Harvard University

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Harvard University

Coat of arms

Latin: Universitas Harvardiana

Former names Harvard College

Motto Veritas[1]

Motto in English Truth

Type Private university

Established 1636; 384 years ago[2]

Endowment $40.9 billion (2019)[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

Affiliations NAICU

AICUM

AAU

URA

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 $40.9 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's alumni include 8 U.S. presidents, 188 living billionaires, 369 Rhodes Scholars, and
252 Marshall Scholars.[18][19][20] As of August 2020, 160 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medal winners,
and 14 Turing Award laureates have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers.
[21]
 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.[22][23]

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.[1]

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.[24][25] 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.
[26]
 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."[27] It trained many Puritan ministers in its early years[28] 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. [29]
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. [30]

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.[31]: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.[31]:4–5[32]: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.[33]

20th century

Richard Rummell's 1906 watercolor landscape view, facing northeast. [34]

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. [35][36][37][38]
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.[39]
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. [40] Throughout the rest of
the 20th century, Harvard became more diverse.[41]
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.
[42]
 Women were first admitted to the medical school in 1945.[43] 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. [44]

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.[45] She was succeeded by Lawrence Bacow on
July 1, 2018.[46]

Campuses
Cambridge

Memorial Hall
University seal
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.[47] The houses were made possible by a gift
from Yale University alumnus Edward Harkness.[48]
Radcliffe Yard, formerly the center of the campus of Radcliffe College and now home to
Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,[49] is adjacent to the Graduate School of
Education and the Cambridge Common.
Memorial Church
Harvard has several commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge. [50][51]

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,[52] 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.[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 will expand
into a new, 500,000+ square foot Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) in Allston. [55] 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. [56]

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,[57] the Villa I Tatti research center in Florence, Italy,[58] the
Harvard Shanghai Center in Shanghai, China,[59] and the Arnold Arboretum in the Jamaica
Plain neighborhood of Boston.