(Posted February 8, 2016)

Jennifer harvey, professor of religion, Drake University
Jennifer harvey, professor of religion, Drake University

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Jennifer Harvey, professor of religion at Drake University, will speak at Juniata College on how religious and secular perspectives can help people better understand how racial issues affect the United States in the talk "From Ferguson to Charleston: Reconciliation, Reparations and the Postures in Between," at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 17, in Sill Boardroom in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The 7 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public. Harvey's talk is part of the Beyond Tolerance Series, a schedule of periodic workshops to help Juniata better understand diversity issues on college campuses.

In addition, Harvey also will hold a workshop for Juniata faculty and staff, "From Charting Shifting Waters: Race (and Whiteness) in the College Classroom" at 3 p.m., Wednesday in Sill Boardroom.

In her public talk, Harvey will outline how many of the photos and videos emerging from the events and subsequent protests were remarkably similar to images taken during the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. The discussion will focus on how lesser-known perspectives on the civil rights movements of the '50s and '60s in the religious and secular worlds can offer insights into today's racial climate.

In the faculty and staff workshop, Harvey will address a seeming disconnect between faculty and staff on college campuses, who believe they are adequately addressing diversity issues, and students, who report that diversity is either addressed too much or not at all.

Harvey, who is the author of "Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice Through Reparations and Sovereignity," centers her teaching and writing on the intersection of religion and ethics with race, gender, activism, spirituality and other aspects of the human condition.

She is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches. She has spent her entire academic career at Drake, which is in Des Moines, Iowa. She was hired in 2004 as a visiting assistant professor of religion and was promoted to assistant professor in 2005, associate professor in 2009 and to full professor in 2015. She recently published "Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation."

She earned a bachelor's degree in 1992 from Westmont College, in Santa Barbara, Calif. She went on to earn a master's degree in divinity in 1997 and a doctoral degree in Christian social ethics in 2004 from Union Theological Seminary, in New York City.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.