Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory

The Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory is an endowed chair at Harvard University. It was established in 1804, and endowed by the will of a Boston merchant, Nicholas Boylston. ^[1]

Image	Name	Start date	End date	References
	John Quincy Adams	1806	1809	[2]
	Joseph McKean	1809	1818	[2]
	Edward Tyrrel Channing	1819	1851	[2]
	Francis James Child	1851	1876	[2]
	Adams Sherman Hill	1876	1904	[2]
	Le Baron Russell Briggs	1904	1925	[2]
	Charles Townsend Copeland	1925	1928	[2]
	Robert S. Hillyer	1937	1944	[2]
	Theodore Spencer	1946	1949	[2]
	Archibald MacLeish	1949	1962	[2]
	Robert Stuart Fitzgerald	1965	1981	[2]
	Seamus Heaney	1984	1995	[2] [3]
	Jorie Graham	1999	2025	[4] [5]
	Tracy K. Smith	2025		[6]

References

1. Adams, John Quincy. "Letter from John Quincy Adams to Ward Nicholas Boylston, 1819 May 24". harvard.edu. Retrieved 2021-01-16.
2. Hendricks, Jay (July–August 1995). "How Harvard Destroyed Rhetoric" (PDF). Harvard Magazine. 97 (6): 37–43.
3. "Honoring, and feeling, Heaney's presence". Harvard Gazette. 2015-03-31. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
4. "Jorie Graham - Harvard University Department of English". Harvard University Department of English. Archived from the original on 2018-04-02. Retrieved 2018-02-23.
5. "Poet Jorie Graham to Read on April 26 at Library's Celebration of National Poetry Month". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-04-11.
6. "Tracy K. Smith | Department of English". english.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2025-09-03.