URI ANNOUNCES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The United Religious Initiative (URI) is pleased to announce Victor Kazanjian as its new Executive Director. Kazanjian will assume the position on October 15, after two decades serving Wellesley College as Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, Co-Director of the Peace & Justice Studies Program and most recently Dean of Intercultural Education.

“The United Religions Initiative community in 86 countries of the world enthusiastically welcomes Victor Kazanjian as our Executive Director and looks forward to his leadership and friendship,” said William Swing, President and founder of the United Religious Initiative.

Victor Kazanjian himself is looking forward to joining the URI community. “It is a great honor for me to have been chosen as Executive Director of the United Religions Initiative. I am very excited to be a part of the URI team as we work together to build peaceful communities and engage problems of injustice and violence by supporting interfaith cooperation and understanding. One of the things that I have admired most about URI over the years is its commitment to a collaborative process of shared leadership that supports grassroots efforts to empower diverse groups of people of different beliefs and practices to transform their communities and the world. At a time when religion is often seen to be at the root of division among people, URI stands out as a beacon of hope for the possibilities for peace,” said Kazanjian. 

Global Council Chair Kiran Bali extends the council’s support. “I am absolutely delighted to welcome Victor Kazanjian as our esteemed Executive Director of URI. Victor is a real asset to URI bringing his extensive experience, leadership and high regard in the field of international interfaith cooperation. I look forward to working in partnership with Victor and our URI community to further strengthen our initiatives through the exciting times that lay ahead.”

Kazanjian’s work at Wellesley College is widely acknowledged as the catalyst in a  movement to include religious diversity and spirituality as core issues in higher education nationally and internationally, and has led to new models of interfaith and intercultural growth and understanding. Specializing in interreligious and intercultural conflict transformation, diversity and democracy, and grassroots peacebuilding, Kazanjian is a recognized thought-leader and the co-author of several books, includingEducation as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and a New Vision for Higher Education in America, (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), Beyond Tolerance: a Campus Religious Diversity Kit,(Washington: NASPA, 2004) and co-editor of the Studies in Spirituality and Education series published by Peter Lang Press.

In 1998 Kazanjian co-founded Education as Transformation, an international organization working with colleges and universities around the world to promote religious pluralism and spirituality in education. He is also a visiting faculty member and Fulbright Scholar at the Malaviya Center for Peace Research at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, and the creator of Wellesley College’s Wintersession program in India. 

Victor Kazanjian is an ordinated priest in the Episcopal Church and holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a graduate of Harvard University.

VICTOR KAZANJIAN

Victor Kazanjian
Dean of Intercultural Education and Religious and Spiritual Life

Dean Kazanjian supports Wellesley College’s commitment to educating students for national and global citizenship by implementing an integrated co-curricular program of intercultural and interreligious education that equips students with the knowledge and skills they will need for leadership and life in a diverse and interdependent world.

He provides leadership for the new Office of Intercultural Education and has primary responsibility for the development and leadership of intercultural education activities, trainings, and programs that educate and promote awareness, understanding, and appreciation of diversity and inclusion on campus, and increasing multicultural competency throughout the campus community. He is the founder of Wellesley's Multifaith Religious and Spiritual Life Program, which seeks to respond to the rich diversity of beliefs represented among community members through a vision of a multifaith community in which all particular expressions of belief are celebrated; no one tradition is seen as normative; and dialogue about common religious, spiritual, and ethical principles is nurtured. This program provides support for people of all religious, spiritual, and humanist traditions and builds community among people of diverse backgrounds and working with faculty, staff, and students.

Dean Kazanjian is also the co-founder and president of Education as Transformation, Inc., an organization that works nationally and internationally with colleges, universities, and educational institutions exploring issues of religious pluralism and spirituality in higher education. As co-director of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at Wellesley he teaches on issues of social justice, conflict transformation, and community change, with a focus on race and class in America, and diversity and democracy in the United States and India.             

Publications

Dean Kazanjian writes and speaks regularly on issues of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, developing multifaith and multicultural communities, spirituality and education, leadership and learning, principles of peacemaking, diversity and democracy, and social justice and institutional change. His recent publications include:

Books

·              Co-editor of Education as Transformation: Religious Pluralism, Spirituality and a New                       Vision for Higher Education in America (New York: Peter Lang, 2000),

·              Co-editor of Beyond Tolerance: a Campus Religious Diversity Kit (Washington: NASPA, 2004)

Articles

·              “Building a New Global Commons: Religious Diversity and the Challenge for Higher Education,” in the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue (Summer 2010)

·              “Design from Dialogue: Houghton Chapel and Multifaith Center at Wellesley College,” in Faith & Form: The Interfaith Journal on Religion, Art and Architecture (2009)

·              “Towards Multi-cultural Learning Communities” in Building the Interfaith Youth Movement (New York: Alta Mira Press, 2006)

·              “Religion, Spirituality and Intellectual Development,” in the Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning , Oxford College at Emory University, Summer, 2005.