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About the Panelists
Fatimah Fanusie, Ph.D. | Panelist
Fatimah Fanusie, Ph.D. is a historian of 19th- and 20th-century American religion whose research is an evolving reappraisal of the study of African American Islam, the modern Civil Rights Movement and Islam in the West. She is also a lecturer in the Islamic Studies department at Johns Hopkins University and a Historian Consultant for the Howard Thurman Historical home in Daytona Beach, Florida. She received her B.A. in History and Arabic from Lincoln University, her M.A. in American History from Tufts University, and her Ph.D. in American History from Howard University.
Zeyneb Sayilgan, Ph.D. | Panelist
Zeyneb Sayilgan, Ph.D., is the Muslim Scholar at ICJS, where her research centers around Islamic theology and spirituality, Christian-Muslim relations, and the intersection of religion and migration. Her personal experience of growing up in Germany as a child of Kurdish Muslim immigrants from Turkey informs her academic work and engagement in interreligious learning. Sayilgan is an affiliated faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and also a Fellow Emerita in Peace and Reconciliation at its Center for Anglican Communion Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Theological and Religious Studies from Georgetown University, a Master’s degree from Hartford Seminary in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, and a B.A/M.A. in Islamic Studies and Public Law from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.
Molly Silverstein | Panelist
Molly Silverstein serves as Program Director for Nonprofit and Civic Professionals at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS). She brings a decade of experience spanning nonprofits, higher education, publishing, mental health, and museum administration. She graduated with a B.A. from Kenyon College and a MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, where she studied end-of-life care, interreligious chaplaincy, and the psychology of religion. She has served as a counselor, educator, chaplain, and facilitator for a range of communities, from individuals navigating mental illness, to Harvard undergraduates and people living with dementia. She is hopeful about the imaginative possibility of interreligious work, and excited about building relationships that honor complexity and value difference.
Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D. | Moderator
Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D. is the ICJS executive director and Roman Catholic scholar. She is an experienced teacher, public speaker, facilitator, and scholar-practitioner of interreligious learning and dialogue. She develops educational initiatives that foster interreligious learning and conversation for the public in the Baltimore-Washington corridor and online. In her research and writing Heather creatively focuses on the theoretical, theological, ethical, and political implications of affirming religious diversity and building an interreligious society.