Year in Review
DEAN’S DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD RALPH M. JAMES The Dean’s Distinguished Service Award recognizes exemplary service to—and support of—Harvard Divinity School. Recipients have a deep understanding of HDS and its mission, and they serve as visible advocates for the School, helping us to strategically advance HDS and the Dean’s priorities. Harvard Divinity School not only prepares scholars, ministers, and leaders to work for a better world, but also brings together knowledge from many different disciplines to advance understanding of the way that religion shapes human experience. It’s how HDS seeks to make a world of difference. This hybrid mission can be difficult to understand for those outside the School, but Ralph James, MBA ’82, gets it instinctively. A longtime champion of “One Harvard,” James embraces the value of the study of religion at HDS because it is inherently interdisciplinary. He sees in the School’s capacity to bring people and knowledge together across boundaries an important model for others at the University—one he promotes through the support and guidance he gives to initiatives throughout Harvard. As co-chair of the Harvard Campaign for the Graduate School of Education (HGSE), James looked for ways to build stronger connections between HGSE and Harvard Business School (HBS) students, graduates, and faculty who are intensely interested in education reform. As a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Radcliffe Institute, he supports a long tradition of convening scholars from many disciplines who collaborate on pathbreaking ideas. Through his work on the Dean’s Council at HDS, he is in close touch with initiatives in ethics, leadership, and values that complement research and teaching at HBS. James, whose career included 10 years in the private sector as president and COO of the First Marblehead Corporation, spent most of his working life at HBS. In his role as executive director of university affairs, from which he retired in August 2017, James took the work of developing connections to a whole new level. There he saw his job as a chance to connect people, programs, and ideas across Harvard in ways that would maximize their positive impact on the world. Following his strong belief in the power of “One Harvard,” James observes that “Harvard is bigger than the sum of its parts. Its impact on the world is greatest when all the parts work together.”
DEAN’S REPORT 2018 • 8
