Harvard Divinity School

On Friday, October 30, 2009, the Pluralism Project co-sponsored “Muslim Community Leadership in America: Women’s Challenges in Horizons” at Harvard Divinity School. Other sponsors included the HDS Diversity Fund, the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, the Center for the Study of World Religions, and certain member of the HDS faculty. This student-initiated conference was the brainchild of Celene Ayat Lizzio, an MDiv student who organized this conference as a field education project with the help of her peers. Its purpose was to provide “an opportunity for Harvard affiliates and guests to converse about the contributions of women in the American context to the vitality and diversity of lived Islam…We aim to consider how customs, communal expectations, legal frameworks, and religious pedagogies influence women’s communal empowerment.” Guest speakers included Muslim American women who are or were chaplains, scholars, architects, and Islamic legalists.