Introducing Symposium 2021 Honored Teacher

Professor Najeeba Syeed

Save the date for the 2021 Starr King Symposium: January 9, 2021!

Starr King School for the Ministry is excited to announce our Honored Teacher for the 2021 Annual Symposium: Professor Najeeba Syeed, a world renowned peace-maker, healer, scholar activist, and educator. Professor Syeed will also receive an honorary doctorate (Doctorate of Humane Letters) from SKSM during the opening ritual of the Symposium.

Professor Syeed is a graduate of Guilford College and Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where she was a teaching fellow in the area of mediation and ran the university’s mediation program. Professor Syeed served as Associate Professor of Interreligious Education at Claremont School of Theology and Director of the Center for Global Peacebuilding. In July, Professor Syeed joined the Chicago Theological Seminary faculty as Associate Professor in Muslim and Interreligious Studies.

Professor Syeed received the Jon Anson Ford Award for reducing violence twice and was named Southern California Mediation Association’s “Peacemaker of the Year” in 2007. Her scholarship encompasses Muslim peacebuilding, interfaith just peacemaking and diplomacy, Islamic spiritual formation for peacemaking, pedagogies for inter-religious education, and justice-grounded transformative rituals.

Professor Syeed’s writings have been published widely on academic and popular settings. Most recently, she authored a chapter in the upcoming book, Asian and Asian American Women in Theology and Religion. Her co-edited book Critical Perspectives on Interreligious Education: Experiments in Empathy will be available in 2020. Syeed regularly appears on various media entities to speak on topics such as religion and politics, interfaith peace building, and social justice activism.

The topic of Professor Syeed Symposium’s address will be: “Birthing Interfaith Rituals of Resistance to Disrupt State Violence.” This is also the topic of the book that she is currently writing.

For more information about honored speaker Najeeba Syeed, visit najeeba.com/about.