News

Swift Hall and the Good Life

By Raissa von Doetinchem de Rande, Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics and Islamic Studies | February 6, 2026

Person ascending the stairs of swift Hall with light streaming out of the window

Swift Hall has been at the forefront of the study of religious ethics since it began welcoming students for classes in 1926. Scholars as influential and innovative as Richard B. Miller, Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Gustafson, and William Schweiker have cultivated diverse conversations that enrich and make relevant scholarly engagement with religion and the good life. The ethicists of Swift Hall excelled because their work was shaped by the University of Chicago Divinity School community and its foundational role in the American study of religion. None of the figures listed above was just an “ethicist”: they were all deeply engaged in theology, politics, philosophy, or the history of religion(s), among other areas of inquiry.

Before joining the faculty, I twice aspired to inhabit Swift Hall and its rich tradition of cutting-edge scholarship and teaching, both when choosing a suitable M.A. and a subsequent Ph.D. program that would allow me to study Islamic ethics. In the field of religious ethics, students and scholars of the Divinity School are known for their remarkable erudition and command of relevant methodologies; some might even say that other programs cower at the depth and breadth of the Chicago ethicists.

In 2024, I finally found myself at Swift Hall as Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics and Islamic Studies, and my high expectations were not unfounded. My colleagues and students at the Div School are exceptionally committed, welcoming, and eager to engage. It has been inspiring to watch students across degrees, both within the school and throughout the university, debate issues and texts rigorously, insightfully, and constructively. Colleagues do not simply talk about interdisciplinarity; they jump at the opportunity to work and think together in seminars, workshops, and events.

What surprised me most, however, was how much the building itself, from Grounds of Being in the basement to my fourth-floor office, absorbed me as one of its own almost instantly.

One year since arriving at Swift Hall, I look forward to walking up or down the staircase, meeting colleagues, staff, and students along the way. This excursion usually offers valuable opportunities: to chat about a new book or a recent talk; to dream up a seminar that would be field-changing if we decided to offer it; to encounter something or someone that bears witness to the building's illustrious past. The walls are marked by traces of previous generations, iterations of bygone eras in the study of religion, and the ever-fresh potential of new ideas. Offices with open doors beckon with the promise of interesting discussions or potential collaborations. The richness of the social and intellectual fabric that weaves and meanders through the building is what makes Swift Hall an exceptional home for the Divinity School community.

As my appointment as Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics and Islamic Studies demonstrates, the Divinity School’s ethics area is moving in new and exciting directions. In my work, I investigate Islamic moral and political thought within the wider framework of religious ethics. My first book, The Politics of Islamic Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2025), is a case study focusing on the Qur’anic term ‘fiṭra.’ Fiṭra is an ethically significant concept, usually understood as a divinely created human nature shared by all people. By exploring how early Islamic philosophers from al-Fārābī (d. 950) to Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) employed fiṭra when philosophizing about the human being, I show that they used it primarily to conceptualize humanity hierarchically. Spanning fields such as logic, politics, and virtue theory, fiṭra, according to these thinkers, accounts for a variety of inequalities as innate and divinely endowed.

Attention to these philosophers’ use of fiṭra illuminates how thinkers inflect fundamental ethical concepts in response to their own intellectual and historical contexts and, in this example, how Islamic theological concepts facilitated philosophical arguments among a variety of audiences. My book intervenes in the study of religious ethics and contributes to a historically grounded, methodologically robust, and philosophically inclined study of normative Islamic thought.

In addition to several article projects on a variety of philosophers and issues in pre-modern Islamic ethics, I am beginning a new book project. This project investigates al-Fārābī’s account of the perfect ruler as it relates to his conceptions of human virtue, political perfection, and the nature of religion.

I note my scholarly agenda, as I see it growing in conjunction with the evolution of the Divinity School’s ethics area. Through research, teaching, and mentoring, my colleagues and I seek to foreground our diverse expertise within the walls of Swift Hall and to capture developments in the study of religious ethics across the country and the globe. As we aim to shape our field in new and meaningful ways, we balance a rigorous grounding in established theological and philosophical ethical theories with training in traditions and methods of students’ choices.

Today, these traditions and methods are often those that have historically been marginalized or excluded, such as religions beyond Christianity or monotheism; the potential contributions of quantitative methods; and the exploration of intersections among the critical studies of race, gender, class, or disability. The Divinity School ethics faculty are therefore excited about new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration within the school and across campus and honored to do our part in training students from varied degree programs, areas, and interests to expand the study of religious ethics in ways befitting the twenty-first century.

Thinking about the future from a vantage point that is aware of the present and past of Swift Hall, one cannot help but be excited. I have no doubt that students, staff, and faculty will continue to shape the study of religion and religious ethics in meaningful ways that take seriously the moral, political, and social challenges confronting our societies now and in the coming years. How could it be otherwise? After all, excellence, innovation, and deep engagement with the needs and realities of the academy and world alike are the most traditional values of Swift Hall.

Read additional faculty reflections upon Swift Hall's centennial: