Scholarship and knowledge in service to the common good

OTTAWA, Canada — Scholarship is often imagined as solely the work of specialists, carried out in universities and published in journals. Over fifty years of experience within the Association for Bahá’í Studies (ABS) is pointing toward a broader conception: every person can in some way contribute to the generation of knowledge, and countless social spaces can become a setting for the disciplined search for insights that advance human well-being.

This idea ran through the Association’s 50th annual conference, which last month brought some 2,100 participants to Ottawa. The gathering began with 16 two-day seminars examining fields as varied as health, technology, media, education, the arts, mental health, scientific inquiry, and community-engaged research, among many others. A parallel program, organized by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity, brought together youth aged 15 to 21 to consider the relationship between their studies, work, service, and contribution to the life of society.

Central to these efforts is the purpose for which the Association exists. Shabnam Koirala-Azad, chairperson of the ABS executive committee, described it as creating opportunities for academics, professionals, and other interested participants to bring principles from the Bahá’í Revelation into serious conversation with the academic and professional discourses of society, illuminating these areas of human endeavor.

Todd Smith, secretary of the executive committee, emphasized that such correlation also moves in both directions: engaging with insights found in wider bodies of knowledge from diverse fields can, in turn, deepen participants’ understanding of the Bahá’í writings.

Speaking on behalf of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, Saphira Rameshfar described the orientation to knowledge that has increasingly characterized the Association: one in which intellectual rigor is brought into harmony with spiritual perception and the requirements of service and understanding advances through consultation.

Knowledge, she said, is a resource for the advancement of civilization.

An expanding field of inquiry

The fiftieth anniversary provided an opportunity to look across the Association’s development and see how a purpose present from its earliest years has found richer expression over time.

The Association was established in 1975 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada at a time when the Canadian Bahá’í community was exploring how insights drawn from the Bahá’í teachings could contribute to the intellectual life of universities and other institutions of higher learning, including through formal presentations, courses, and lectureships.

Eighty people attended its first annual conference the following year at Cedar Glen in Bolton, Ontario. From these beginnings, the Association sought to foster serious intellectual engagement with the Bahá’í teachings and with questions confronting society. A publishing program began almost immediately, creating avenues for scholarly writing that could also speak to a wider audience. Lectures and conferences were held in university settings, campus associations emerged, and students found spaces in which to consider questions arising from their studies in light of Bahá’í principles.

David Smith, who was among those involved in the Association’s early development later served as a member of the Board of Counsellors in North America, recalled being drawn to the possibility that people looking for answers to the problems of society and technology could encounter insights from the Bahá’í teachings in settings of higher learning. The Association, he said, became “this instrument of learning.”

As the Association grew, so did the avenues through which this purpose could be pursued. Its mandate expanded across North America in 1981, and the Centre for Bahá’í Studies opened in Ottawa the following year. During the 1980s, a number of symposia and dialogues became opportunities for Bahá’í perspectives to be considered alongside other bodies of scholarship and contemporary currents of social thought. The Journal of Bahá’í Studies, established in 1988, provided another increasingly rigorous way for scholarship to contribute both to the intellectual life of the Bahá’í community and to wider academic conversations.

Conferences, publications, campus initiatives, and scholarly dialogues would all assume different forms over the following decades. Yet the purpose animating them continued to deepen: How could insights arising from Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation contribute to humanity’s search for knowledge?

Roshan Danesh, a former member of the executive committee, described another important dimension of the Association’s early contribution. At a time when scholarship on the Bahá’í Faith outside Persian- and Arabic-language contexts was still limited, the Association helped create settings in which such work could develop and enter broader intellectual conversations. From the outset, he said, the Association’s concern extended beyond the study of the Bahá’í Faith itself to correlating the Bahá’í teachings with contemporary thought.

This orientation found expression in publications, conferences and exchanges with thinkers from a range of disciplines. Dr. Danesh noted that these early initiatives helped establish “points of intersection” between Bahá’í thought and wider fields of knowledge. The more participatory approaches visible today, he said, build on this earlier work of exploring how such connections could be made.

Pierre-Yves Mocquais, another former member of the ABS executive committee and now professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, described a feature that stands out across those decades: “The one thing that to me is remarkable about the Association for Bahá’í Studies is the fact that it has all along experimented.”

New approaches unfolded through consultation with Bahá’í institutions as the Association sought to understand how its work could respond to changing needs.

The evolution was therefore not simply one of scale. It involved reconsidering the nature of the spaces where scholarship happens.

Julia Berger, who also previously served on the executive committee, recalled early efforts where several people from a similar field would sit together in what were called “fishbowl conversations,” thinking aloud about questions in their disciplines through the lens of Bahá’í principles and experience.

Dr. Berger described what followed as a “steadfast, dogged commitment to iteration and reflection.” Those relatively simple beginnings gradually contributed to the more intensive seminars now held throughout the year and before the annual conference.

Dr. David Smith similarly recalled the movement from a conference culture largely centered on lectures toward settings in which participants themselves became more actively engaged in sustained inquiry. Learning to learn, he said, is something the Association has become increasingly capable of fostering.

A further significant milestone in this continuing process came with guidance addressed to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada by the Universal House of Justice in 2013. It encouraged the development of settings in which people from similar academic disciplines could examine the prevalent discourses of their fields and highlighted the contribution the Association could make as rising generations entered diverse fields of human endeavor.

By then, capacities being developed through grassroots efforts of the global Bahá’í community for systematic action and reflection, consultation, and the application of spiritual principles to social reality were increasingly finding expression within the Association’s approaches.

“The evolution of the Association is a direct reflection of the capacities that are being built in the Bahá’í community outside of ABS,” said Mariam Ashtiani, a sociologist and member of the executive committee.

Experiences arising from community-building and social action initiatives, she explained, provide insights regarding how spiritual principles can be applied to lived reality rather than remaining at the level of abstraction. The habits of consultation, learning, and reflection developed through such experience have, in turn, enriched how participants approach questions in their academic and professional fields.

One example illustrates how this evolving mode of scholarship can unfold over time. Dr. Todd Smith described a reading group formed to study the work of a philosopher of science. The group eventually became a collaborative writing effort involving seven participants who met regularly over several years, reviewing one another’s abstracts, outlines, and successive drafts, while also drawing on insights generated through larger seminars. This process culminated in six essays published across two issues of The Journal of Bahá’í Studies.

The aim, Dr. Smith emphasized, extended well beyond publication. Participants were learning how to “assist each other to develop their essays alongside each other,” bringing the spirit of collaboration and consultation into the process of scholarship itself.

Dr. Ashtiani stated that “the conference historically was seen as the main vehicle” of the Association’s work. Increasingly, it has become an “inflection point” where threads of inquiry pursued throughout the year converge.

In surveying the past decades, another development has come increasingly into view. Duncan Hanks, a longtime collaborator of the Association, described how “collective learning and collaborative spaces started to take hold,” expanding the circle of those who could see themselves as participants in Bahá’í scholarship and the generation of knowledge.

The Association continues to value the specialized contributions of scholars, he said, while a broader picture has emerged over the last fifty years: professionals and students, together with all others engaged in grassroots efforts can take part in this process.

New perspectives on familiar questions

The experiences examined at this year’s conference offered concrete examples of how the broadened conception of scholarship and participation in the generation of knowledge can unfold within specific fields.

“To contribute to the prevalent discourses of society means we are thinking about transformation at the level of thought, because thought shapes practice,” Dr. Ashtiani said.

A field’s assumptions about human nature, progress, power, knowledge, or the purpose of society influence which issues are recognized as significant, how those issues are interpreted, and what courses of action appear reasonable. Introducing Bahá’í principles into conversations within a field therefore involves more than adding spiritual terminology to existing approaches. At times, it can change the questions being asked in the first place.

Research with, rather than on, communities

Valentina Muraleedharan, a geographer and educator, helped facilitate a seminar on participatory action research (PAR)—an approach that enables communities to take an active part in investigating their own social reality and in considering responses to the conditions they identify.

Traditional research, she explained, can begin with someone entering a community from a university setting with a question already defined. Drawing on the work of PAR scholars, she noted that participatory approaches instead recognize that people living within a community possess knowledge of their own experience that cannot simply be substituted by outside expertise.

The Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humanity carries this idea further. Dr. Muraleedharan described how it can soften assumptions of a fixed division between the researcher and those being researched.

“There’s no insider/outsider when it comes to doing research with a community,” she said. “Rather, one sees themselves as part of that community, and the challenges they face as their own challenges.”

Universal participation, meanwhile, has implications for the meaning of justice in research. A just process cannot be considered solely in terms of the eventual findings or benefits. It also raises questions about who helps identify the problem, formulate the questions, interpret experience, and determine what action should follow.

“Who is participating in that research becomes really important to achieving a just outcome and a just process,” Dr. Muraleedharan said.

Research approached in this way can become part of building a community’s capacity to understand and respond to its own reality, rather than merely producing knowledge about it.

From individual health to the health of a social body

The principle of oneness has also influenced the direction of Jasmine Miller-Kleinhenz’s work in population health.

Dr. Miller-Kleinhenz—a molecular biologist and member of the Executive Committee—initially worked on developing treatments for an aggressive form of breast cancer that appeared disproportionately among certain populations of women. Common explanations often pointed to ancestry or characteristics presumed to be inherent in those populations.

