Harvard's founding was authorized by the Massachusetts colonial legislature, "dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches". Though never formally affiliated with any denomination, in its early years Harvard College primarily trained Congregational clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century.
In 1639, it was named Harvard College after John Harvard, an English clergyman who had died soon after immigrating to Massachusetts, bequeathing it £780 and his library of some 320 volumes.[18] The charter creating Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.
A 1643 publication defined the college's purpose: "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."[19] The college trained many Puritan ministers in its early years[20] and offered a classic curriculum based on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. Harvard never affiliated with any particular denomination.[21]
Increase Mather served as Harvard College's president from 1681 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman.[22]
In the 19th century, Enlightenment ideas of reason and free will were widespread among Congregational ministers, placing those ministers and their congregations at odds with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties.[23]: 1–4 When Hollis Professor of DivinityDavid Tappan died in 1803 and President Joseph Willard died a year later, a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected Hollis chair in 1805, and liberal Samuel Webber was appointed president two years later, signaling a shift from traditional ideas at Harvard to liberal, Arminian ideas.[23]: 4–5 [24]: 24
From 1869 to 1909, Charles William Eliot was Harvard University's president. He decreased the favored position of Christianity from the curriculum, and opened it to student self-direction. Though Eliot was an influential figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated primarily by Transcendentalist and Unitarian convictions influenced by William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others of the time, rather than secularism.[25]
In 1816, Harvard University launched new programs in the study of French and Spanish, and appointed George Ticknor the university's first professor for these language programs.
20th century
A 1906 watercolor painting of the campus, facing northeast[26]
Harvard's graduate schools began admitting women in small numbers in the late 19th century. During World War II, students at Radcliffe College (which, since its 1879 founding, had been paying Harvard professors to repeat their lectures for women) began attending Harvard classes alongside men.[27] In 1945, women were first admitted to the medical school.[28]
Since 1971, Harvard had controlled essentially all aspects of undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for Radcliffe women; in 1999, Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard.[29]
In the 20th century, Harvard's reputation grew as its endowment burgeoned and prominent intellectuals and professors affiliated with the university. The university's rapid enrollment growth also was a product of both the founding of new graduate academic programs and an expansion of the undergraduate college. Radcliffe College emerged as the female counterpart of Harvard College, becoming one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States. In 1900, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities.[13]
The student body in its first decades of the 20th century was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians", according to sociologist and author Jerome Karabel.[30] In 1923, a year after the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard reached 20%, President A. Lawrence Lowell supported a policy change that would have capped the admission of Jewish students to 15% of the undergraduate population. But Lowell's idea was rejected. Lowell also refused to mandate forced desegregation in the university's freshman dormitories, writing that, "We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man, but we do not owe to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial."[31][32][33][34]
President James B. Conant led the university from 1933 to 1953; Conant reinvigorated creative scholarship in an effort to guarantee Harvard's preeminence among the nation and world's emerging research institutions. Conant viewed higher education as a vehicle of opportunity for the talented rather than an entitlement for the wealthy. As such, he devised programs to identify, recruit, and support talented youth. An influential 268-page report issued by Harvard faculty in 1945 under Conant's leadership, General Education in a Free Society, remains one of the most important works in curriculum studies.[35]
Between 1945 and 1960, admissions standardized to open the university to a more diverse group of students; for example, after World War II, special exams were developed so veterans could be considered for admission.[36] No longer drawing mostly from select New England prep schools, the undergraduate college became accessible to striving middle class students from public schools; many more Jews and Catholics were admitted, but still few Blacks, Hispanics, or Asians versus the representation of these groups in the general population.[37] Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Harvard incrementally became vastly more diverse.[38]
21st century
An aerial view of Harvard University at night in July 2017
In February 2023, approximately 6,000 Harvard workers attempted to organize a union.[41]
On July 1, 2023, Claudine Gay, a Harvard professor in the Government and African American Studies departments and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, succeeded Bacow as the university's 30th president. In January 2024, Provost Alan Garber succeeded Gay as interim president after Gay resigned following allegations of antisemitism and plagiarism.[42] On April 24, 2024, the student-led group Harvard out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) established a pro-Palestinian encampmentonHarvard Yard. As a result, the university blocked access to the yard. On May 14, 2024, HOOP ended the encampment, and President Garber issued a statement committing to "facilitate a meeting with the chair of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and other University officials to address questions about the endowment," and, along with dean of faculty of arts and sciences (FAS) Hopi Hoekstra, to "meet with students to hear their perspectives on academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East."[43] Five students were suspended, over 20 were placed on probation,[44] and 13 were prohibited from walking at commencement, despite a faculty vote to allow them to do so.[45] In 2024, Jewish students filed a lawsuit against the university, alleging that they have failed to adequately address antisemitism on campus.[46][47]
