Religion and Public Life Spring 2026 Summit
Capital, Conscience, and Knowledge: Religion and the Common Good in a Market-Driven Society
Thursday, March 26 - Friday, March 27, 2026
Swartz Hall, 45 Francis Avenue
Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
This conference, hosted by Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School in partnership with Arizona State University’s Department of Religious Studies, engages the fundamental moral questions animating the overlapping sources of power now shaping higher education within market and political economies increasingly influenced by AI, digitization, and related social dynamics. Capital, Conscience, and Knowledge frames the endowment as a central site of governance. Alongside broader themes at the intersection of religion, capitalism, and higher education, we ask how payout rules, restricted gifts, and investment mandates shape academic freedom, moral formation, and public trust.
We will bring together scholars, public intellectuals, and institutional leaders to analyze these pressures and to develop practical strategies, with a focus on the role of higher education in moral formation, ethical reflection, and the pursuit of justice in a democratic society.
Attendance is limited. Please register below by Friday, March 16, 2026. Please contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu if you have any questions.
Conference Background and Rationale
Institutions of higher learning in the United States are under sustained scrutiny. Supporters and critics question the value and legitimacy of a college education amid intersecting concerns about cost, access, free speech, and institutional neutrality. In contrast to the latter half of the twentieth century, when colleges and universities held strong prestige within civil society, recent years have seen an erosion of higher education’s perceived moral authority and political autonomy. Yet today’s turbulence also reflects the dialogical, critical, and constructive character of contemplative and investigative learning in the liberal arts and sciences.
Capital, Conscience, and Knowledge brings together scholars, public intellectuals, and institutional leaders to analyze these strains and to develop practical strategies, with a focus on the role of higher education in moral formation, ethical reflection, and the pursuit of justice in a democratic society.
Please click below to read more.
For nearly three centuries, American colleges and universities have calibrated commitments to classical education, innovation, and the common good. They have always navigated competing interests; today they face intensified political, social, and market demands.
These demands have roots. American universities have long served as guardians of tradition and sites of intellectual insurgency. During the civil-rights era, campuses became key battlegrounds for inclusion, justice, and peace, marked by friction among Anglo-American liberalism, classical education, critical approaches to race, gender, and capitalism, and demands for social transformation. At the same time, as movements for racial and gender inclusion gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s—and as antiwar activism grew—the university became increasingly entangled with market forces: corporate partnerships, defense-industry contracts, philanthropic influence, and exposure to the instabilities of federal and state funding. These dynamics have only grown more complex as critical disciplinary innovations over the past half century (e.g., Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Environmental Studies, Religious Studies) have become flash points in broader debates about the meaning and purpose of higher education.
Scholars in the humanities, and in the study of religion in particular, aim to navigate research, teaching, and learning without abandoning moral education. Given the ties among theology, religious difference, and ethical discernment, scholars and students of religion are well positioned to contribute to public conversations about the purposes and values of higher education. Moral and political fault lines have been actively contested within the study of religion—especially across theological and religious studies contexts—where questions of moral pluralism, cultural crisis, and spiritual values are front and center.
Former Harvard University president, Derek Bok, in his Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education cautioned that “the danger lies not in making money but in allowing financial concerns to overwhelm the educational and moral purposes of the university.” This remains a central challenge. At Arizona State University, President Michael Crow’s “New American University” model seeks to address these tensions by positioning higher education as a “social enterprise” that leverages market forces for public benefit.
Higher education now faces renewed pressures from federal and state interventions. Reliance on corporations, donors, and government funding has yielded scientific, economic, social, and cultural advances, but it has also deepened dependence on market dynamics and political currents. Today’s infrastructure is shaped as much by endowments, donors, and data-driven management and efficiency as by commitments to truth, scientific inquiry, equity, and civic growth.
The yearlong conversation, a partnership between Harvard Divinity School and Arizona State University, engages the fundamental moral questions animating the overlapping sources of power now shaping higher education within market and political economies increasingly influenced by Artificial Intelligence, digitization, and related social dynamics.
Capital, Conscience, and Knowledge treats the endowment as a central site of governance. Alongside broader themes at the intersection of religion, capitalism, and higher education, we ask how payout rules, restricted gifts, and investment mandates shape academic freedom, moral formation, and public trust. The yearlong conversation, a partnership between Harvard Divinity School and Arizona State University’s Department of Religious Studies, engages the fundamental moral questions animating the overlapping sources of power now shaping higher education within market and political economies increasingly influenced by Artificial Intelligence, digitization, and related social dynamics. The conversation opened with a hybrid event featuring Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson on October 28, 2025. This conference invites participants to imagine new frameworks for higher education which bring together moral clarity and institutional power and reclaim the university as a force for justice in public life.
Programming: Thursday, March 26, 2026
3:00 – 4:00 pm | Arrival and Check-In | HDS Commons, Swartz Hall
Registered conference attendees will need to check in. Upon checking in, attendees will receive a conference program booklet, name tag, and other conference supplies.
4:00 – 5:00 pm | Conference Opening Reception | Braun Room, Swartz Hall
A high-top table reception will be provided for conference attendees. Please note any accessibility accommodations you may need when you register.
5:00 – 6:30 pm | Opening Panel | James Room, Swartz Hall
“Religion, Capital, and the University: Purpose, Power, and Democratic Norms”
Panelists:
- Benjamin M. Friedman, AB '66, AM '69, PhD '71 – Harvard University, Department of Economics
- Nikki W. Kraus – Chief Executive Officer, Strategic Investment Group
- Corey D.B. Walker, MTS '99 – Dean, Wake Forest University School of Divinity
Moderator:
- Terrence L. Johnson, MDiv ’00 – Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), and Director of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School
Programming: Friday, March 27, 2026
8:00 – 9:00 am | Breakfast and Check-in | James Room, Swartz Hall
All registered conference attendees who were not able to attend Thursday evening will need to check in. Upon checking-in attendees will receive a conference program booklet, name tag, and other conference supplies. A continental breakfast will be available.
9:00 – 9:15 am | Welcome | James Room, Swartz Hall
- Opening Remarks and Welcome by HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick
9:15 – 10:15 am | Opening Keynote | James Room, Swartz Hall
“Universities at the Crossroads: The State, the Endowment, and the Crisis of Legitimacy”
Speaker:
- Laurie L. Patton, AB '83 – President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Respondent:
- Terrence L. Johnson, MDiv ’00 – Charles G. Adams Professor of African American Religious Studies, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS), and Director of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School
10:20 am – 11:30 am | Panel 1| James Room, Swartz Hall
"Risk, Return, and Responsibility"
Panelists:
- George Bulman – University of California Santa Cruz
- John Y. Campbell – Harvard University, Department of Economics
- Darren Dochuk – University of Notre Dame, Department of History
- Luis M. Viceira, AM '95, PhD '98 – Harvard Business School
Moderator:
- Jacob K. Olupona – Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Chair of African and African American Studies (FAS)
11:40 am – 12:50 pm | Panel 2| James Room, Swartz Hall
"Private Money and the Crisis of the Common Good"
Panelists:
- Mark Cladis – Brown University, Department of Religious Studies
- John W. Rogers, Jr. – Founder, Chairman, Co-CEO and CIO, Ariel Investments
- Deondra Rose – Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy
- Jonathan F.P. Rose – Founder, CEO, Jonathan Rose Companies
Moderator:
- Melissa Wood Bartholomew, MDiv '15 – Associate Dean for Community and Belonging and Lecturer on Community and Belonging, Harvard Divinity School
12:50 – 1:10 pm | Lunch | James Room, Swartz Hall
1:15 – 2:15 pm | Keynote | James Room, Swartz Hall
“Leading Mission-Driven Institutions”
Speaker:
- Linda Livingstone – President, Baylor University
Respondent:
- David F. Holland – Bartlett Professor of New England Church History and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Harvard Divinity School
2:20 – 3:30 pm | Panel 3| James Room, Swartz Hall
"Institutional Power: Perspectives, Evidence, and Accountability"
Panelists:
- Nabih Haddad – Michigan State University, Department of Religious Studies
- Susannah Heschel, MTS '76 – Dartmouth College, Department of Jewish Studies
- Timothy M. Rainey – St. Olaf College, Department of Religious Studies
- K. Wayne Yang, AB '92 – Provost, John Muir College, University of California San Diego
Moderator:
- Evan Berry – Arizona State University, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
3:30 – 3:45 pm | Coffee and tea break | James Room, Swartz Hall
3:45 – 4:55 pm | Leadership Roundtable | James Room, Swartz Hall
"Stewardship, Moral Formation, and Public Trust"
Participants:
- Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld – President, Hebrew College
- Michael L. Lomax – President and CEO, United Negro College Fund
- Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado – Provost, Lebanon Valley College
- David Quigley – Provost and Dean of Faculties, Boston College
Moderator:
- Tracey E. Hucks, AM ’95, PhD ’98 – Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Suzanne Young Murray Professor (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)
4:55 – 5:00 pm | Closing Remarks
Planning Your Visit
We recommend that you make hotel arrangements as early as possible as rooms may be limited.
Cambria Hotel Boston Somerville
515 Somerville Ave
Somerville, MA 02143
Main: 617-341-9040
We have blocked a few rooms at a reduced price for the conference; you may use this link to obtain the special pricing – valid until 2/25/2026.
Porter Square Hotel
1924 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
Main: 617-499-3399
Hotel 1868
1868 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
Main: 617-499-2998
Harvard Square Hotel
110 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Main: 617-864-5200
A Friendly Inn at Harvard Square
1673 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Main: 617-547-7851
Irving House at Harvard
24 Irving Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Main: 617-547-4600
Parking
Parking is available at the 52 Oxford Street Parking Garage.
The entrance is located at Oxford Street and Everett Street and is about 0.1 miles from the HDS campus.
University guests can also log in to the permit site and purchase their own permits:
- Go to the Daily Parking Permit Purchasing site.
- Log in as a Visitor, create a log in and password if this is the first time.
- If this is the first time logging in, you will need to indicate that you are affiliated with HDS, the department code is 1002.
- To purchase a permit, select the parking lot on the home page, on the next page, enter the license plate number and state, and the date(s) for the permits. Permits can only be purchased less than 2 weeks ahead through the online system.
- Use RENTAL as the license plate number for rental cars.
- Payment can be made through Pay Pal or a credit card.
- Once purchased, you will be able to print or save a PDF of the permit.
- The permit needs to be displayed on the dashboard of the parked car.
- Please note that the permit holder must stop at the Guard House on the way into the 52 Oxford Street Garage, show the guard the permit and they will give the permit holder a ticket to swipe. This will allow access into the garage. The permit holder must keep the swipe ticket with them as it allows pedestrian access back into the garage to get their car. They swipe the ticket to call the elevator to the ground floor. Note: hitting the button on the elevator will not bring the elevator to them.
For additional visitor parking, please visit the Harvard Transportation Parking Locations site.
More on maps, directions, and parking.
Contact
Please contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu if you have any questions.
Harvard Divinity School welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations, please contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu in advance of your participation.