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100-615: The Harvard–Yenching Institute is an independent foundation dedicated to advancing higher education in Asia in the humanities and social sciences, with special attention to the study of Asian culture. It traditionally had close ties to Harvard University and the now-defunct Yenching University , and its offices are located on the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts , but it is not part of Harvard. The Harvard–Yenching Institute (HYI)

200-704: A 21-acre (8.5 ha) campus in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston , about 3.3 miles (5.3 km) south of the Cambridge campus. Several Harvard-affiliated hospitals and research institutes are also in Longwood, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center , Boston Children's Hospital , Brigham and Women's Hospital , Dana–Farber Cancer Institute , Joslin Diabetes Center , and

300-763: A 358-acre (145 ha) campus in the Allston section of Boston across the John W. Weeks Bridge , which crosses the Charles River and connects the Allston and Cambridge campuses. The university is actively expanding into Allston, where it now owns more land than in Cambridge. Plans include new construction and renovation for the Business School, a hotel and conference center, graduate student housing, Harvard Stadium, and other athletics facilities. In 2021,

400-527: A Brown graduate, as the university's first president. Thomas Cooper , an Oxford alumnus and University of Pennsylvania faculty member, became the second president of the South Carolina college. The founders of the University of California came from Yale, hence Berkeley 's colors are Yale Blue and California Gold. Stanford University has, since its earliest days, been nicknamed the "Cornell of

500-554: 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 ,

600-623: A HYI Faculty Advisory Committee functions as an informal advisory group to the director, offering general advice on institute operations and academic directions. In its 80 years, the Harvard–Yenching Institute has had seven directors, each a member of the faculty of Harvard University: The Harvard–Yenching Institute has several fellowship programs that bring scholars from Asia to conduct research at Harvard University, to participate in special training programs, or to attend graduate school at Harvard University as well as other universities in

700-574: A challenge from Columbia, published in the Yale News. The dual meet took place prior to a basketball game hosted by Columbia and resulted in a tie. Two years later, Penn and Princeton also added wrestling teams, leading to the formation of the student-run Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, now the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA), the first and oldest collegiate wrestling league in

800-459: A closer bond of confidence and cooperation and toward the formation of a common front against the threat of a breakdown in the ideals of amateur sport in the interests of supposed expediency. Please do not regard that statement as implying the organization of an Eastern conference or even a poetic "Ivy League". That sort of thing does not seem to be in the cards at the moment. Within a year of this statement and having held month-long discussions about

900-501: A particularly advantageous position to assume leadership for the preservation of the ideals of intercollegiate athletics. The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Rowing teams from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee , New Hampshire , on August 3, 1852. Harvard's team, "The Oneida", won

1000-555: A side instead of 11 (soccer) as Yale would have preferred. In 1881, Penn , Harvard College , Haverford College , Princeton University (then known as College of New Jersey), and Columbia University (then known as Columbia College) formed The Intercollegiate Cricket Association , which Cornell University later joined. Penn won The Intercollegiate Cricket Association championship 23 times, including 18 solo victories and three shared with Haverford and Harvard, one shared with Haverford and Cornell, and one shared with just Haverford, during

1100-486: A social elite; to some degree independent of the actual schools. In 1870, the nation's first formal athletic league was created in 1870 with the formation of the Rowing Association of American Colleges (RAAC), composed exclusively of Ivy League universities. RAAC hosted a national championship in rowing from 1870 to 1894. The first Harvard vs Yale rugby football contest was held in 1875, two years after

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1200-587: 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

1300-800: Is an American collegiate athletic conference of eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States . It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I , and in football , in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The term Ivy League is used more broadly to refer to the eight schools that belong to the league, which are globally-renowned as elite colleges associated with academic excellence , highly selective admissions , and social elitism . The term

1400-477: Is the world's largest academic library . Harvard alumni, faculty, and researchers include 188 living billionaires , eight U.S. presidents , 24 heads of state and 31 heads of government , founders of notable companies, Nobel laureates , Fields Medalists , members of Congress , MacArthur Fellows , Rhodes Scholars , Marshall Scholars , Turing Award Recipients , Pulitzer Prize recipients, and Fulbright Scholars ; by most metrics, Harvard University ranks among

1500-525: The American Revolution . 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,

1600-586: The Association of American Universities , the most prestigious alliance of American research universities. Undergraduate enrollments range from about 4,500 to about 15,000, larger than most liberal arts colleges and smaller than most state university systems . Total enrollment, which includes graduate students, ranges from approximately 6,600 at Dartmouth to over 20,000 at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, and Penn. Ivy League financial endowments range from Brown's $ 6.9 billion to Harvard's $ 53.2 billion,

1700-533: The Carnegie Classification . The medical school consistently ranks first among medical schools for research, 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. In 2019, the medical school and its affiliates attracted $ 1.65 billion in competitive research grants from

1800-494: The Darfur genocide , and tobacco , fossil fuel , and private prison industries. 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. The university eventually reduced its South African holdings by $ 230 million , out of a total of $ 400 million , in response to

1900-452: The Faculty of Arts and Sciences , including Sever Hall , Harvard Hall , and freshman dormitories . Upperclassmen live in the twelve residential houses , located south of Harvard Yard near the Charles River and on Radcliffe Quadrangle , which formerly housed Radcliffe College students. Each house is a community of undergraduates, faculty deans, and resident tutors, with its own dining hall, library, and recreational facilities. Also on

2000-614: The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences , the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) , and the Division of Continuing Education , which includes Harvard Summer School and Harvard Extension School . There are nine other graduate and professional faculties and a faculty attacked to the Harvard Radcliffe Institute . There are four Harvard joint programs with MIT , which include

2100-648: 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. 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. The university's schools of Medicine , Dental Medicine , and Public Health are located on

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2200-838: The Harvard-Yenching Library as well as the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies . During the 1930s and 40s, the institute provided direct support to Yenching University in Beiping (now Beijing), because of its focus on the humanities, along with five other colleges in China, University of Nanking ( Nanjing ), Fukien Christian University ( Fuzhou ), Lingnan University ( Guangzhou ), Cheeloo University ( Jinan ) and West China Union University ( Chengdu ), as well as Allahabad Agricultural Institute in India. Since

2300-638: The Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology , the Broad Institute , The Observatory of Economic Complexity , and edX . The university maintains 12 schools, which include: Harvard is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and a preeminent research university with "very high" research activity (R1) and comprehensive doctoral programs across the arts, sciences, engineering, and medicine, according to

2400-672: The National Institutes of Health , more than twice that of any other university. 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. Houghton Library , the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on

2500-665: The Patriot League , except for football, for which they are affiliate members of the American Athletic Conference . "Planting the ivy " was a customary class day ceremony at many colleges in the 1800s. In 1893, an alumnus told The Harvard Crimson , "In 1850, class day was placed upon the University Calendar...the custom of planting the ivy, while the ivy oration was delivered, arose about this time." At Penn, graduating seniors started

2600-519: The Roman numeral for four ( IV ), asserting that there was such a sports league originally with four members. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins helped to perpetuate this belief. The supposed " IV League" was formed over a century ago and consisted of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a fourth school that varies depending on who is telling the story. However, it is clear that Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Yale met on November 23, 1876, at

2700-564: The United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy , and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. At this time, however, none of these institutions made efforts to form an athletic league. A common folk etymology attributes the name to

2800-826: The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering . Additional affiliates, including Massachusetts General Hospital , are located throughout Greater Boston . Harvard owns Dumbarton Oaks , a research library in Washington, D.C., Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts , Concord Field Station in Estabrook Woods in Concord, Massachusetts , the Villa I Tatti research center in Florence , Italy, and

2900-558: The football teams. The principles established reiterated those put forward in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton presidents' Agreement of 1916. The Ivy Group Agreement established the core tenet that an applicant's ability to play on a team would not influence admissions decisions: The members of the Group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships. Athletes shall be admitted as students and awarded financial aid only on

3000-842: The largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world. The Ivy League is similar to other groups of universities in other countries, such as Oxbridge in England , the C9 League in China , and the Imperial Universities in Japan . Ivy League universities have some of the largest university financial endowments in the world, allowing the universities to provide abundant resources for their academic programs, financial aid, and research endeavors. As of 2021, Harvard University had an endowment of $ 53.2 billion,

3100-455: The "Ivies" except Cornell were founded during the colonial period and therefore make up seven of the nine colonial colleges . The other two colonial colleges, Queens College (now Rutgers University ) and the College of William & Mary , became public institutions. Ivy League schools are some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 18 of

