Video: Leading Towards Justice: Intersections of Religion, Ethics, and Government

On October 3, 2022, RPL hosted a panel discussions spotlighting alumni impact in the world and the ways alumni leverage their HDS training while working in secular or public professions. This session discussed the critical importance of ethical practices and religious literacy in government and public service fields. Moderated by Susan O. Hayward, MDiv ’07, associate director for the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative (RLPI) at Harvard Divinity School.

Full Transcript:

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Leading toward justice, intersections of religion, ethics, and government, October 3, 2022.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: Hello again, my name is Chandra Mohammed and I am the Associate Director for Alumni Relations at Harvard Divinity School. We are so glad that many of you could join us for today's webinar, leading toward justice, intersections of religion, ethics, and government. We have more than 170 people registered to join us today for this discussion. With that, I am very excited to introduce our moderator for today's discussion, Susie Hayward.

Susie is the Associate Director for the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative, a component of Religion and Public Life at HDS that fosters curricular and programmatic activity to advance religious literacy across a wide range of professional fields of public engagement. Susie is also one of our stellar leaders in the alumunus community. Great. Susie, we are honored to have you lead today's discussion. So I'll turn it over to you to introduce the panelists.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you Chandra and thanks to all of you for joining us today. It's really great to see so many interested in this topic and in this series that we've been having with alumunus who are working in secular defined fields and sharing with us how they bring their religious studies degree and leverage them in those fields in order to advance justice. That is actually a central component to the Religious Literacy and Professions Initiative, that's part of Religion and Public Life that I work with.

And four, as Chandra mentioned, we also work with current students here at Harvard Divinity School who are studying religion in preparation for going into professions like organizing media humanitarianism. Or as is our focus today government and public policy making. We know that religion inevitably intersects with government and governance systems generally, particularly in its normative operations and that religion intersects in particular with a range of policy issues.

So as religion scholars, those of us who are gathered here today as religion scholars and us at HDS, we could probably make a case for religion being involved in pretty much every issue along the policy gamut. We can find religion everywhere. But certainly when it comes to policy issues like immigration, criminal justice, women's and gender rights, climate and land management, economic policies.

I think many of us can see clear religious dimensions. These religious dimensions play out in how policies are shaped. For example being shaped by particular religious interests of certain groups or in how policies affect different religious communities. Or if we want to think even more deeply about some of the embedded or implicit ways in which religion shapes policy, how religious worldviews shape, how we even understand these issues.

And so the policy solutions that we develop for them. I'm grateful to have four wonderful fellow HDS alumnus with me today who have worked or are currently working in government spaces. So they can speak a bit more about how the study of religion can be leveraged in the work of policy making or in providing services through government institutions in order to advance just peace. Among us we have an Illinois State Senator, Jackie Collins, a Canadian parliamentarian, Gary Burrill, a US Foreign Service Officer now based in Saudi Arabia, Usra Ghazi, and a former Associate Director of Corrections in Oregon State, Kelly Raths.

They are all extraordinary and they have wonderful biodata that you can find by clicking the links that will be put in the chat box shortly if they're not already there that link to their Fuller bios. But I think what can sometimes be even more interesting than reading that biodata is to hear from individuals about what they do in their current positions. So I'd like to start with that by asking each of the four panelists to share what it is do in your day job in government spaces. So Gary, if I could start with you please.

GARY BURRILL: Sure. Thanks. I'm an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada but for the last dozen years or so. I've been a member of the legislative assembly of the province of Nova Scotia in Canada, an MLA as we call it. And MLAs are I guess like a state representative in the US or something of that sort. In Nova Scotia, in our legislature we have 55 seats. The party that I come from holds six of those. I belong to the new Democratic Party which is a party of social justice and social change, a Democratic socialist party.

And our caucus at the moment in the Nova Scotia legislature is a little bit like this panel. We have six MLAs, I'm the only man. And in fact we have the highest proportion of women and gender diverse people of any caucus in any Canadian jurisdiction in all of Canada's history. So it's always very exciting. And so that's the context in which I work.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Great. Thank you Gary. Jackie, what do you do and how did you get there?

JACQUELINE COLLINS: Well, thank you, first of all, for me to participate. It's an honor to participate in the webinar today. I am State Senator Jacqueline Collins and I represent the 16th legislative district of Illinois. And I serve over 213,000 constituents in communities represented on the South Side of Chicago as well as citizens in both the suburban and rural areas in Illinois. So I majored in journalism at Northwestern University and worked some 20 years at CBS TV in Chicago.

But while working in the media, I became very disillusioned with how the media appear to sensationalize-- well, prioritize sensationalism and moved away from educating and informing the public. So in my opinion, it failed in its mission to shine a light in the darkness. And we know that the masthead of the Washington Post reads, "Democracy dies in darkness." So when I decided to leave CBS, it was only natural that I would seek admission to Harvard Divinity School and later the Kennedy School.

Coming of age in the '60s, my role models were John and Robert Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So these men I thought articulated a rhetoric of hope and possibility and they inspired me and really gave birth to my passion for social justice. So HDS, I was fortunate and grateful to study the ethical and religious thought of Dr. King with Professor Preston Williams. So it was in my last semester at Harvard in 2002 that I received a call from my pastor Father Michael Pfleger of Saint Sabina in Chicago.

And he was asking me to return to Chicago and run for senate seat that was newly created in the 2000 census. So I accepted the challenge and won my election in 2002 and took my seat in 2003. And so I served in Illinois General Assembly for close to 20 years. But I will be transitioning out of the seat in next year in 2023.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Jackie, thank you for that and we wish you all the best as you make those transitions and we'll look forward to seeing where you're headed next. So we have a couple elected officials who are with us today. And then we have a couple of folks who have worked within the administration in different government agencies or bureaucracies. So Yusra, if you could share with us where you are and how you got there please.

USRA GHAZI: Yes. Hi, I am happy to share. I am currently in Saudi Arabia working as a US Foreign Service Officer for the US Department of State. It's my second tour, my last tour was in London. And I got started on this career a while ago. I grew up in the Chicago area and spent a lot of my early career working for interfaith America and previously known as Interfaith Youth core. And so had a very particular take on the role of Religion and Public Life and the ways that religiously diverse communities can and should be working together in the world.

And that got me wanting to study this academically, and so that is how I ended up applying to study at HDS. I had already worked-- some of you may be familiar with President Obama's interfaith campus challenge where he tried to get and succeeded in getting lots of higher education institutions to promote interfaith cooperation across the country. And that was my first entry point thinking about the role that government agencies play in not just understanding Religion and Public Life but also promoting inter-religious cooperation and working hand in hand with religious actors.

And so I studied a number of these types of theories. This is a growing field looking at Religion and Public Life, religion and politics. So I got to study this at HDS. And during that time because of the many courses that were not many but a handful of courses across listed with the Kennedy School of Government, I was able to learn more about this topic from various perspectives and landed a fellowship over the summer through the Rapoport Institute at the mayor's office in Boston.

And I never ever thought I would work in government. I was like, down with the man. But here I was working as a faith-based policy fellow at the Mayor Marty Walsh's office for immigrant advancement. And that got me thinking even more about what this means and then looking at a macro scale. It was through a Harvard alumnus that I landed a fellowship at the US Department of State which I ended up doing for a year and that grew into a longer term career.

Working in offices that look at religion and global affairs and also other types of cooperation and understanding built globally across communities. And along the way I ended up applying for the US Foreign Service and the rest is history.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Things you saw and of course when you were one of the offices that you were working at the State Department religion and global affairs was led at the time by another HGS alum Sean Casey. Kelly, how about you? Can you share with us, please?

KELLY RATHS: Sure. I'm just finishing a 15 year career with the Oregon Department of Corrections, most recent position as an assistant director over correctional services, so of all the care and programming for folks in custody. But my career in prison systems, my interest in that started when I was at HDS at a volunteer activities fair. I picked up a trifold flyer about Partakers, the mentoring program for people pursuing their higher ed degrees.

And that led to some great experiences working with a group of Quakers and people in custody who are leading alternatives to violence programs in Massachusetts prisons. And so I was hooked into the criminal justice system both with just incredible curiosity and incredible frustration and anger. And so that's where that captured me.

When I left HDS, I went and got a massage therapy degree. I needed to go from this corporal space to-- or cerebral space to a more corporal space. And during that time, worked with some women whose children-- children whose moms were in prison.

That led me to be a chaplain in the prison system and. Then again for the last 15 years, I've worked with Oregon Department of Corrections, and I'm now kind of onto a new career. But that's my pathway, Susan.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Great. Thank you, Kelly, and to all of us for sharing your careers' paths. I wonder now if we could shift to talking a little bit about how your study of religion at Harvard shaped how you approached your work in government service.

I'm going to start with you, Jackie, but before I do that, I also just want to remind folks who've joined us since we started to please throw an introduction into the chat box, so we can see who's here. Thank you. Jackie.

JACQUELINE COLLINS: Well, thank you. I think my HDS studies enable me to explore the writings, ideas, and primary concepts of Dr. King as a theologian, a minister, and civil rights advocate pursuing justice.

Within the academic framework, I was introduced to Dr. King's vision for a just society, a society he called the beloved community, a society where you recognize the intrinsic value of every individual and work for the common good. So it was a place where poverty, hunger, and homelessness would have no place in a just society.

So I learned that Dr. King believed that justice was the birthright of every human being in a beloved community. So that's my HDS experience, I think, offered me a way of thinking of being and seeing in the world.

The knowledge of Dr. King's moral action grounded in his theological learning provided me with the blueprint of how faith and faith in God sometimes compels you or requires you to be politically engaged.

My classmates were Jewish, South Korean Christians, and even agnostics. [LAUGHS] And so my HDS experience and encounters showed me how you can be loyal to your own religious tradition and yet show reverence and express reverence for different traditions.

So as a Catholic, which I am, pursuing a deeper understanding of justice, I was only aware of the Black Catholic-- I'm sorry, I was only aware of the Black church tradition of fighting for social justice. Yet it was only at HDS that I was introduced to the rich heritage of Catholic social teaching.

And I think Catholic social teaching is one of the best kept secrets of the Catholic Church. So I am grateful for HDS because when I came to HDS, Fr. Bryan Hehir was the acting dean. So I was grateful for HDS in helping me see the intersection and the interrelatedness amongst all religious traditions that seek a more just world.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Jackie. I sometimes say that it's-- HDS, I'm appreciative of not just the substance of what I've learned, or I'm certainly appreciative of that in the same way you're appreciative of having been able to do deep study of Martin Luther King and other exemplary leaders but more importantly, how it taught me to think and move in the world.

So I connect with what you just said and also about the diversity of the student body at HDS, being a microcosm of the world that you are then going into and developing policies in response to and hopefully further justice within. Usra.

USRA GHAZI: Thank you. It's really hard for me to answer this question because there are so many elements of my time at HDS that feeds into what I do today and the places that my career led me to over the years since graduation.

But the first things that came to mind were-- I mean beyond the coursework and the reading of the classroom, I really benefited immensely from the network of peers and alumni at HDS that were there around the time that I was.

And you mentioned this, Susie. It was Shaun Casey, an alumnus from Harvard Divinity School, who I practically stalked every time he came to campus for a talk, in order to try to get a position in his office at the Department of State, after he was appointed special representative for Religion and Global Affairs by Secretary Kerry.

And it was a number of other alumni and peers that I continue to stay in touch with and engage in my work at the department and outside the department after moving to Washington, DC. And every day, I randomly bump into HDS alumni. It's just a wonderful community, really rich in resources, and very giving of their intellect and their time and their curiosity about religion and public life.

So the network and the peers was a big piece. The second thing that I wanted to mention is the many scholar practitioners. So we've already mentioned Bryan Hehir but individuals like Jocelyne Cesari, who was teaching classes that were cross listed with the Kennedy School and HDS, Professor Diane Moore, Professor Diana Eck.

A lot of the coursework that I took with them was really practical. It was about looking at case studies, thinking about the role of religious literacy and how important it is in the working world, how we can think about lived religion outside of academia as we go off into our careers.

And I definitely took a lot of those teachings, a lot of those resources with me to the point that I was calling them up even after joining the State Department to say, hey, please sit on this advisory board. I need you to share your wisdom with my colleagues.

So in many, many, many ways, my time at HDS was incredibly fruitful and continued to be fruitful in the years afterwards as I developed my career in government.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Usra. Yeah, that network of HDS alumnx is also one that we're building on here with the Religion and Public Life Program and has been really fruitful for our students to be able to connect with alumnx, who, like you say, are kind of everywhere in different fields.

Kelly, can you share a bit about how your study of religion at Harvard informed your approach to decision making and policymaking in the Department of Corrections?

KELLY RATHS: Yeah. Like Usra and probably others, Jackie, I, too, took the opportunity to dabble across the Harvard Graduate School course offerings. And so one of the places that I went and took a couple of courses at the business school on social enterprise.

And the classes were wonderful. I really enjoyed them. And both of them reassured for me that I was enrolled on the right side of the river. And so one of the examples one day in a course that we were taking about a nonprofit organization was each case study, the nonprofit organization had a based belief, a theory of change.

And I, unknowingly, raised my hand boldly and wanted to question the theory of change of that organization. And the professor quickly corrected me that, hey, we don't, in these courses, question the theory of change. And so for me, one of the things that HDS provided for me was this assurance that no, we questioned the theory of change.

And so I carried that into my career in the criminal justice system, the Department of Corrections. And one of the ways that showed up really unexpected and profoundly for me was I went into the criminal justice system to work for people in custody for their families and for their children.

And when I worked at the penitentiary as a chaplain, we started a restorative justice group with men in custody, members of the community, and employees. And so one of the things when you're in prison, you don't often get the opportunity to address those folks that you've directly harmed through your crime.

But the premise of the group is that we could address the harm within the community of the penitentiary. And so we read Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect that talks in detail about the 1971 Stanford Prison Project.

And one of the things that the men really kind of gifted for me in that questioning my basic assumption of why I was in prison was this awareness, this aha about the harm, the psychological trickery, if you will, of what it means to be an employee of the Department of Corrections, in particular, a correctional officer.

And so that MLK's notion that we're all the shared fabric, that we have the shared destiny really shifted my role in the last several years that I've spent with the Department of Corrections, from directly working on behalf of people in custody to looking at employee wellness. And so that's something we'll talk a little bit more about as we go.

SUSIE HAYWARD: That's great. Thank you, Kelly. Yeah. The religious studies approach that has really benefited me is that question everything. It brings sort of deep critical analysis to all of the presumed systems and processes of doing things, as well as that holistic understanding of how change is necessary, focusing on the spiritual and the whole of the self and systems as well.

Gary.

GARY BURRILL: Well, thanks. I didn't come to HDS to straighten out my thinking so much about social and economic justice. I had already been an organizer, community organizer, and writer on the left for some years before I went to theological school.

But I did come with a sense of urgent need to clarify my own thinking as a Christian Socialist about what's the real theoretical, the real theological bedrock of this position, what does it really mean to be a Christian Socialist, and to clarify my sense of the vision and the mission that involves.

That was over 30 years ago. This has made a tremendous difference to me as a progressive politician. One of the elements that, I think, if you asked many people what's missing in our current politics, they often will say, well, vision, a bigger picture, or some sense of what this is all for or a commanding sense of purpose.

I had this marvelous opportunity for those couple of years to just buckle down and straighten out for myself what is it that I think. And in politics, there's no shortage of people who want to guide you about what you think.

And it's immensely helpful to have a very solid foundation of a sense of why it is you're there and what it is you think you're pushing for. And I think that theological education has been very helpful to me in that respect.

SUSIE HAYWARD: I appreciate that, that deep grounding and the time that you get to really craft the vision and ground yourself in it before going out into the world where there will be many, many temptations to stray from your groundedness and your commitment. So thank you, Gary, for that.

Before I turn to the third question, I just want to invite all of those who are with us, if you have questions for the panelists, to please throw them into the chat box. And we'll have time to get to them after the next couple of questions. If it's for a particular panelist, please note that in the chat box.

For the third question, I'm curious if we can give a little bit more illustration of what we were just talking about. So if you have an anecdote or an example of some sort of when you're training in religious studies, your religious literacy helped you with formulating a policy response or responding to a particular crisis or need in your position in government.

So Usra, I can begin with you, please.

USRA GHAZI: Yes. So before I-- I mentioned that I worked at Interfaith America and was helping with President Obama's Interfaith Campus Challenge program. At that point-- and part of my studies at HDS were about looking at the growth of faith-based offices at government agencies at the state level and at federal agencies.

And so like his predecessor, President Obama also appointed individuals to lead these faith-based office for the Department of Commerce or for other agencies. I went to a particular government agency's event while I was still outside government.

And they decided to open up the event with a benediction and close it with a prayer, where they were-- the person in charge of that agency invoked Jesus and other kind of very heavily Christian themes.

And as a Muslim practitioner, community organizer, interfaith worker, I felt super excluded and kind of like, hey, I studied religion for my undergrad, and I know enough to know that this is probably not appropriate.

And it really made me want to think like the story that I've been told about the division of faith and public life or religion and government, what's it really about? And what are the rules we should be following as we enter into this new world of hyperactive engagement between government agencies and faith communities?

So I ended up deciding to go to HDS. And when I started my fellowship at the mayor's office in Boston, with my first week, I was at a community event. I think it was organized by an Irish-American organization. Contact the mayor's office and somebody pulled me aside and said, so you're the faith-based policy fellow. Do you go around hosting prayer circles, like what's your deal?

And I realized, over the years, that there is so much that people assume that religion means or should mean. It's based on the stories we're told about, our Constitution, about the First Amendment, about Founding Fathers, about what's OK in a school, and what's not OK in a school.

And a lot of my experiences at HDS helped me dissect these assumptions and better understand from various lenses how religion can and maybe should be talked about within public schools, within government agencies, and to understand at a deeper level.

So all that to say when I joined the State Department, I had the blessing and the privilege of getting to work at the Office of Religion and Global Affairs where we conducted-- and Susie, you were there-- a number of trainings when you were at USIP on religion and global affairs, religion and government engagement.

And a lot of it just involved talking to foreign policy practitioners about the basics, breaking down their assumptions about the First Amendment, things they couldn't do, trying to open up people's eyes to say, hey, you can talk about more than Ramadan with X Muslim community.

You can talk about anti-corruption efforts. You can talk about criminal justice. You can talk about these themes that are really important to diverse communities and connected to their deeply held values and still be within the parameters of law and within the First Amendment parameters.

So I took a lot from some of the professors that I already mentioned in the kind of curriculum and training I developed as a trainer within that office and continue to do that type of education in my day to day, even now that I'm not in a religion-focused job.

SUSIE HAYWARD: That's great. Thank you, Usra. Yeah, thanks for outing me, too, as a former quasi-governmental. So a lot of what you folks are saying resonates quite deeply for me as well. Kelly, how about you? Give us an example.

