Seminary of the Southwest is proud to announce Kazu Haga as the keynote speaker for the 57th annual Blandy Lecture, to be held on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. A respected voice in the fields of nonviolence and restorative justice, Haga brings decades of experience in social change and community healing to this year’s event, which honors the legacy of the Very Rev. Gray M. Blandy, the seminary’s founding dean.
The daylong celebration will invite alumni and guests to reengage with the seminary’s academic and spiritual life. The schedule includes the opportunity to audit a Wednesday morning class, attend an Alumni Eucharist in Christ Chapel, share lunch with the Southwest community, and participate in a late afternoon reception followed by Haga’s lecture.
You can register now here. More details and a schedule of the day will be released at the end of June.
Kazu Haga is a leading practitioner of Kingian Nonviolence, a philosophy and methodology rooted in the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is the founder of the East Point Peace Academy, a training organization based in Oakland, California, dedicated to cultivating peace and justice through inner transformation and collective action. A longtime activist and educator, Haga works with a wide range of communities—from incarcerated individuals to youth organizers and faith-based groups—offering tools to navigate conflict, heal harm, and engage in nonviolent direct action.
He is a founding core member of the Ahimsa Collective, a restorative justice organization that bridges the worlds of criminal justice, trauma healing, and peacemaking, and is also part of the leadership circle of the Fierce Vulnerability Network. His approach to justice work is deeply influenced by his experience as a formerly incarcerated youth and his early training in nonviolence at the age of 17 while living at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.
Haga is the author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm (Parallax Press, 2020) and Fierce Vulnerability: A Memoir of Healing from Trauma, Emerging through Collapse (2023), which blend personal narrative with practical philosophy to offer readers pathways toward communal healing and systemic change.
He lives with his family at Canticle Farm, an intentional interfaith community located on Lisjan Ohlone land in Oakland, California, where his work continues to be informed by principles of simplicity, justice, and mutual care.
