David Harrington Watt is the Douglas and Dorothy Steere Professor of Quaker Studies. He is on a research leave that will conclude in January of 2025. When he is not on leave, Watt teaches courses such as: "Ethical Struggles in Catastrophic Times;" "Exclusion, Inclusion, and the U. S. Academy;" "Quakers, War, Slavery, and Freedom;" "Reinventing Quakerism;" and "Religion in the United States."
Watt's current research focuses on Global Quakerism and on Quakers' responses to the Shoah. His publications include: Henry Cadbury: Quaker, Pacifist, and Skeptic (2024, co-written with James Krippner); The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830-1937 (2023, co-edited with Stephen Angell and Pink Dandelion); Antifundamentalism in Modern America (2017); Fundamentalism: Perspectives on a Contested History (2014, co-edited with Simon Wood); Bible-Carrying Christians: Conservative Protestants and Social Power (2002); and A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism (1991).
In collaboration with Laura Levitt and Tracy Fessenden, Watt edits a series, North American Religions, for NYU Press. More than twenty-five authors have written books for the series; the books explore topics such as lived religion, popular religious movements, religion and social power, religion and cultural reproduction, and the relationship between secular and religious practices.
Over the course of his career, Watt's work has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, the Council of Independent Colleges, the Fulbright Scholars Program, Harvard University, Haverford College, the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicalism, the Lilly Endowment, the Louisville Institute, Princeton University, Temple University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the University of Chicago. He received a PhD from Harvard and an AB from Berkeley. Watt grew up in the deserts of Southern California and in the American South.