Religion Dept. Brings in New Professors

Columbia's department of religion recently hired two new professors, and is in the process of bringing in more.

Bernard Faure, the Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, hails from Stanford, and is also associated with the East Asian Languages and Cultures department.

Michael Como, the Sukami Professor of Shinto Studies, has been teaching one undergraduate and one graduate class per semester at Columbia since fall 2005. He previously taught at the College of William and Mary, here he takes on two classes per semester, one undergraduate and one graduate.

Department Chair Robert Thurman attributed the hiring wave to turnover within the faculty. Spaces have been opening up: one professor, Ryuichi Abe, was recently lost to Harvard.

The department is also working to hire Mark Taylor of Williams College. Taylor has been a visiting professor at Columbia for three years, and the religion department says it is trying hard to keep him here for good.

"He's probably the most famous philosopher of religion in the country," said Thurman. "We're hoping he will help to revive the undergraduate curriculum.

Thurman also discussed the possibility of a new chair for the study of methodology in religion. In addition, the department is seeking to gain new faculty for Judaic Studies.

Financing to bring the professors in has come from a variety of sources. Faure's position is funded by the Kao Company, a Japanese cosmetics firm. Como's is a fully-funded endowment given by the International Shinto Foundation.

Thurman said that the criteria used for hiring has been determined on a case-by-case basis. "We got the best people we could in the various fields that were open," he said.

Thurman also said that the department recently made connections with the Union Theological Seminary. The College and Seminary were previously separate entities, according to Thurman.

"We entered an agreement with UTS whereby three of their more academic professors, who satisfy scholarly and pedagogical requirements of a Columbia department, are invited to serve" in the College's Christian Studies division, he said.

The "bridge" professors are Euan Cameron, who specializes in reformation studies, John McGuckin, who specializes in Byzantine studies, and and Gary Dorrien, the Reinhold Niebuhr Chair of Social Ethics.

The department also wants to work in sync with upcoming University capital fund drives to create a Center for the Critical Study of World Religions, which would regularly bring visiting scholars to campus.

As to why such major changes are taking place, Thurman cited the necessity of creating and maintaining a "strong counter to the various kinds of would-be theocrats currently on the rise ... all over the world."

"We want to create scholars who will be public intellectuals in the best sense, raising critically informed voices against [threats to] our precious separation of church and state," he said.