Freshman dormitories are in, or adjacent to, the Yard. Upperclassmen live in the twelve residential houses – nine south of the Yard near the Charles River, the others half a mile northwest of the Yard at the Radcliffe Quadrangle (which formerly housed Radcliffe College students). Each house is a community of undergraduates, faculty deans, and resident tutors, with its own dining hall, library, and recreational facilities.[48]
The university is actively expanding into Allston, where it now owns more land than in Cambridge.[53]
Plans include new construction and renovation for the Business School, a hotel and conference center, graduate student housing, Harvard Stadium, and other athletics facilities.[54]
In 2021, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences expanded into a new, 500,000+ square foot Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) in Allston.[55]
The SEC is adjacent to the Enterprise Research Campus, the Business School, and the Harvard Innovation Labs to encourage technology- and life science-focused startups as well as collaborations with mature companies.[56]
Harvard has the largest university endowment in the world, valued at about $50.7 billion as of 2023.[3][4]
During the recession of 2007–2009, it suffered significant losses that forced large budget cuts, in particular temporarily halting construction on the Allston Science Complex.[63]
The endowment has since recovered.[64][65][66][67]
About $2 billion of investment income is annually distributed to fund operations.[68]
Harvard's ability to fund its degree and financial aid programs depends on the performance of its endowment; a poor performance in fiscal year 2016 forced a 4.4% cut in the number of graduate students funded by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[69]
Endowment income is critical, as only 22% of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board.[70]
In the late 1980s, during the divestment from South Africa movement, student activists erected a symbolic "shantytown" on Harvard Yard and blockaded a speech by South African Vice Consul Duke Kent-Brown.[73][74]
The university eventually reduced its South African holdings by $230 million (out of $400 million) in response to the pressure.[73][75]
Harvard is a large, highly residential research university[77]
offering 50 undergraduate majors,[78]
134 graduate degrees,[79]
and 32 professional degrees.[80]
During the 2018–2019 academic year, Harvard granted 1,665 baccalaureate degrees, 1,013 graduate degrees, and 5,695 professional degrees.[80]
Harvard College, the four-year, full-time undergraduate program, has a liberal arts and sciences focus.[77][78]
To graduate in the usual four years, undergraduates normally take four courses per semester.[81]
In most majors, an honors degree requires advanced coursework and a senior thesis.[82]
Though some introductory courses have large enrollments, the median class size is 12 students.[83]
Harvard is a founding member of the Association of American Universities[85] and a preeminent research university with "very high" research activity (R1) and comprehensive doctoral programs across the arts, sciences, engineering, and medicine according to the Carnegie Classification.[77]
With the medical school consistently ranking first among medical schools for research,[86] biomedical research is an area of particular strength for the university. More than 11,000 faculty and over 1,600 graduate students conduct research at the medical school as well as its 15 affiliated hospitals and research institutes.[87] The medical school and its affiliates attracted $1.65 billion in competitive research grants from the National Institutes of Health in 2019, more than twice as much as any other university.[88]
Houghton Library, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and the Harvard University Archives consist principally of rare and unique materials. America's oldest collection of maps, gazetteers, and atlases is stored in Pusey Library and open to the public. The largest collection of East-Asian language material outside of East Asia is held in the Harvard-Yenching Library.
Harvard was also ranked in the first tier of American research universities, along with Columbia, MIT, and Stanford, in the 2023 report from the Center for Measuring University Performance.[104]
The Undergraduate Council represented College students, until it was dissolved in 2022,[113] and replaced by the Undergraduate Association. The Graduate Council represents students at all twelve graduate and professional schools, most of which also have their own student government.[114]
Both the undergraduate College and the graduate schools have intramural sports programs.
Harvard College competes in the NCAADivision IIvy League conference. The school fields 42 intercollegiate sports teams, more than any other college in the country.[115] Every two years, the Harvard and Yale track and field teams come together to compete against a combined Oxford and Cambridge team in the oldest continuous international amateur competition in the world.[116] As with other Ivy League universities, Harvard does not offer athletic scholarships.[117] The school color is crimson.[118]
Harvard's athletic rivalry with Yale is intense in every sport in which they meet, coming to a climax each fall in the annual football meeting, which dates back to 1875.[119]
Harvard University Gazette
The Harvard Gazette, also called the Harvard University Gazette, is the official press organ of Harvard University. Formerly a print publication, it is now a web site. It publicizes research, faculty, teaching and events at the university. Initiated in 1906, it was originally a weekly calendar of news and events. In 1968 it became a weekly newspaper.
When the Gazette was a print publication, it was considered a good way of keeping up with Harvard news: "If weekly reading suits you best, the most comprehensive and authoritative medium is the Harvard University Gazette."
