Professors

A group of professors discuss their religious backgrounds and how it has influenced their academic and personal lives. They come from various religious traditions such as Reform Judaism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Protestant Christianity. They talk about their experiences in college and how religion played a role, or lack thereof, during that time. They also mention their reasons for becoming professors and the impact of religion on their day-to-day lives now. Hello, my name is Elon Ruff, and I'm here with Professor Henry Tauszner, Professor Swapnielche, Professor Megan Robb, here to chat about religion on campus and religious views as being a professor. So we'll start by going around and answering the first question, did you grow up in a specific religious tradition? And feel free to go down that road however you want. Professor Tauszner? I think I grew up not in a specific religious tradition, I grew up sort of on the outskirts of Reform Judaism. My family would sort of join the synagogue around the high holidays, stick around through Hanukkah and then drift away, so definitely Reform Judaism, but not very much in that. Totally. Yeah, for me it was largely religious, but I think that's common in India, so I grew up sort of Hindu slash Jain, and a lot of it growing up was like going to temples and like prayers and things like that, so it was very religious, I think, in middle school to like high school, and then like, as with most people, as you get older, you sort of think about like, what is it that I want, and is this what I want, and that's sort of what it was for me and like a lot of us. And when you say Hindu and Jain, did you grow up with one parent from each faith background? No, so I think in India at least, so both our parents are Jain, but Hinduism is close enough to Jainism, so there's a lot of things that I either conflated or didn't know the distinctions between that I only realized when I was older. So there were like things that's like, this is really more of a Hindu thing than a Jain thing, but we just do it anyway, or like we celebrate it anyway. So there were like things like that, that I think in India, at least being growing up, like I had a lot of Muslim friends, a lot of Catholic friends, and it was just like religion was not really something we talked about, but everyone just did what they did. And either they did it because their parents did it, or they did it because they want to do it. But it was like, everything was like really mixed. So like in school, for example, we'd get all these holidays, we'd get holidays for like Eid, we'd get holidays for like Easter and Christmas, we'd get holidays for the Hindu holidays. So for us, it was just a holiday, it didn't really matter like which religion it was. Interesting. Professor Al? Yes, I did grow up, is this like a little, I did grow up very religious. My parents raised me in Protestant Christian context. So I grew up in a church that was part of the Disciples of Christ denomination in the US. So I grew up going to church three times a week. And my parents were still very invested in church life. And they also helped found a church at some point. Yeah, so I grew up in a very, very Christian infused environment. Totally. So now on the side of academia itself, what inspired you to become a professor and continue in this research teaching field? Yeah, I think for me, I mean, I'm in religious studies as a discipline and my, I don't think my parents would mind me saying that they were surprised that I went into religious studies because I'm not particularly observant. For me, I really enjoyed what college offered. What college offered to me was a chance to ask any questions I wanted, and to be very exploratory and even borderline offensive in the questions that I was asking. And I loved it. I thought it was, this blew my world whole, like wide open. And for me, even though I loved religious studies, because it gave me a chance to keep thinking about this part of my life that was very important to me, even after I came to the conclusion that I couldn't be involved in it in exactly the same way as my parents. So for me, I would say a lot of it was because I'm in computer science, religion was not really that much of a part of at least like masters and PhD sort of training and things like that. So it was more like what you would do on your own. As far as why I became a professor, I tried industry, didn't really like it, didn't find it as challenging, tried research. I liked research, I didn't like it as much as I like teaching. So when I was doing my PhD, I taught something like, I TA'd something like 10 classes, I taught like five classes as an instructor of record. So when I was finishing off, I was like, I really want something where I primarily teach. If I do some research on the side, that's fine. But I wanted something that was teaching focused. So that's how I ended up here. And just knowing you, it sounds like that's the exact role that you're able to find here at Penn. Yeah, exactly. Yep. I like sitting around thinking about things. I think I was always going to end up being a professor somehow in some form. And I got really into math in college and really enjoyed sitting around thinking about math specifically. And so that worked out for me. Seriously. And specifically, I know that you teach logic as well. Was there a part of you that was thinking philosophy as well? No, not really. I'm much more of an, even within logic, I'm much more of a mathematician than a philosopher. Totally. That makes sense. All right. So and now that you guys are here as professors at Penn, we'll look back a little bit to when you guys were in college and your experience there, both as a learner and as an individual who has beliefs and thoughts. What was your relationship with religion and maybe how it interacted with academia while you were in