Today we are going to explore Harvard University, a topic that has captured the attention of people of all ages and walks of life. Since its emergence, Harvard University has generated great interest due to its impact on our society and our daily lives. In this article, we are going to dive into the history of Harvard University, explore its implications in today's world, and reflect on its future. Whether you are an expert on the topic or just curious to learn more about it, this article will provide you with a complete and insightful overview of Harvard University. Join us on this fascinating journey!
Private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Harvard University is a privateIvy Leagueresearch university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded October 28, 1636, and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.[12]
In 1643, a Harvard publication defined the college's purpose: "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."[22] In its early years, the college trained many Puritan ministers[23] and offered a classical curriculum based on the English university model many colonial-era Massachusetts leaders experienced at the University of Cambridge, where many of them studied prior to immigrating to British America. Harvard never formally affiliated with any particular Protestant denomination, but its curriculum conformed to the tenets of Puritanism.[24] In 1650, the charter for Harvard Corporation, the college's governing body, was granted.
In the 19th century, Harvard was influenced by Enlightenment Age ideas, including reason and free will, which were widespread among Congregational ministers and which placed these ministers and their congregations at odds with more traditionalist, Calvinist pastors and clergies.[27]: 1–4 Following the death of Hollis Professor of DivinityDavid Tappan in 1803 and that of Joseph Willard, Harvard's eleventh president, the following year, a struggle broke out over their replacements. In 1805, Henry Ware was elected to replace Tappan as Hollis chair. Two years later, in 1807, liberal Samuel Webber was appointed as Harvard's 13th president, representing a shift from traditional ideas at Harvard to more liberal and Arminian ideas.[27]: 4–5 [28]: 24
In 1816, Harvard University launched new language programs in the study of French and Spanish, and appointed George Ticknor the university's first professor for these language programs.
From 1869 to 1909, Charles William Eliot, Harvard University's 21st president, decreased the historically favored position of Christianity in the curriculum, opening it to student self-direction. Though Eliot was an influential figure in the secularization of U.S. higher education, he was motivated primarily by Transcendentalist and Unitarian convictions influenced by William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, rather than secularism. In the late 19th century, Harvard University's graduate schools began admitting women in small numbers.[29]
Over the 20th century, as its endowment burgeoned and prominent intellectuals and professors affiliated with it, Harvard University's reputation as one of the world's most prestigious universities grew notably. The university's enrollment also underwent substantial growth, 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 in the nation for women.
In 1923, a year after the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard reached 20%, A. Lawrence Lowell, the university's 22nd president, unsuccessfully proposed capping the admission of Jewish students to 15% of the undergraduate population. 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."[32][33][34][35]
Between 1933 and 1953, Harvard University was led by James B. Conant, the university's 23rd president, who reinvigorated the university's 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, and devised programs to identify, recruit, and support talented youth. In 1945, under Conant's leadership, an influential 268-page report, General Education in a Free Society, was published by Harvard faculty, which remains one of the most important works in curriculum studies,[36] and women were first admitted to the medical school.[37]
Between 1945 and 1960, admissions were standardized to open the university to a more diverse group of students. Following the end of World War II, for example, special exams were developed so veterans could be considered for admission.[38] No longer drawing mostly from prestigious prep schools in New England, 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 U.S. population.[39] Over the second half of the 20th century, however, the university became incrementally more diverse.[40]
Between 1971 and 1999, Harvard controlled undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for Radcliffe's women; in 1999, Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard University.[41]
In February 2023, approximately 6,000 Harvard workers attempted to organize a union.[44]
Bacow retired in June 2023, and on July 1 Claudine Gay, a Harvard professor in the Government and African American Studies departments and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, became Harvard's 30th president.
In January 2024, just six months into her presidency, Gay resigned following allegations of antisemitism and plagiarism.[45] Gay was succeeded by Alan Garber, the university's provost, who was appointed interim president. In August 2024, the university announced that Garber would be appointed Harvard's 31st president through the end of the 2026–27 academic year.