In 2010, the Gazette "shifted from a print-first to a digital-first and mobile-first" publication, and reduced its publication calendar to biweekly, while keeping the same number of reporters, including some who had previously worked for the Boston Globe, Miami Herald, and the Associated Press.
Over more than three and a half centuries, Harvard alumni have contributed creatively and significantly to society, the arts and sciences, business, and national and international affairs.
The perception of Harvard as a center of either elite achievement, or elitist privilege, has made it a frequent literary and cinematic backdrop. "In the grammar of film, Harvard has come to mean both tradition, and a certain amount of stuffiness," film critic Paul Sherman has said.[138]
The Second Happiest Day (1953) by John P. Marquand Jr. portrays the Harvard of the World War II generation.[142][143][144][145][146]
Film
Harvard permits filming on its property only rarely, so most scenes set at Harvard (especially indoor shots, but excepting aerial footage and shots of public areas such as Harvard Square) are in fact shot elsewhere.[147][148]
Love Story (1970) concerns a romance between a wealthy Harvard hockey player (Ryan O'Neal) and a brilliant Radcliffe student of modest means (Ali MacGraw): it is screened annually for incoming freshmen.[149][150][151]
^An appropriation of £400 toward a "school or college" was voted on October 28, 1636 (OS), at a meeting which convened on September 8 and was adjourned to October 28. Some sources consider October 28, 1636 (OS) (November 7, 1636, NS) to be the date of founding. Harvard's 1936 tercentenary celebration treated September 18 as the founding date, though its 1836 bicentennial was celebrated on September 8, 1836. Sources: meeting dates, Quincy, Josiah (1860). The History of Harvard University. Crosby, Nichols, Lee & Company. p. 586. ISBN978-0-405-10016-1. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015.,『At a Court holden September 8th, 1636 and continued by adjournment to the 28th of the 8th month (October, 1636)... the Court agreed to give £400 towards a School or College, whereof £200 to be paid next year....』Tercentenary dates: "Cambridge Birthday". Time. September 28, 1936. Archived from the original on December 5, 2012. Retrieved September 8, 2006.: "Harvard claims birth on the day the Massachusetts Great and General Court convened to authorize its founding. This was Sept. 8, 1637 under the Julian calendar. Allowing for the ten-day advance of the Gregorian calendar, Tercentenary officials arrived at Sept. 18 as the date for the third and last big Day of the celebration;" "on Oct. 28, 1636 ... £400 for that 'school or college' [was voted by] the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony." Bicentennial date: Marvin Hightower (September 2, 2003). "Harvard Gazette: This Month in Harvard History". Harvard University. Archived from the original on September 8, 2006. Retrieved September 15, 2006., "Sept. 8, 1836 – Some 1,100 to 1,300 alumni flock to Harvard's Bicentennial, at which a professional choir premieres "Fair Harvard." ... guest speaker Josiah Quincy Jr., Class of 1821, makes a motion, unanimously adopted, 'that this assembly of the Alumni be adjourned to meet at this place on September 8, 1936.'" Tercentary opening of Quincy's sealed package: The New York Times, September 9, 1936, p. 24, "Package Sealed in 1836 Opened at Harvard. It Held Letters Written at Bicentenary": "September 8th, 1936: As the first formal function in the celebration of Harvard's tercentenary, the Harvard Alumni Association witnessed the opening by President Conant of the 'mysterious' package sealed by President Josiah Quincy at the Harvard bicentennial in 1836."
^ abcFinancial Report Fiscal Year 2023(PDF) (Report). Harvard University. October 19, 2023. p. 7. Archived(PDF) from the original on October 23, 2023. Retrieved October 23, 2023.
^ abc"Common Data Set 2022–2023"(PDF). Office of Institutional Research. Harvard University. Archived from the original(PDF) on July 20, 2023. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
Keller, Morton; Keller, Phyllis (2001). Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. Oxford University Press. pp. 463–481. ISBN0-19-514457-0. Harvard's professional schools... won world prestige of a sort rarely seen among social institutions. [...] Harvard's age, wealth, quality, and prestige may well shield it from any conceivable vicissitudes.
Spaulding, Christina (1989). "Sexual Shakedown". In Trumpbour, John (ed.). How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. South End Press. pp. 326–336. ISBN0-89608-284-9. ... [Harvard's] tremendous institutional power and prestige [...] Within the nation's (arguably) most prestigious institution of higher learning ...
Collier's Encyclopedia. Macmillan Educational Co. 1986. Harvard University, one of the world's most prestigious institutions of higher learning, was founded in Massachusetts in 1636.
Leonhardt, David (September 17, 2006). "Ending Early Admissions: Guess Who Wins?". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 27, 2020. Retrieved March 27, 2020. The most prestigious college in the world, of course, is Harvard, and the gap between it and every other university is often underestimated.
