I’ve been teaching a graduate seminar on religion and peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School one night a month this year (as HDS’s first Lecturer on the Practice of Peace). The course is connected with the public speaker series that is part of the school’s new Religions and the Practice of Peace Initiative.

Our most recent speakers were Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammad Ashafa, founders of the Interfaith Mediation Center in Nigeria. They once led rival youth militias and tried to kill one another. James lost his hand in combat. Muhammad lost his teacher and two cousins. They ultimately made peace and now help others do the same.

I’m pictured here with them, and with Dean David Hampton, Professor Diana Eck (one of my teachers when I studied at HDS years ago), and Professor Darren Kew of UMass Boston (who I know from my student days, and who now focuses his academic work on Nigeria).