Harvard was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The college was named after John Harvard, a Puritan minister who had left his books and half his estate to the college.

Funded by the church, the college established colleges of divinity, law and medicine. By 1865 Harvard had established its independence from the church and was run by elected members of a governing board.

People who have either graduated or taught at Harvard include John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Phillips, Martin Delany, Charles Sumner, Rutherhood Hayes, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippman, William Du Bois, Richard Olney, Henry Cabot Lodge, Francis Attwood, William Randolph Hearst, Alice Hamilton, Roger Baldwin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harold Laski, Herbert Croly, Leonard Bernstein, John Dos Passos, Joseph Losey, Pete Seeger, Ralph Bunche and John F. Kennedy.