Jonathan Dickstein is Assistant Professor of Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute. He received a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022. Jonathan's areas of research include Jain Studies, religion and ecology, comparative ethics, and South Asian religions.
Nirva Patel is the Executive Director at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School and a passionate advocate for animal welfare. She is also a registered patent attorney, biomedical engineer, and executive producer for several plant-based films, including “The Game Changers,” “The End of Medicine,” and “Meat Me Halfway.” As Chair of the Board of Directors, Nirva is dedicated to furthering Farm Sanctuary’s commitment to addressing the full scope of interrelated social injustices rooted in animal agriculture. For close to a decade, Nirva worked in animal advocacy in Mumbai, India. In the U.S., she has individually sparked many advocacy campaigns, including successfully pushing to ban the sale of fur in Weston, Massachusetts, and demanding Jain temples across the U.S. in 2018 remove ghee and dairy from their offerings. She also serves on the International Vegan Film Festival board and is an Advisory Board Member of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA). She has provided strategic fundraising efforts for numerous non- profit capital and development campaigns in Boston. Nirva holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, a J.D. from The New England School of Law, and an M.S. in Animals and Public Policy from Tufts University. Her passion for animals was predicated by the Jain philosophy of ahimsa (non-violence), which advocates for a vegan lifestyle. She lives in Boston with her husband, four children, and two rescued rabbits.
Cogen Bohanec is an Assistant Professor in Sanskrit and Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute where he teaches Sanskrit language, and Jain philosophy and its applications, and Sanskrit and other languages. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Claremont School of Theology (CST), and he has taught numerous classes on South Asian Religions and Sanskrit at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley. Dr. Bohanec specializes in comparative dharma traditions, philosophy of religion, and Sanskrit language and literature, and has numerous publications in those areas. He has a PhD in “Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion” with an emphasis in Hindu Studies from GTU, and he also holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies at GTU.