Yale University

About the Chaplaincy

The YHC strives to provide members with access to a caring community, support in an ethical framework, and opportunities for reflective service. Additionally, we hope to engage in activities to educate community members about the worldview of Humanism as defined in the Humanist Manifesto.

The YHC coordinates a variety of social, academic and service projects for the Yale and New Haven communities. In line with our mission, as described above, we regularly:

Host lectures, workshops and debates, often open to the public, about Humanist and related issues.
Provide events for social engagement and informal discussions for students, both with fellow Humanists and in inter-religious contexts.
Develop personal, one-on-one support, as well as a larger safe and open atmosphere for students, alumni and others in the larger New Haven community.
Organize humanitarian service opportunities to engage students with social problems they may not otherwise encounter, give them a change to give back, and nurture the virtues of generosity and compassion—both as a community of Humanists, and in partnership with our religious neighbors.
Coordinate with and connect our members to other Humanist communities, such as through our partnerships with the Humanist Community at Harvard and the Humanist Chaplaincy at Rutgers, as well as to the broader movement.

The Yale Humanist Community started working on this mission in the Fall semester of 2012 when it was founded by Miles Lasater and Paul Chiariello. We are recognized as a chapter of the American Humanist Association and the Humanist Unitarian Universalist Association. Locally we are a member group of the Connecticut Coalition of Reason. Here at Yale, Chris Stedman, our Coordinator for Humanist Life, is a Fellow of Davenport College and the YHC is a Community Agency member of Dwight Hall.

About the Executive Director

Kathleen Green is Yale Humanist Community’s Executive Director. Before focusing full-time on her doctorate degree, Kathleen served Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations for 10 years, in Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and New Jersey. She has a long history of interfaith and social justice work which includes, after several years of advocating for marriage equality, officiating the first legal same sex marriage ceremony in Bergen County, NJ. Over the past decade, Kathleen has provided a humanist perspective in the work on issues of immigration reform, moral budgeting, clean water, and gun violence prevention through involvement with the Unitarian Universalist legislative ministries of both California and New Jersey. She is a past member of the Faith and Reproductive Justice Leadership Institute at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, and current member of the Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association, the UU Society for Community Ministers, and was recently appointed by the Old Lyme, CT, Board of Selectmen to serve the community as its representative to the Regional Mental Health Board.

Kathleen considers herself a ‘believer in humanity’ and concurs with the words of John Lovejoy Elliott (1868-1942): I have known many good people who did not believe in God. But I have never known a human being who was good that did not believe in people. Her skill in bringing people together, and gift of public speaking, will be central to Kathleen’s work with YHC. She is dedicated and passionate about promoting a positive humanist voice, and working with others to create secular humanist communities of exploration, support, and service. She facilitated a panel discussion (Conversations Among Humanists, Atheists, and Religious Believers) at the 2015 Parliament of World Religions, has been published on Humanist.com, and is the author of an upcoming book of humanist reflections for children, Goodness Gracious, due out by the end of 2017.

As a humanist interfaith activist, Kathleen is part of the teaching faculty at Claremont Lincoln University; teaching courses in the Master of Arts in Interfaith Action program. She received her undergraduate degree from Thomas Edison University in NJ, her Master of Divinity degree from Meadville-Lombard Theological School in Chicago, and expects to receive her doctorate degree in multifaith studies from New York Theological Seminary in New York City in May of 2018. Additionally, Kathleen is a certified Positive Psychology Practitioner and Humanist Celebrant.

Kathleen and her husband, Mitchell, live in the quiet shoreline community of Old Lyme, where the wild turkeys and deer often stop by to say ‘hello’!