Interfaith Council Sponsors Discussion

Attending a secular university presents difficulties in religious students’ daily routines, but it often also reinforces their faith, student group leaders said at a panel discussion yesterday.

The panelists, who represented Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish student organizations, also discussed how students manage to balance religious and academic commitments, and how they maintain their faith in classrooms that sometimes challenge it.

“I remember sitting there listening to them say religion was just a means of cooperation,” former Harvard Hillel vice president Joshua C. Wertheimer ’08 said, recalling a moment in Science B-29, “Evolution of Human Nature.” “But there’s a distinction between what it’s like to look at religion and what it’s like to practice it.”

Mihiri U. Tillakaratne ’09, president of the Harvard College Buddhist Community, said that some students seem to make assumptions about her faith, approaching academic discussions with an “I-know-more-about-your-faith-than-you-do kind of attitude.”

Wertheimer and Hasan K. Siddiqi ’08, vice president of the Harvard Islamic Society, both described difficulties in following exacting religious requirements while living at Harvard.

In keeping the Sabbath on Friday evenings, Wertheimer said, he sometimes finds himself “racing the sunset” to complete a paper. Siddiqi said that exam schedules can prevent Muslims from completing a religiously mandated midday prayer.

Siddiqi added that as a neurobiology concentrator, he regularly confronts questions about his faith and often engages in discussions with faculty members about reconciling religion and science.

Panelist Allison A. Frost ’08, a member of both the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Student Organization and Harvard Christian Impact, said that Harvard’s culture tends to emphasize the power of one person acting individually, rather than the need to submit to a higher power. Frost, who is also an inactive member of The Crimson’s news board, said that what separates her most from the typical Harvard student is her commitment to “saying, ‘God, you’re the master of my life,’ which is very counter-cultural in an academic environment.”

Professor of comparative religion and Indian studies Diana L. Eck moderated the event, which was sponsored by the Harvard College Interfaith Council and drew more than two dozen attendees to Ticknor Lounge.

Eck noted that though the panelists found their faith reaffirmed in college, their experiences “might be the exception, rather than the rule.”