Harvard University

Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, as well as the first and oldest corporation in the Americas.
Initially referred to simply as "the new college", the institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after its first principal donor, a young clergyman named John Harvard. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in England, John Harvard bequeathed about four hundred books in his will to form the basis of the college library collection, along with half his personal wealth worth several hundred pounds. The earliest known official reference to Harvard as a "university" rather than a "college" occurred in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.
In his 1869-1909 tenure as Harvard president, Charles William Eliot radically transformed Harvard into the pattern of the modern research university. Eliot's reforms included elective courses, small classes, and entrance examinations. Eliot saw to it that Harvard would attract the best minds from around the world, thus securing its place among the great world universities. The Harvard model influenced American education nationally, at both college and secondary levels. Eliot, it should be noted, was responsible for the now famous "Harvard Classics" originally known as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf." During his presidency at Harvard, Dr. Eliot was more well-known than then many of Presidents of the United States at the time.
In 1999, Radcliffe College, founded in 1894 as an outgrowth of the "Harvard Annex" for women, merged formally with Harvard University, becoming the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Harvard's library collection contains more than 15 million volumes, making it the largest academic library in the world, and the fourth among the five "mega-libraries" of the world (after the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the French Bibliothèque Nationale, but ahead of the New York Public Library). Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any non-profit organization, standing at $34.9 billion as of 2007.

