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A Conversation With USC's Dean Of Religious Life Varun Soni

Chhaya Nene |
February 24, 2014 | 10:18 p.m. PST

Reporter

From a predominately Jewish enclave neighborhood in Newport Beach, to the ethnically diverse campus of USC, Varun Soni was raised with a strong sense of spirituality. It wasn’t until college that he realized he wanted to bridge the gap between the spiritual and scholarly world. As the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, Soni manages over 100 religious groups on campus (the most in the country) as well as 50 chaplains who represent a wide spectrum of faiths and traditions from Baha’i to Zoroastrian. Dean Soni spoke about the path that brought him to his current position and why his job matters.

Q: Why was your hire significant?

A: “I became the first Hindu in American history to be the chief religious or spiritual leader of a university and I’m currently the only non-Christian in the country who has a position like this.  All my colleagues are ordained ministers, I’m a non-ordained Hindu attorney.  USC really thought outside the box with the hire.

 For me what was interesting about my hire was that I didn’t get the job because I was Hindu, but I wasn’t precluded from the job because I was Hindu. “

Q: Who were your role models or the people that helped you chose the position you hold today?

A: “I was primarily raised by my grandfather. My parents were at the hospital doing their residencies and then their practices so I never really saw them growing up. But my grandfather was sort of the presence in my life. And he had a unique life, his mother was very good friends with Kasturba Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s wife.

 My grandfather grew up with the leaders of the Indian Nationalist movement so he actually grew up with Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru. He would tell me stories about them because he had personal experiences with them, so at a very young age, my grandfather who was a teacher, an artist, a Buddhist, a musician, really turned me on to a different way of seeing the world, and I think he planted a seed. What was really interesting to me, was this idea of bringing together the spiritual and the scholarly world in my life the way Gandhi had done it for the purposes of social justices.”

Q: Did you have any life-changing moments during your studies that brought you specifically towards wanting to combine the spiritual and scholarly?

A: “I went abroad my junior year and I did the Antioch studies program in Bodhgaya India which is the town where the Buddha was enlightened. 

I think that was October 2nd 1994 it was Gandhi’s birthday and in order to commemorate this, I was going to go and meditate under the tree that marks the spot where the Buddha was enlightened. So the sun is rising, and I hear this commotion, and I open my eyes and walking towards me is the Dalai Lama. Apparently he comes through Bodhgaya and gives his respects wherever he is near, and him and his small entourage of 15 people were coming towards me and I just had this interaction with him that made me realize that what I was trying to do.

I wanted to experience was a place that looked like where he was residing, to achieve some heightened level of consciousness.

In my interaction with him, I realized that this person was seeing the world in a very, different way, I was intrigued. He was also another figure I had thought who brought together the spiritual and the scholarly in his life for the purposes of social justice.

So as a 20 year old I thought this was it, and what I realized at that age was that my approach to religion shouldn’t just be spiritual, it should also be scholarly, that I had to do this not only for myself but I could be a professor of religion, or work as a religious professional.”



 

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