Amy Brenneman Graduates from Harvard Divinity School
Brenneman completed her master's degree, almost 40 years after graduating from Harvard with a degree in comparative religion
Amy Brenneman has lots to celebrate!
On Thursday, May 28, Brenneman, 61, posted to Instagram that she was graduating from Harvard Divinity School with a master’s degree. In the gallery of photos, she posed in her cap and gown alongside some of her classmates. She also shared a video of her walking through the crowd of graduates and a photo of her posing with husband Brad Silberling and their two children, Charlotte and Bodhi.
She wrote in the caption, “In the words of @kathryneverett Best year with the best people. Thank you to @harvarddivinity for reviving me, my beautiful family for showing up, and my cohort for always showing me how to create a way where there is no way.”
She finished, “We. Did. It.”
Brenneman, who grew up in Connecticut, completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1987, majoring in comparative religion. Her mother, Frederica Shoenfield, attended Radcliffe College (then a sister school to Harvard) beginning in 1943 and entered Harvard Law School in 1950, the first year the school accepted women. Brenneman’s father Russell also enrolled in Harvard Law that year.
Her parents met and got married while still in school. Russell died in 2016 and Shoenfield in 2021. They were married for 65 years.
“My parents remain an inspiration to me and many others,” Brenneman wrote in a 2022 essay for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. “I followed their footsteps to Cambridge and earned a degree from Harvard-Radcliffe in comparative religion. I am as passionate about my vocation as an actor/producer as they were about the law. They taught me that ‘one’s vocation is the place where one’s passion and the world’s need intersect.’ ”
Brenneman had her first major role on NYPD Blue, playing a mob-connected officer through the show’s first and second seasons, from 1993 to 1994. She received two Emmy nominations for the part.
In 1999, she created her own TV series, Judging Amy, which was based on her mother, a judge in Hartford, Conn. She became a judge when Amy was 3 years old. She received three Emmy nominations for her role as Judge Amy Gray. Judging Amy ran until 2005.
“My mother and I co-mingled our vocations when I created the television show Judging Amy, which is based on her life and work,” Brenneman wrote in her 2022 essay. “We used our separate passions to collaborate on a project which amplified stories of humanity, systemic inequality, and public service.”
In a March episode of Harvard Divinity School’s Hope Podcast, Brenneman explained why she returned to school to get her master’s degree in religion and public life. During her initial degree at Harvard, she studied for a semester in Kathmandu, Nepal, and ended up studying Buddhist texts.
“One of the reasons I majored in religion is there was no theater department at Harvard at the time. But in a strange way, it really empowered my cohort to just do whatever we wanted to do,” she said.
Decades later, she had learned about the religion and public life program from a friend, who heard about it from singer Maggie Rogers, who completed the same master’s degree in 2022.
“It is a one-year program for people that are in established in other vocations to come and get grounded and work on a project and be in conversation,” she explained. “So I applied, I think, right when I heard about it.” At the time, she was working on the FX show The Old Man, which ran for two seasons. She deferred her admission until the show was canceled in December 2024.
Brenneman, who’s also active in liberal politics, said part of what she learned during her degree was the importance of “creative expression” and to be “service-oriented.”
She explained that though she’s not an economist, “I do know through practice and through deep belief and through being an art maker and a collaborative art maker — I know how to be present with people to the best of my ability.”
Brenneman’s other projects have included her role as Violet Turner on Private Practice and her role as Laurie Garvey on The Leftovers. She also starred in movies like 1995’s Heat and Casper (directed by her husband, Silberling).
Brenneman was not the only celebrity at Harvard graduation. Conan O’Brien gave the commencement address and Audra McDonald, who congratulated Brenneman on her commencement, received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.