Harvard University

I

Introduction

Harvard University, private, coeducational institution of higher education, the oldest in the United States in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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 named in 1639 for 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.

Harvard has steadily developed under the great American educators who have successively served as its presidents. During the presidency of Charles W. Eliot (1869-1909), Harvard established an elective system for undergraduates, by which they could choose most of their courses themselves. Under Abbott L. Lowell, who was president from 1909 to 1933, the undergraduate house systems of residence and instruction were introduced.

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, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot. More U.S. presidents have attended Harvard than any other college: John Adams (1797-1801), John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), and John F. Kennedy (1961-1963). A sixth, Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), was a graduate of Harvard Law School, which also counts the jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Stephen Breyer, and John Roberts among its alumni.

---

---

III

Undergraduate Activities

Harvard College, the university’s oldest division, offers undergraduate courses for men and women, leading to a bachelor of arts degree granted by the university. Beginning in 1963, graduates of Radcliffe College, the affiliated undergraduate institution for women, received Harvard degrees with the Radcliffe seal and countersigned by the president of Radcliffe. In the 1970s, Harvard abolished the quota limiting the number of women students, and a joint Harvard and Radcliffe Admissions Office began selecting students on an equal basis. In 1999 Harvard fully absorbed Radcliffe and created the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which focuses on the study of women and gender.

During their freshman year, many 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 residences known as houses. Named in honor of a distinguished alumnus or administrator, each house accommodates approximately 350 students and a group of faculty members who provide individual instruction as tutors, fostering social and intellectual exchange between students and teachers. 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 last 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.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain