Category Archives: Online Events

Welcome to the first event of the Fall 2022 QLHE series.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented, in partnership with Twin Seas Media:

Truth Tellers: Higher Education, the Arts, and Social Justice

The importance of Truth, Creativity, and the Human Story in our classrooms, our institutions, and society.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Presenter:
Robert Shetterly
American Artist
americanswhotellthetruth.org

Moderator:
Matt Zisk
Attorney and Retired Professor
Founder and Executive Director
Cherry Brook Arts

Here is the link to the video and other information about this event.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:

Rethinking the Holy Experiment: Decolonizing Quakerism

What is the work of decolonization? How might it impact Quakerism, our testimonies, and our organizations?

Tuesday, May 24, 2022
7:30-9 pm, eastern

Presenters:
Cherice Bock
M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary
M.S., Antioch University New England
Ph.D. candidate, Antioch University New England
Adjunct Professor
Portland Seminary
Creation Justice Advocate
Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon

Christy Randazzo
PhD, University of Birmingham
Adjunct Professor
Montclair State University, NJ
University of St. Joseph, CT

Moderator:
Ada Jaarsma
Professor of Philosophy
Mount Royal University

This panel focused on addressing the necessity of reimagining Quakerism at its foundations, with an explicitly decolonial focus. This included offering a brief explanation of what the work of decolonizing entails generally, along with an examination of the potential ways that this process could be applied to Quakerism in terms of our theology, our testimony, as well as the practical impacts of such an approach on our institutions. Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo discussed both the challenges and opportunities they encountered as they organized a recent panel on decolonizing the Quaker Peace Testimony for the Quaker Theological Discussion Group (QTDG), with an eye to offering those in attendance some potential frameworks for continuing this work within their own meetings, churches, and institutions.

Bios:

Cherice Bock lives in Oregon, on the lands of the Kalapuya (now part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). She is adjunct professor of ecotheology at Portland Seminary, and she leads Oregon Interfaith Power & Light at Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. She began teaching in the theology department at University of Portland in the fall of 2020.  In the 2018–2019 school year, she served as visiting professor of environmental studies at The Oregon Extension. Bock holds an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and an M.S. in environmental studies from Antioch University New England, and she is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental studies at Antioch University New England. Bock edits the Barclay Press curriculum Illuminate, edited the environmental studies journal Whole Terrain for three volumes, and curates web content for the watershed discipleship website, a ministry of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. She is the co-chair for the Quaker Theological Discussion group and is the social media editor for Quaker Religious Thought.

Christy Randazzo (PhD, University of Birmingham) teaches at both Montclair State University (New Jersey, USA) and the University of St. Joseph (Connecticut, USA), where they offer courses on religious peacemaking, introduction to religious studies, and the intersections between theology and peace work. They have also done ministry across multiple religious communities in diverse settings, including youth ministry, religious education, and social ministries amongst unhoused populations. They have written in a variety of both academic and popular settings, including the Quaker biblical studies series Illuminate, and two books for the Brill Quaker Studies series, including the upcoming A Quaker Ecotheology of Light. Christy is both an editor for the Politics of Scripture on the Political Theology Network, and the co-chair of the Quaker Theological Discussion Group.

Here is more information, including a link to the video of the presentation.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:

Toward a Quaker Testimony of Labor:  
What Do Our Experiences as Quakers Within Higher Education Institutions Tell Us About Our Lived, Embodied Quaker Theology?

Tuesday, April 26, 2022
7:30-9 pm, eastern

Presenters:
Windy Cooler
Doctoral Candidate
Lancaster Theological Seminary

Tom Hamm
Professor of History  
Quaker Scholar in Residence
Earlham College

Moderator:
Trayce N. Peterson
MA student/instructor
Human Rights Practice
University of Arizona

Bios:

Windy Cooler is an embraced public Friend whose ministry is held under the care of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly. She earned an MDiv from Earlham School of Religion in 2021 and is Pendle Hill’s 2020 Cadbury Scholar. A current doctoral candidate at Lancaster Theological Seminary, her work incorporates ethnography and the Quaker tradition of discernment processes to help communities move forward in the Light. Windy a frequent guest of monthly and yearly meetings in the US where she has researched, lectured and given workshops on the connection between caregiving responses and justice in peer-to-peer ministry. She lives with her husband Erik and son Ob in Greenbelt, MD, and has an adult daughter, Maggie.