Wong, Alia (September 11, 2018). "At Private Colleges, Students Pay for Prestige". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on February 26, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2020. Americans tend to think of colleges as falling somewhere on a vast hierarchy based largely on their status and brand recognition. At the top are the Harvards and the Stanfords, with their celebrated faculty, groundbreaking research, and perfectly manicured quads.
^Story, Ronald (1975). "Harvard and the Boston Brahmins: A Study in Institutional and Class Development, 1800–1865". Journal of Social History. 8 (3): 94–121. doi:10.1353/jsh/8.3.94. ISSN0022-4529. S2CID147208647.
^Farrell, Betty G. (1993). Elite Families: Class and Power in Nineteenth-Century Boston. State University of New York Press. ISBN0-7914-1593-7.
^Harvard, John. "John Harvard Facts, Information". encyclopedia.com. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Archived from the original on July 15, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2009. He bequeathed £780 (half his estate) and his library of 320 volumes to the new established college at Cambridge, Mass., which was named in his honor.
^Wright, Louis B. (2002). The Cultural Life of the American Colonies (1st ed.). Dover Publications (published May 3, 2002). p. 116. ISBN978-0-486-42223-7.
^Harvard Office of News and Public Affairs (July 26, 2007). "Harvard guide intro". Harvard University. Archived from the original on July 26, 2007. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
^Shoemaker, Stephen P. (2006–2007). "The Theological Roots of Charles W. Eliot's Educational Reforms". Journal of Unitarian Universalist History. 31: 30–45.
^Schwager, Sally (2004). "Taking up the Challenge: The Origins of Radcliffe". In Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (ed.). Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 115. ISBN1-4039-6098-4.
^Steinberg, Stephen (September 1, 1971). "How Jewish Quotas Began". Commentary. Archived from the original on September 11, 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2017.
^Kridel, Craig, ed. (2010). "General Education in a Free Society (Harvard Redbook)". Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies. Vol. 1. SAGE. pp. 400–402. ISBN978-1-4129-5883-7.
^"The Class of 1950". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
^"Shanghai Center". Harvard.edu. Archived from the original on December 17, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2014.
^Bethell, John T.; Hunt, Richard M.; Shenton, Robert (2009). Harvard A to Z. Harvard University Press. pp. 166–. ISBN978-0-674-02089-4. Archived from the original on January 2, 2017. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
^Burlington Free Press, June 24, 2009, page 11B, ""Harvard to cut 275 jobs" Associated Press
^"Degree Programs"(PDF). Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Handbook. pp. 28–30. Archived from the original(PDF) on September 9, 2015. Retrieved August 28, 2010.
^ ab"Degrees Awarded". harvard.edu. Office of Institutional Research, Harvard University. Archived from the original on July 28, 2021. Retrieved December 13, 2019.
^"Colors". Identity Guide. Harvard University. Archived from the original on March 15, 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
^Bracken, Chris (November 17, 2017). "A game unlike any other". yaledailynews.com. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
^Barzilay, Karen N. "The Education of John Adams". Massachusetts Historical Society. Archived from the original on July 26, 2021. Retrieved September 20, 2020.
^"John Quincy Adams". The White House. Archived from the original on October 5, 2021. Retrieved September 21, 2020.
^Thomas, Sarah (September 24, 2010). "'Social Network' taps other campuses for Harvard role". Boston.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 20, 2020. 'In the grammar of film, Harvard has come to mean both tradition, and a certain amount of stuffiness.... Someone from Missouri who has never lived in Boston ... can get this idea that it's all trust fund babies and ivy-covered walls.'
^King, Michael (2002). Wrestling with the Angel. p. 371. ...praised as an iconic chronicle of his generation and his WASP-ish class.
^Halberstam, Michael J. (February 18, 1953). "White Shoe and Weak Will". Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on November 26, 2015. The book is written slickly, but without distinction.... The book will be quick, enjoyable reading for all Harvard men.
^Yardley, Jonathan (December 23, 2009). "Second Reading". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 9, 2015. '...a balanced and impressive novel...' [is] a judgment with which I [agree].
^Du Bois, William (February 1, 1953). "Out of a Jitter-and-Fritter World". The New York Times. p. BR5. exhibits Mr. Phillips' talent at its finest
^"John Phillips, The Second Happiest Day". Southwest Review. Vol. 38. p. 267. So when the critics say the author of "The Second Happiest Day" is a new Fitzgerald, we think they may be right.
^Gewertz, Ken (February 8, 1996). "A Many-Splendored 'Love Story'. Movie filmed at Harvard 25 years ago helped to define a generation". Harvard University Gazette.
^Walsh, Colleen (October 2, 2012). "The Paper Chase at 40". Harvard Gazette. Archived from the original on December 3, 2012. Retrieved October 16, 2012.
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