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3200-627: The "Ivy colleges" came in 1933, when Stanley Woodward of the New York Herald Tribune used it to refer to the eight current members plus Army. In 1935, the Associated Press reported on an example of collaboration between the schools: The athletic authorities of the so-called "Ivy League" are considering drastic measures to curb the increasing tendency toward riotous attacks on goal posts and other encroachments by spectators on playing fields. Despite such collaboration,

3300-575: The 1950s, the institute's core activity has been to offer fellowships for overseas study and research to younger doctoral and post-doctoral scholars at leading East and Southeast Asian universities in all fields of the humanities and social sciences. Although the institute has a special commitment to promoting the study of Asian culture, its support is not limited to that field. To date over 1000 faculty from Asia have received Institute fellowships and over 300 doctoral students have received their degrees with Institute support. In addition to providing fellowships,

3400-685: The 2023-24 academic calendar; up until that point the Ivies that sponsor wrestling—all except Dartmouth and Yale— were members of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association . The Ivy League was the first athletic conference to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by shutting down all athletic competition in March 2020, leaving many Spring schedules unfinished. The Fall 2020 schedule was canceled in July, and winter sports were canceled before Thanksgiving. Of

3500-729: The 2024 U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking . U.S. News has named a member of the Ivy League as the best national university every year since 2001: as of 2020 , Princeton eleven times, Harvard twice, and the two schools tied for first five times. In the 2024–2025 U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking , six Ivies rank in the top 20: Harvard (#1), Columbia (#9), Yale (#10), Penn (#14), Princeton (#18), and Cornell (#19) —ranks that U.S. News says are based on "indicators that measure their academic research performance and their global and regional reputations." All eight Ivy League schools are members of

3600-413: 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

3700-565: The 357 men's basketball teams in Division I , only ten did not play; the Ivy League made up eight of those ten. By giving up its automatic qualifying bid to March Madness , the Ivy League forfeited at least $ 280,000 in NCAA basketball funds. As a consequence of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of student athletes in the Ivy League either transferred to other schools, or temporarily unenrolled in hopes of maintaining their eligibility to play post-pandemic. Some Ivy alumni expressed displeasure with

3800-720: The 44 years that the Intercollegiate Cricket Association existed from 1881 through 1924. In 1895, Cornell, Columbia, and Penn founded the Intercollegiate Rowing Association , which remains the oldest collegiate athletic organizing body in the US. To this day, the IRA Championship Regatta determines the national champion in rowing and all of the Ivies are regularly invited to compete. A basketball league

3900-550: The Balkan States in Europe, by founding, developing, supporting, maintaining and/or conducting one or more educational institutions and/or by supporting in whole or in part, co-operating with or joining or affiliating with other institutions now in existence or hereafter formed... In the 1930s, the institute supported the development of what became the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard and founded

4000-974: The Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece. https://greece.chs.harvard.edu the Harvard Shanghai Center in Shanghai , China, and Arnold Arboretum in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Harvard is governed by a combination of its Board of Overseers and the President and Fellows of Harvard College , which is also known as the Harvard Corporation. These two bodies, in turn, appoint the President of Harvard University . There are 16,000 staff and faculty, including 2,400 professors, lecturers, and instructors. Harvard has

4100-735: The Harvard Library system include Baker Library/Bloomberg Center at Harvard Business School , Cabot Science Library at Harvard Science Center , Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. , Gutman Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Education , Harvard Film Archive at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts , Houghton Library , and Lamont Library . Ivy League The Ivy League

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4200-656: 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 . Other major libraries in

4300-557: The Ivy League absorbed the EIBL. The Ivy League claims the EIBL's history as its own. Through the EIBL, it is the oldest basketball conference in Division I. As late as the 1960s many of the Ivy League universities' undergraduate programs remained open only to men, with Cornell the only one to have been coeducational from its founding (1865) and Columbia being the last (1983) to become coeducational. Before they became coeducational, many of

4400-405: The Ivy League alleging that by denying athletic scholarships, the 1954 "Ivy League Agreement" is anticompetititive and violates antitrust laws. The lawsuit claims that the agreement constitutes price-fixing in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and in effect raises the cost of Ivy League education for student athletes. The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with seven out of

4500-433: The Ivy League schools were members of other single-sport conferences and the top-performing Ivy League team would be crowned the champion. The United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy were members of the Ivy League in many sports and were crowned as Ivy League champions while competing with Ivy League teams. Both schools left the conference in the early 2000s to join with their current conference,

