School Notes: Yale Divinity School
January/February 2025

Summer program expands worldwide

The Divinity School has launched a new abbreviated summer travel course program that allows students to reap some of the most significant benefits of studying abroad but in manageable, two-week periods. The first travel course—Urban Spirituality and Theology—was held in Hong Kong last summer. 

Motivated by a commitment in the current strategic plan to step up international engagement, YDS plans to expand the program to additional destinations in Latin America and South America, and a travel course to Kenya is planned for next summer.

YDS panel confronts Yale history of slavery, racism

Around 100 Yale alums, donors, and guests packed an event space at the new International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, on September 14 to hear two Yale scholars extol the value of honest reckonings with history, even its most painful living legacies. 

In a time when areas of the country are shutting down examinations of slavery and racism, David Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning Yale history professor, and William Barber, director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at the Divinity School, exchanged unsparing insights on the evils of oppression and the necessary work of confronting them. 

YDS Dean Greg Sterling welcomed the audience by voicing appreciation for their willingness to engage what can be a difficult subject. “It wouldn’t be enough to simply talk about what’s happened in the past,” Sterling said. “It needs to transform us in the present and shape our future.”

YDS professor honored by University of Oslo

Laura Nasrallah, Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, was honored by the University of Oslo with an honorary doctorate. Nasrallah, who has been a member of the YDS faculty since 2019 with a joint appointment in Yale’s religious studies department, was recognized for a teaching and research career that has produced four monographs and several edited volumes, as well as a Letters of Paul website and online course.