college? I don't think I have. I don't think I followed religion at all while I was in college. That is a relationship with religion. Yeah, I think it was similar for me. So I think in India, compared to at least the US education system, you get literally zero choice. So you apply for a specific major. If you get in, you can never change. There's nothing like a double major or like anything like that. In all of my four years of undergrad, I had one elective in my senior year fall and senior year spring. And that's it. Everything else is decided. So in your first semester, everyone takes these four classes. In your second semester, everyone takes these six classes. And it was an engineering school. So that was it was all engineering. So no social science humanities. And I when I came to the US, which was about like 20 years ago, I appreciated a lot then and even more now, like how much value there is in doing something outside of your field. So all of my education was like engineering and that was great. But I have literally no formal education in anything other than that. So I wish I could have taken classes in like art history. Like in all the things that you know, typically Penn students do, but we never got to do that. So what was my relationship to religion in college? I think that I tried out a lot of different ways of a lot of different ways of observing religious practice in college, but I couldn't really ever find a good fit. I didn't major in religious studies in undergrad. I really wanted to. I still have this printout of like religious studies departments for all of the places that I was applying to. And when I was in high school, I considered going the full way, like being ordained. I was very, very invested. But once I got to college, I focused on English literature and India studies. So I'm a specialist in South Asian studies. India studies. So I'm a specialist in South Asian Islam. That's my academic focus. And that probably had to do with my grandmother partly. So it's a bit of a long story, but my grandmother is from Illinois. But when she was 40, she moved to Buckingham for several years and lived there and traveled abroad for many years and felt very passionately that her grandchildren should not live the first half of their lives the way that she did, never having left the U.S. She was very, she's been a very powerful influence on my life. And her second husband was from Pakistan. And so she took me traveling with her in India. So that was a really influential moment for me right before I started college. So I was much more, I was much more invested in learning languages, traveling to India each summer. I was trying to think about and find a place to observe Christianity at Indiana University, which is where I went to undergrad. But I really could never find a good fit. I, and I don't know exactly why that is. I found, I found the liberal arts project much more compelling. And it was that time in my life, it was much more important for me to be asking questions, learning languages, but I still always had that kind of yearning. So I was always searching for something in my private religious life, just never found it. That makes total sense. And to bring it back to Professor Kaufman, you mentioned that when you were in college, was there a way that you viewed religion or religious students who were at school with you? I don't, I don't know that I strongly recall. Yeah. I don't think I thought about it much. I mean, I was sort of vaguely an atheist, agnostic, something, and it just wasn't a big part of my life. It hadn't been that big of a part growing up. And then once I went to college, there was kind of no reason to think about it much. And I'm sure that represents the opinions of many people, even on this campus. So now, after going to undergraduate and getting your graduate degrees and being here, and I know many of you are married, with families, or just in general, how has religion affected your day-to-day life today? Or if it's on the larger picture? So, so now I'm aware of my family's members in synagogue. And in fact, I think the overwhelming majority of our social life outside of the university is through the synagogue, through people we've met through the synagogue, our closest friends are all people, well, people we met the synagogue through, and then people we then met through the synagogue. And so it's become a really essential part of our kind of sense of community. That's beautiful. Have you found a community on campus? I have not. I haven't, I haven't looked for one. That's very fair. I like, I like students. But actually, once in a while, a student will show up. You know, the synagogue's only like a mile west of campus. And then once in a while, a student will come, will show up and say, well, that's lovely. And I want students back home. But actually socializing with students outside of the school environment always feels a little strange. That makes total sense. Swaap? Yeah, I think for me, it's, it's been interesting sort of just over time that growing up super, like not super religious, but like, there's a lot of things that we would do as like children and things like that. And then in college thinking about like, why do we do this? Or why does this practice exist? Or why does this culture exist? And then sort of through college, and then especially coming to the US, it was very much, I think, as you were saying, like more atheist agnostic than I was used to, especially in India, where I think there are very few, at least openly atheist agnostic people growing up for me in the 90s. So that was an interesting just sort of thing just to see. And that's when I was learning and reading more about like Jainism and things that I found that I really liked was things like Jainism is, like the word they use is transtheistic, which is, you could believe in the existence of God or you could not, it doesn't