Preston N. Williams

Houghton Professor of Theology and Contemporary Change Emeritus
Preston N. Williams
pwilliams@hds.harvard.edu

 

Education

  • AB, Washington and Jefferson College
  • MA, Washington and Jefferson
  • BD, Johnson C. Smith University
  • STM, Yale University Divinity School
  • PhD, Harvard University

Profile

Preston Williams, who retired in June 2002, became the Houghton Professor in 1971. He has taught previously at four historically Black colleges: Johnson C. Smith University, Knoxville College, North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), and Lincoln University. He has also served as associate chaplain at Pennsylvania State University and Protestant chaplain at Brandeis University. Prior to coming to Harvard Divinity School, he was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor at Boston University School of Theology.

In his years at Harvard, he has served in various capacities beyond his professorial role: He was Acting Dean of the Divinity School from 1974 to 1975 and the acting and first director of Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute from 1975 to 1977. He was the 1975–76 president of the American Academy of Religion and the 1974–75 president of the Society for Christian Ethics. From 1998 to 2008 he was the director of the Summer Leadership Institute, a program that brought religious leaders from urban settings to Harvard for two weeks of intensive classes on community development. His fields of interest are Christian ethics, social and economic justice, human rights, and African American experience. He is an ordained Presbyterian USA minister.

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