Talking About Cults (and Buddhism) with Ann Gleig

Ann Gleig is a Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. Her research specialties include Buddhism in America and American spiritualities that draw on Buddhism and Hinduism. On a personal level she has practiced in the Insight and Tibetan Nyingma traditions of Buddhism and has been a student of the Diamond Approach for over two decades. She is author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, which was published in 2019, the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism from 2024, and the co-editor of the anthology Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism. Plus, two forthcoming books. One of them, co-authored with Amy Langenberg, is about sexual abuse in American Buddhism, which we talked about in this interview. The other, now available from the University of Georgia Press, is titled Talking About Cults: Abuse and the Study of New Religious Movements. We focused on that as well, along with related topics having mainly to do with sexual abuse in American spiritual circles and the most efficacious ways to understand it, confront it, and prevent it. NOTE: in the latter part of the interview there is a glitch in the recording. Ann is referring there to the fraternity house sex scandal at Cornell University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices