The Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University is supporting a number of research projects into Peoples Temple and Jonestown. It is the chief institutional sponsor of the Peoples Temple Oral History Project and of the website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple.
Faculty in the department are also working with librarians at SDSU’s Love Library and Special Collections to create permanent housing for tapes gathered under the oral history project, as well as government documents released under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
SDSU’s interest in Peoples Temple is related to development of a Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, to be sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies. Three departmental projects — Jonestown research, the Institute for Druze Studies, and archaeological study in Israel — will eventually comprise the center.