The Octet Collaborative is pleased to convene a conversation between Prof. C. Kavin Rowe and a special guest about the role and work of the university. What is the purpose of the knowledge generated and disseminated by MIT? What does it mean for MIT to form leaders of integrity? What role do communities of faith play in supporting the university in its vocation?

C. Kavin Rowe is the Vice Dean of the Faculty and the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament. The second of three volumes of his collected essays has recently been published as Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies (Eerdmans, 2024). The first volume is Leading Christian Communities (Eerdmans, 2023). Rowe is the author of four other books: Christianity's Surprise: A Sure and Certain Hope (Abingdon, 2020), One True Life: the Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (Yale University Press, 2016), World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press, 2009, paperback 2010), and Early Narrative Christology (de Gruyter, 2006, repr. Baker Academic, 2009). He has published dozens of articles and essays, and co-edited The Word Leaps the Gap (Eerdmans, 2008) and Rethinking the Unity and Reception of Luke and Acts (University of South Carolina Press, 2010). He is on the editorial board of several international peer-review journals and has also frequently written articles for faithandleadership.com.

Rowe has been a Fulbright Scholar, Regional Scholar for the Society of Biblical Literature, chair of the Society’s Southeastern Region New Testament section, president of the Society's Southeastern Region, and was elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He was awarded a Lilly Faculty Fellowship, a Christian Faith and Life Grant from the Louisville Institute, the John Templeton Prize for Theological Promise, the Paul J. Achtemeier Award, and a Distinguished Scholars grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation.

The self discovery process and finding one's identity has grown increasingly complicated with modern technologies like the internet and social media. While all generations have experienced the angst and the uncertainty of becoming adults, is Generation Z experiencing it differently? What is the transition from adolescence to adulthood like for today's youth? And how do the economic landscape and senses of opportunity shape one's perception of ability to reach goals? Does society characterize Generation Z unfairly? Nancy Hill of Harvard will deliver a presentation on this topic, followed by a discussion with Thea Keith-Lucas, MIT's Chaplain to the Institute. 

Nancy Hill is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on parenting and adolescent development. Hill’s research focuses in on two areas. First, she studies the ways race, socioeconomic status, and community context interact and impact youths’ opportunities for upward mobility, especially through secondary school and postsecondary transitions. Second, her research focuses on the relational supports and mechanisms associated with adolescents’ emerging sense of purpose and views of the economy as they influence post-secondary transitions to college and career. These include familial and school-based supportive relationships and how they support youth as they engage in school, succeed academically and hone their goals, aspirations, and sense of purpose. Hill is known for her work identifying developmentally sensitive strategies to maintain parental involvement in education during adolescence.

After seven years as MIT’s Episcopal Chaplain, Thea Keith-Lucas is the Chaplain to the Institute at MIT, which makes her the university’s primary interfaith chaplain and leader of its Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life. She took on this role in January 2022 after serving in an interim capacity for a year and a half. From 2013 to 2020, Thea served a small community of progressive Christians as the Episcopal Chaplain at MIT. She was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 2006 and previously served parishes in Randolph, Mass. and Danvers, Mass.

This event is by invitation only. If you’re interested in attending, please email comm@octetcollaborative.org

In an era of deep division and conflict, how should MIT think about the moral formation of its students? Does character matter, and should the university - particularly one focused on science and engineering such as MIT - play a role in building it? And how does one do so in a way that respects the pluralistic society that MIT happily supports? Join Prof. Jennifer Herdt and the Octet Collaborative for a thought-provoking conversation in pursuit of intellectual hospitality.

Jennifer A. Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University’s Divinity School.  She is the author, most recently, of Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well(link is external).  Her 2019 book, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition(link is external), was supported by a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.  She is also the author of Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (link is external)(selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), and of Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy(link is external), and has published widely on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Christian Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Religion, and served as the 2020 President of the Society of Christian Ethics. From 2013-2021, she served as the academic dean of Yale Divinity School. She is currently researching more-than-human creaturely agency as a senior member of a research team that has received a $3.9M, 3-year collaborative grant from the Templeton Foundation(link is external) in 2020 to pursue projects in science-informed theological anthropology.

