Currier House Master and religious history scholar William A. Graham has been appointed dean of the Harvard Divinity School, following a nearly year-long search, University President Lawrence H. Summers announced Monday.

Graham, the Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of the History of Religion, has served as acting dean since his predecessor the Rev. Dr. J. Bryan Hehir left Harvard to head Catholic Charities USA last January.

In an interview yesterday, Graham said that while he was initially hesitant to leave his scholarly work for a full-time administrative post, he looks forward to taking on several serious challenges facing the school.

Immediate priorities, Graham said, include filling several holes in the faculty, increasing financial aid available to students, and conducting a major review of the curriculum—the first such review in 20 years.

So pressing was the need for curricular review, Graham said, that he began the process in May—before he knew that he would be continuing on as permanent dean.

Graham said that among the sweeping changes he might lead is a cut in size of the student body.

“Ideally the size could be a bit smaller...Whether that’s by 20 people or 100 people isn’t clear,” Graham said.

More generally, Graham said that he would look to clarify the school’s mission and place within the wider University.

Divinity School professors said they also hoped Graham would provide stability to a school that has seen three deans in the last four years.

Hehir served since 1998 after replacing Ronald F. Thiemann, who was forced out after pornography was found on his office computer.

In a press release announcing Graham’s appointment, Summers highlighted Graham’s intellect and professional background as his key qualifications for the job.

“Bill Graham is a person of exceptional intellectual breadth and profound integrity,” Summers said. “He brings to this role a deep understanding of Harvard and the place of the Divinity School in its history, as well as active engagement in the broad field of religious studies.”

Graham, 58, has spent his entire professional career at Harvard, specializing in study of the Middle East. He has taught several popular undergraduate Core courses, including Literature and Arts A-80, “To Far Away Places: Literature of Journey and Quest.”

He has held a variety of administrative posts, including chair of the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard.

A church-going Episcopalian, Graham is the second lay person to lead the non-sectarian, but historically Christian Divinity School in its 186-year history.

Divided Divinity

Divinity School professors say Graham has his work cut out for him, facing the challenge of bringing definition to the school’s sometimes-conflicting missions, and resolution to an often-divided faculty.

“We’re not in possession of a clear mission in several areas,” said Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes.

A key issue, Gomes said, is whether the Divinity School considers itself a professional school with an aim to produce a learned ministry, or instead, a school dedicated to preparing students for a life in academia.

The school has tried to be both, Gomes said, but must reassess whether that continues to be possible.

Equally thorny is the issue of how the school’s Christian heritage should be represented in a modern divinity school.

On the one hand, the divinity school represents over 55 Christian and non-Christian denominations and serves the purpose of preparing students for religious leadership in a broad spectrum of settings.

On the other hand, the school retains its roots as a Christian institution, faculty say, and studies other religions mainly for the purpose of serving as a contrast to Christianity.

According to David Hall, a professor of American religious history and a member of a committee that advised Summers on the search, a major question remains unanswered—”What is the place of non-Christian religions within an ostensively Christian divinity school?”

The school has clearly broadened beyond its roots, Hall said, but the exact role for Christian theology remains to be seen.

No consensus arose within the 13- member advisory committee, Hall said, and the faculty remain deeply split on this and other questions.

Gomes said he feels strongly that the Christian bedrock of the school, must be, if anything, strengthened.

“The worst thing we could do would be to become a Kennedy School of Religion, studying everything without a single focus,” Gomes said. “If we cease to be a school whose primary professional constituency is Western Christian religion, then our heart will be eviscerated.”

But Gomes acknowledges that there are many who disagree. “There are serious divisions,” Gomes said. “We’re not fractious, but there are serious divisions.”

Graham, who has spent his career studying world religions, said that in a pluralistic society, a divinity school must have a broader base. Of the Christian focus, Graham said, “I don’t think that’s going to go away.”

“[Graham’s] challenge is to make it a healthy intellectually debating faculty,” Hall said. “People would vary in their assessments of whether that is the case now.”

The other issues Graham raises, Hall and others said, are also not likely to be easily addressed. Hall said that during the search Summers struggled with the question of how the Divinity School should fit within the University. “It was clear that he couldn’t quite get a handle on it,” Hall said.

Another challenge will be on diversity. With the departure of former Fletcher University Professor Cornel West, there will only be two African-Americans on the Divinity School faculty—and only one senior faculty member.

“That’s me,” Gomes said, “And I’m not going to be around forever.”

Gomes said that it was frustrating that the level of faculty diversity remains much the same as when he first arrived in the 1960s.

David Carrasco, Rudenstine Professor of Latin American studies and a member of the advisory committee, wrote in an e-mail that he was confident Graham would act quickly to address the problem.

“Diversity is a pressing issue at the Divinity School and I believe Dean Graham will work quickly and thoughtfully to bring about creative change,” Carrasco wrote.

With the availability of eight full time faculty slots—two in African American religious history—Graham could make a difference, but given the difficulty the faculty has had filling slots in the past, the going won’t be easy.

“We are a difficult place to attract black scholars, and the departure of Professor West certainly didn’t help that,” Gomes said.

Graham said that he would prioritize international, ethnic and gender diversity.

The Search

With Graham’s appointment Monday, Summers finally closed the book on the list of pressing tasks he had said would consume much of his first year as President.

In addition to reacquainting himself with Harvard and most of the schools’ programs, Summers was faced with searches to fill a number of top University positions.

Of the deans of Harvard’s 11 schools, three are now Summers appointees, seven date from his predecessor Neil L. Rudenstine’s tenure, and one was appointed by Derek C. Bok.

Of the three dean searches, the Divinity appointment by far took the longest.

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.