Although he appointed Graham with a mandate to remake HDS, Summers had little interest in the school coming into his new job, according to Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes.

“He really had no choice—he had to learn about us pretty quickly,” Gomes says. “[Presidents] don’t really deal with the graduate schools until they have to.”

The fruit of the dean search was both the selection of Graham and the mandate with which Summers charged Graham—to remake the school. And while most presidents have urged new deans to focus the Divinity School’s mission, Gomes said this curricular review would allow a complete overhaul of the school.

“Once a generation, you have a chance to reshape a school, and I think that is what is happening,” Gomes says.

In his convocation address, Summers underscored two major points about the school’s mission: the need to balance training scholars and religious leaders and the need to balance the school’s Christian heritage—the core of its program—with the growing importance of scholarship and training in other religions.

He also emphasized the need for distinct professional degrees awarded by the school to be reflective of certain skills. A divinity student, he said, should graduate with a particular approach to thinking in much the same way that a law student learns to “think like a lawyer.”

“Within a given degree program, students should face real requirements and graduate with some core of shared knowledge and identifiable competencies,” he said.

While Summers certainly identified the crux of the problem confronting the Divinity School, many say he was simply echoing what he heard from the faculty in his consultations.

“A lot of what he was saying was simply reflecting back to us,” says Associate Professor of Theology Nicholas P. Constas.

Few actually see Summers as the driving force behind discussions of reform.

“I don’t think that President Summers had his own vision for the school—I sometimes wish he had,” Gomes says. “But I think his mandate to the dean was that you should spend your first portion of your time over there trying to get the school to agree what its mission ought to be...and then set to it.”

Professor of Comparative Religion Diana L. Eck agrees that Summers has deputized Graham to chart the school’s course.

“I don’t think President Summers has a vision for the school,” she says. “He has entrusted vision-making to Dean Graham.”

The convocation speech was, in a sense, a “hand-off,” according to Gomes.

“[Summers] wished to be regarded as an encourager of the divinity school,” he says. “He felt he did his job in choosing Bill Graham.”