Harvard University

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Harvard University

Coat of arms

Latin: Universitas Harvardiana

Former names Harvard College

Motto Veritas (Latin)[1]

Motto in English Truth

Type Private research university

Established 1636; 384 years ago[2]

Academic NAICU
affiliations
AICUM

AAU

URA

Space-grant

Endowment $41.9 billion (2020)[3]

 President Lawrence Bacow

Academic staff ~2,400 faculty members (and >10,400 academic

appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals)[4]

Students 20,970 (Fall 2019)[5]

Undergraduates 6,755 (Fall 2019)[5]

Postgraduates 14,215 (Fall 2019)[5]

Location Cambridge

Massachusetts

United States

42°22′28″N 71°07′01″WCoordinates:

42°22′28″N 71°07′01″W

Campus Urban

209 acres (85 ha)

Newspaper The Harvard Crimson

Colors Crimson[4]

Athletics NCAA Division I – Ivy League

Nickname Harvard Crimson

Website harvard.edu

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor,
clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in
the United States[6] and among the most prestigious in the world.[7]
The Massachusetts colonial legislature, the General Court, authorized Harvard's
founding. In its early years, Harvard College primarily
trained Congregational and Unitarian clergy, although it has never been formally
affiliated with any denomination. Its curriculum and student body were gradually
secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century, Harvard had
emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.[8][9] Following
the American Civil War, President Charles William Eliot's long tenure (1869–
1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a
modern research university; Harvard became a founding member of
the Association of American Universities in 1900.[10] James B. Conant led the
university through the Great Depression and World War II; he liberalized
admissions after the war.
The university is composed of ten academic faculties plus the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study. Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range
of academic disciplines for undergraduates and for graduates, while the other
faculties offer only graduate degrees, mostly professional. Harvard has three
main campuses:[11] the 209-acre (85 ha) Cambridge campus centered
on Harvard Yard; an adjoining campus immediately across the Charles River in
the Allston neighborhood of Boston; and the medical campus in
Boston's Longwood Medical Area.[12] Harvard's endowment is valued at
$41.9 billion, making it the largest of any academic institution.[3] Endowment
income helps enable the undergraduate college to admit students regardless of
financial need and provide generous financial aid with no loans.[13] The Harvard
Library is the world's largest academic library system, comprising 79 individual
libraries holding about 20.4 million items.[14][15][16][17]
Harvard has more alumni, faculty, and researchers who have won Nobel
Prizes (161) and Fields Medals (18) than any other university in the world and
more alumni who have been members of the U.S. Congress, MacArthur
Fellows, Rhodes Scholars (375), and Marshall Scholars (252) than any other
university in the United States.[18] Its alumni also include eight U.S.
presidents and 188 living billionaires, the most of any university.
Fourteen Turing Award laureates have been Harvard affiliates. Students and
alumni have also won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108
Olympic medals (46 gold), and they have founded many notable companies.

Contents

• 1History
o 1.1Colonial
o 1.219th century
o 1.320th century
o 1.421st century
• 2Campuses
o 2.1Cambridge
o 2.2Allston
o 2.3Longwood
o 2.4Other
• 3Organization and administration
o 3.1Governance
o 3.2Endowment
▪ 3.2.1Divestment
 • 4Academics
o 4.1Teaching and learning
o 4.2Research
o 4.3Libraries and museums
o 4.4Reputation and rankings
• 5Student life
o 5.1Student government
o 5.2Athletics
• 6Notable people
o 6.1Alumni
o 6.2Faculty
• 7Literature and popular culture
o 7.1Literature
o 7.2Film
• 8See also
• 9References
• 10Bibliography
• 11External links

History
Main article: History of Harvard University
Colonial

The seal of the Harvard Corporation, found on Harvard diplomas. Christo et Ecclesiae ("For Christ
and Church") is one of Harvard's several early mottoes.[19]

Engraving of Harvard College by Paul Revere, 1767

Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of
the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first
known printing press.[20][21] In 1639, it was named Harvard College after
deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of
Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his library of some 400
volumes.[22] The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.
A 1643 publication gave the school's purpose as "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."[23] It trained many Puritan
ministers in its early years[24] and offered a classic curriculum based on the
English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended
the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism.
Harvard has never affiliated with any particular denomination, though many of
its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and
Unitarian churches.[25]
Increase Mather served as president from 1681 to 1701. In 1708, John
Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, marking a
turning of the college away from Puritanism and toward intellectual
independence.[26]
19th century

John Harvard statue, Harvard Yard

In the 19th century, Enlightenment ideas of reason and free will were
widespread among Congregational ministers, putting those ministers and their
congregations in tension with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties.[27]:1–
4
When Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803
and President Joseph Willard died a year later, a struggle broke out over their
replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the Hollis chair in 1805, and the
liberal Samuel Webber was appointed to the presidency two years later,
signaling the shift from the dominance of traditional ideas at Harvard to the
dominance of liberal, Arminian ideas.[27]:4–5[28]:24
Charles William Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the favored position of
Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction.
Though Eliot was the crucial figure in the secularization of American higher
education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education but
by Transcendentalist Unitarian convictions influenced by William Ellery
Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson.[29]
20th century
Richard Rummell's 1906 watercolor landscape view, facing northeast.[30]

In the 20th century, Harvard's reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and

prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Rapid enrollment growth
continued as new graduate schools were begun and the undergraduate
college expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as the female
counterpart of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for
women in the United States. Harvard became a founding member of
the Association of American Universities in 1900.[10]
The student body in the early decades of the century was predominantly "old-
stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists,
and Presbyterians." A 1923 proposal by President A. Lawrence Lowell that
Jews be limited to 15% of undergraduates was rejected, but Lowell did ban
blacks from freshman dormitories.[31][32][33][34]
President James B. Conant reinvigorated creative scholarship to guarantee
Harvard's preeminence among research institutions. He saw higher education
as a vehicle of opportunity for the talented rather than an entitlement for the
wealthy, so Conant devised programs to identify, recruit, and support talented
youth. In 1943, he asked the faculty to make a definitive statement about what
general education ought to be, at the secondary as well as at the college level.
The resulting Report, published in 1945, was one of the most influential
manifestos in 20th century American education.[35]
Between 1945 and 1960, admissions were opened up to bring in a more diverse
group of students. 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 few blacks, Hispanics, or Asians.[36] Throughout the rest of the 20th century,
Harvard became more diverse.[37]
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 1879 had been paying Harvard professors to repeat their lectures for
women) began attending Harvard classes alongside men.[38] Women were first
admitted to the medical school in 1945.[39] Since 1971, Harvard has controlled
essentially all aspects of undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for
Radcliffe women. In 1999, Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard. [40]
21st century
Drew Gilpin Faust, previously the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study, became Harvard's first woman president on July 1, 2007.[41] She was
succeeded by Lawrence Bacow on July 1, 2018.[42]
Campuses
Cambridge

Memorial Hall

Memorial Church

Harvard's 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in

Cambridge, about 3 miles (5 km) west-northwest of downtown Boston, and
extends into the surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. Harvard Yard itself
contains key administrative offices such as University Hall and Massachusetts
Hall; libraries such as Widener, Pusey, Houghton, and Lamont; Memorial
Church; academic buildings such as Sever Hall and Harvard Hall; and
most freshman dormitories. Sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates live
in twelve residential houses, nine of which are south of Harvard Yard along or
near the Charles River. The other three are located in a residential
neighborhood half a mile northwest of the Yard at the Quadrangle (commonly
referred to as the "Quad") which housed Radcliffe College students until
Radcliffe merged its residential system with Harvard. Each residential house is
a community with undergraduates, faculty deans, and resident tutors, as well as
a dining hall, library, and recreational spaces.[43] The houses were made
possible by a gift from Yale University alumnus Edward Harkness.[44]
Radcliffe Yard, formerly the center of the campus of Radcliffe College and now
home to Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,[45] is adjacent to
the Graduate School of Education and the Cambridge Common.
Harvard has several commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge.[46][47]
Allston
See also: Harvard University's expansion in Allston, Massachusetts
Harvard Business School, Harvard Innovation Labs, and many athletics
facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located on a 358-acre (145 ha)
campus in Allston,[48] a Boston neighborhood just across the Charles River from
the Cambridge campus. The John W. Weeks Bridge, a pedestrian bridge over
the Charles River, connects the two campuses.
The university is actively expanding into Allston, where it now owns more land
than in Cambridge.[49] Plans include new construction and renovation for the
Business School, a hotel and conference center, graduate student housing,
Harvard Stadium, and other athletics facilities.[50]
In 2021, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences will expand into a new, 500,000+ square foot Science and
Engineering Complex (SEC) in Allston.[51] The SEC will be 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.[52]
Longwood
See also: Longwood Medical and Academic Area
The Medical School, School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Public
Health are located on a 21-acre (8.5 ha) campus in the Longwood Medical and
Academic Area in Boston about 3.3 miles (5.3 km) south of the Cambridge
campus.[12] Several Harvard-affiliated hospitals and research institutes are also
in Longwood, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston
Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer
Institute, Joslin Diabetes Center, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering. Additional affiliates, most notably Massachusetts General Hospital,
are located throughout the Greater Boston area.
Other
Harvard also owns the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection in Washington, D.C., the Harvard Forest in Petersham,
Massachusetts, the Concord Field Station in Estabrook Woods in Concord,
Massachusetts,[53] the Villa I Tatti research center in Florence, Italy,[54] the
Harvard Shanghai Center in Shanghai, China,[55] and the Arnold Arboretum in
the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.

Organization and administration

University seal

Governance
School Founded

Harvard College 1636

Medicine 1782

Divinity 1816

Law 1817

Dental Medicine 1867

Arts and Sciences 1872

Business 1908

Extension 1910

Design 1914

Education 1920

Public Health 1922

Government 1936

Engineering and Applied Sciences 2007

Harvard Medical School

Harvard is governed by a combination of its Board of Overseers and

the President and Fellows of Harvard College (also known as the Harvard
Corporation), which in turn appoints the President of Harvard
University.[56] There are 16,000 staff and faculty,[57] including 2,400 professors,
lecturers, and instructors.[58]
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is the largest Harvard faculty and has primary
responsibility for instruction in Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education, which
includes Harvard Summer School and Harvard Extension School. There are
nine other graduate and professional faculties as well as the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study.
Joint programs with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology include
the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, the Broad
Institute, The Observatory of Economic Complexity, and edX.
Endowment
Main article: Harvard University endowment
Harvard has the largest university endowment in the world, valued at about
$41.9 billion as of 2020.[3] 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.[59] The endowment has since
recovered.[60][61][62][63][64]
About $2 billion of investment income is annually distributed to fund
operations.[65] 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.[66] Endowment income is critical, as only 22%
of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board. [67]
Divestment
See also: Financial endowment § Criticism and reforms
Since the 1970s, several student-led campaigns have
advocated divesting Harvard's endowment from controversial holdings,
including investments in apartheid South Africa, Sudan during the Darfur
genocide, and the tobacco, fossil fuel, and private prison industries.[68][69]
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.[70][71] The university
eventually reduced its South African holdings by $230 million (out of
$400 million) in response to the pressure.[70][72]

Academics
Teaching and learning
Massachusetts Hall (1720), Harvard's oldest building[73]

Harvard Yard

Harvard is a large, highly residential research university[74] offering

50 undergraduate majors,[75] 134 graduate degrees,[76] and 32 professional
degrees.[77] For the 2018–2019 academic year, Harvard granted 1,665
baccalaureate degrees, 1,013 graduate degrees, and 5,695 professional
degrees.[77]
Main article: Harvard College
The four-year, full-time undergraduate program has a liberal arts and
sciences focus.[74][75] To graduate in the usual four years, undergraduates
normally take four courses per semester.[78] In most majors, an honors degree
requires advanced coursework and a senior thesis.[79] Though some introductory
courses have large enrollments, the median class size is 12 students.[80]
Research
Harvard is a founding member of the Association of American Universities[81] 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.[74]
With the medical school consistently ranking first among medical schools for
research,[82] biomedical research is an area of particular strength for the
university. More than 11,000 faculty members and over 1,600 medical and
graduate students contribute to discovery and innovation at the medical school
as well as its 15 affiliated hospitals and research institutes.[83] 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.[84]
Research opportunities are available to undergraduates as well, as early as
their freshman year.[85] Numerous mechanisms for funding and faculty
mentorship are available during both term-time and the summer.[85]
Libraries and museums

Widener Library anchors the Harvard Library system.

The Harvard Library system is centered in Widener Library in Harvard Yard and
comprises nearly 80 individual libraries holding about 20.4 million
items.[14][15][17] According to the American Library Association, this makes it the
largest academic library in the world.[15][4]
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 both old and new 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.

Henry Moore's sculpture Large Four Piece Reclining Figure, near Lamont Library

The Harvard Art Museums comprise three museums. The Arthur M. Sackler
Museum covers Asian, Mediterranean, and Islamic art, the Busch–Reisinger
Museum (formerly the Germanic Museum) covers central and northern
European art, and the Fogg Museum covers Western art from the Middle Ages
to the present emphasizing Italian early Renaissance, British pre-Raphaelite,
and 19th-century French art. The Harvard Museum of Natural History includes
the Harvard Mineralogical Museum, the Harvard University Herbaria featuring
the Blaschka Glass Flowers exhibit, and the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Other museums include the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, designed
by Le Corbusier and housing the film archive, the Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology, specializing in the cultural history and civilizations
of the Western Hemisphere, and the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near
East featuring artifacts from excavations in the Middle East.
Reputation and rankings

University rankings

National

ARWU[86] 1

Forbes[87] 1

THE/WSJ[88] 1

U.S. News & World Report[89] 2

Washington Monthly[90] 2

Global

ARWU[91] 1

QS[92] 3

THE[93] 3

U.S. News & World Report[94] 1

showNational Graduate Rankings[95]

showGlobal Subject Rankings[96]