KELLY RATHS: Yeah. And kind of this I alluded to before in the last question, one of the things midway through my career that became a shift for me in my energy direction.

And really, I think because of almost receiving permission from that group of incredible men at the penitentiary, involved in that restorative justice process, was this shared single garment of destiny that we have in this appreciation that this system that we are in harm's in all directions.

And so my career shift took off to focusing on employee wellness. And you may or may not be aware that our first responder community-- I mean, that is a public health crisis in and of itself with their social, emotional, physical outcomes for the career choices that they've made.

And so one of the things that I did in that focus on employee wellness and can we move the dial on employee well-being was I partnered with the amazing Fleet Maull with the Center for Mindfulness and Corrections. And we spent a lot of time teaching correctional employees to breathe, to be mindful, to take ownership over their own physiology, their nervous systems, things like that.

And so one of the things that this may cause, whatever degree of reaction, but I think we were particularly proud when we thought that we'd led these three-day silent mindfulness retreats for corrections employees that the correction system paid for, paid time for these folks to participate.

And as we were breathing, we had folks who had their concealed carry strapped on them. And so it was just like, OK, can we breathe you into a space of safety where you can evolve in these understandings? And so that became an incredible place for me in like, why is this system so sticky from an HDS standpoint?

And I don't think that I would have understood or been able to impact the system and its stickiness had I not been a part of it. And I think that investment just closed out one of the things that-- at the end of my career with bittersweet quality-- is that focus on employees, that understanding of stickiness allowed me, if you will, to midwife the closure of three prisons.

So at the end of our current governor's term last year, she decided to close three prisons. And so HDS equipped me to understand, how do you bring this system to the history books and to love and care for incredible public servants in those prison systems and use tools that are different than the tools that created this punitive system?

So how do you love a prison in a very rural remote area that holds that economy together into closure? And so I think that kind of complexity and again, heading on a path that I wouldn't have anticipated in my career, it was the HDS tools that helped me to do that, so.

SUSIE HAYWARD: That's fantastic, Kelly. Yeah. So just thinking about how all of these policies and systems have humans at their heart of them. And so putting that human need and perspective in the midst of it and thinking about how to make decisions that don't reproduce violence wittingly or unwittingly.

Gary, over to you. Do you have an example for us?

GARY BURRILL: Well, I think that my own theological education has helped me a lot to think about and provide some leadership in a very important part of political work, which is failure and loss. I think about Sharon Welch. She was a big influence on my thinking, feminist ethicist at HDS when I was there.

She used to talk about how in the '80s, she had been involved in the anti-nuclear movement at a time when the movement was really going through some struggles and decline. And people were not being attracted to rallies and meetings and so on.

And she noticed that at the meetings where she was, everyone had gone away except those whose background, to a great extent, had come out of the African-American church.

Then she reflected on that and said that it-- said to her that these were people who had come out of a formation to this work, out of which, they did not hyperfocus on individual battles but rather, had a larger sense of the mission and the purpose and the goal, by which they thought about the worth of their work for social change.

I think this has always stayed with me. I, until recently, was leader of the New Democratic Party in Nova Scotia. And I came to be leader in a period of real setbacks for our party and discouragement for our party.

And I tried very hard, in the years when I was in that position, to help us regain our confidence about what was our purpose, what was our mission, what were we trying to do, and to understand that this was going to include times of setback and include times of failure.

And that did not diminish, in any way, the integrity or power of our capital P Project. And I think that's a way of thinking that much has been much configured in me theologically.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Wonderful. Thank you. The stuff of ministry and of religion and the role that it can play and remaining committed to a larger vision, it's powerful. And Jackie, to you, please.

JACQUELINE COLLINS: So I think it's quite obvious now that my guiding principle and moral compass has been Dr. King.

And so his quote that I really formed the bedrock of all my campaigns and my legislative career is that Dr. King's quote that says, "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere deserve three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their mind, dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits."

And so as a woman, as an African-American, and a member of a faith community, the question of how we provide remedy and for whom is never far from my mind. So as a legislator, I seek to provide remedy for those who need it the most. And that is what justice looks like to me.

And for that reason, if you follow my legislative career, you are going to see me tackle a lot of issues that I feel are at the root of inequality here in Illinois. And that's why I relate very closely to what Kelly said in reference to criminal justice reform as well as Gary's move in politics to actually bring change.

So in the Illinois General Assembly, as an example, I chaired the financial institutions committee. And it was in response to reports of widespread racial inequality, in how home loan, lending and property appraisals were being conducted that I held a Senate hearing that brought together banking executives, government agencies, and advocates to look at the report and to come to some kind of recognition of reform being needed.

