Harvard University

I

Introduction

Harvard University, institution of higher learning, the oldest in the United States, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of eight members of the group of traditional schools that constitute the Ivy League.

II

History and Administration

In 1636 a college was founded in Cambridge by the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was opened for instruction two years later and was named in 1639 after the English clergyman John Harvard, its first benefactor. The college at first lacked substantial endowments and existed on gifts from individuals and the General Court. Harvard gradually acquired considerable autonomy and private financial support, becoming a chartered university in 1780. Today it has the largest private endowment of any university in the world.

Harvard has steadily developed under the great American educators who have successively served as president. During the presidency of Charles William Eliot, Harvard established an elective, or optional, system for undergraduates, by which they could choose most of their courses themselves. Under Abbot Lawrence Lowell, the undergraduate house systems of residence and instruction were introduced. Academic growth and physical expansion continued during the tenures of James Bryant Conant, Nathan Marsh Pusey, and Derek Curtis Bok. In 2007, Harvard appointed its first female president, Drew Gilpin Faust.

Sponsored by Henry Rosovsky, the former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the undergraduate optional system, or General Education Program, was replaced from 1979 onwards, by a new Core Curriculum, designed to prepare truly well-educated men and women for the challenges of modern life. Under the new curriculum, students were required to take courses for the equivalent of an academic year in each of five areas: literature and arts, history, social analysis and moral reasoning, science, and foreign cultures. In addition, students spent roughly the equivalent of two years on courses in a field of concentration and one year on optional courses. Students also had to demonstrate competence in writing, mathematics, and a foreign language. In 2007, after much debate, a faculty committee recommended that the curriculum be refocused onto science, religious beliefs, and world cultures.

From its earliest days Harvard established and maintained a tradition of academic excellence and the training of citizens for national public service. Among many notable alumni are the religious leaders Increase Mather and Cotton Mather; the philosopher and psychologist William James; and men of letters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot. More US presidents have attended Harvard than any other college: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. A sixth, Rutherford B. Hayes, was a graduate of Harvard Law School, which also counts the jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Felix Frankfurter among its alumni.

Harvard University is governed by a self-perpetuating corporation (the oldest corporation in the United States) known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The corporation consults with a 30-member Board of Overseers elected by the alumni.

III

Undergraduate Activities

Harvard College, the university's oldest division, offers undergraduate courses for men and women, leading to a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree granted by the university. Graduates of Radcliffe College, the affiliated undergraduate institution for women, have received Harvard degrees with the Radcliffe seal and countersigned by the president of Radcliffe since 1963. In 1975, Harvard abolished the quota limiting the number of women students. A joint Harvard and Radcliffe Admissions Office selects students on an equal basis. With admission criteria ranking among the most selective in the United States, Harvard-Radcliffe accepts less than 20 per cent of all applicants; three-quarters of those accepted actually enrol.

During their freshman, or high school year, students live in halls within Harvard Yard, a walled enclosure containing several structures from the early 18th century now used as dormitories, dining facilities, libraries, and classrooms. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in the 12 residences known as houses. Named in honour of a distinguished alumnus or administrator, each house accommodates approximately 350 students and a group of faculty members who provide individual instruction as tutors; social and intellectual exchange between students and teachers is thus fostered. Each house also has a library and sponsors cultural activities and intramural athletics. Undergraduate life has the additional attraction of proximity to Boston.

IV

Graduate and Professional Facilities

Harvard's graduate and professional facilities, founded over the past 200 years, include schools of arts and sciences, business administration, dental medicine, design, divinity, education, law, medicine, public administration (now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government), and public health. Special studies programmes are also provided at the Harvard-Yenching Institute; the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research; the Russian Research Center; the Centers for Middle Eastern Studies; International Affairs; International Legal Studies; Energy and International Policy; and Health Policy Management.