Victor Kazanjian
Dean of Intercultural Education and Religious and Spiritual Life
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.
