Meet Our Faculty

We are very proud of our CRI faculty. From the inception of CRI ten years ago, we have been honored by an outstanding faculty, most of whom are professors at the major universities and seminaries of America. They are distinguished academics and superior teachers.

Robert Chender became a student of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche while in college. He majored in East Asian Studies at Vassar and also attended Harvard, where he wrote his senior thesis on the history of Buddhism in China; he also has a degree from the NYU School of Law. He has been a meditation instructor, teacher, and Shambhala Training director for more than twenty-five years. He has served on the Shambhala Center Board of Directors since its inception, and was chairman of the Board from 2000 until 2005. He is also the spiritual director of the Tel Aviv Shambhala Meditation Group.



Michael Collins. Michael is a familiar face around St. Bart’s, where he serves as the Verger (the major domo of all worship services.) Scholarly and thoughtful, he has made a life-long study of philosophy, which he began as a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Rt. Rev. Catherine S. Roskam, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, has oversight of the 66 congregations of Region II, the area encompassing Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties, where she continues her work in congregational development, clergy care, and leadership training. Her vision for mission includes a deep commitment to youth and young adults and to cultural and racial inclusiveness. Bishop Roskam served on the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church as Chair of the International Concerns Committee and is a representative from the Episcopal Church to the Anglican Consultative Council. She was instrumental in founding the Global Women’s Fund of the Diocese of New York, which is devoted to empowering women in the developing world, as well as The Carpenter’s Kids, a program developed in relationship with the Diocese of Central Tanganyika in support of AIDS orphans in Tanzania through parish to parish linkage. 

Anisa Mehdi is an Emmy Award-winning journalist specializing in religion and the arts. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, and has earned a master’s degree from Columbia School of Journalism. For over 20 years she has reported, written, directed and produced television news and documentary programs for major American media outlets, including National Geographic, PBS, ABC News, and CBS. Her commentaries have been heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She has written perspective pieces for newspapers, magazines and Internet sites. Anisa Mehdi is founder and president of Whetstone Productions, a New Jersey-based production and consulting company. She is adjunct Professor of Communications at Seton Hall University.


Dr. Claudia Setzer is Chairperson and Professor of Religious Studies at ManhattanCollege.  She earned her B.A. at Macalaster College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Setzer's books and articles focus on social relations between Jews and early Christians, and she has a special interest in North African Christianity. She has served for several years as chair of the Early/Jewish Christian Relations group at the Society of Biblical Literature, and has been an associate editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, has been a contributor to PBS website “From Jesus to Christ,” and re-established in 2006 the Columbia University seminar on the New Testament, which she also is the Co-Chair person. She is also compiling and editing a sourcebook on the Bible and American Culture with David Shefferman for Routledge Press.


Deirdre Good. A professor of New Testament at General Theological Seminary, Deirdre has taught at CRI almost since its inception. She earned her doctorate at Harvard, and is one of CRI’s most popular teachers.

Rachel Fell McDermott is Associate Professor and Chair of the Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures Department at Barnard College/Columbia University, and specializes in South Asia, especially India. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, her M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School in 1984, and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1993. Her research interests focus on Bengal, in eastern India, and the Hindu-goddess-centered religious traditions from that part of the subcontinent. She is also committed to the study of comparative religion, and teaches comparative courses in which important religious themes are traced across cultures.

Jeannine Hill Fletcher is Associate Professor of Theology at Fordham University.  She earned his doctorate at Harvard Divinity School. As a systematic theologian, she is especially interested in how to communicate Catholic Christian identity in a religiously plural world, using resources of the tradition to address contemporary challenges. For example, in Monopoly on Salvation? A Feminist Response to Religious Pluralism (Continuum, 2005), She reclaims Karl Rahner’s theology of God’s incomprehensibility in a feminist theology of religious pluralism. Her current research pursues the issues raised in this text by asking whether and how women’s interfaith engagements might inform our understandings of identity and plurality.



Terrance Klein. Father Klein teaches theology at Fordham. He earned his doctorate at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, as well as a master’s degree from Notre Dame. His robust classes perhaps reveal his hobby of weight-lifting. Known for his wry approach to “great issues,” he charms his students while teaching them to understand more than they ever expected.

Daniel F. Polish. Rabbi Dan Polish is a long time CRI teacher, whose wide range of classes in Hinduism, Bible, and religious philosophy are a popular part of the CRI program. He earned his doctorate at Harvard in the history of religion.

Hussein Rashid. Hussein just completed his doctoral work at Harvard. He has been a regular CRI faculty member for the last several years, teaching courses in Islam, Qur’an and related fields. His courses evaluations are routinely raves.

Leonard Schoolman. Rabbi Schoolman is the founding director of the Center for Religious Inquiry, and he regularly teaches classes in Judaism, Bible and Hebrew. He is a graduate of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he was ordained, and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees. He is author of The Changing Christian World: A Brief Introduction for Jews (2008.)

Phyllis Trible. Perhaps one of the first (or the first) feminist Bible scholars, Phyllis Trible spent most of her academic career at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she recently retired as Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature. We are delighted to have her back at CRI.