Harvard Divinity School

Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. Its purpose is to train graduate students in either the practice of a religious ministry or the academic investigation of religion. Even though Harvard was founded in 1636 as a Puritan institution, the Divinity School dates from 1816, when it was established as the first non-sectarian divinity school in the United States. For most of its early history, the school was unofficially associated with the Unitarian church. Today its students and faculty come from a variety of religious backgrounds. Its current dean, William A. Graham, is a secular scholar of Islamic history.

Notable Alumni

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Theodore Parker
• Edmund Sears