Dr. John Grim, Honorary DD recipient Dr. Mary Evelyn

Tucker, Dr. James Miller and Dr. Pamela Dickey Young

Dr. Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University, where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies.  She teaches in the joint Master of Arts program in Religion and Ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale with her husband, John Grim.

Her special area of study is Asian religions.  She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Japanese Confucianism.  Since 1997, she has been a Research Associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard.  Her Confucian publications include Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989) and The Philosophy of Qi(Columbia University Press, 2007).

Her concern for the growing environmental crisis, especially in Asia, led her to organize with John Grim a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard (1995-1998).  After the Conference series, she and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology.  To help shape this new interdisciplinary field they edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994) and a Daedalus volume titled Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change ? (2001).

Tucker has worked closely with evolutionary philosopher, Brian Swimme, for some 25 years.  Together they have created a multi-media project called Journey of the Universe.

Tucker has also been involved with the Earth Charter since its inception.  She served on the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997 to 2000, and is a member of the Earth Charter International Council.