Symposium investigates the history and global reach of the Bahá’í Faith
Eight scholars from around the country came to ɫ to present research on the religion’s history
New York state and the Bahá’í religion are woven together. The first knot of that tapestry was tied in 1848, a momentous year, said ɫ Professor of Middle East Studies Omid Ghaemmaghami.
That July, some 300 people — among them Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass — met in the upstate New York village of Seneca Falls for the nation’s first convention on women’s rights. Two weeks earlier in the northern Iranian hamlet of Badasht, another group of people were making history. All were men, save one: a young poet, scholar and revolutionary named Ṭáhirih, who helped proclaim the advent of a new religion and usher in a transformation. At Badasht, Ṭáhirih brazenly removed her veil, an act that shocked her contemporaries and symbolized the independence of the Bábí religion, the precursor to the Bahá’í Faith.
“Even if the immediate effects of the conferences in upstate New York and northern Iran were limited, the spark ignited at both events was not to be snuffed out,” Ghaemmaghami said, quoting scholar Farzaneh Milani. “The implications of these near-simultaneous happenings were great for both genders, but particularly for women and the enduring struggle for equality. And the long-term impact of both has been profound and far-reaching.”
On April 10, ɫ hosted the symposium, in partnership with the Corinne True Center for Bahá’í History. The event was co-sponsored by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH); the departments of History, Judaic Studies (Religious Studies minor), and Middle Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (MEAMS); the Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP); and the Center for Middle East and North Africa Studies (CMENAS).
The Bahá’í Faith, founded by Bahá’u’lláh, teaches the essential worth of all religions and the unity of all people, regardless of race, nation or gender. Around 8 million adherents live in virtually every corner of the world today, although the religion faces heavy persecution in its native Iran.
The symposium looked at the growth and development of the religion, from its homeland and countries in the East, to the Western Hemisphere and the Global South. Each of the four panels was chaired by a faculty member in Harpur College.
Aaron Yates of Denison University and Guy Emerson Mount of Wake Forest University began the panel sessions with a discussion of W.E.B. DuBois. A monumental American sociologist, civil rights activist and Black intellectual, DuBois had a complex relationship with the Bahá’í Faith; he grew up Protestant but later decided that he wouldn’t belong to any religion unless it fully agreed with all his principles, Yates said. However, he maintained connections with religious people and institutions throughout his life, including many Bahá’ís; he taught at Bahá’í schools, attended Bahá’í meetings, his first wife, Nina Gomer Du Bois, became a Bahá’í, and he was seen by close friends as part of the religion, Mount said.
Later in the morning, Louis Venters of Francis Marion University and Otha Malik Nash of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro discussed the practice and application of history. Venters explored how Bahá’u’lláh’s vision of a collapsing global order and an emerging new one can be read alongside contemporary analyses of modern crises, asking how Bahá’ís might engage more rigorously with historical thinking and global scholarship. Nash’s presentation invited the approach of history itself as a “translative” practice, highlighting the shared craft of historians and translators and examining how Bahá’í perspectives and a proper disposition can help bridge indigenous African historical traditions and Atlantic historiography.
In the first panel of the afternoon, Ghaemmaghami and Mina Yazdani of Eastern Kentucky University addressed the history and context of two authoritative Bahá’í texts authored in the 19th century. Ghaemmaghami traced the journey and the social and historical implications of one of the earliest known copies of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the central text in the Bahá’í canon, originally composed by Bahá’u’lláh while under confinement in ‘Akká (Acre) in Ottoman Palestine, and brought from Iran to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library in the early 1890s. Yazdani examined the Risáliy-i-Síyásíyyih (the Treatise on Politics), written by Bahá’u’lláh’s son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1893, situating the treatise in the political upheavals of late Qajar Iran and arguing that it articulated a clear Bahá’í stance against the involvement of the clergy in politics while guiding the Bahá’í community through several critical periods of unrest.
The final panel, featuring Janice Ndegwa from Stanford University and Robert Stockman of Indiana University, explored the development and growth of Bahá’í communities in East Africa and the United States. Ndegwa considered the spread of the Bahá’í Faith in mid-20th-century East Africa, focusing on early converts in Kampala who carried the religion across the region during the turbulent years of decolonization, highlighting how conversion offered new ways of navigating identity, belonging, and social change. Stockman traced the growth of the Bahá’í community in the United States from its late 19th-century beginnings to the present, identifying key periods of expansion and analyzing patterns of conversion, including the prominent role of Protestant backgrounds and the significant, though shifting, presence of African Americans.
The symbolic connection between New York and the Bahá’í Faith extends far beyond the summer of 1848, Ghaemmaghami noted in his opening remarks. The religion arrived in the state in 1892, introduced by an early Arab adherent who claimed to have been sent by Bahá’u’lláh. A pivotal year was 1912, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made New York his headquarters for nine months as he traveled through the United States and Canada, speaking to audiences about Bahá’í teachings such as the unity of humankind, the equality of women and men, the harmony of science and religion, and the imperative to eliminate prejudice and abandon blind imitation of the past.
New York City was the administrative and publication heart of the American Bahá’í community throughout the early 20th century; the Geneva community was distinguished by its integration of white and Black Bahá’ís in the 1930s, Ghaemmaghami said.
ɫ was among the first cities in the state to establish a Bahá’í community; by 1939, seven of the nine members who served on its local governing assembly were women. In 1988, Diana Malouf, working under the direction of Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and founder of the University’s PhD program in Translation Studies, Marilyn Gaddis Rose, completed a dissertation on the translation of Bahá’u’lláh’s preeminent ethical work—one of the earliest dissertations completed in academic Bahá’í studies. Subsequently published under the title Unveiling the Hidden Words (Oxford, 1997), Malouf dedicated the dissertation in part “to the Bahá’ís of Broome County for their love and support and who in indirect ways share in this undertaking.”
“The religion has grown slowly yet steadily across the state and witnessed many ebbs and flows,” Ghaemmaghami said. “By the 1960s, New York state had administrative institutions in 18 localities. New York City is today home to one of the largest, most diverse, and active local communities in the world.”
The symposium brought together a rich and diverse set of perspectives on Bahá’í history—spanning different regions of the world and exploring a wide range of themes, from textual and intellectual history to lived experience and global developments.
“What makes this gathering especially exciting,” said Ghaemmaghami, “is that it reflects the growing maturity of Bahá’í studies as a field of academic historical inquiry: one that is increasingly comparative, interdisciplinary, and attentive to both local contexts and global connections.”