Not As Thorny As Might Seem: Issues in Scholar-Practitioner Collaboration

For twelve years, I have directed a set of practitioner-oriented, campus-community programs in religious literacy and interfaith leadership while at the same time publishing, teaching, and presenting in the critical study of religion. Wearing these “two hats” can produce a fair amount of internal conflict. Thus I routinely wrestle with the three exemplary issues for this session: how to bring a measure of rigor to the scholar-practitioner dialogues and interactions that I participate in and program, how to negotiate these two different roles within myself and with my students in the classroom, and how attune myself to the ethical questions that invariably arise in wearing these two hats in my scholarship, programming, and teaching. Although I do not have hard-and-fast answers or solutions to any of them, I can bring to them a measure of experience and perspective, one from which these issues are not as thorny as might seem.