Hehir Named Divinity School Head

University officials announced Wednesday that J. Bryan Hehir, the Divinity School's interim leader for the past eight months, will become the school's permanent head, making him the first Roman Catholic ever to hold the position at Harvard.

Search committee member Harvey G. Cox said the appointment is an indication of how much has changed at the Divinity School since it was founded in 1636 as a training ground for Protestant Puritans.

"I think this is a very major development in American religion and American theological education to have a Roman Catholic priest as head of the oldest divinity school in the country," said Cox, the Thomas Professor of Divinity. Catholics now make up 16% of the school's student body.

"This is a sign of the new ecumenical and open era in which we're living," Cox said.

Cox said faculty members at the meeting where the announcement was made on Wednesday greeted the news with a standing ovation.

Students also seemed pleased by the choice.

"I think there will be a general sense of excitement to have him as dean," said Elizabeth N. Valera, the president of the Divinity School's student body. "I know I'm happy about it. I really can't imagine a better choice."

"There are many students that expressed their opinion that they wanted him to serve as the interim head," added Andrew W. Ulman, who served on the school's Student Association Executive Council. "He's well liked by a lot of different people."

Hehir will succeed Dean Ronald F. Thiemann, who stepped down last fall after University computer technicians found pornography on his computer. Divinity School policy prohibits storing material that is "inappropriate, obscene, bigoted or abusive" on University computers and limits computer use to activities "related to the School's mission of education, research and public service."

Thiemann, who is an ordained Lutheran minister, is currently on sabbatical from his position as O'Brian Professor of Divinity and is slated to return to teaching and research in 2000.

While previous heads of the Divinity School have held the title of Dean, Hehir will instead be called Chair of the Divinity School Executive Committee. Hehir said he and Rudenstine selected the title because Hehir will retain significant pastoral commitments and share administrative responsibilities.

"It's a commitment I feel I owe my own ecclesiastical community, so we designed the position so it made that possible," said Hehir, who will run the school with the help of a group of senior administrators and associate deans. "We don't want in any way to skimp on the amount of time and effort that it takes to do this job," Hehir said.

"This was a way for Harvard and Father Hehir to create an appropriate match to each other," added University spokesperson Joe Wrinn. "Given his responsibilities to the church, in order to take advantage of his talents we had to adjust the job and his responsibilities to fit his talents."

Hehir is a practicing priest at nearby St. Paul's church and at the Church of the Resurrection in Ellicott City, Md., and is also Professor of Practice in Religion and Society at the Divinity School.

And Hehir--who said there is "not much" difference between his responsibilities now and his responsibilities for the past five months--said his major goals include making appointments to the open spots on the Divinity School faculty and reviewing the curriculum.

"The school has a number of imminent concerns," he said. "There are a series of major appointments that need to be made in the faculty. Secondly, many people in the school have believed for a long time and I think rightly that we are in need of a curriculum review as we enter a new century."

Hehir said he also plans to maintain the school's commitment to the study of world religions and to explore the public role of religion--areas in which search committee members praised his expertise.

"It was quite obvious to all of us that of all the very qualified outside candidates, none of them approached his combination of abilities, skills and character that we thought we really need," Cox said. "He's the kind of person who combines the skills and intellectual competence you expect in a university with hands on experience."

Valera said she hoped Hehir would also be able to lead students at a school still reeling from the surprising circumstances surrounding Thiemann's departure.

"A large part of the sentiment from the student body last year was, 'What does this mean for us?'" she said. "I think more of a concern was, 'What does this reflect about the nature of the school?' Part of that was a disconnection from one another."

She said she believed Hehir would be able to help the student body articulate a shared sense of purpose in the wake of Thiemann's departure.

Still, Cox said that the desire for a familiar leader in the wake of the departure and surrounding controversy was not the driving force behind the selection.

"I thought it would [play a role] and it didn't really," Cox said. "When we talked to outside candidates, I was convinced they could handle that situation competently and smoothly, and I was sure [Hehir] could, too."

"It didn't figure very prominently when the actual choice was made," Cox said.

Members of the search committee interviewed and discussed candidates before University President Neil L. Rudenstine made the final selection.

And in a statement released on Wednesday, Rudenstine praised Hehir for his leadership skills.

"Father Hehir is a man of exceptional intellect and incisiveness, and he possesses rare human and spiritual qualities that make him ideally suited for this important position," he said. "His combination of qualities--humanity, leadership, intelligence, judgement, commitment and administrative ability--is quite simply superb."

Indeed, the only person who seemed surprised by the decision was Hehir, who said yesterday that he had never expected to become the school's permanent head.

"It wasn't a position I had thought about at all," he said. "I understood that I took the position for six months, until they got a new dean."

Hehir played a crucial role in drafting the 1983 Catholic Bishop's Statement on Nuclear Weapons, which advocated eventual nuclear disarmament, and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work on the document.

He received his Th.D. in Applied Theology from the Divinity School, and served as Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics until 1992.