Editor,
A strange dynamic seems to surround religion on our University campus today. I took a walk around the Duck Pond during Welcome Back days, and found the student club scene to be dominated by faith-based organizations.
On any given day as I walk around campus, I might suddenly be confronted by large placards threatening hell to heathens.
And many days when I read the letters to the editor section in the Daily Lobo, faith is clearly an important issue on the local scene.
But much of this attention seems to be shrill and angry, despite the fact that religion often plays a positive role in students' lives. An interesting case in point is the front-page news story "Students fast to help feed the homeless," a report on UNM's third annual Fast-A-Thon on the occasion of Ramadan. While Ramadan is clearly a religious festival, it has found supporters - 333 according to the report - across faith borders and served, at least for one day, as an anchor point for community response to issues of poverty and starvation.
A review of the opinion columns in the Daily Lobo in the last three months reveals a community often torn by controversy. Debates on faith politics like "Jesus was no Republican" launched a series of responses, and issues of Islam, issues on intelligent design and the place of science and spirit have been inundating these columns and letters. Perhaps these writers feel there is no forum for civil discussion of these issues in the classroom. This suggests a need for a free and safe intellectual climate for that kind of discussion - especially since, though the University must always continue to be non-sectarian, faith does play and will continue to play an important role in the everyday lives of many students, staff and faculty.
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Our University has taken a lead in initiating such a forum in the form of a yearlong, six-part series called "Nexus: Religion in the Public University." The series seeks to foster a constructive and critical dialogue between clergy and university faculty by redefining a public profile for religion within the intellectual world of the public university. Participating clergy represent many of New Mexico's diverse religious traditions, and faculty participants come from a number of the University's academic departments.
The next event in this series is Nov. 15 at noon in SUB Ballroom C with a lecture by a renowned postcolonial scholar on Islam, Anouar Majid. Majid will examine the ongoing conflict between Islam and the United States in a lecture - "Saints at Odds: Islam and America in the World." The lecture is free and open to the public.
Other lectures scheduled for spring 2006 include Ted Peters and Marty Hewlett on "Evolution, Wars: Who is Fighting Whom About What;" Max Stackhouse on faith, globalization, and political ethics; and Richard Zaner on medical ethics. Those interested in these topics - and who hope that the public university can be a site for thoughtful and civil discussion of them - are encouraged to attend. Together, we can build a better-informed and more civil conversation about the place of religion in the contemporary world.
Bhavana Upadhyaya
UNM student
