Larry Shinn

Who is Larry Shinn?

Larry Shinn was president of Berea College, Kentucky, from 1994 to 2012. Prior to this appointment he was Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Dean of Humanities and Head of the Religious Studies Department at Bucknell University.

Larry Shinn received his undergraduate degree from Baldwin-Wallace College located in Berea Ohio. In 1972 he defended his dissertation Krsna’s Lila: An Analysis of the Relationship of the Notion of Deity and the Concept of Samsara in the Bhagavata Purana and received a Ph.D. in history of religions from Princeton University. Shinn has studied Hare Krishnas in America for more than forty years and, among his other writings, published, The Dark Lord, a study of the Hare Krishnas and the cult controversy.