Tom Hamm is a lifelong Friend with roots that go back to the beginnings of Quakerism–one of his ancestors signed George Fox’s death certificate in 1691. He is a native of New Castle, Indiana. He went to Butler University on a debate scholarship, majoring in history. On graduating in 1979, he went on to Indiana University in Bloomington for his Ph.D. in history, which he completed in 1985. After teaching for two years at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, he joined the faculty at Earlham College. There he taught history and served as archivist and director of special special collections in the library. Now moving toward retirement, he is currently Professor of History and Quaker Scholar in Residence and holds the Trueblood Chair in Christian Thought. At Earlham, he has been actively involved in faculty governance and is currently the clerk of the faculty. Tom has written extensively on Quaker history. His dissertation became his first book, The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907 (Indiana University Press, 1988), received the Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for best first book in American religious history. His other books include God’s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform 1842-1846 (Indiana University Press, 1995); Earlham College: A History, 1847-1997 (Indiana University Press, 1997); The Quakers in America (Columbia University Press, 2003); and Liberal Quakerism in America in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1790-1920 (Brill, 2020). He edited Quaker Writings, 1650-1920 (Penguin Classics, 2012). He has also been the author of numerous articles and book chapters, with four different chapters currently in press. He has completed a book-length manuscript on Hicksite Friends in the nineteenth century, and is currently at work on a project on Quakers and the Civil War and a collection of the writings of North Carolina Friend Mary Mendenhall Hobbs. An active Friend, Tom has served as monthly meeting clerk and as recording clerk of Indiana Yearly Meeting and the New Association of Friends. He has spoken at numerous Quaker venues, including Friends General Conference and Friends United Meeting. He was book review editor for Quaker History from 1990 to 2020, and has served on the editorial boards of Quaker History, and Quaker Studies. From 1993 to 2011, he was a member of the Indiana Library and Historical Board, serving as president 2001-2011. He has also served on the Pendle Hill board, including three years as assistant clerk. Tom and his wife Mary Louise Reynolds live in Richmond, Indiana, near the Earlham campus and across the street from West Richmond Friends Meeting, where he is now a member.

Trayce Peterson is a native of Philadelphia, PA, and grateful for her formative education experiences at Lansdowne, Media, and Providence Friends schools. She received her B.A. and her Master’s of Divinity from Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Tucson, AZ, and is a grad student and instructor in the Human Rights Practice program at the University of Arizona. She is an active member and on the League of Women Voters Greater Tucson board. Trayce is the co-founder of SplitSeed Productions, which uses art-based interventions to inform, educate, and explore issues of human rights. An avid film lover, she is a member of a team working on a film that profiles the work of four longtime Chicana feminist activists at the forefront of immigration rights organizing here in Southern Arizona. Among Friends, Trayce serves on the American Friends Service Committee Nominating Committee and is a General Committee member and co-clerk of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion working group of the Friends Committee National Legislation.

Link to the poster

Here is further information about this event, including a recording.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:

In Search of Integrity
Across the Higher Education Landscape

What has worked in helping you navigate situations where you could easily fall short of full integrity?

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Presenter:
Emma Jones Lapsansky
Emeritus Professor of History and
Curator of the Quaker Collection  
Haverford College

Moderator:
David R. Ross
Research Professor
Department of Economics
Bryn Mawr College

Bio:
Emma Jones Lapsansky is Emeritus Professor of History and Curator of the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, near Philadelphia, PA, where she continues to teach and to consult with students and with scholars who visit Haverford’s Quaker Collections.

After a one-year break in her undergraduate education to work in the Mississippi civil rights movement with the Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches, she received her BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania, and her doctorate in American Civilization from the same institution. Her research interests and publications include Quaker history, African-American history and especially the intersection between the two, as well as Pennsylvania history, the American West, and various aspects of American social and material-culture history.

With Gary Nash and Clayborne Carson, Lapsansky has authored Struggle for Freedom, a college text on African American History, the third edition of which appeared in 2018. She is also a co-author on the Pearson Education high-school American History text, and was a member of the team that recently revised the Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum (APUSH) 2009.
Lapsansky frequently consults to museums and to pre-collegiate curriculum developers on enriching and enlivening public history and classroom history presentations, as well as to authors seeking editorial and/or research advice. See has been an invited lecturer at Earlham College, Guilford College, and George Fox College, Villanova University, and University of Pennsylvania, among others, as well as at a number of Quaker colleges, Meetings, and study centers. She is currently at work on two projects: a history of a Bryn Mawr Quaker family; and a study of a mid-twentieth-century Philadelphia multi-cultural intentional community.

Having been an active member of the governing board of the Organization of American Historians, a Board member of the Library Company of Philadelphia, and an Advisory Board member of the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, Friends’ Central School, the American Friends Service Committee, and Friends Journal, she currently teaches Quaker History and First-Year Writing at Haverford College, and continues to publish and lecture widely on various history topics.

A member of Lansdowne Monthly Meeting, in Lansdowne PA, she is the parent of three Friends’ schools’ graduates, and she now serves on the oversight committee of the Lansdowne Friends School, as well as on the oversight editorial committee for Pendle Hill Pamphlets, and the governing board of Friends’ Historical Association.

Here is the video and further information about this event.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presents:

Universal Design in the Classroom: Inclusivity and Hospitality

Tuesday, February 22, 2022
7:30-9 pm, eastern

To register: tinyurl.com/FAHE-02-22-22

Presenters:
Zoe Arditi
Research Coordinator
Mount Sinai Hospital
Haverford College Class of 2020
https://vimeo.com/537841064

Jane Dryden
Professor of Philosophy
Mount Allison University

Jharna Jahnavi
First-year Medical Student
Larner College of Medicine
University of Vermont
Haverford College Class of 2019

Moderator:
Ada Jaarsma,
Professor of Philosophy
Mount Royal University

Bios:
Zoe Arditi, Research Coordinator at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC. Haverford College Class of ’20 alumni interested in the practice and accessibility of medicine.