History
Between 1800 and 1870 a transformation of Harvard occurred which E. Digby Baltzell calls "privatization." Harvard had prospered while Federalists controlled state government, but "in 1824 the federalist party was finally defeated forever in Massachusetts; the triumphant Democratic-Republicans cut off all state funds." By 1870, the "magistrates and ministers" on the Board of Overseers had been completely "replaced by Harvard alumni drawn primarily from the ranks of Boston's upper-class business and professional community" and funded by private endowment.
During this period, Harvard experienced unparalleled growth that put it into a different category from other colleges. Ronald Story notes in 1850, Harvard's total assets were "five times that of Amherst and Williams combined, and three times that of Yale.... By 1850, it was a genuine university, 'unequalled in facilities,' as a budding scholar put it by any other institution in America — the 'greatest University,' said another, 'in all creation'". Story also notes that "all the evidence... points to the four decades from 1815 to 1855 as the era when parents, in Henry Adams's words, began 'sending their children to Harvard College for the sake of its social advantages'". Harvard was also an early leader in admitting ethnic and religious minorities. Stephen Steinberg, author of The Ethnic Myth, noted that "a climate of intolerance prevailed in many eastern colleges long before discriminatory quotas were contemplated" and noted that "Jews tended to avoid such campuses as Yale and Princeton, which had reputations for bigotry.... [while] under President Eliot's administration, Harvard earned a reputation as the most liberal and democratic of the Big Three, and therefore Jews did not feel that the avenue to a prestigious college was altogether closed". In 1870, one year into Eliot's term, Richard Theodore Greener became the first African-American to graduate from Harvard College. Seven years later, Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, graduated from Harvard Law School.
Nevertheless, Harvard became the bastion of a distinctly Protestant elite — the so-called Boston Brahmin class — and continued to be so well into the 20th century. The social milieu of 1880s Harvard is depicted in Owen Wister's Philosophy 4, which contrasts the character and demeanor of two undergraduates who "had colonial names (Rogers, I think, and Schuyler)" with that of their tutor, one Oscar Maironi, whose "parents had come over in the steerage."
Though Harvard ended required chapel in the mid-1880s, the school remained culturally Protestant, and fears of dilution grew as enrollment of immigrants, Catholics and Jews surged at the turn of the twentieth century. By 1908, Catholics made up nine percent of the freshman class, and between 1906 and 1922, Jewish enrollment at Harvard increased from six to twenty percent. In June 1922, under President Lowell, Harvard announced a Jewish quota. Other universities had done this surreptitiously. Lowell did it in a forthright way, and positioned it as means of combatting anti-Semitism, writing that "anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews.... when... the number of Jews was small, the race antagonism was small also." The social milieu of 1940s Harvard is presented in Myron Kaufman's 1957 novel, Remember Me to God, which follows the life of a Jewish undergraduate as he attempts to navigate the shoals of casual anti-Semitism, be recognized as a "gentleman," and be accepted into "The Pudding." Indeed, Harvard's discriminatory policies, both tacit and explicit, were partly responsible for the founding of Boston College in 1863[citation needed] and Brandeis University in nearby Waltham in 1948.
Policies of exclusion were not limited to religious minorities. In 1920, "Harvard University maliciously persecuted and harassed" those it believed to be gay via a "Secret Court" led by Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell. Summoned at the behest of a wealthy alumnus, the inquistions and expulsions carried out by this tribunal, in conjunction with the "vindictive tenacity of the university in ensuring that the stigmatization of the expelled students would persist throughout their productive lives" led to two suicides. Harvard President Lawrence Summers characterized the 1920 episode as "part of a past that we have rightly left behind", and "abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university". Yet as late as the 1950s, Wilbur Bender, then the dean of admissions for Harvard College, was seeking better ways to "detect homosexual tendencies and serious psychiatric problems” in prospective students.
During the twentieth century, Harvard's international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Explosive growth in the student population continued with the addition of new graduate schools and the expansion of the undergraduate program. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States.
In the decades immediately after the Second World War, Harvard reformed its admissions policies as it sought students from a more diverse applicant pool. Whereas Harvard undergraduates had almost exclusively been white, upper-class alumni of select New England "feeder schools" such as Exeter and Andover, increasing numbers of international, minority, and working-class students had, by the late 1960s, altered the ethnic and socio-economic makeup of the college. Nonetheless, Harvard's undergraduate population remained predominantly male, with about four men attending Harvard College for every woman studying at Radcliffe. Following the merger of Harvard and Radcliffe admissions in 1977, the proportion of female undergraduates steadily increased, mirroring a trend throughout higher education in the United States. Harvard's graduate schools, which had accepted females and other groups in greater numbers even before the college, also became more diverse in the post-war period.
Today, Harvard is considered one of the premier centers of higher learning in the world. Despite periods of reactionary sentiment in the past, the politics of Harvard's affiliates, in line with most of American academia, are generally liberal (center-left): Richard Nixon famously attacked it as the "Kremlin on the Charles". In 2004, the Harvard Crimson found that Harvard undergraduates favored Kerry over Bush by 73% to 19%, consistent with Kerry's margin in major eastern cities such as Boston and New York City. While Harvard has sometimes been criticized as elitist and "hostile to progressive intellectuals" (Trumpbour), there have been both prominent conservatives and liberals who have attended the school. President George W. Bush graduated from the Harvard Business School while John F. Kennedy and Al Gore graduated from Harvard College. Today, there are both prominent conservative and prominent liberal voices among the faculty of the various schools, such as Martin Feldstein, Greg Mankiw and Alan Dershowitz.

Recent developments
Drew Gilpin Faust is the 28th president of Harvard. An American historian, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Lincoln Professor of History at Harvard University, Faust is the first female president in the university's history.
On February 21, 2006, president Lawrence Summers announced his intention to resign the presidency, effective June 30, 2006. His resignation came just one week before a second planned vote of no confidence by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Former president Derek Bok served as interim president. Members of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which instructs graduate students in GSAS and undergraduates in Harvard College, had passed an earlier motion of "lack of confidence" in Summers' leadership on March 15, 2005 by a 218-185 vote, with 18 abstentions. The 2005 motion was precipitated by comments about the causes of gender demographics in academia made at a closed academic conference and leaked to the press. In response, Summers convened two committees to study this issue: the Task Force on Women Faculty and the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering. Summers had also pledged $50 million to support their recommendations and other proposed reforms.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harvard, along with numerous other institutions of higher education across the United States and Canada, offered to take in students who were unable to attend universities and colleges that were closed for the fall semester. Twenty-five students were admitted to the College, and the Law School made similar arrangements. Tuition was not charged and housing was provided.
In February 2007, the Harvard Corporation and Overseers formally approved the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences to become the 14th School of Harvard (Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences). In his April letter Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy Knowles said, "most of the net growth in the next few years will be in the sciences and engineering."
In 2005 Harvard received a large donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for the development of research programs in Islamic studies. The acceptance by Harvard and other universities of this and comparable donations has drawn criticism from some commentators and accusations that the donations are used to spread pro-Saudi propaganda.