4600-408: The Ivy schools maintained extensive social ties with nearby Seven Sisters women's colleges , including weekend visits, dances and parties inviting Ivy and Seven Sisters students to mingle. This was the case not only at Barnard College and Radcliffe College , which are adjacent to Columbia and Harvard, but at more distant institutions as well. The movie Animal House includes a satiric version of

4700-790: The League's position. In February 2021 it was reported that Yale declined a multi-million dollar offer from alum Joseph Tsai to create a sequestered "bubble" for the lacrosse team. The league announced in a May 2021 joint statement that "regular athletic competition" would resume "across all sports" in fall 2021. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Ivy League Conference committed itself to uphold "diversity, equity, and inclusion," to combat racism and homophobia. At Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton there are Black Student Athlete groups and other affinity groups that are dedicated to ensuring their organizations are committed to anti-racism and anti-homophobia. In 2023, two former Brown University basketball players sued

4800-651: The Time", encouraging the seven universities to form the league in an effort to preserve the ideals of athletics. Part of the editorial read as follows: The Ivy League exists already in the minds of a good many of those connected with football, and we fail to see why the seven schools concerned should be satisfied to let it exist as a purely nebulous entity where there are so many practical benefits which would be possible under definite organized association. The seven colleges involved fall naturally together by reason of their common interests and similar general standards and by dint of their established national reputation they are in

4900-416: The U.S. Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian-American candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied. Harvard was subject to a similar challenge in 2019 from an Asian American student group, with regard to which a federal judge found Harvard to be in compliance with constitutional requirements. The student group has since appealed that decision, and

5000-432: The U.S. and abroad. The fellowship programs include: Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research 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

5100-483: The US. Though schools now in Ivy League (such as Yale and Columbia) played against each other in the 1880s, it was not until 1930 that Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton and Yale formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League ; they were later joined by Harvard, Brown, Army and Navy. Before the formal establishment of the Ivy League, there was an "unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations". The earliest reference to

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5200-414: The West": more than half of Stanford's initial faculty, as well as its first two presidents, had connections to Cornell as alumni or faculty. A plurality of the Ivy League schools have identifiable Protestant roots. Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth all held early associations with the Congregationalists . Princeton was financed by New Light Presbyterians, though originally led by a Congregationalist. Brown

5300-414: The appeal is still pending as of August 2020. Members of the League have been highly ranked by various university rankings . All of the Ivy League schools are consistently ranked within the top 20 national universities by the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking . (2024) Collaboration between the member schools is illustrated by the student-led Ivy Council that meets in

5400-424: The basis of the same academic standards and economic need as are applied to all other students. In 1954, the presidents extended the Ivy Group Agreement to all intercollegiate sports, effective with the 1955–56 basketball season. This is generally reckoned as the formal formation of the Ivy League. As part of the transition, Brown, the only Ivy that had not joined the EIBL, did so for the 1954–55 season. A year later,

5500-472: The churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." In its early years, the college trained many Puritan ministers 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

5600-533: The custom of planting ivy at a university building each spring in 1873 and that practice was formally designated as " Ivy Day " in 1874. Ivy planting ceremonies are recorded at Yale University , Simmons College , and Bryn Mawr College among other schools. Princeton's "Ivy Club" was founded in 1879. The first usage of Ivy in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895–1965). A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into

5700-580: The eight universities reporting undergraduate acceptance rates below 6%. Admitted students come from around the world, although those from the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students. In 2021, all eight Ivy League schools recorded record high numbers of applications and record low acceptance rates. Year-over-year increases in the number of applicants ranged from 14.5% at Princeton to 51% at Columbia. There have been arguments that Ivy League schools discriminate against Asian-American candidates. For example, in August 2020,

5800-409: 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

5900-420: The first black athlete in the U.S. to win a gold medal in the Olympics) and a black student was named captain of the track team in 1918. Columbia's track and field team would be integrated in 1934. Basketball would become integrated at Yale in 1926, at Princeton in 1947. In 1945 the presidents of the eight schools signed the first Ivy Group Agreement , which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for

6000-455: 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

6100-507: The following year. In 1638, the university acquired British North America 's first known printing press . The same year, on his deathbed, John Harvard , a Puritan clergyman who 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: "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to

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6200-483: The formerly common visits by Dartmouth men to Massachusetts to meet Smith and Mount Holyoke women, a drive of more than two hours. As noted by Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra, "The ' Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar , Bryn Mawr , Wellesley , and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men's colleges." In 1982 the Ivy League considered adding two members, with Army, Navy, and Northwestern as

