Tom Ridge

Harvard University is an American private Ivy League research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the... country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.
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Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees . Founded in 1636, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. In 1636 the New College came into... existence by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—though without a single building, instructor, or student. In 1639 it was renamed in honor of deceased Charlestown minister John Harvard, who had bequeathed to the school his entire library and half of his monetary estate. Harvard's first instructor, schoolmaster Nathaniel Eaton, was also its first instructor to be dismissed—in 1639 for overstrict discipline. The school's first students were graduated in 1642. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, "from the Wampanoag did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period.
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