Learning to Pay Attention: Dr. Harold Roth on Contemplation and the Liberal Arts

On October 22, students and faculty gathered in Tucker Hall to hear Dr. Harold Roth, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies at Brown University, deliver a lecture titled “Contemplative Studies and the Liberal Arts Education: How Contemplative Studies Programs Can Meet the Challenges of a Liberal Arts Education in Stressful Times.” Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the talk explored how contemplative practices can help students reclaim attention and resilience amid the commodification of focus in the digital age. Dr. Roth noted that this loss of agency underlies many of today’s attention challenges. Contemplative studies, he emphasized, offer tools to reclaim that agency through the cultivation of contemplative intelligence. 

As the founder and director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown, Dr. Roth leads a program dedicated to teaching the cognitive framework of contemplative practices while providing students with opportunities to practice meditation in the classroom. He began his lecture with a voluntary contemplative exercise, leading the audience through a brief meditation sequence. This recentering practice was followed by an overview of the meaning of a liberal arts education, in which Dr. Roth argued that today’s programs should emphasize not only critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but also the skills of contemplative intelligence. 

These skills, he explained, develop through the study and practice of contemplation—a process that occurs both intentionally and non-intentionally through meditation and flow activities. The process begins with sustained attention, which gradually leads to deepened concentration, a broadening of awareness, a greater understanding of oneself, and ultimately, “self-contextualizing experiences.” Dr. Roth illustrated how such experiences reveal that each person is part of a larger context—family, society, nation, or environment—and how they form the basis for other-regarding virtues such as empathy, compassion, and humaneness. 

The lecture concluded with a Q&A session, during which Dr. Roth discussed the structure of the Contemplative Studies Initiative and the courses offered within the program. The curriculum fosters flexible skills in critical thinking and “critical being” studies, preparing students to enter diverse fields across the humanities and STEM professions. Dr. Roth highlighted the breadth of careers pursued by students who engage in contemplative studies, including biological and clinical sciences, law, and medicine. By strengthening contemplative intelligence, he concluded, students develop resilience and self-awareness, equipping them for success in a wide range of professional paths.