“[In] the first hundred and fifty years of Harvard College . . . the study of divinity was at the center of a curriculum that was supposed to prepare students for all aspects of life.”
To Better Serve Our World At bicentennial, HDS Dean considers School’s evolving mission
On its 200th anniversary, Harvard Divinity School rests on a firm foundation— thanks largely to the leadership of its Dean, David N. Hempton. Since taking office in 2012, Hempton has helped lead the effort to restructure the University’s Committee on the Study of Religion, merged HDS’s doctoral program with that of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and persuaded members of the Faculty of Divinity to devote a quarter of their teaching time to undergraduate education. In line with his vision for the School, Hempton has also tried to make HDS a leader in the study of religion at Harvard by encouraging cross-faculty initiatives with Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School as well as FAS. He’s presided over the hiring of three new full professors and the promotion of six more, reinvigorating research, teaching, and scholarship at the School. Finally, Hempton has been the public face of the Campaign for HDS, which has so far raised over $30M for teaching, research, and student support. On the cusp of HDS’s third century, Dean Hempton shared his thoughts on the School’s proud past, its standing today, and the challenges and opportunities of the future.
HDS COMMUNICATIONS: Harvard University was founded “to advance learning
and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.” Can you talk about the role played by the study of religion in general—and divinity in particular— in the founding of Harvard and in the University’s first 180 years before the establishment of the Divinity School?
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