6300-476: The founding of other colleges and universities is notable. This included the Southern public college movement which blossomed in the decades surrounding the turn of the 19th century when Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia established what became the flagship universities of their respective states. In 1801, a majority of the first board of trustees for what became the University of South Carolina were Princeton alumni. They appointed Jonathan Maxcy ,

6400-498: The inaugural Princeton–Yale rugby football contest. Harvard athlete Nathaniel Curtis challenged Yale 's captain, William Arnold to a rugby-style game. Program for the "Foot Ball Match", Harvard v Yale, the first intercollegiate game. It is considered the first rugby game between Ivy League teams. The game was played at Hamilton Park , a venue in New Haven, Connecticut (located at the intersection of Whalley Avenue and West Park Avenue ). The two teams played with 15 players (rugby) on

6500-445: The institute supports publications through Harvard's Monograph Series as well as overseas publications in Chinese and Vietnamese, conferences, workshops and training programs. The Harvard–Yenching Institute has a nine-member board of directors, consisting of three each representing Harvard University and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and three independent members with significant experience in Asia. In addition,

6600-486: The largest university endowment in the world, valued at about $ 50.7 billion as of 2023. 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. The endowment has since recovered. About $ 2 billion of investment income is annually distributed to fund operations. Harvard's ability to fund its degree and financial aid programs depends on

6700-537: The largest of any educational institution. Each university attracts millions of dollars in annual research funding from both the federal government and private sources. Before the 2000s, many of the Ivy League championships for men's and women's cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field, and swimming & diving were formatted as invitationals that many schools across the eastern United States would attend. In other sports, such as fencing, wrestling, men's and women's ice hockey, and men's and women's rowing, all of

6800-456: The late 19th century, Harvard University's graduate schools began admitting women in small numbers. 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

6900-441: The main campus in Cambridge are the Law , Divinity (theology), Engineering and Applied Science , Design (architecture), Education , Kennedy (public policy), and Extension schools, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Radcliffe Yard. Harvard also has commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge. Harvard Business School , Harvard Innovation Labs , and many athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium , are located on

7000-412: 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 $ 50.7 billion , makes it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Harvard Library , with more than 20 million volumes,

7100-437: The most likely candidates; if it had done so, the league could probably have avoided being moved into the recently created Division I-AA (now Division I FCS) for football. In 1983, following the admission of women to Columbia College, Columbia University and Barnard College entered into an athletic consortium agreement by which students from both schools compete together on Columbia University women's athletic teams, which replaced

7200-501: 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 denomination , Harvard trained Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as

7300-469: 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

7400-536: 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 . Endowment income is critical, as only 22% of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board. Since the 1970s, several student-led campaigns have advocated divesting Harvard's endowment from controversial holdings, including investments in South Africa during apartheid , Sudan during

7500-432: The pressure. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university offering 50 undergraduate majors, 134 graduate degrees, and 32 professional degrees. During the 2018–2019 academic year, Harvard granted 1,665 baccalaureate degrees, 1,013 graduate degrees, and 5,695 professional degrees. Harvard College , the four-year, full-time undergraduate program, has a liberal arts and sciences focus. To graduate in

7600-500: The primary institutions of higher learning in British America 's Northern and Middle Colonies . During the colonial era, the schools' faculties and founding boards were largely drawn from other Ivy League institutions. Also represented were British graduates from the University of Cambridge , the University of Oxford , the University of St. Andrews , and the University of Edinburgh . The influence of these institutions on

7700-540: The proposal, on December 3, 1936, the idea of "the formation of an Ivy League" gained enough traction among the undergraduate bodies of the universities that the Columbia Daily Spectator , The Cornell Daily Sun , The Dartmouth , The Harvard Crimson , The Daily Pennsylvanian , The Daily Princetonian and the Yale Daily News would simultaneously run an editorial entitled "Now Is

7800-533: The race and was presented with trophy black walnut oars from then-presidential nominee General Franklin Pierce . The proposal to create an athletic league did not succeed. On January 11, 1937, the athletic authorities at the schools rejected the "possibility of a heptagonal league in football such as these institutions maintain in basketball, baseball and track." However, they noted that the league "has such promising possibilities that it may not be dismissed and must be

7900-405: The so-called Massasoit Convention to decide on uniform rules for the emerging game of American football, which rapidly spread. Seven out of the eight Ivy League schools are Colonial Colleges : institutions of higher education founded prior to the American Revolution . Cornell, the exception to this commonality, was founded immediately after the American Civil War . These seven colleges served as

