Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636, and named Harvard College in 1639 in honor of its first benefactor, 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.
Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court, the governing legislature of colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. While never formally affiliated with any Protestant denomination, Harvard trained Christian clergy of Congregational denomination until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century. In 1780, the Constitution of Massachusetts referred to it as a university, and a new medical school established in 1782 was named the Medical Institution of Harvard University; but this was a new name, not a new foundation. Harvard College soon became the name of the university's undergraduate division.
By the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston elite. Following the American Civil War, under Harvard president Charles William Eliot's long tenure from 1869 to 1909, Harvard developed multiple professional schools, which transformed it into a modern research university. In 1900, Harvard co-founded the Association of American Universities. James B. Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II, and liberalized admissions after the war.
The university has ten academic faculties and a faculty attached to Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate academic disciplines, and other faculties offer graduate degrees, including professional degrees. Harvard has three campuses: the main campus, a 209-acre (85 ha) in Cambridge centered on Harvard Yard; an adjoining campus immediately across Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston; and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment, valued at $55.7 billion, makes it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Harvard Library, with more than 20 million volumes, is the world's largest academic library.
History
17th century
Harvard was founded in 1636 by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its first headmaster, Nathaniel Eaton, took office the following year. In 1638, the university acquired English North America's first known printing press. The same year, on his deathbed, John Harvard, a Puritan clergyman who had emigrated to the colony from England, bequeathed the emerging college £780 and his library of some 320 volumes; the following year, it was named Harvard College.
In 1643, a Harvard publication defined the college's purpose: "[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."
In its early years, the college trained many Congregational ministers and offered a classical curriculum based on the English university model exemplified by the University of Cambridge, where many colonial Massachusetts leaders had studied prior to emigrating to the colony. Though Harvard College never formally affiliated with any particular Protestant denomination, its curriculum conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. In 1650, the charter for Harvard Corporation, the college's governing body, was granted.
From 1681 to 1701, Increase Mather, a Puritan clergyman, served as Harvard's sixth president. In 1708, John Leverett became Harvard's seventh president and the first president who was not also a clergyman.
Harvard seal
The earliest known official seal of Harvard College, commonly referred to as the Seal of 1650 or the In Christi Gloriam seal, features a square shield bearing three open books arranged around a central chevron. This design symbolizes the pursuit of learning under divine guidance. The motto IN CHRISTI GLORIAM ("To the glory of Christ") appears prominently on the seal, which is encircled by the Latin inscription SIGILL COL HARVARD CANTAB NOV ANGL 1650, meaning "Seal of Harvard College Cambridge New England 1650." This seal reflects the original religious mission of the institution.
In 1885, the Harvard Corporation adopted a revised design known as the Appleton Seal, based on an earlier version created by President Josiah Quincy in 1843. Designed by William Sumner Appleton (Harvard AB 1860), the seal features a triangular shield bearing three open books with the motto VERITAS ("Truth"). Surrounding the shield is the motto CHRISTO ET ECCLESIÆ ("For Christ and the Church"), and the outer border bears the inscription SIGILLVM ACADEMIÆ HARVARDINÆ IN NOV. ANG. ("Seal of Harvard College in New England"). This version of the seal sought to harmonize the university's intellectual pursuits with its ecclesiastical roots.
18th century
Harvard faculty and students largely supported the Patriot cause during the American Revolution.
In the second half of the 18th century, Harvard began granting graduate and doctorate-level degrees. In 1780, the Constitution of Massachusetts recognized Harvard College as a university, and when in 1783 a new medical school was established, it was given the formal name of the Medical Institution of Harvard University. This was a renaming of the college, and not a re-founding.
19th century
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. Following the death of Hollis Professor of Divinity David 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.
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.
20th century
In 1900, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities. For the first few decades of the 20th century, the Harvard student body was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians," according to sociologist and author Jerome Karabel.
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 proportion 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."
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, and women were first admitted to the medical school.
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. 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 Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians remained underrepresented. Over the second half of the 20th century, however, the university became incrementally more diverse.
Between 1971 and 1999, Harvard controlled undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for Radcliffe's women; in 1999, Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard University.
21st century
On July 1, 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, was appointed Harvard's 28th and the university's first female president. On July 1, 2018, Faust retired and joined the board of Goldman Sachs, and Lawrence Bacow became Harvard's 29th president.
In February 2023, approximately 6,000 Harvard workers attempted to organize a union.
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. 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.
Second presidency of Donald Trump
In February 2025, Leo Terrell, the head of the Trump administration's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, announced that he would investigate Harvard University as part of the Department of Justice's broader investigation into antisemitism on college campuses.
In April 2025, the United States federal government under President Donald Trump threatened to withhold nearly $9 billion in government funds from the university unless the university complied with government demands to modify many of its policies. This threat was part of a broader battle over universities' autonomy following contentious student protests against the Gaza war, and followed similar demands made of Columbia University. The university's leadership resisted the government's demands, claiming that they were an unlawful overreach of government authority. In response, the US Department of Education announced they were freezing $2.3 billion in federal funds to Harvard. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently threatened to revoke Harvard's eligibility to host international students. Harvard responded by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the District Court of Massachusetts, arguing that the freezing of funds was unconstitutional.
In May 2025, education secretary Linda McMahon informed Harvard president Garber that the federal government would no longer provide grant funding until the university complied with the Trump administration's demands. The following week, the Trump administration cut an additional $450 million in grants to the school.
Later that same month, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem announced that Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification had been revoked, barring Harvard from hosting international students. The following day, Harvard sued the Trump administration for banning them from enrolling international students and U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order stopping the ban. On June 16, 2025, Burroughs postponed a ruling after hearing arguments from lawyers on both sides, leaving the temporary block in place for another week.
On May 30, 2025, the State Department ordered all US embassies and consulates to conduct "comprehensive and thorough vetting" of the online presence of anyone seeking to visit Harvard from abroad.
On June 4, 2025, Trump issued a proclamation restricting international students from studying at Harvard, and directing the State Department to consider revoking the visas of current international students studying at that university. The following day, Harvard filed a legal challenge, amending their existing federal complaint against the administration.
On June 20, Harvard was granted an injunction allowing it to continue hosting international students as litigation continues. On June 30, a Trump administration investigation found Harvard violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff.
On September 3, 2025 US District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the Trump administration illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding stating the administration "...violated Harvard's free-speech rights as well as the US Civil Rights Act."