This event is by invitation only. If you’re interested in attending, please email comm@octetcollaborative.org

What is the importance of academic collaboration across disciplines and lines of difference? How might the academic vocation be served - and better serve the common good - by the restoration of literal and figurative “common tables”? Join Prof. Alan Love and the Octet Collaborative for an evening of stimulating conversation and intellectual hospitality around a table of our own!

Alan C. Love, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. He also serves as director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. Love’s research focuses on conceptual issues in biology and has concentrated on evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo), developmental biology, molecular biology, and paleontology (among others).  Love uses a combination of approaches to investigate a variety of philosophical questions concerning conceptual change, explanatory pluralism, knowledge structure, reductionism, the nature of historical science, and interdisciplinary epistemology. Other areas of interest include the role of history in philosophical research and the nature of intuitions generated by thought experiments in philosophical inquiry.

This event is by invitation only. If you’re interested in attending, please email comm@octetcollaborative.org

At a moment when science is of pivotal importance in addressing societal problems, societal distrust of science is on the rise. What is the role of science and leading scientific institutions like MIT in restoring that trust and ensuring that science serves the common good? Join Dr. Joshua Swamidass and the Octet Collaborative for a discussion of this critical topic that pursues rigorous dialogue and intellectual hospitality.

Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass is an associate professor in the Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at Washington University in St Louis. He holds an MD and PhD (Information and Computer Sciences) from the University of California, Irvine. Both a scientist and a physician, he uses computational methods to study information at the intersection of medicine, chemistry, and biology. 

This event is by invitation only. If you’re interested in attending, please email comm@octetcollaborative.org

Join the Octet Collaborative and Nii Addy for dinner and a discussion of mental health that engenders intellectual hospitality, open dialogue and a rigorous inspection of ideas. Open to MIT Faculty and Staff.

Nii Addy is the Albert E. Kent Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology and the inaugural Director of Scientist Diversity and Inclusion at Yale School of Medicine. He is also Director of the Faculty Mentoring Program for Minority Organization for Recruitment and Expansion (MORE) and co-chair of the Career Development Subcommittee of the Anti-Racism Task Force in the Yale Department of Psychiatry. He contributes to graduate student and postdoctoral training and to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives through his efforts on campus and in scientific societies.

Technological advances have impacted the deepest questions of what it means to be human. Join the Octet Collaborative and Andy Crouch for dinner and a discussion of technology, sexuality, and gender that engenders intellectual hospitality, open dialogue and a rigorous inspection of ideas. Open to MIT Faculty and Staff.

Andy Crouch is partner for theology and culture at Praxis, an organization that works as a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship. His writing explores faith, culture, and the image of God in the domains of technology, power, leadership, and the arts. He is the author of five books (plus another with his daughter, Amy Crouch): The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, and Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.

There may be no more contentious issue in America - including among Christians - then the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Join the Octet Collaborative and legal scholar David Skeel for dinner and a discussion of abortion policy that engenders intellectual hospitality, open dialogue and a rigorous inspection of ideas. Open to MIT Faculty and Staff.

David Skeel is S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is the author of True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World (InterVarsity, 2014); The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences (Wiley, 2011); Icarus in the Boardroom (Oxford, 2005); Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (Princeton, 2001); and numerous articles on bankruptcy, corporate law, financial regulation, Christianity and law, and other topics.

Join the Octet Collaborative and Christy Vines for dinner and a discussion of race and difference that engenders intellectual hospitality, open dialogue and a rigorous inspection of ideas. Open to MIT Faculty and Staff.

Christy Vines, President and CEO of Ideos Institute, is a published writer, international speaker, and the executive producer of the 2022 documentary film, "Dialogue Lab: America," a moving take on the current state of division and polarization in America.