Diana Eck

March 5, 2012. This week I have received copies of India: A Sacred Geography. This has been a long, long project and it's great to have it finally out. I had a month in India in January and realized once again, while clambering up the hillside at Bateshwarsthan along the Ganga, that I could easily continue working on this for many years. The work goes on, but the book is done.

The Pluralism Project has just completed our pilot project "America's Interfaith Infrastructure," looking at twenty cities in the U.S. and the emerging networks and initiatives that bridge faith and culture divides. The interactive website has Google maps, community portraits, case-studies, and promising practices in this cities-based research. With the support of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, we have been able to launch new research on a phenomenon that is critically under-studied in the U.S., and in the world for that matter.

In the past month, I participated in a National Forum on "Civility and American Democracy" sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Massachusetts Council on the Humanities at the new Center for Civil Discourse at U Mass Boston. The sessions went on all day, but it is online, if you are interested. My own presentation was more on incivility, entitled "Civility in the Face of Organized Hostility," on the emerging networks of organized hostility to Islam.

I also lectured in Jacksonville, Florida last week, an event co-sponsored by the University of North Florida and OneJax, the Jacksonville interfaith organization. "The Power of Religion: Practical Pluralism in a World of Difference." This was an especially interesting visit, since I have been teaching one of our Pluralism Project case-studies that explores the civic controversy in Jacksonville, when a Muslim professor of finance from UNF was nominated to the Human Rights Commission and immediately encountered strong and well-organized opposition. In meeting religious, political, and civic leaders, I felt as if I were meeting old friends.

Meanwhile, at Lowell House, we have just completed the hiring of twelve new resident tutors for next year. This is always an exciting process, since we spend long evenings interviewing some of the very best of the Harvard graduate schools. 

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