Harvard Divinity School

Dear Harvard Divinity School faculty and administrators,

We, the below-signed students of Harvard Divinity School, are compelled to express our sincere dissatisfaction with the decision not to extend a further offer of employment to Professor M. Christian Green. Furthermore, we request that HDS place a much stronger emphasis on retaining and hiring professors who merge the theoretical with the pragmatic, a skill which Professor Green exemplifies.


Professor Green

Professor M. Christian Green combines many of the skills and gifts that attract dynamic students and scholars to Harvard. She brings an impressive intellectual breadth and depth to courses that intersect with the most important ethnical issues of our lives and age (Understanding Katrina, Fear and Memory, Overcoming Violence). She exposes students to a wide array of research and methodologies by working in close collaboration with professors at Harvard and in the BTI. Furthermore, her legal background adds a uniquely practical and inter-contextual perspective to HDS students. Her scholarly approach incorporates life experience and reflection, actions and words, as well as theory and practice.

She also demonstrates immense commitment to students by providing extensive office hours, attending and participating in student-run events, and co-facilitating HDS service trips to provide relief and aid after Hurricane Katrina. Furthermore, as a young female professor, Professor Green offers women students the role model of a thoughtful and engaged participant in the academic life of the university through her own innovative research, and her dedication to teaching the next generation of scholars and ministers. Professor Greens return to Emory will be an immeasurable loss to the HDS community, and one we believe should have been avoided.


Recommendations

Professor Greens blending of theory and practice, and her participation in the HDS community, exemplifies the type of professor that has drawn us to HDS. We believe such models of excellence will increasingly characterize the most effective and well-regarded divinity schools. The majority of students who attend HDS are both scholars and involved participants in religious communities, and various social activism, humanitarian, and ecological groups. We thrive among faculty who both stimulate us academically and offer models of professorship that incorporate the pragmatic with the theoretical.