The annual Festival of Faiths returns to Louisville this week.

This year’s theme is “Sacred Belonging” and one of the sessions exploring that is “The Beauty of Radical Inclusion.”

Presenter M. Shadee Malaklou is the founder of the bell hooks center at Berea College, where she also chairs the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

I spoke with Malaklou about what radical inclusion looks like in practice, and how it might help us bridge divides in our communities and beyond.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Ayisha Jaffer: What does radical inclusion mean, and how does it connect to this year's festival theme of sacred belonging?

M. Shadee Malaklou: For me, I take the meaning from bell hooks and the ways in which she found radical belonging in Appa

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