On October 14, 2016, I made a presentation at Harvard Divinity School on Daoism and Ecology. The context for this presentation was conference on Religion, Ecology, and our Planetary Future, organized by Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. This conferenced marked the twentieth anniversary of a series of conferences on world religions and ecology that was organized in the 1990s by Mary Evelyn Tucker, and which led to the formation of the Harvard Forum on Religion and Ecology, now translated to the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology.
In this ten-minute talk I reflect on my experience of studying Daoism and Ecology, and attempt to link this to a broader conversation on how the disciplinary structures of the university underpin modes of knowledge production that are antithetical to an ecologically flourishing future. The future of religion and ecology thus entails the ushering in of new modes of thought spanning the sciences and humanitities, and requires an accompanying undsciplining of the university.
Learn more about my “outside-in” philosophy of education.