Harvard University was named best in the world for the study of divinity, theology, and religion by the influential QS World University Rankings for 2019. It was the third year in a row that the School’s programs earned the distinction.
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QS, which aims to help prospective students identify the world’s leading schools in their field of interest, named Harvard #1 out of 100 Institutions worldwide. The firm uses a wide-ranging methodology for its rankings, including a school’s academic reputation, employer reputation, academic citations per paper by faculty, and H-Index citations (measuring productivity and the impact of published work by faculty).
“With its partners at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and elsewhere at Harvard, HDS is at the center of an effort to explore all of the world’s major religious traditions and the way that they shape virtually every aspect of human experience,” said Dean David N. Hempton. “We’re proud to be among the outstanding institutions recognized by QS and, like them, will do all we can to continue to improve the quality of our research and teaching in the years ahead.”
Harvard was followed in the rankings by the University of Notre Dame, and by Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Other U.S. institutions that made the top ten included Yale, Duke, and the University of Chicago.
Founded in 1816 as the country’s first non-sectarian divinity school, Harvard Divinity School is the hub of the study of religion at Harvard University. A training ground for scholars and spiritual innovators in all religious traditions, the School prepares ethical, religiously literate professionals who make a world of difference.
Harvard’s Faculty of Divinity includes some of the most accomplished scholars of religion in the world, with international reputations in the fields of Islamic Studies, Hinduism and Indian Religions, Tibetan Buddhism, African and African American Religions, Comparative Theology, and Feminist Theology as well as in areas of traditional strength such as Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible, History of Christianity, and American Religious History. HDS faculty regularly author prize-winning books, lead major sessions at the yearly conference of the American Academy of Religion, and figure prominently in many other spheres of scholarly service.
The School’s student body includes more than 30 different faiths and denominations and aspires to be a model of informed pluralism critical for healthy communities around the world and for human flourishing.
HDS graduates are prominent scholars in the departments of religion of the country’s most prestigious universities. They lead large denominations and shape twenty-first century spiritual life in all religious traditions—and in burgeoning communities of the “spiritual but not religious.” In addition to becoming ministers and leaders in their own religious traditions; HDS alumni work in public service and with governmental, nongovernmental, and social organizations, in nonprofits and in business, in the arts, in health care, and in many other professions where devotion to service and knowledge of religion are vital.