Jane Dryden is a philosophy professor at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, where she teaches courses on history of philosophy, feminist philosophy, philosophy of disability, aesthetics, and biomedical ethics.

Jharna Jahnavi (she/her) is a first-year medical student at Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. She was a Haverford College class of 2019 Biology major and is interested in accessibility for marginalized students in STEM, higher education, and medicine.

Supporting Vocation: Helping Students Navigate a Neoliberal Culture
Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Jen and Greg have been developing a vocational discernment curriculum for college students and young adults rooted in Quaker practices for Quakers and non-Quakers alike. In this presentation, they shared key concepts and practical tools and activities from that work, which can help students engage their own inner teacher and values, and continue to grapple with questions of vocation in a changing world.

Their work is being supported by the Forum for Theological Exploration and the Lyman Fund.

Presenters:

Jennifer Higgins-Newman
Program Director
Beacon Hill Friends House
Master of Theological Studies
Vanderbilt Divinity School

Greg Woods
Program Consultant
Beacon Hill Friends House
Master of Divinity
Princeton Theological Seminary

Moderator:
Walter Hjelt Sullivan
Director of Quaker Affairs
Haverford College

Here is the flyer for the event:

And here are links to the presentation and other materials about this event.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented our November event:

Freedom from Harm: Resisting Incarceration for All
Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Panelists:
Nekeisha Alayna Alexis, Liberationist
Intercultural Competence and Undoing Racism (ICUR) coordinator
Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Johnny Perez
Director of U.S. Prisons Program
National Religious Campaign Against Torture

Moderator:
Ursula C. McTaggart
Professor of English
Wilmington College

Here is a link to a recording of this event plus other materials.

Friends Association for Higher Education is very excited to bring back the Quaker Leadings in Higher Education (QLHE) series for the 2021-22 academic year.

Our first event of the year was:

Rethinking the Canon:
The Promise of Liberatory Reading/Teaching/Research

Tuesday, October 26, 2021
 
Panelists:
Ada Jaarsma,
Professor of Philosophy
Mount Royal University

Sarah Willie LeBreton,
Provost and Dean of the Faculty
Professor of Sociology
Swarthmore College

Namrata Mitra,
Associate Professor of English
Iona College

Moderator:
David R. Ross
Research Professor
Department of Economics
Bryn Mawr College

Here is a link to the video and other materials for this event.

Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:

Pedagogy that Reconnects:
Students and the more than human world

Tuesday, May 25, 2021
7-8:30 pm, eastern
 
To reconnect with the more than human world, we need to change our pedagogies. We need pedagogies that reconnect.  Craig, Stephen, and Sara Jolena will each share a number of specific strategies and practices so you can walk away with both expanded understanding of what this entails and a greater awareness of tools and techniques of what is possible in your own teaching.
 
Panelists:

Craig Goodworth
Installation Artist and Poet

Stephen Potthoff
Professor of Religion, Philosophy, and Peace Studies
Wilmington College

Sara Jolena Wolcott
Educator and Founding Director
Sequoia Samanvaya LLC

Moderator:

David R. Ross
Research Professor
Department of Economics
Bryn Mawr College
 
Craig Goodworth is an Oregon-based artist working in installation and poetry. His practice encompasses drawing, object-making, research, teaching and farm labor. He has received fellowships in art and writing including a Fulbright to the Slovak Republic (2015). Along with exhibiting his artworks nationally and internationally, he’s engaged in various collaborations and residencies relating art to science and religion. Goodworth holds Master’s Degrees in fine art and sustainable communities. Originally from Arizona, his interests include land, place, mysticism and folk traditions.

Stephen Potthoff teaches as a professor of religion, philosophy and peace studies at Wilmington College (Ohio USA).  His academic background is in archaeology and the history of religion, and his principle research interests include indigenous religious traditions, ecospirituality, and the psychology of dream and visionary experience.  As co-editor, along with Cherice Bock, of Quakers, Creation Care, and Sustainability, his publications also include The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage:  Near-Death Experience, Ancestor Cult and the Archaeology of Paradise (Routledge 2016).  A birthright Friend who grew up in New Garden Friends Meeting in Greensboro, NC, Stephen worships at the Wilmington College Campus Friends Meeting.

Sara Jolena Wolcott teaches at the independent international learning community she founded, Sequoia Samanvaya.   Her work re-membering the origin stories of climate change into the histories of colonization developed while she was a student at Union Theological Seminary.  She works with faith leaders, cultural change initiators, and others keen on the spiritual and cultural dimensions of creating a regenerative, just society.   She holds a degree in Anthropology from Haverford College, and followed her leadings around the need for cultural change as part of responding to climate change into international sustainable development for nearly a decade prior to starting her own initiative. A birthright Friend who grew up in Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting, in California, she sits on the board of Quaker Institute for the Future. She currently lives in the historic homeland of the Mohigan peoples, in the Hudson Valley.

Here is a video of this event.