ABS 2018 – Shahrzad Sabet: Social Identity and the Oneness of Humankind

“Social Identity and the Oneness of Humankind” is a talk delivered by Shahrzad Sabet at the Association for Baha’i Studies Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) in August 2018. In this talk, Shahrzad draws on the Baha’i principle of the oneness of humankind to address the conceptual underpinnings of this debate in public discourse and political philosophy. She believes that a genuinely unbounded primary identity (i.e., one based on our membership in a single human race) represents not just an expansion of scope from the national to the global, but a qualitative shift that permeates all identities, and serves to fundamentally protect and liberate our secondary affiliations from their otherwise inherent instabilities and contradictions.

Shahrzad Sabet‘s research spans politics, economics, psychology, and philosophy. She is a Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Baha’i Chair for World Peace Program. Previously, she was a Senior Research Fellow at Princeton University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, where she received her PhD. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The Washington Post and TheNew York Times.

This talk was filmed at the Association for Baha’i Studies Conference in Atlanta, Georgia in August 2018.

The Association for Baha’i Studies (ABS) promotes the advanced study of the Baha’i Faith and its application to the needs of humanity, it holds an annual conference and sponsors seminars and symposia, engaging participants from all over North America. It publishes a peer-reviewed journal, ‘The Journal of Baha’i Studies’, occasional books and monographs, as well as other publications. It is also engaged in a number of initiatives to advance Baha’i studies among students and young adults and to stimulate broader interest in Baha’i studies.

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Sonjel Vreeland

In her innermost heart, Sonjel is a stay-at-home parent and a bookworm with a maxed out library card but professionally she is a museologist with a background in English Literature. She currently lives on Prince Edward Island, an isle in the shape of a smile on the eastern Canadian coast. Sonjel is a writer who loves to listen to jazz when she's driving at night.