A search for a new dean for the School of Education begun concurrent with the Divinity School search ended in April with the appointment of Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. A search for a new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences took only three months.
Hall said that the search for a new Divinity School dean was a complex one, complicated by the unique set of questions that arise at a non-denominational, University affiliated school of theology.
Additionally, Hall said, Summers was forthright in saying that he did not know very much about divinity schools and needed time to educate himself.
Since the advisory committee only considered external candidates, Graham was never discussed, and committee members would not say whether Graham was a fall-back candidate.
They did however join in near-unanimous praise of Graham.
“I have known Bill Graham as a colleague and friend for more than a decade,” Robert Putnam, Stanfield Professor of International Peace at the Kennedy School of Government, wrote in an e-mail. “He’s a major league scholar of religion and a thoroughly decent and thoughtful human being. I expect him to be an outstanding dean of the divinity school.”
Graham’s background as a lay person and historian will benefit the Divinity School greatly, Carrasco writes.
“Professor Graham’s appointment is thoroughly good news for the Divinity School in particular and Harvard in general,” Carrasco wrote in an e-mail. “By bringing an historian of religions into leadership, there is a chance for richer dialogues between various disciplines in the study of religion and in ministerial training.”
Carrasco wrote that he didn’t think a controversial stance Graham took earlier this year, as one of two House Masters to sign a petition urging the University to divest from Israel in protest of it’s policies toward Palestinians, would cause him many problems at the Divinity School.
“On the surface of it I don’t think this will be much of a problem,” Carrasco wrote. “The school has many other problems he’ll be dealing with.”
Students who knew Graham through House life and classes said they were glad to see Graham take over full-time.
They said he is a great House Master, and hope he continues in that role.
“He is involved with every aspect of the House, and as students we can tell that he enjoys this involvement and that he really cares about us,” Currier House Committee Chair Marc Manara ’04 wrote in an e-mail. “He has a characteristic warmth about him that comes across in all his interactions with students.”
A native of North Carolina, Graham received his bachelors degree, summa cum laude, in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He received his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard.
Graham is married to Barbara Graham, associate director for administration and programs in the Harvard University Library system. They have one child.
—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.