Harvard University

(i)

Click Here for Items Related To - Harvard University

Harvard University
Coat of arms
Latin: Universitas Harvardiana
Former names	Harvard College
Motto	Veritas (Latin)^[1]
Motto in English	Truth
Type	Private
Established	1636; 384 years ago (1636)^[2]
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″W / 42.37444°N 71.11694°W / 42.37444; -71.11694Coordinates: 42°22′28″N 71°07′01″W / 42.37444°N 71.11694°W / 42.37444; -71.11694
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 Gen

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's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, 188 living billionaires, 369 Rhodes Scholars, 252 Marshall Scholars, and 11 Mitchell Scholars. As of October 2020, 161 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medal winners, and 14 Turing Award laureates have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers.^[18] Harvard students and alumni have founded many notable companies worldwide, and have also won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108 Olympic medals (including 46 gold medals).

1 History
2 Campuses

3 Organization and administration

3.1 Governance

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.

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

20th century

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

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]

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]