8000-483: The strife and the turmoil. The first known instance of the term Ivy League appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935. Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era , together with

8100-745: The subject of further consideration." The integration of athletics followed a similar pattern to the overall integration of the Ivy League's in the 19th and early 20th century. There was no active policy that would discriminate against incorporating Black student athletes into the athletic coalition. Harvard has the earliest record of breaking the color barrier in athletics after recruiting William Henry Lewis to their football team in 1892. Dartmouth followed suit, with Black athletes integrating onto their football teams in 1904. Brown integrated their football team shortly after, in 1916. Cornell would follow suit in 1937. Penn had black students on their track and field team as early as 1903 ( John Baxter Taylor, Jr. ,

8200-423: 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 Harvard Yard and adjacent areas include the main academic buildings of

8300-460: 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 faculty and students largely supported the Patriot cause during

8400-498: The top universities in the world in each of these categories. Harvard students and alumni have also collectively won 10 Academy Awards and 110 Olympic medals , including 46 gold. Harvard was founded in 1636 during the colonial , pre- Revolutionary era by vote of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony , one of the original Thirteen Colonies of British America . Its first headmaster, Nathaniel Eaton , took office

8500-468: The trustees of his estate was to promote higher education in Asia, and to that end the trustees of his estate partnered with Harvard University in order to fulfill the Harvard–Yenching Institute's mission as stated in its Articles of Incorporation: to conduct and provide research, instruction and publication in the culture of China and/or elsewhere in Continental Asia and Japan and/or Turkey and

8600-498: 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. 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

8700-511: The universities did not seem to consider the formation of the league as imminent. Romeyn Berry , Cornell's manager of athletics, reported the situation in January 1936 as follows: I can say with certainty that in the last five years—and markedly in the last three months—there has been a strong drift among the eight or ten universities of the East which see a good deal of one another in sport toward

8800-496: 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:

8900-400: 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

9000-428: 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

9100-531: 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

9200-507: The usual four years, undergraduates normally take four courses per semester. In most majors, an honors degree requires advanced coursework and a senior thesis. Though some introductory courses have large enrollments, the median class size is 12 students. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences , with an academic staff of 1,211 as of 2019, is the largest Harvard faculty, and has primary responsibility for instruction in Harvard College ,

9300-499: The women's teams previously sponsored by Barnard. When Army and Navy departed the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League in 1992, nearly all intercollegiate competition involving the eight schools became united under the Ivy League banner. The major exception is hockey, with the Ivies that sponsor hockey—all except Penn and Columbia—members of ECAC Hockey. Wrestling was a second exception through

9400-464: 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

9500-458: Was formally merged into Harvard University. 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

9600-417: Was founded by Baptists, though the university's charter stipulated that students should enjoy "full liberty of conscience." Columbia was founded by Anglicans, who composed 10 of the college's first 15 presidents. Penn and Cornell were officially nonsectarian, though Protestants were well represented in their respective founding. In the early nineteenth century, the specific purpose of training Calvinist ministers

9700-519: Was founded in 1928 by Yenching University President John Leighton Stuart with funding provided solely from the estate of Charles Martin Hall , the inventor of a process for refining aluminum and the founder of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Although the institute has close ties with Harvard University, it is a legally and fiscally independent public charitable trust. Hall's charge to

9800-485: Was handed off to theological seminaries , but a denominational tone and religious traditions including compulsory chapel often lasted well into the twentieth century. "Ivy League" is sometimes used as a way of referring to an elite class, even though institutions such as Cornell University were among the first in the United States to reject racial and gender discrimination in their admissions policies. This dates back to at least 1935. Novels and memoirs attest this sense, as

9900-634: Was later created in 1902, when Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton formed the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League ; they were later joined by Penn and Dartmouth. In 1906, the organization that eventually became the National Collegiate Athletic Association was formed, primarily to formalize rules for the emerging sport of football. But of the 39 original member colleges in the NCAA, only two of them (Dartmouth and Penn) later became Ivies. In February 1903, intercollegiate wrestling began when Yale accepted

10000-470: Was used as early as 1933, and it became official in 1954 following the formation of the Ivy League athletic conference. The eight members of the Ivy League are Brown University , Columbia University , Cornell University , Dartmouth College , Harvard University , University of Pennsylvania , Princeton University , and Yale University . The conference headquarters is in Princeton, New Jersey . All of

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