The 209-acre (85 ha) main campus of Harvard University is centered on Harvard Yard, colloquially known as "the Yard," in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about 3 miles (5 km) west-northwest of downtown Boston, and extending to the surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. The Yard houses several Harvard buildings, including four of the university's libraries, Houghton, Lamont, Pusey, and Widener. Also on Harvard Yard are Massachusetts Hall, built between 1718 and 1720 and the university's oldest still standing building, Memorial Church, and University Hall
The university is actively expanding into Allston, where it now owns more land than in Cambridge.[52] Plans include new construction and renovation for the Business School, a hotel and conference center, graduate student housing, Harvard Stadium, and other athletics facilities.[53]
In 2021, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences expanded into the new Allston-based Science and Engineering Complex (SEC), which is more than 500,000 square feet in size.[54] SEC is adjacent to the Enterprise Research Campus, the Business School, and Harvard Innovation Labs, and designed to encourage technology- and life science-focused startups and collaborations with mature companies.[55]
Harvard has the largest university endowment in the world, valued at about $50.7 billion as of 2023.[5][6]
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.[62] The endowment has since recovered.[63][64][65][66]
About $2 billion of investment income is annually distributed to fund operations.[67]
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.[68]
Endowment income is critical, as only 22% of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board.[69]
In the late 1980s, during the disinvestment from South Africa movement, student activists erected a symbolic shanty town on Harvard Yard and blockaded a speech by South African Vice Consul Duke Kent-Brown.[72][73]
The university eventually reduced its South African holdings by $230 million, out of a total of $400 million, in response to the pressure.[72][74]
Harvard is a large, highly residential research university[75]
offering 50 undergraduate majors,[76]
134 graduate degrees,[77] and 32 professional degrees.[78] During the 2018–2019 academic year, Harvard granted 1,665 baccalaureate degrees, 1,013 graduate degrees, and 5,695 professional degrees.[78]
Harvard College, the four-year, full-time undergraduate program, has a liberal arts and sciences focus.[75][76] To graduate in the usual four years, undergraduates normally take four courses per semester.[79]
In most majors, an honors degree requires advanced coursework and a senior thesis.[80]
Though some introductory courses have large enrollments, the median class size is 12 students.[81]
Harvard is a founding member of the Association of American Universities[83] 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.[75]
The medical school consistently ranks first among medical schools for research,[84] and biomedical research is an area of particular strength for the university. More than 11,000 faculty and 1,600 graduate students conduct research at the medical school and its 15 affiliated hospitals and research institutes.[85] In 2019, the medical school and its affiliates attracted $1.65 billion in competitive research grants from the National Institutes of Health, more than twice that of any other university.[86]
Harvard Library, the largest academic library in the world with 20.4 million holdings, is centered in Widener Library in Harvard Yard. It includes 25 individual Harvard libraries around the world with a combined staff of more than 800 librarians and personnel.[87]
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. The nation's oldest collection of maps, gazetteers, and atlases is stored in Pusey Library on Harvard Yard, which is open to the public. The largest collection of East-Asian language material outside of East Asia is held in 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.[98]
The Undergraduate Council represented Harvard College undergraduate students until it was dissolved in 2022,[107] 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.[108]
Harvard College competes in the NCAADivision IIvy League conference. The school fields 42 intercollegiate sports teams, more than any other college in the country.[109]
In the NCAA Division I era, which began in 1973, Harvard Crimson teams have won five NCAA Division I championships as of 2024: men's ice hockey in 1989, women's lacrosse in 1990, women's rowing in 2003, and men's fencing in 2006 and 2024. Including the pre-NCAA era, Harvard has won 159 national championships across all sports. Its men's squash team holds the record for the most national collegiate championships in the sport. Harvard's first national championship came in 1880, when its track and field team won the national championship.[112]
Harvard's athletic programs maintain a long-standing rivalry with Yale in all sports, especially in college football, where Harvard and Yale compete in an annual football rivalry, which has played 139 times as of 2024, dating back to its first meeting in 1875.[113]
Every two years, 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.[114]
Since its founding nearly four centuries ago, Harvard alumni have distinguished themselves in academia, activism, arts, athletics, business, entrepreneurship, government, international affairs, journalism, media, music, non-profit organizations, politics, public policy, science, technology, writing, and other industries and fields.
Harvard's reputation as a center of 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 said in 2010.[133]
Literature
In contemporary literature, Harvard University features prominently in multiple novels, including:
^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' 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. ... 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.
^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.
^"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.
^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...' a judgment with which I .
^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.
^"A Many-Splendored 'Love Story'". Harvard University Gazette. February 8, 1996.
^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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