Berkley Center

As a sociologist, I can discuss the historical role interfaith networks in higher education have had in the context of the United States' exchanges with Latin America. These interfaith networks helped to support transnational academic and activist networks.

One example is the case of Brady Tyson, who was a Texas native, a World War II veteran, a Methodist minister, and a four-year missionary to Brazil during the military dictatorship in the 1960s. Tyson was expelled from Brazil for his interreligious human rights activism. From 1967 to his retirement in 1994, Tyson served at the School of International Service at the American University. He was professor of international relations and specialized in Latin American studies. He played a key role in the formation of the North American Congress on Latin America, which was a convergence of professors and university students, Christian and Catholic movements, peace activists, retired Peace Corps volunteers, and Latin Americans residing in the United States.

These academic and religious networks have paved the way for the American youth activists who were working for civil rights, the anti-Vietnam struggle, and the processes of national liberation in Third World countries. Many Latin American exiles came through these academic and religious networks to teach human rights or Latin American studies in various American universities. This led to links of transnational activism.

At Georgetown University, Robert Drinan was a key figure who encouraged such links; he pushed the university to house Emilio Mignone, who became one of the key figures of the human rights movement in Argentina after being arrested by the dictatorship. Coexistence in the Middle East is an academic program that teaches about Israel. The executive director of Coexistence is the son of Argentine exiles who came to Mexico. These networks help address different humanitarian issues, and Latin American exiles have served as such resources in many different university and interreligious networks around the world.

Unlike a single-faith community service model that gives a univocal religious sense to the activity of solidarity, an interreligious community service model democratizes community service for the existing religious plurality. An unintentional consequence is that it has a doubly secularizing effect. On the one hand, it gives an equal role to religions within the academic world. On the other hand, it facilitates the construction of a "religious culture" beyond particularisms. It provides a space for the articulation of heterogeneous demands in a common space of solidarity, allowing for the negotiation of differences and for the construction of small daily consensuses. Interreligious spaces are productive places to create global movements beyond class tensions, cultural, ethnic, and even national differences.

By encouraging these spaces, the government avoids privileging religions that have historically been involved with state politics, and it promotes a culture of religious pluralism beyond the existing plurality. This creates a national culture of solidarity. As with the Youth Parliaments of Peace and Solidarity in Argentina, when the government empowers civil society actors to foster a culture of peace, it gives them a secular role in democracy and a pathway to impact peace instead of war. Latin American governments’ promotion of transnational social justice networks and interreligious action by civil society actors is an effective mechanism to overcome the gap between producers and citizens and refugees, enabling forms of citizen inclusivity that pave the way for new forms of political membership.