USC’s Varun Soni To Be First Hindu To Speak At Stanford’s Baccalaureate Event

India-West Staff Reporter

PALO ALTO, CA – Varun Soni, an interfaith leader who is the first Hindu to serve as the lead chaplain on a U.S. college campus, will be the keynote speaker for Stanford’s 2024 Baccalaureate celebration in June, ahead of the actual commencement ceremonies. Baccalaureate is a student-led celebration with readings, prayers, and lively music reflecting the wide range of religious traditions in the Stanford community.

The Dean of religious and spiritual life at the University of Southern California, Soni will speak during the celebratory event for graduates, family members, and other guests on Saturday morning, June 15, at Frost Amphitheater, Standford University said in a statement.

Soni, who also served as USC’s inaugural vice provost of campus wellness and crisis intervention, became the first Hindu to be chief religious or spiritual leader of a college or university in American history in 2008. He holds a BA in religion from Tufts University, MTS from Harvard Divinity School, MA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, JD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and PhD from the University of Cape Town.

Tiffany Steinwert, Stanford’s dean for religious and spiritual life at Stanford said, “Placing community and belonging at the heart of spiritual life, and the university itself, Soni has explored new ways in which higher education can support students as they create lives of meaning and purpose.”

Soni was born in India and raised in the U.S., and he has family members on five continents – who together represent every major religious tradition on the globe. As an undergraduate, he spent a semester living in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh Gaya, India, and, as a graduate student, spent months doing field research in South Asia. He is the author of Natural Mystics: The Prophetic Lives of Bob Marley and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Soni said he was “humbled to be the first Hindu to offer the Baccalaureate address at Stanford. And so, I very much look forward to gathering as a spiritual community at a time when we all need it most.”