Anthony Cruz Pantojas is the Humanist Chaplain at Tufts University. They serve as a board member of the Association of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life in Higher Education and representative to the International Association of Chaplains in Higher Education.
As a child, I revered the West as this abstract place of progress and possibility. In today’s climate of precarity, I struggle with the consequences of having been subscribing to Western modernity, whether in conscious or insidious ways, and how it has led me to feel ashamed of my wounds and embodied knowledge and experiences.
Shuttling between Borikén and various U.S. cities, I’ve lived a nomadic existence that disrupts silos and seeks repair through a philosophical approach of marronage, fugitivities, and unbelonging. Though there’s never a truly safe place, I believe in repairing, co-designing new ways of being, and exploring new aesthetics and imaginations, especially as conjured by perspectives from the margins. I grapple with embodying an intersectional, decolonial praxis of Humanism/Freethought that engages in networks to listen, share, risk, and reckon with feelings and experiences. Mentorship is necessary for dreaming and speculating for a better future, particularly for those who have suffered trauma around becoming more human.
As a Humanist educator and scholar-activist informed by Black feminist thought, African philosophy, Cultural Studies, and Caribbean cosmologies and subjectivities, this forum serves to interrogate and bring consciousness to a responsive ethic of care and the urgent need for transnational coalition-building.
Members of the panel include Ana Raquel Aquino (President of Young Humanists International), Jasmine Banks (Executive Director of UnKoch My Campus), Lily Bolourian (Legal and Policy Director for AHA), Anthony Cruz Pantojas (Humanist Chaplain at Tufts University), and Junelie Anthony Velonta (Youth Ambassador of Humanist Alliance Philippines, International).
The event is hosted and organized by the American Humanist Association, a Member of Humanists International, and in collaboration with other institutions, and civil society organizations, including Young Humanists International and Humanists International.