really matter. That's your individual choice. But Jainism in many ways is like close to Buddhism, where it's about like living your life and doing good to others and not harming other people and stuff. And that resonated with me. And my parents are very, still very religious and things like that. And for me, I would say I'm more on the spiritual sort of side, but I found that like useful because it ties into a lot of other things that I like doing things like meditation and stuff like that. So it's not really like going to temples or something that is not that big a part of it, but just like meditation and things like that is still very much a part of it. That's it. Can you repeat the question? Yeah, totally. After spending time on different campuses and getting here, what's your relationship with religion today? Hmm. You know, I think mine is always constantly evolving. I think I would probably, I'm very uncomfortable with labels for myself, for whatever reason. And I don't think it's just being evasive. There is a good reason for not being very open about religious perspectives in a religious studies classroom. Like we've talked about this. There is a concern that I think is reasonable that you don't want to give any students the sense that, you know, your personal beliefs might impact your receptivity to what they have to say in a humanities classroom. And I do think that's very important, but that's not the only reason why it's difficult for me to answer that question. I think that I've gotten into religious studies because it lets me think about religion constantly without ever having to answer that question. Right. So I guess I would fall into the category of agnostic in the sense that I feel very open and fascinated endlessly. And I have been involved in many different ritual practices across traditions, but just because people I care about have been involved in those ritual traditions. I'm definitely culturally Christian, and I really like that term culturally Christian. It's something that my Muslim friends are much more comfortable with, where they're like, well, I'm culturally Muslim, but, you know, I'm not a practicing Muslim. I like, we need that in Christianity because I'm definitely culturally Christian. My entire family is very Christian. Those, the rituals, the vocabulary, the emotions, the smells, the sounds, all of it, like evokes something in me. And that's really powerful. And I deeply respect it because people I love the most in this life are, you know, intrinsically wedded to those practices. But I don't, so it depends on the day. I literally will sometimes have people ask me, what is your religion? And I'll say Christian. And then other times people would ask me, and I will say culturally Christian. And then sometimes people will ask me, and I'll say agnostic. I will never say atheist. It depends on how you're feeling that day. It does, actually. I know that sounds very wishy-washy, but I will never say atheist. That's actually something that I'm not comfortable with and never have been, never have identified that way. Because in my mind, this is where it comes from for me, is there's too much a sense for the respect for the unknown and what I don't know to foreclose the possibility. But that's where I'm, that's a very unsatisfying answer. No. And you mentioned this idea of not wanting to share your religious beliefs in a humanities classroom, otherwise it doesn't make people feel comfortable sharing their own beliefs. I'm curious, in STEM classrooms, have either of you guys felt that religious beliefs can't be shared or have been part of the class in some way? That's a good question. So I typically teach like intro computer science. I feel that it's not really the place to talk about it. I mean, of course, like we talk about things like extensions for homework and things like that for religious holidays, like that's different. But I would see that if I were to teach like an AI class where we talk about like philosophy and stuff and sort of that would be a great place to do it. I just don't teach in that area. But I remember like one of the classes I took at Columbia, the professor, it wasn't really about religion, but more about like sentience and like intelligence. And he basically had everyone lined up on one side of the room and said, OK, I'm going to name like different like things. At what point do you think this thing is intelligent? So we started with like bacteria and then like small like animals, like ants, like mammals. And then at some point, everyone was on the right side of the room, right? And that was sort of the whole philosophy side, like what is intelligent? So I think tying that in with religion could be really fascinating. But I don't teach in those areas. When you were there, do you know at which point you found sentience to? I would say like small mammals, like dogs and cats. And yeah, interesting. So unsurprisingly, this isn't something that comes up in Calculus, right? And I think, on the other hand, I teach logic a lot and people have long had the sense that some of the questions that come up in logic are not unrelated. I think Ketzer invented, you know, higher affinities and then lobbied the Catholic Church to incorporate it into, you know, official theology. Ketzer was a Protestant, but lobbied the Catholic Church anyway, right? And I think I tend not to talk about these things, and it may be very much in passing. I think out of a sense that these are delicate issues that I'm not knowledgeable enough to talk about carefully enough. And so I'd much rather not touch on something that might be very, you know, might be more personal than most of the stuff we talk about in the math class. And that makes total sense. Super fair. So throughout academic religious journeys that you guys have all been on, have there been mentors, either through teachers you've had, researchers you've interacted