“Why Does Diversity Matter?”

"Diversity" is a hot button topic. The word pervades our culture. It evokes strong feelings of varied persuasions. In some circles, it is taken as an axiom that we should always seek diversity. But why? Does it matter? I will share some reflections from my own personal life, my journey to Christ, and my experience as a scientist in academia about why diversity matters, and how it has shaped the way I mentor and how I do science.

Praveen Sethupathy is Professor of Physiological Genomics and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cornell University. He is also Director of the Cornell Center for Vertebrate Genomics. He leads a research lab focused on genome-scale and molecular approaches to understand physiology and human disease.

Praveen received his BA degree from Cornell University and his PhD in Genomics from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Human Genome Research Institute under the mentorship of NIH Director Francis Collins, he moved in 2011 to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics. The same year he was selected by Genome Technology as one of the nation’s top 25 rising young investigators in genomics. In 2017, he returned to Cornell University.

Praveen has authored over 145 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals such as PNAS, Cell, and Science and has served as a reviewer for over 50 different journals. Honors include a faculty merit award for outstanding teaching and mentoring, the prestigious American Diabetes Association Pathway to Stop Diabetes Research Accelerator (which is awarded to only three people per year), and the inaugural Boehringer Ingelheim Award for Excellence in Research Mentorship.

Praveen is an advocate for thoughtful discussion at the interface of science and faith and has served on the advisory board of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), serves on the Board of BioLogos, is a frequent speaker for the Veritas Forum, and a mentor in the Veritas Faculty Scholars program.

Diversity, Unity, Oneness

Our world is rife with discord and hostility. The diversity that is a hallmark of our humanness has become a weapon for separation and denigration along virtually every axis of difference. Pleas for unity are echoing across America and around the globe.

Christ calls the Church to both unity and oneness. I will examine these terms—”unity” and “oneness”—from biblical and secular perspectives. Then I will offer insights into how faith in Christ and knowledge of science can inform or reform efforts to bridge the chasms and bring about healing and transformation.

Charmaine Royal obtained a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, a master’s degree in genetic counseling, and a doctorate in human genetics from Howard University. She completed postgraduate training in ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) research and bioethics at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and in epidemiology and behavioral medicine at Howard University Cancer Center.

She is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of African and African American Studies, Biology, Global Health, and Family Medicine and Community Health at Duke University. She directs the Duke Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference and the Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.

Her research, scholarship, and teaching focus on ethical, social, scientific, and clinical implications of human genetics and genomics, particularly issues at the intersection of genetics and “race.” Her specific interests and primary areas of work include genetics and genomics in African and African Diaspora populations; sickle cell disease and trait; public and professional perspectives and practices regarding “race,” ethnicity, and ancestry; genetic ancestry inference; and genotype-environment interplay. A fundamental aim of her work is to dismantle ideologies and systems of racial hierarchy in science, healthcare, and society.

She serves on numerous national and international advisory boards and committees for government agencies, professional organizations, research initiatives, not-for-profit entities, and corporations.

“Come Let Us Reason Together: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust”

As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, we have become not just a hyper-partisan society but also a deeply cynical one, distrustful of traditional sources of knowledge and wisdom. Skepticism about vaccines led to the needless deaths of at least 230,000 Americans. “Do your own research” is now a rallying cry in many online rabbit holes. Yet experts aren’t perfect either: they (we) can make mistakes, and institutions can lose their moral compass. So how can we navigate through all this? And how can scientists and people of faith play effective roles in re-anchoring us?

In this talk, I plan to review the four core sources of judgment and clear thinking that have anchored all successful societies down through history, but that are now under significant threat in our divided nation: truth, science, faith, and trust. Drawing on ethics, philosophy, Christian theology, and my own scientific experience from the Human Genome Project and heading the National Institutes of Health, I will try to make a robust case for each of these sources—their reliability, but also their limits. Ultimately, I will argue that they should work together, not separately—and certainly not in conflict.

