What Being Human Is

We have forgotten who we are.

Our world is in crisis, and our need for a moral compass has never been more urgent. The religious, educational, and civic institutions that cultivated our moral lives are in severe decline. People need new resources to reengage the moral imagination. Being Human is building the platform to meet that need: starting with a podcast, growing toward seminars, courses, and live gatherings.

Questions that outlast the moment

Each season takes up one perennial question — the kind that admits no easy resolution and illuminates far beyond the news cycle.

Thinking done together

One conversation at a time, in an ordinary place, arriving somewhere neither person announced in advance. The listener isn't overhearing. They're being inducted into a way of thinking.

Discovering a principled practice

Moral judgment is a capacity, built through practices of inquiry and reflection, worked out with others over time.

Dr. David Kyuman Kim speaking at the Global Philanthropy Forum, May 2026

Live at the Global Philanthropy Forum · San Francisco, May 2026

Season One · Fall 2026

A Season of Forgiveness

Why does forgiveness feel impossible right now — and what would it take to build a culture capable of repair?

Everyone is carrying something. A photograph that stays in the drawer. A book with a letter still inside it. A message never answered, and never deleted.

Being Human asks people to bring it. What holds a person is often what holds them back.

All of us wish to forgive or to be forgiven. Yet so many of us find both hard to realize. Season One lives in that distance, one conversation at a time, with people who have something specific at stake.

The season moves through five questions. No single conversation answers any of them.

Why can't we forgive?
What does unforgiveness cost?
What makes forgiving yourself harder?
What is forgiveness, precisely?
Why does it matter now?

Every conversation ends the same way, with the question turned outward: what would you bring to share?

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GPF Leaders' Summit 2026

“Dr. David Kyuman Kim spoke about the moral covenant at the heart of philanthropy. Not as a transaction, but as an expression of love, compassion, and responsibility. He challenged us to name both the good we seek and the harm we must confront — to move beyond guilt or performative action, and instead practice moral imagination, solidarity, and truth-telling with love.” Yasmina ZaidmanChief Development and Partnerships Officer, Acumen

“As Dr. David Kyuman Kim reminded us in the opening, the scale of today's challenges demands urgency, ambition, and a willingness to fundamentally shift to choose humanity over capital to build our common future.” Marie LichtenbergExecutive Director, Planet Aid

“He spoke about ‘broken covenants’ in his talk, ‘Are We Each Other's Harvest?’ As he unpacked his thesis — how our world, shaped by overlapping crises, calls for moral imagination in service of humanity, and a renewed courage to speak truth to power — he set both the tone and a challenge for philanthropy, and for each of us individually.” Ansu TumbahangfeDirector, TRAC4Change, Helvetas

Philanthropic Advisory

A moral compass for giving.

As Senior Advisor to the Global Philanthropy Forum, David is helping shape a moral framework for philanthropy — moving funders beyond transaction toward covenant: love, responsibility, and solidarity in service of the common good, with an ambition to help establish a moral compass for the field as a whole. That work extends to philanthropic networks as well as individual donors and families for whom significant wealth carries real moral weight — and real questions about purpose, responsibility, and legacy.

Interested in a conversation? Reach out →

Speaking

Invite David to speak.

A select number of keynotes, public forums, and conversations each year — on love, justice, race, democracy, and what moral imagination demands of us.

Love, Justice & the Moral Imagination

Building a culture of love and justice — not as sentiment, but as practice.

Being Human: Asking Better Questions

Moral inquiry as a civic and cultural practice in an age of crisis.

Race, Belonging & the Covenant We Keep

On diversity, inclusion, and the deeper question of what we owe each other.

Forgiveness, Repair & Moral Culture

Why the capacity to forgive is not weakness — and what it demands of institutions.

Philanthropy & the Moral Life

For foundations and civic leaders: what does generosity require of us now?

About

Dr. David Kyuman Kim

A philosopher, political theorist, and public intellectual whose work sits at the intersection of love, justice, race, and democracy. He served as Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Connecticut College for nearly twenty years, and has held appointments at Brown, Union Theological Seminary, Penn, the Graduate Theological Union, the Social Science Research Council, and Stanford.

He is the author of Melancholic Freedom (Oxford University Press), Founder and Host of Being Human, and Senior Advisor to the Global Philanthropy Forum. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and beyond.

David is part of a small circle of contemporary voices — among them Krista Tippett, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, David Brooks, Arthur Brooks, and Prentiss Hemphill — to whom people increasingly turn for moral guidance and clarity in uncertain times. Being Human is his contribution to that work: not commentary from a distance, but direct, communal practice — building the space to think through hard questions together.

Selected speaking venues: Council on Foreign Relations · Airbnb · Brazilian Philanthropy Forum · Skoll World Forum · Royal Society of Edinburgh · Vanderbilt

“A voice that consistently finds the moral clarity the rest of us are reaching for.” Ellen McGirt — Editor, Design Observer · Founder, Fortune raceAhead

“An architect of change.” Maria Shriver — Author, Journalist, and Social Activist

Founding Support

Help shape what Being Human becomes.

Being Human is at its founding moment. Early supporters help shape the questions it takes on, the voices it gathers, and the communities it reaches. Request the founding supporter brief to see how.

Current support from · Levi Strauss Foundation · Henry Luce Foundation

What do we owe each other?