So based on the findings of the committee hearing, I introduced the Illinois Predatory Loan Prevention Act. So it was this legislation that capped interest rates for all consumer, auto and title loans at 36%. Now, that might seem even high. That might even seem like usury.

But prior to this legislation, the APR on average for a payday loan was averaging in 267%, thus creating a cycle of debt and generational poverty. And so we know that these high cost payday loans and auto title lenders have stripped billions of dollars from Illinois families and both the Black and brown communities.

And we're responsible, basically, for worsening the racial wealth gap. So it's really economic exploitation. So I say that to say basically, my legislative agenda has been framed by the work and witness of Dr. King and his concept of justice.

And one of the things that I like-- I'm called to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I think former Congressman John Lewis referred to it as getting into good trouble and necessary trouble.

So I want to tell one of the other issues that I dealt with was I sponsored legislation. I have a large Muslim group in my district. I sponsor something called Charity Without Fear. Right after the 2011 attack, many of our Muslim brothers and sisters, who are obligated to send money back to charitable organizations, they were put on a terrorist list.

So I sponsor legislation, so they would not be accused of terrorism for making their charity obligations. And also, I sponsor legislation to help our Muslim brothers and sisters where they would not be penalized for wearing their religious garb, whether it was the hijab for women and other necessities or the beards, right?

So I'm proud to say that my exposure at HDS to Islam and that religious tradition helped me understand and continue the fight for equity across the board, allowing everyone's religious traditions to be respected.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Great examples of the commitment to justice and the commitment to religious pluralism and the intersection of justice and religious pluralism and the experience of minorities. Thank you, Jackie.

I have one last question for all of you. And then I'm going to turn it over to the questions that have been coming in the chat. And please, anybody else who has a question, please throw it in there. We're going to get to as many as we can.

But before we do that, I hear from many students here at HDS these days-- it probably won't surprise you-- but a healthy skepticism about the ability to truly advance justice within systems, specifically systems of power. And when that system is governmental, given its power agendas, given the bureaucracy of government, and so on, a concern about the ability to truly work within those systems in ways that are transformational.

So many of you may be familiar with the famous Audre Lorde quote, "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." In that same speech in 1984, she went on to say that they, the master's tools, may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game but not to create genuine change.

So that's what our current students are wrestling with. And I'm sure that this is also something that the four of you have wrestled with as well as did I when I was working in DC and even now as I work within this system here at Harvard. So I wonder if you could speak a bit to that question or that challenge.

How can you work within the government system to advance justice without inadvertently reproducing or reifying unjust practices and agendas? Can you do so? So Kelly, if I can start with you.

KELLY RATHS: Yeah. Susie, I don't think you can. And so I think about when I go to the grocery store and I am trying my darndest to make the most enlightened cart of groceries that I have least amount of miles traveled plastic, other sorts of things like that, there is something unavoidable that-- there's kind of the shared caught up in.

And so I have thought a lot about this. And this is in part why I'm at the end of my career in corrections. But I don't want to dissuade folks from doing that.

So just a couple of things that come to my mind on this question. One is I have always personally struggled with-- there's some folks in my business and others that have a tagline on their emails to be above reproach. I think-- [CHUCKLES] there is no such thing as being above reproach.

I think that we are prepared and equipped through our faith, through our training for incredible complexity, for things that are messy and that that ability-- and then for most of us, we have some faith background that allows me to say, in my faith tradition, do I have a garden to pray in?

Do I have people to break bread with? Do I have ministers of the word who are cross checking my moral compass everyday? And just as that faith allowed me to come into this work, my faith also has showed me when to exit the work.

And so I also-- I think the other thing for me that is challenging and particularly important in these times is to not exacerbate fault lines.

And so if I were to stay cloistered in my ideals, I would have missed a great deal of understanding that just as I prayed for a system to find a different way out to be dismantled, there are wives and loved ones of the people that I have worked with who pray everyday just as fervently for protect my husband or my wife who's this officer as they go and protect the community.

And so how do I reconcile my prayers with their prayers? And that, I couldn't have understood and contributed to change had I not been a part of the thing that felt a little scary. So starting off.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you for that honest reflection, Kelly. Gary, you have thoughts on this question?

GARY BURRILL: Well, sure. It's a very familiar part of the landscape of the social change struggle, this question. I don't think of it as an abstract question but as a practical matter of, how do we actually accomplish things that seem as though they can't be accomplished? And so for some people, this can only be done, let's say legislatively.

And that's where the real action is and not in terms of direct action and organizing and community mobilization and so on. For other people, it's the opposite, that the real action, the thing that really leads to change, accomplishing things, that people might have thought couldn't be accomplished only comes from mobilizing and organizing and putting together grassroots power.

And my experience is, although I spent most of my life or much of my life on the legislative side, I would not say that I think that's the only path to accomplishing a great change. And in my own experience, I would say that when there is a convergence of these two worlds of social change, this is where the gas is.

This is where the power, is when you have progressive committed legislators on an issue at a time and a context where there is real popular mobilization around that issue, things can be accomplished in the public sphere that people would have thought there was no chance of accomplishing.

I can think of many examples here in the politics of Eastern Canada. The one particular recent one is rent control. We have recently achieved rent control.

Succession of governments had said that under no circumstances would they ever allow rent control, which was achieved through the work of a strong militant, left-wing caucus arguing for it in the legislature while there were people organizing demonstrations and mobilizing communities in the streets.

And the convergence of this can create change that nobody would have thought could have been done. That's all.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Yeah. No. I appreciate that. The work from within and without is necessary for the transformation to occur.

GARY BURRILL: Somebody called this pushing for nonreformist reforms. I think that's right.

SUSIE HAYWARD: And appreciate as well that you're coming in to-- like with you, sir, you're coming in with the organizing background as well with that experience and perspective. Jackie, anything you want to add to this?

JACQUELINE COLLINS: Yeah. I think there is interconnectividity-- connectivity-- excuse me, a connectedness to both organizing on the outside and the activism, advocating for what you believe in and what you do on the legislative side. So I look at politics at the art of the possibility.

And I love the saying-- and I can't remember who said it-- but those closest to the pain need to be closest to the power. And what being a legislator, being in the legislative process means is that I'm able to give justice a seat at the policy table.

And so we have many examples of how you work together with the advocacy. We only have to look at the same sex marriage legislation that recently passed because of the advocacy on the outside and what they were able to connect with legislators who upheld the right of same sex marriages. So it takes both working together.

So I come out of the '60s. So I naturally assume that inspired by the Kennedys, who are actually in the institution, but the Kennedys really defined public service and gave me a desire to be a part of that change, to be an agent of change within the system.

And so even later for the millennials that came out of the Obama administration or were inspired by his rhetoric of hope and what possibility could be, I think that show-- many young people are now running for office based on the influence of the Obama and his rhetoric of hope. So I think it takes both.

We were only able to move civil rights legislation and the Voting Rights Act of '65 when Johnson told the advocates that, I want to do it, but you have to make me do it. And so then they went out and put in the momentum and a movement that gave birth to the organizing on the outside that pursued or persuaded Johnson to act.

So I take both of us working together. And I don't want the young students or the students at HDS to be so cynical that they give up their agency to be agents of change.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thanks, Jackie. And Usra.

USRA GHAZI: Thank you, Susan. Thanks, everyone. I very much in line with everything that you shared. Now, I grew up as a Muslim of Pakistani origin in a post 9/11 era and grew up seeing policies like the Patriot Act made about the communities that I come from and feeling like I didn't have a voice in those decisions.

And I grew up in a family of organizers and community leaders. And so very early on in my life, I knew the power of showing up, knocking on an elected representative's door, and asking for what you need.

And I was reminded of this at the mayor's office in Boston when early in my time there, a Somali community leader came to our office and said, hey, I see cops policing my neighborhood all the time. But why don't I see Somali cops?

I want you, the mayor and the mayor staff, to work on a program that helps educate my community about how they can join the police force or ways that they can be more included and have jobs and internships at city hall.

And that is the kind of engagement that really inspires me because it took her, being on that side of the table as a community leader, to make some change happen that happened as a result of her outreach. And for someone like me, who understood that community and had a voice at the policymaking table to help make certain things happen.

And so I got to end up organizing Mayor Walsh's first iftar at city hall, which was protested by fellow Muslims who did not agree with the role that the mayor want to play in engaging religious communities. But like Gary was saying, I think it takes all sides, and it takes perspectives. And it takes-- I like to say it takes Martins and it takes Malcolms to create a successful movement.

And so that's what really inspired me. I'll just really briefly mention that while I was waiting to get into the Foreign Service, I directed an organization called America Indivisible that helps Muslim communities and those who perceive to be Muslim connect with local leaders, city, state, and county-level leaders, like Senator Collins, to do more and to ask more of their representatives.

And we ran a study in 2017 and found that across all faith communities, Muslims were the least engaged with their local elected representatives. And that is a disservice to the community. It's a disservice to themselves.

And so I would love to see that anger and that activism helping to get more people out there drawing attention to the issues that matter to them. But also, perhaps, seeing for themselves, careers at the policy-making table so that they can work in tandem.

SUSIE HAYWARD: It's great. Thank you. And what you're saying also speaks to what Kelly was saying earlier, too, about just the complexity and the messiness of all of these issues. And part of what a divinity school degree does is help you be less paralyzed in the face of complexity and try to manage it creatively in order to advance real transformations. So I'm going to turn now to some of the questions that have been coming in here.

And I'm going to start with a question from Jess Heil, who is speaking as somebody with 30 plus years staffing in public service, and is asking about, when you have encountered situations where you are having a value conflict with either the administration that you're representing, the party you're representing, or your bosses, and how you have dealt strategically with those moral conflicts and representing or pushing for certain policy priorities.

