Kusumita P. Pedersen

Kusumita P. Pedersen is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at St. Francis College and was Khatib Chair in Comparative Religion at St. Joseph’s College in 2016. She has been part of the global interfaith movement for forty years and is Chair of the Interfaith Center of New York, a Trustee of the Parliament of the World's Religions and a founding member of the Parliament's Climate Action Task Force (CATF). She is Co-Chair of the Climate Working Group of the Committee of Religious NGOs at the UN and serves on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Earth Ethics, the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement at Seattle University. She was previously Executive Director of the Project on Religion and Human Rights and Joint Secretary of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival. Kusumita is co-author of Global Ethics in Practice: Historical Backgrounds, Current Issues and Future Prospects (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) and of Faith for Earth: A Call for Action (UN Environment Programme and Parliament of the World’s Religions, 2020) and has published a number of essays and book chapters on environmental ethics, human rights and the interfaith movement. She has compiled and edited librettos for two works by Philip Glass: Symphony No. 5: Bardo, Requiem and Nirmānakāya (1999) and The Passion of Ramakrishna (2006). Kusumita has been a student of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007) since 1971 and is the author of The Philosophy of Sri Chinmoy: Love and Transformation (Lexington Books, 2021) and Sri Chinmoy: Aspects of His Work (Aśvattha Press, 2022).