Yet, she said, the scientific evidence did not adequately support such assumptions.

Reflecting on the Bahá’í conception of humanity as one family prompted another line of inquiry: what conditions were these women living within, and might those conditions themselves leave a biological imprint?

Her research began moving outward from the molecular processes within individual bodies to the social and physical environments in which people live, examining access to nutritious food, quality education, green space, and other social conditions, and considering how environments shaped by collective decisions can become embodied in an individual’s health outcomes.

For Dr. Miller-Kleinhenz, the principle of oneness did not generate a scientific conclusion. It helped make another scientific question visible.

“It can’t just be something nice that I do on the side,” she said of the effort to apply spiritual principles to daily life. “It also has to shape my research questions.”

Moving the question from what is happening within a person’s body to the conditions in which that person lives also changes where responsibility for health is located. An exclusively individualized model can ask whether a person has a healthy diet or exercises enough. A broader conception considers the individual within a web of relationships, institutions, environments, and social choices, and asks what responsibility the wider society bears for the conditions in which health is cultivated.

Making the assumptions within technology visible

Similar questions about hidden assumptions arose in seminars on technology.

Adib Shafipour, a researcher working on artificial intelligence applications for disease detection, described an exercise he introduced while teaching biotechnology. Students were asked to identify assumptions contained within the technologies they were studying.

Their observations quickly moved beyond technical performance. One student identified an implicit assumption that extending human life should be pursued regardless of the quality of that life. Another questioned whether greater efficiency should always be treated as desirable without considering wider material and social consequences.

The exercise did not prescribe what students should conclude. Its significance lay in bringing assumptions to the surface that can otherwise appear to be merely technical.

Mr. Shafipour explained that technologies are often described as neutral tools. Yet their design inevitably reflects ideas about what should be optimized, which needs matter, what constitutes progress, and how a human being is understood.

This becomes especially consequential when the dominant image of the person is that of a consumer whose participation consists chiefly in adopting what has already been produced.

A Bahá’í conception of human beings as protagonists with the capacity to consult, make choices, and contribute to their collective life opens another possibility: communities themselves can become more capable of considering what technologies they need, for what purposes, and their likely effects on their relationships and culture.

Such examples are modest, Mr. Shafipour emphasized, but they suggest that meaningful participation in technological choices need not be restricted to technologists.

Rethinking the starting point of political thought

Michael Sabet, a PhD candidate in political science and the editor of The Journal of Bahá’í Studies, helped facilitate a seminar examining alternatives to political partisanship and polarization.

Much political thought, he explained, begins with individuals or groups who are understood to have differing interests. The problem of politics then becomes how those competing interests are negotiated, balanced, or contested.

The principle of the oneness of humanity changes the starting point.

“If our beginning assumption… is the oneness of humanity, then the discussion begins on a different footing,” Mr. Sabet said.

He drew on the Bahá’í analogy of humanity as a single body. The needs of its different parts are distinct, yet the well-being of one cannot ultimately be secured through the deprivation of another. Applied to political thought, this shifts attention beyond how competing groups can obtain their share, and directs it toward how diverse needs can be understood within the well-being of the whole.

Mr. Sabet explained that the Bahá’í principle of consultation offers a means to make that shift. It creates a setting in which differing perspectives can be examined together and gradually brought into a shared understanding that can guide collective action. As he put it, “If people come together with the right methodology,” they can arrive at such unity of understanding.

A growing circle of contributors

For Nwandi Lawson, a media practitioner, the widening conception of Bahá’í scholarship is reflected in her own relationship with ABS.

“I assumed, as a media professional, ABS is not for me, so I excluded myself,” she recalled.

It was only after someone encouraged her to participate that she encountered collaborative spaces in which her professional experience could become part of a disciplined examination of the assumptions shaping media.

This year, one detail stood out to her: a Grade 12 student was among those taking part in the seminar on media and society.

Experience remains essential, Ms. Lawson said, but a field becomes richer when people just entering it can think alongside those who have worked within it for decades.

That intergenerational dynamic was also reflected in the conference’s dedicated program for young people. High school and university-age participants examined how their education and eventual professions can form part of a coherent life of service, alongside participation in community-building efforts and social action.

Hoda Farahmandpour, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada, recalled attending her first ABS conference as a youth. Addressing the conference at its opening, she reflected on the opportunities now available for young people to enter academic and professional fields “in the company of experienced people,” developing the intellectual rigor and clarity of thought required to contribute to a common pool of knowledge for the advancement of all.

Underlying this widening participation in ABS forums, Dr. Todd Smith suggested, is a posture of humility: participants diligently pursuing this work while also seeing themselves as being “on the same path of service where everybody has something to contribute.”