I will shine a light on how deterioration in our traditional support for these foundational anchors has led to distrust of science and public health, partisanship, emergence of racist messages, denial of climate change, and threats to our democracy. But as followers of Jesus, we are not without hope: God is still sovereign and there are specific actions that each of us can take.

With response from Walter Kim, President, National Association of Evangelicals.

Francis S. Collins is an American physician-scientist. Under his direction, the international Human Genome Project produced the first finished sequence of human DNA in 2003. From 2009 through 2021, he served as the 16th Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world. Francis has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Templeton Prize. He received a doctorate in physical chemistry from Yale University, and a medical degree from the University of North Carolina.

An atheist in graduate school, Francis became a Christian in medical school and has sought ways to emphasize the harmony of science and faith. He is the author of The Language of God (Free Press), Belief (Harper One), and The Language of Science and Faith (with Karl Giberson, InterVarsity). Frances founded The BioLogos Foundation in November 2007 and served as president until August 2009 when his official duties as NIH Director required him to step down. His new book The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust will be published by Little, Brown in September 2024.

“‘Are Women Human?’ A Medieval Catholic Perspective on Modern Evangelical Ideas about Women”

On June 12, 2024, a denominational amendment that would have declared a woman serving in any pastoral role as an automatic reason to disfellowship a church from the Southern Baptist Convention almost received the 66% vote it needed to become constitutional. Instead of expressing victory over the failure of this amendment, Baptist Women in Ministry expressed “grief” that the vote took place at all because it reveals a devaluing of women as compared to men. Despite claims to the contrary, I argue that modern gender theology arguing “complementary” roles for women and men is rooted in Aristotelian misogyny that was less present in medieval Christianity. Using the biblical example of the Syrophoenician woman, this lecture compares how medieval sermons preached to ordinary people presented women as compared to the increasingly restrictive complementarian theology now dominating modern evangelicalism. It also will consider the impact of this increasingly narrow gender theology on the dignity and personhood of women.

Beth Allison Barr (PhD, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She specializes in medieval history, women’s history, and church history. Barr is the author of the bestselling book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos Press, 2021). NPR and The New Yorker have featured her work, and she is a regular contributor to The Anxious Bench, the popular Patheos website on religious history, and has written for Christianity Today, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, The Dallas Morning News, Religion & Politics, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. She is also a Baptist pastor’s wife and the mom of two great kids.

“The Diversity of Beauty in Science”

Scientists, traditionally viewed as paragons of rationality, have been critiqued since the Romantic era for reducing and stripping away beauty and mystery from nature. Yet, recent Nobel laureates and renowned scientists have portrayed science as a source of beauty and awe, akin to art. What does beauty mean to scientists and how does it shape the practice of science?

To explore this topic empirically, we conducted the first global study on the role of aesthetics in science, surveying nearly 3,500 physicists and biologists across the US, UK, Italy, and India and conducting more than 200 in-depth interviews with them. We identified three main types of beauty in science.

1. Sensory beauty in nature draws many to become scientists yet differs across scientific fields.
2. Useful beauty is the reliance on beauty as a guide to truth, which is a subject of considerable debate among scientists.
3. The beauty of understanding—the joy of uncovering the hidden order underlying phenomena or inner logic of systems—is the most valued aesthetic dimension of science.

Our research suggests that science is fundamentally a quest for the beauty of understanding, which unites the rich variety of aesthetic aspects of science. In our divided times, we have much to learn from scientists about how to value and cultivate this kind of beauty in our lives.

Brandon Vaidyanathan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Institutional Flourishing Lab at The Catholic University of America. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and HEC Montreal respectively, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Brandon's research examines human flourishing in religious, commercial, and scientific institutions, and has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He is author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019). His research has been funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and the Lilly Endowment. He is also Founder of Beauty at Work, a media platform which includes a podcast and YouTube channel that aims to expand our understanding of beauty: what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. He is currently working on a book co-authored with Bridget Ritz, titled The Beauty of Understanding: What Scientists Can Teach Us About the Pleasures of Learning.