President of Harvard University | |
---|---|
Appointer | Harvard Corporation |
Formation | 1640 |
First holder | Henry Dunster |
Website | harvard |
The president of Harvard University is the chief administrator of Harvard University and the ex officio president of the Harvard Corporation. [1] Each is appointed by and is responsible to the other members of that body, who delegate to the president the day-to-day running of the university.
Harvard's current president is Alan Garber, who took office on January 2, 2024, following the resignation of Claudine Gay. In August 2024, the Harvard Corporation announced he would be in the position until mid- 2027. [2]
The president plays an important part in university-wide planning and strategy. Each names a faculty's dean (and, since the foundation of the office in 1994, the university's provost), and grants tenure to recommended professors. However, the president is expected to make such decisions after extensive consultation with faculty members.
Recently, however, the job has become increasingly administrative, especially as fund-raising campaigns have taken on central importance in large institutions such as Harvard. Some have criticized this trend to the extent it has prevented the president from focusing on substantive issues in higher education. [3]
Each president is professor in some department of the university and teaches from time to time.
The university maintains an official residence for the president's use, which from 1912 until 1971, was President's House, and since then has been Elmwood. [4]
Harvard presidents have traditionally influenced educational practices nationwide. Charles W. Eliot, for example, originated America's familiar system of a smorgasbord of elective courses available to each student; James B. Conant worked to introduce standardized testing; Derek Bok and Neil L. Rudenstine argued for the continued importance of diversity in higher education.
At Harvard's founding it was headed by a "schoolmaster", Nathaniel Eaton. In 1640, when Henry Dunster was brought in, he adopted the title of president. Since Harvard was founded for the training of Puritan clergy, and even though its mission was soon broadened, nearly all presidents through the end of the 18th century were in holy orders.
All presidents from Leonard Hoar in 1672 through Nathan Pusey in 1971 were graduates of Harvard College. Of the presidents since Pusey, nearly all earned a graduate degree at Harvard. The only exception has been Drew Gilpin Faust, who was the first president since the seventeenth century with no earned Harvard degree.
No. | Image | Presidents | Term of office | Length | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
– | Nathaniel Eaton | 1637–1639 | 2 years | Referred to as "schoolmaster" of Harvard College Fired for "embezzlement and beating students" [5] | |
1 | Henry Dunster | 1640–1654 | 14 years, 1 month and 27 days | Forced to resign for speaking out against and interrupting infant baptisms [6] | |
2 | Charles Chauncy | 1654–1672 | 17 years, 3 months and 17 days | Died in office [7] | |
3 | Leonard Hoar | 1672–1675 | 2 years, 3 months and 5 days | Forced to resign [8] | |
4 | Urian Oakes | 1675–1680 (acting); 1680–1681 | 6 years, 3 months and 18 days (total); 4 years, 9 months and 26 days (acting); 1 year, 5 months and 23 days | Died in office [9] [7] | |
5 | John Rogers | 1682–1684 | 2 years, 3 months and 2 days | Died in office [10] [11] [7] | |
6 | Increase Mather | 1685–1686 (acting); 1686–1692 (rector); 1692–1701 | 16 years and 18 days (total); 1 year and 12 days (acting); 6 years and 4 days (rector); 9 years and 2 days | Forced to resign [12] [7] | |
– | Samuel Willard | 1701–1707 (acting) | 6 years and 6 days | Resigned due to illness [13] | |
7 | John Leverett | 1708–1724 | 16 years, 3 months and 19 days | First lawyer to serve as president. Died in office. [7] [14] | |
8 | Benjamin Wadsworth | 1725–1737 | 11 years, 8 months and 9 days | Died in office [11] [7] | |
9 | Edward Holyoke | 1737–1769 | 32 years | At 79, the oldest president; died in office. [11] [7] | |
– | John Winthrop | 1769 (acting) | Declined presidency on a permanent basis on grounds of old age [15] | ||
10 | Samuel Locke | 1770–1773 | 3 years, 6 months and 10 days | Resigned after fathering a child out of wedlock [16] | |
– | John Winthrop | 1773–1774 (acting) | Declined presidency again on a permanent basis on grounds of old age | ||
