The Greenberg Center Reopens at Trinity College

Bella Chirkis ’27

News Editor

The Leonard E. Greenberg Center was first established at Trinity College in 1996 and recently reopened in Sep. 2024 for students and faculty. The purpose of the Greenberg Center is to help educate students about various religions and how their institutions and ideas take play in our real world. The Greenberg Center explores challenges that deal with religious ideas and tensions that are created between religious and secular values. The basis is to further examine how religion influences politics, gender roles and family life all over the world. The Greenberg Center has public lectures to educate Trinity students, as well as conferences and workshops. The overarching goal of the Greenberg Center is to foster mature discussion of religion within our campus community as well as within public life. 

The Greenberg Center is meant to be a safe space for any students who are interested in the role of religion through public lives. In an interview with the Tripod, professor Leslie Ribovich, the current director of the Greenberg Center, said: “Religion has been and continues to be a way to understand the social world: history, culture, visions for the future, power structures, human relationships, institutions and more, because religion blurs the boundaries of private and public of profound meaning and everyday practice. Students can ask big questions, learn about the many and varied answers people have given to them and analyze the worlds that have emerged through the asking and answering of such questions.” 

The Greenberg Center recently moved from Vernon Street to McCook 201 in order to be closer to the Religious Studies and Public Policy and Law departments. The fall events at the Greenberg Center are listed on their website, including lunch events with professor Shane Gleason, professor Leslie Ribovich, as well as Dr. Mona Oraby, an editor for The Immanent Frame. This digital forum publishes perspectives on religion, secularism and the public sphere.  There are more events taking place in the spring such as a progress lunch, where a group of faculty and students will meet for discussion and feedback with Tazeen Ali, author of “The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam.” as well as the group of Distinguished Fellows visit, interacting with students that participate in the life of the Greenbern Center, with Terrence Johnson of the Harvard Divinity School. These lectures and discussions with Johnson will take place on March 6 and 7. To interact with the student body that is a part of the Greenberg Center, these distinguished fellows will be presenting public-facing research projects on April 30 at 12:15 p.m.. Trinity students that are interested in serving as a fellow can contact professor Leslie Ribovich at leslie.ribovich@trincoll.edu if they want to apply.

Professor Leslie Ribovich’s goals with the reopening of the Greenberg Center were recorded as such: “First, I want to further connections with the Trinity community by sharing relevant resources and lesson plans ahead of events and encouraging undergrad fellows to utilize offerings on campus, such as the special collections. Second, I’d like to deepen connections in Hartford through, for instance, my class on religion in public life in Hartford next academic year and working with community partners. Third, given my research, I see race and education as vectors by which religion enters public life, and so I aim to prioritize these areas in programming. Fourth, through events such as our works-in-progress lunches, I want to create spaces for faculty to share and receive feedback on research from people across the campus community — students, staff, other faculty — since I see writing and learning as ongoing and collaborative processes. Finally, I want to learn from the Trinity community what your needs and interests are and how Greenberg can support them.”