thinking carefully about listening lets us see whose voices we’re uplifting and whose we’re leaving out.”
The workshop wasn’t just a discussion, but an interactive experience. Participants were organized into pairs and led through a deep listening activity in which they shared stories about moments when they had felt overlooked. Each participant was asked to pay careful attention to every part of their partner’s story—not just the words they said, but also the sounds and silences around the edges.
As the group reconvened, Ganz reflected on the role emotion and storytelling play in organizing work. “While we often resist speaking the language of emotion in organizing, what we're trying to do is not just hear concepts but hear feelings,” he said. “Because values are feelings.”
Paula Ortiz, MDiv ’26, and Lia Pikus, MTS ’27, lead a Deep Listening workshop in the HDS Multireligious Chapel in fall 2025.
Members of the HDS community gathered at a Deep Listening workshop with Paula Ortiz, MDiv ’26, and Lia Pikus, MTS ’27, in fall 2025.
According to Ganz, community action begins when people share stories that allow others to connect emotionally to their experiences. “Stories are a way of sharing emotional reality—a way of being able to confront threats with courage and not fear,” he said.
The workshop shifted to another activity, in which pairs of participants were asked to share a narrative moment from their early life that defines what Ganz refers to as the “story of self.” Ganz emphasized the importance of deep listening as a practice that allows for vulnerability in interactions like these. Rather than striving for “safe space,” he encouraged participants to cultivate “brave space.”
The conversation that followed ranged from Ganz’s experience as the son of a rabbi to his time in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi to more recent experience leading workshops in locations across the world, from Georgia to Japan to the United Kingdom.
In each instance, however, Ganz emphasized the importance of deep listening as a practice of presence. “Much of the work in organizing and public narrative is about finding the courage to allow yourself to be seen, and paying attention in such a way that you are able to listen deeply,” he said.
The evening concluded with final reflections from Ganz on storytelling, vulnerability, and community building. He emphasized that reciprocal listening and the sharing of personal stories are essential practices for building collective trust and action.
“Listening is not passive,” he said. “The challenge is allowing ourselves the vulnerability to allow ourselves to be heard, and to hear.”
All photos by Alex Bayer.