11 | Samuel Langdon | 1774–1780 | 6 years, 1 month and 12 days | Students petitioned the Corporation to dismiss him and he resigned. [7] [17] | |
– | Edward Wigglesworth | 1780–1781 (acting) | |||
12 | Joseph Willard | 1781–1804 | 23 years and 20 days | Died in office [18] | |
– | Eliphalet Pearson | 1804–1806 (acting) | Acting president after death of Willard | ||
13 | Samuel Webber | 1806–1810 | 4 years, 2 months and 11 days | Died in office [19] | |
– | Henry Ware | 1810 (acting) | Served as acting president after Webber's death. | ||
14 | John Thornton Kirkland | 1810–1828 | 17 years, 4 months and 19 days | Suffered a stroke, was accused of financial mismanagement by the Harvard Corporation, and resigned | |
– | Henry Ware | 1828-1829 (acting) | Served as acting president after the resignation of Kirkland | ||
15 | Josiah Quincy III | 1829–1845 | 16 years, 6 months and 29 days | Retired [20] | |
16 | Edward Everett | 1846–1848 | 2 years, 11 months and 27 days | Resigned due to dissatisfaction with the job. [21] Later became United States Secretary of State and United States Senator. | |
17 | Jared Sparks | 1849–1853 | 4 years and 9 days | Resigned due to dissatisfaction with the job [22] | |
18 | James Walker | 1853–1860 | 6 years, 11 months and 16 days | Resigned due to arthritis [23] | |
19 | Cornelius Conway Felton | 1860–1862 | 2 years and 10 days | Died from a disease of the heart en route to Washington, D.C. for a meeting at the Smithsonian Institution [24] | |
– | Andrew Preston Peabody | 1862 (acting) | Served as acting president after the death of Felton | ||
20 | Thomas Hill | 1862–1868 | 5 years, 11 months and 24 days | Resigned due to poor health [25] | |
– | Andrew Preston Peabody | 1868-1869 (acting) | Served as acting president after the resignation of Hill due to illness [26] | ||
21 | Charles William Eliot | 1869–1909 | 40 years, 2 months and 7 days [27] | At 35, the youngest president. [28] Longest term of office. [29] [30] For a portion of 1900-1901 [31] and 1905, Henry Pickering Walcott served as acting president while Eliot was on vacation. | |
22 | A. Lawrence Lowell | 1909–1933 | 24 years, 1 month and 2 days | Retired [32] [33] | |
23 | James B. Conant | 1933–1953 | 19 years, 6 months and 22 days | Retired to become Allied High Commissioner for Occupied Germany and later U.S. ambassador to Germany [34] | |
24 | Nathan Pusey | 1953–1971 | 18 years and 29 days | "Pusey called in the Cambridge police to end a student sit-in" in 1969. "Sharply criticized for his handling of the situation, he announced in 1970 that he would retire the following year". [35] [36] | |
25 | Derek Bok | 1971–1991 | 19 years, 11 months and 29 days [37] | Henry Rosovsky served as acting president in 1984 and 1987 when Bok traveled and took brief sabbaticals. [38] [39] | |
26 | Neil Rudenstine | 1991–2001 [40] | 9 years, 11 months and 29 days | Provost Albert Carnesale served as acting president for three months, from November 1994 to February 1995, during Rudenstine's medical leave of absence. [41] | |
27 | Lawrence Summers | 2001–2006 | 4 years, 11 months and 29 days | First Jewish president [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] Shortest tenure since Civil War. Resigned following several clashes with faculty resulting in a no-confidence vote. [47] [48] [49] [50] | |
– | Derek Bok | 2006–2007 (interim) | 11 months and 29 days | Served as acting president after the resignation of Summers [51] [7] | |
28 | Drew Gilpin Faust | 2007–2018 | 10 years, 11 months and 29 days | First female president [7] [52] | |
29 | Lawrence Bacow | 2018–2023 | 4 years, 11 months and 29 days | Retired [7] [53] | |
30 | Claudine Gay | 2023–2024 | 6 months and 1 day | Shortest serving president; resigned following congressional hearings into antisemitism on campus and multiple allegations of plagiarism. [54] Harvard's only black president. [55] | |
31 | Alan Garber | 2024–Present | 11 months and 24 days | Appointed as interim president after Gay's resignation [56] [57] Appointed permanently in August 2024 as 31st president until 2027, when Harvard will appoint a successor. [58] |
The Harvard Crimson is the student newspaper at Harvard University, an Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The newspaper was founded in 1873, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduate students.
