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This course introduces students to the role of interfaith understanding in promoting cooperation and positive change in personal, professional, and political contexts. The course explores various approaches to inter-religious cooperation and helps students across disciplines develop the knowledge and leadership skills needed to negotiate challenges regarding religious and other dimensions of diversity in the workplace and public life. The course includes examples of diverse religious commitments to inter-religious engagement and social and environmental justice and invites all students (whether they hold religious convictions or not) to reflect on their own values and the significance of inter-religious understanding for creating positive change.

Is God racist, sexist, and greedy? God is used to justify racist and anti-racist, sexist and anti-sexist, and profit-seeking and anti-profit actions, leaving us mired in conflicting opinions. This class explores U.S. faith-based responses to issues of classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism to tease out the ethical principles driving action. By the end of this class, you should be able to determine the underlying assumptions of arguments and formulate productive ways forward. We focus on reading, writing and speaking.

This course covers the major philosophical and yogic traditions of India, with an emphasis on the Vedanta school. The first half of the course examines readings from the Vedas and Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. The second half of the course focuses on Advaita Vedanta; it investigates the development of the metaphysical, epistemological, and theological ideas of the tradition, and how these concepts inform Vedantic spiritual practices. Philosophical problems the course will cover include: consciousness and personal identity; individual agency; time and temporality; and the relationship between ontology and meditative practice.