with, family members, or friends that you've felt have positively or even negatively impacted your idea of faith and religion in conjunction with your academic appointments? Sure. So I'm trying to think about it, like lots of mentors over time, of course, but nothing specific to religion. I think I also tend to be a very private person, so I don't really talk about this that much. My wife and I don't really talk about it, not to like keep it secret or whatever, but we're just private people. And yes, I don't really talk about this to many people. Well, appreciate you coming in and sharing. Happy to. I'm so sorry. Will you repeat the question? I was listening really closely and I totally lost track. I'm just curious about mentors that you've found. Right. Well, so for me, my academic specialty is in a language and an area of the world that I did not grow up speaking or living in. So mentorship has been centrally important for me to find a space in those conversations. I benefited from the level of generosity and hospitality that I've experienced in India has been life-changing in a really positive way. So people I lived with who became some of my closest friends, teachers who have the generosity to be open with me about their culture in a way that I didn't always see as a possibility in the culture in which I was raised, really humbled me and fostered a kind of passion for my subject. But it also is teaching me a way of being in the world, an ethics of practice, ways to show respect to a range of beliefs. So I kind of saw the way they were respecting what they often assumed to be Christian beliefs on my part. And I found myself developing a way of being that kind of mirrored that back to some of my mentors. So, yeah, I mean, but it was in a very – with a mode of respect and was a way that did deeply respect the private. So it was like a coexistence and a respect and a friendship, but also like a sensitivity and a delicacy about it that was something – I'm not being very good at describing it. It gave me skills, I think, that I use in the classroom that allow me to balance like a deep passion for what I do with a lot of openness. And so my mentors in India and Pakistan, I think, helped confer that to me. And I can chime in on that a little bit. So I feel like growing up in India, there was – like the joke, or I shouldn't say joke, but like the thing that we always said is that people have been very supportive of each other. It's that the politicians try to drive in these measures. So especially when we had like the riots in like the 90s and the 2000s and things like that. So growing up, I had a lot of like Hindu friends, Muslim friends, Catholic friends. And we all sort of – essentially, it was like everyone, like the thing that you were saying, like everyone's private, they can practice or believe what they want. But we are still friends and it doesn't affect us. And in many ways, like in India, for the most part, you can probably tell people's religion based on their names or like what part of India they grew up in. And so it's not really secret, but it's also like you don't want to pry. So – but I think that sort of just made us used to like, yeah, like you do you and like I don't – it's not like I don't care, but it's like it doesn't affect me what you believe in. And that I found a little different in like different parts of the world. So like in the US, for example, when I first came, it was interesting to see like how those – some things were similar, some things were different. And that I think has – I think it chimed in a lot on like what you were saying. Yeah, yeah, difference can be a lot more threatening in the US, right? It's – it has a – it has an emotional charge, I think, in the US that is quite distinct to different parts of the world. Yeah. That's interesting. Professor Tasman, you want to comment? Yeah. So I certainly have some measures that are extremely important to my academic career. I didn't think of them as, you know, religion as being a significant part of it. So I think one of the things that did draw me back to Judaism and helped me sort of think about being Jewish and, you know, sort of starting out culturally Jewish as being a really important part of my identity was recognizing that, in fact, all my mentors were Jewish with very different relationships of their own. Some of them were – my Ph.D. advisor was a practicing Jew. My undergraduate mentor was a Russian Jew who had no religious connection. But it was an important cultural element for him. And I think recognizing that was a meaningful cultural connection as part of what made me start more meaningfully identifying as Jewish. Do you have any idea why the people you gravitated towards were Jewish? I – no idea. No idea. And I would, you know, I would tell you that it was purely intellectual. I have seen what they were researching. And it just – this logic in – math in general and logic in general and my part of logic in general are more and more disproportionately Jewish. Interesting. I have no idea why. I mean, I guess that's just the way it is. Yeah, just to add to that, right, like I've seen these really fascinating differences when I go to CS conferences because I would go to a few different types of conferences. When I go to a software engineering conference, for example, a lot of women relative to, like, let's say, some other fields of computer science. But I would go to, like, some theory conferences and a lot of people, like, either Jewish or Indian and Jewish from, like, different parts of the world. So, like, either American or Israeli or Russian or, like, different parts of the world. And it was just fascinating to see, like, I have no idea how that happened. But it's definitely very noticeable. So, I'm excited to circle back to the idea of conferences and how that might look. But we're going to take a break for a second and we'll be right back.