Albert Carnesale is an American academic and a specialist in arms control and national security. He is a former chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, provost of Harvard University, and dean of the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. He was also acting president of Harvard while President Neil L. Rudenstine was on leave for three months. He has also been active in international diplomacy on nuclear arms control and nuclear non-proliferation. From 1970 to 1972, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union—a major step towards controlling nuclear weapons. Carnesale teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at UCLA on topics relating to U.S. national security.
Neil Leon Rudenstine is an American scholar, educator, and administrator. He served as president of Harvard University from 1991 to 2001.
Nathan Marsh Pusey was an American academic. Originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Pusey won a scholarship to Harvard University out of high school and went on to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in the classics at Harvard. Pusey began his academic career as a professor of literature at Scripps College and Wesleyan University before serving as president of Lawrence College from 1944 to 1953.
Peter John Gomes was an American preacher and theologian, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and Pusey Minister at Harvard's Memorial Church — in the words of Harvard's president "one of the great preachers of our generation, and a living symbol of courage and conviction."
The history of Harvard University begins in 1636, when Harvard College was founded in New Towne, a settlement founded six years earlier in colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the original Thirteen Colonies. Two years later, in 1638, New Towne's name was changed to Cambridge, in honor of Cambridge, England, where many of the Colony's settlers had attended the University of Cambridge. Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South. Faust is also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has been ranked among the world's most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.
Penny Sue Pritzker is an American billionaire heiress, businesswoman and civic leader who served as the 38th United States secretary of commerce in the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. She was confirmed by a Senate vote of 97–1.
Merlo John Pusey was an American biographer and editorial writer. He won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 1952 Bancroft Prize for his 1951 biography of U.S. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.
Henry Rosovsky was an American economist and academic administrator who served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University. Following a career as an economic historian specializing in East Asia, Rosovsky was named dean in 1973 by Harvard President Derek Bok. He served from 1973 to 1984 and, again, in 1990 to 1991. He also served as acting president of Harvard in 1984 and 1987. In 1985, Rosovsky became a member of Harvard’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, until 1997. He was the first Harvard faculty member to do so in a century.
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 the most prestigious universities in the world.
John Francis Manning is an American legal scholar who serves as the provost of Harvard University. He is the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (HLS), where he is a scholar of administrative and constitutional law. From 2017 to 2024, he was the 13th Dean of Harvard Law School.
Mary Elizabeth Magill is an American legal scholar. She served as the 9th president of the University of Pennsylvania from 2022 to 2023, as executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia from 2019 to 2022, and as the 13th dean of Stanford Law School from 2012 to 2019.
Alan Michael Garber is an American physician and health economist, currently serving as the 31st president of Harvard University since January 2024.
Harvard University celebrated the 300th anniversary of its founding in 1936 with elaborate festivities, hosting tens of thousands of alumni, dignitaries, and representatives of institutions of learning and scholarship from around the world.
Claudine Gay is an American political scientist and academic administrator who is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.
During the Vietnam War, Harvard University was the site of a number of protests against both the war generally and Harvard's connections to the war specifically.
Christopher Ferguson Rufo is an American conservative activist, New College of Florida board member, and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He is an opponent of critical race theory, which he says "has pervaded every aspect of the federal government" and poses "an existential threat to the United States". He is a former documentary filmmaker and former fellow at the Discovery Institute, the Claremont Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.
Nathan Marsh Pusey Library is an underground library located inside of Harvard University. It was announced in June 1971 and was named after Nathan Pusey, the president of Harvard from 1953 to 1971. The library is the world's first library to be built with a halon-gas fire-extinguishing system. The building contains the Harvard University Archives.
On December 5, 2023, the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The committee called a few university leaders to testify, including the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.