Dear Community,  

On Saturday, March 8, communities around the world celebrated International Women’s Day. As we saw from the powerful actions taken across the globe — from La Paz to Lahore and Buenos Aires to Belgrade — women took to the streets to, in the words of the International Women’s Day Campaign, "call for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.” 

We are, indeed, living in trying times — times that have many of us in fear as the material safety of so many in our communities is being threatened and, in the U.S., hard-won rights for women, immigrants, and people of color, and queer, trans, and nonbinary folks are being stripped away. At the same time, many visionaries and spiritual leaders from diverse traditions across the world speak of these times as a crucible, testing our spiritual mettle so that we may bring forth a world of greater harmony, equality, and peace.

As a department committed to anti-racist trans-inclusive intersectional feminism, our Women's Spirituality community is at the forefront of challenging oppressive systems and envisioning more liberatory ways of being. For International Women's Day this year, we invited our community to share wisdom and insights with the broader CIIS community.

Students shared a dedication to women’s liberation and creating a more just and harmonious world, including by: 

• radically dreaming and acting upon our shared values. 
• holding multiplicity. 
• leveraging privilege to make the world a better place. 
• holding each other accountable with care and empathy.
• nurturing courage and compassion.
• disrupting and dismantling comfortable systems of white supremacy, including in our own feminist academic and activist spaces.
• speaking truth to power.
• standing up for racial, restorative, and reproductive justice.
• reimagining academia.
• centering Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and all underrepresented voices.
• engaging in cultural reclamation, embodied spirituality, and community healing.

We recognize that as a department, the work of liberation and transformation takes place not only out in the world, but also within our own community — in our classrooms, our scholarship, and our activism. We remain committed to working on ourselves and in our community to protect and uphold each other's dignity and rights while collectively creating a better world.  

In solidarity,  
Women’s Spirituality Program Faculty and Staff

Related Department

Women's Spirituality