Varun Soni
Dean of Religious Life University of Southern California
Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, where he also served as the inaugural vice provost of campus wellness and crisis intervention, and where he currently teaches courses in the Marshall School of Business, the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupation Therapy, and the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. He is the first and only Hindu in American history to serve as the chief spiritual leader of a college or university. Prior to his role at the University of Southern California, he spent four years teaching courses in the Law and Society Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
A prolific public speaker and scholar of religions, Dean Soni is a national interfaith leader and advocate for religious reconciliation. He is the author of Natural Mystics: The Prophetic Lives of Bob Marley and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and his work has been featured in the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, NPR, Huffington Post, Jewish Journal, and Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He is senior advisor for the multimedia production company Religion of Sports, which was founded by Tom Brady, Michael Strahan, and Gotham Chopra, and he also advises the video game company Naughty Dog, where he contributed to the Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises. He served as a consultant for HBO, ESPN, Showtime, A&E, History Channel, Live Nation, and the Oprah Winfrey Network, and produced the graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary. He also hosted his own radio show on 90.7FM Los Angeles (Pacifica / KPFK), which showcased diverse musical traditions from South Asia and its diaspora. For his work at the intersection of spirituality and popular culture, LA Weekly named him “one of the most interesting people in Los Angeles.”
Dean Soni received his B.A. degree in Religion from Tufts University, where he also earned an Asian Studies minor and completed the Program in Peace and Justice Studies. He subsequently received his M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School and his M.A. degree through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He went on to receive his J.D. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he also completed the Critical Race Studies Program and served as an editor for the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law. He earned his Ph.D. through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where his doctoral research focused on religion, technology, and music. As an undergraduate student, Dean Soni spent a semester living in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh Gaya, India through Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies Program. As a graduate student, he spent months doing field research in South Asia through UCSB’s Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies.
Dean Soni is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Academy of Religion, and the Association of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life in Higher Education. He is the recipient of the Peter Gomes Alumni Award for Spiritual Innovation from Harvard University and the Presidential Medallion from the University of Southern California.