Among overall rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

has ranked Harvard as the world's top university every year since it was
released.[97] When QS and Times Higher Education collaborated to publish
the Times Higher Education–QS World University Rankings from 2004 to 2009,
Harvard held the top spot every year and continued to hold first place on THE
World Reputation Rankings ever since it was released in 2011.[98] In 2019, it was
ranked first worldwide by SCImago Institutions Rankings.[99]
Among rankings of specific indicators, Harvard topped both the University
Ranking by Academic Performance (2019–2020) and Mines ParisTech:
Professional Ranking of World Universities (2011), which measured universities'
numbers of alumni holding CEO positions in Fortune Global
500 companies.[100] According to annual polls done by The Princeton Review,
Harvard is consistently among the top two most commonly named "dream
colleges" in the United States, both for students and
parents.[101][102][103] Additionally, having made significant investments in
its engineering school in recent years, Harvard was ranked third worldwide for
Engineering and Technology in 2019 by Times Higher Education.[104]

Student life
Student demographics (Fall 2019)[105]

Undergrad Grad/prof

Asian 21% 13%

Black 9% 5%

Hispanic or Latino 11% 7%

White 37% 38%

Two or more races 8% 3%

International 12% 32%

Student government
The Harvard Undergraduate Council and the Harvard Graduate Council are the
chief organs of student government.
Athletics
Main article: Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson fields 42 intercollegiate sports teams in
the NCAA Division I Ivy League, more than any other college in the
country.[106] 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. [107] As with
other Ivy League universities, Harvard does not offer athletic
scholarships.[108] The school color is crimson.
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.[109]

Notable people
Alumni
Main articles: List of Harvard University people, List of Harvard University non-
graduate alumni, and List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Harvard University
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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. Harvard's alumni include eight U.S.
presidents, 188 living billionaires, 79 Nobel laureates, 7 Fields Medal winners, 9
Turing Award laureates, 369 Rhodes Scholars, 252 Marshall Scholars, and
13 Mitchell Scholars.[110][111][112][113] Harvard students and alumni have also won
10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108 Olympic medals (including 46
gold medals), and they have founded many notable companies worldwide.[114][115]

• Notable Harvard alumni include:

• 2nd President of the United States John Adams (AB, 1755; AM, 1758)[116]

6th President of the United States John Quincy Adams (AB, 1787; AM, 1790)[117][118]

Essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (AB, 1821)

•
 Naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (AB, 1837)

19th President of the United States Rutherford B. Hayes (LLB, 1845)[119]

Philosopher, logician, and mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce (AB, 1862, SB

1863)

26th President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Theodore
Roosevelt (AB, 1880)[120]

Sociologist and civil rights activist

W. E. B. Du Bois (PhD, 1895)
 •

32nd President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt (AB, 1903)[121]

Author, political activist, and lecturer Helen Keller (AB, 1904, Radcliffe College)

Poet and Nobel laureate in literature T. S. Eliot (AB, 1909; AM, 1910)

Physicist and leader of Manhattan Project J. Robert Oppenheimer (AB, 1925)

Economist and Nobel laureate in economics Paul Samuelson (AM, 1936; PhD,
1941)
 •

Musician and composer Leonard Bernstein (AB, 1939)

35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy (AB, 1940)[122]

7th President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights Mary Robinson (LLM, 1968)

45th Vice President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al
Gore (AB, 1969)
 •

24th President of Liberia and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf (MPA, 1971)[123]

11th Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto (AB, 1973, Radcliffe College)

14th Chair of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke (AB, 1975; AM, 1975)

43rd President of the United States George W. Bush (MBA, 1975)[124]

17th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States John Roberts (AB,
1976; JD, 1979)
 •

Founder of Microsoft and philanthropist Bill Gates (College, 1977;[a 1] LLD hc, 2007)

8th Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon (MPA, 1984)

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Elena Kagan (JD,
1986)

Former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama (JD, 1988)

•
 Biochemist and Nobel laureate in chemistry Jennifer Doudna (PhD, 1989)[125]

44th President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack
Obama (JD, 1991)[126][127]

1. ^ Nominal Harvard College class year: did not graduate

Faculty
• Notable present and past Harvard faculty include:
•

Danielle Allen

Alan Dershowitz

Paul Farmer
 •

Drew Faust

Jason Furman

John Kenneth Galbraith

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Seamus Heaney
 •

William James

Timothy Leary

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Greg Mankiw

Steven Pinker
 •

Michael Porter

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Amartya Sen

B. F. Skinner

Lawrence Summers
•

Cass Sunstein

Cornel West

E. O. Wilson

Shing-Tung Yau