Does anybody want to take that one first?

JACQUELINE COLLINS: So I'll start first. I think I come to the table with a value system that I believe in. And I'm not willing to move off of my value standard. However, this is where I ask for the lobbyists of advocates that support my stance to be the agents on the outside to fight for what I'm trying to do while I'm at the table.

It also requires me to talk to people who might not share the same values to explain my position where I'm coming from, hoping that they listen with an opening ear. I mean it's so-- in reference with criminal justice reform, right? Many of my opposition on the opposition side are very law-and-order directed, guided.

I have to show them how that policy has caused disparate treatment and injustice to certain victims of an unjust criminal justice system. They might not hear me, but I have the facts. Hopefully they'll hear me and make change. But if not, I have those advocates on the outside fighting and uplifting the voices of the incarcerated, the former incarcerated.

And so that's how I deal with it. But I'm not going to change my value, who I am, because I want to bring a different value to the table. And I'm not willing to move on that. And there are so many people in the system institution that uphold a status quo.

I'm not there to uphold a status quo, I'm there to question the status quo because it has not served my constituency well over the years. So I have to bring a different voice that really raises the critical issues about racism, xenophobia in society, and homophobia in society. So that's why I'm there, and that's the role I have to play while I'm there.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Great. Thank you, Jackie. Let me add another question onto here. And you can either answer the first question from Jess or another question here that's coming in from Hunter Limbaugh, which is, Hunter's curious how all the panelists views on-- he's curious about the panelists' views on how one effectively separates personal religiosity from public policy in the secular world of governing.

So how do you manage your own faith commitments, express your own faith commitments, operate out of your own faith commitments in a way that is inclusive?

USRA GHAZI: I'll just say a quick word about this. I should have started with this. But my views that I shared in this session do not represent the US Department of State. And so one way that we do it is we use disclaimers, right?

Separate from that, at least at the State Department, there are channels that you can use to voice your dissent, like a dissent cable channel, where any all-star staff can write in any opposition that they have on whatever values they base it on about existing policies or to advise the department about existing policies that they do not agree with or are ill advised, if they think they are ill advised.

So that's one method. But also, I, recently, just last year, helped found a new Muslim employees association at the State Department. And so there is a growing network of diverse employee organizations across federal agencies, where these conversations can be had.

And these are EEO-protected spaces, Equal Employment Office-protected spaces, where we can have these discussions and talk about our values, in a way without a fear of reprisal or feeling as if it's not a safe environment to share these thoughts or to share our values with each other.

So there are lots of ways that you can find an opportunity to have these conversations, both formally, such as the dissent channel, and then informally with peers and colleagues. So just a couple ideas on what happens within the State Department

SUSIE HAYWARD: Thank you, Usra. Kelly or Gary, do you want to add anything else or come in quickly to the hour? So this will have to be something of the last word.

KELLY RATHS: I would just quickly, Gary. One of the things for me, as a person, white woman in the corrections system, trying to bridge some gaps, for me, I spent inordinate amounts of time eating breakfast and drinking coffee with folks.

It was really that relational capital piece that was what HDS equipped me to say, is that my roots of my faith grow deeper as I engage someone who, same faith or not, has differences. And so my roots grow deeper. But it was a lot of relational capital time to say through this relationship, to sit down and say, I don't share that same understanding as you. And how do we walk one on one through those conversations?

I was the kooky liberal who led a lot of mindfulness trainings and so how to stay in relationship to be able to have those difficult conversations. I will turn over to Gary.

GARY BURRILL: Well, I would just say about the second question that a person, of course, always has to be humble about their own formation and recognize it as only one stream. In my own political tradition of the Democratic Party, there's a stream of people who have come from religiously configured socialism. But it's certainly not the majority view in our party.

There's a big stream of people who have come out with the women's movement, stream of people who have come out of the environmental movement, lots of other streams. So I think we need to cultivate and try to live within this combined confidence in who we are and what we believe, and at the same time, humility about one's own formation.

SUSIE HAYWARD: Wonderful. Thank you, Gary. That's a great message to end on. And I want to thank all of our panelists. I mean, this conversation, we could go for hours.

But I really appreciate what you've offered in terms of how the study of religion can help you, both of the diversity of religion that exists in so many of our human societies but also in asking those-- critiquing everything, asking questions about everything and embracing the complexity and working through the complexity and how a religious studies degree can help you with that.

So thank you for joining us today. And I'll hand it back over to Chandra to take us out.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Susie, Gary, Jackie, Usra, and Kelly for this wonderfully thoughtful discussion. And thanks to all of you in the audience for your thought-provoking questions. And the conversation doesn't have to stop here. I hope to see you all in Cambridge this November 4 for HDS Alumni Day.

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