We're in the midst of the Muslim holy days of Ramadan, just past Western Christians' celebration of Easter, and looking forward to the Jewish Passover holidays in late April. We often refer to these traditions as the Abrahamic faiths—a reference to the childless man chosen by God in the Jewish Bible to be the father of a great nation, and who's an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Today, many who work for religious understanding use Abraham as a point of commonality between those in the three different religious traditions.

Not so fast, says Harvard University Jewish studies scholar, Jon Levenson, PhD ’75. He says that, a bit like the old joke about the United States, Great Britain, and the English language, Abraham is the common figure that separates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. "It is surely the case that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have more in common than their adherents believe," he writes in his 2012 book, Inheriting Abraham, "but the patriarch is less useful to the end of inter-religious concord than many think."

So how does Abraham and his story play out differently in the three traditions? Why is it important to understand those differences? And if Abraham is not the fulcrum on which efforts for religious conciliation can revolve, what are the areas of commonality that can foster peaceful coexistence, particularly today, when it's needed most?

Tufts University Professor James Intriligator, PhD ’97, a human factors engineer, says that GPT is not a search engine, although many of us use it that way. It's more like a glider. It can take us to great knowledge and help us explore new territory. But we need to steer it smartly to get where we want to go. In these journeys, our own curiosity is the wind beneath ChatGPT's wings, the force that unlocks AI's almost limitless potential. In this episode of Colloquy, James Intriligator maps out a flight plan for GPT glider pilots. He says the questions we ask the large language model can take us through transversal spaces that cross many different areas of knowledge. And he's got some important advice for steering it through these domains to get better answers.

In 2022, white residents of the Greater Boston area had about 19 times as much wealth as Black residents, $214,000 to $11,000, according to the Urban Institute. While the gap is particularly large in this part of the country, it's an issue across the US. In 2019, Black Americans held just $0.17 on average for every white dollar of wealth. 

Much has been written about the racial wealth gap, but how has it evolved since emancipation? Why has it been so stubbornly persistent over the past 160 years? And what role does this country's original sin of slavery continue to play in its perpetuation? 

The Princeton University Economist Ellora Derenoncourt takes these questions on in "The Wealth of Two Nations," a paper published last year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Beginning with the Civil War, Derenoncourt and her coauthors chart the way the racial wealth gap narrowed, stalled, and started to widen again in recent years. She writes, "While policies that address racial gaps in savings and capital gains can be a complement, only the redistribution of large stocks of wealth, like reparations, can immediately reduce the racial wealth gap." 

This month on Colloquy: the history of the racial wealth gap.