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the world's most prestigious universities.
The University grew out of an association of scholars in the city of Cambridge that was formed, early records suggest, in 1209 by scholars leaving Oxford after a dispute with local townsfolk there.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to cultural and practical associations as a historic part of English society, the two universities also have a long history of rivalry with each other.
Cantabrigian is the formal adjective meaning "of Cambridge University" which is also used as a term for the university's members (abbreviated as Cantab. in post-nominal letters for alumni).

History
Early history
Roger of Wendover wrote that Cambridge University could trace its origins to a crime committed in 1209. Although not always a reliable source, the detail given in his contemporaneous writings lends them credence. Two Oxford scholars were convicted of the murder or manslaughter of a woman and were hanged by the town authorities with the assent of the King. In protest at the hanging, the University of Oxford went into voluntary suspension, and scholars migrated to a number of other locations, including the pre-existing school at Cambridge (Cambridge had been recorded as a “school” rather than University when John Grim held the office of Master there in 1201). These post-graduate researchers from Oxford started Cambridge’s life as a University in 1209. Cambridge’s status as a University is further confirmed by a decree in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX which awarded the ius non trahi extra (a form of legal protection) to the chancellor and universitas of scholars at Cambridge. After Cambridge was recognised by papal bull as a studium generale by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to come and visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.
Foundation of the Colleges
Cambridge’s colleges were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garrett Hostel Lane.
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse in 1284, Cambridge’s first college. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recent college established is Robinson, built in the late 1970s.
In medieval times, colleges were founded so that their students would pray for the souls of the founders. For that reason they were often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in the colleges’ focus occurred in 1536 with the dissolution of the monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching “scholastic philosophy”. In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.
Mathematics
From the time of Isaac Newton in the later 17th century until the mid-19th century, the university maintained a strong emphasis on mathematics. Study of this subject was compulsory for graduation, and students were required to take an exam for the Bachelor of Arts degree, the main first degree at Cambridge in both arts and science subjects. This exam is known as a Tripos. Students awarded first-class honours after completing the mathematics Tripos were named wranglers. The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos was competitive and helped produce some of the most famous names in British science, including James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and Lord Rayleigh. However, some famous students, such as G. H. Hardy, disliked the system, feeling that people were too interested in accumulating marks in exams and not interested in the subject itself.
Although diversified in its research and teaching interests, Cambridge today maintains its strength in mathematics. The Isaac Newton Institute, part of the university, is widely regarded as the UK’s national research institute for mathematics and theoretical physics. Cambridge alumni have won eight Fields Medals and one Abel Prize for mathematics. The University also runs a special Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics course.
Women’s education
Originally all students were male. The first colleges for women were Girton College (founded by Emily Davies) in 1869 and Newnham College in 1872. The first women students were examined in 1882 but attempts to make women full members of the university did not succeed until 1947. Although Cambridge did not give degrees to women until this date women were in fact allowed to study courses, sit examinations, and have their results recorded from the nineteenth century onwards. In the twentieth century women could be given a “titular degree”; although they were not denied recognised qualifications, without a full degree they were excluded from the governing of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. All of the men’s colleges began to admit women between 1960 and 1988. One women’s college, Girton, also began to admit men, but the other women’s colleges did not follow suit. In the academic year 2004-5, the university’s student gender ratio, i ncluding post-graduates, was male 52%: female 48% (Source: Cambridge University Reporter).

Myths, legends and traditions
There are many popular myths associated with the University of Cambridge:
One famous myth relates to Queens’ College’s so-called Mathematical Bridge (pictured right). Supposedly constructed by Sir Isaac Newton, it reportedly held itself together without any bolts or screws. Legend has it inquisitive students took it apart and were then unable to reassemble it without bolts. However, the bridge was erected 22 years after Newton’s death. This myth may have arisen from the fact that earlier versions of the bridge used iron pins and screws at the joints, whereas the current bridge uses more visible nuts and bolts.
Another famous myth involves Clare Bridge, currently the oldest bridge, which is attached to Clare College. Spherical stone ornaments adorn this bridge. One of these has a quarter sphere wedge removed from the back. This is a feature pointed out on almost all tours over the bridge. Various myths are associated with this sphere. See Cambridge legends.
A discontinued tradition is that of the wooden spoon, the ‘prize’ awarded to the student with the lowest passing grade in the final examinations of the Mathematical Tripos. The last of these spoons was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of the Lady Margaret Boat Club of St John’s College. It was over one metre in length and had an oar blade for a handle. It can now be seen outside the Senior Combination Room of St John's. Since 1909, results were published alphabetically within class rather than score order. This made it harder to ascertain who the winner of the spoon was (unless there was only one person in the third class), and so the practice was abandoned.
On the other hand, the legend of the Austin 7 delivery van that ended up on the apex of the Senate House is no myth at all. The Caius College website recounts in detail how this vehicle “went up in the world”.
Each Christmas Eve, BBC radio and television broadcasts The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The radio broadcast has been a national Christmas tradition since it was first transmitted in 1928 (though the festival has existed since 1918). The radio broadcast is carried worldwide by the BBC World Service and is also syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in the USA. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954.

Boston University

Boston University (BU) is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839. The University organized formal Centennial observances both in 1939 and 1969.
With more than 3,000 faculty members and nearly 30,000 students, Boston University is the fourth-largest private university in the United States of America and the city's fourth-largest employer. The University offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through 18 schools and colleges and operates two urban campuses. The main campus is on the Charles River in Boston's Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood, and the Boston University Medical Campus is in Boston's South End neighborhood.

History
On 24-25 April 1839 a meeting of Methodist ministers and laymen from throughout New England was held at the Old Bromfield Street Church in Boston. This meeting voted to establish a Methodist theological school. The school was established in Newbury, Vermont and was called the Newbury Biblical Institute.
In 1847 a Congregational Society in Concord, New Hampshire, invited the Institute to relocate to Concord and made available a disused Congregational church building that was able to seat 1200 people. Other citizens of Concord covered the remodeling costs. One stipulation of the invitation was that the Institute remain in Concord for at least 20 years. The charter issued by New Hampshire for the relocated institute named it the "Methodist General Biblical Institute", but it was commonly called the "Concord Biblical Institute."
With the agreed twenty years coming to a close, the Trustees of the Concord Biblical Institute purchased 30 acres on Aspinwall Hill in Brookline, Massachusetts as a possible relocation site. The Institute moved in 1867 to 23 Pinkney Street in Boston and received a Massachusetts Charter as the "Boston Theological Institute."
In 1869, three Trustees of the Boston Theological Institute obtained from the Massachusetts Legislature a charter for a university to be called "Boston University." These three were successful Boston businessmen and Methodist laymen, with a history of involvement in educational enterprises and became the Founders of Boston University. They were Isaac Rich (1801-1872), Lee Claflin (1791-1871), and Jacob Sleeper (1802-1889). (Today, Boston University's three West Campus dormitories are named after them.) Lee Claflin's son, William, was then Governor of Massachusetts and signed the University Charter on 26 May 1869 after it was passed by the Legislature.
One provision of the short charter, as reported by Kathleen Kilgore in her book, "Transformations, A History of Boston University" (see Further Reading) the Founders directed the inclusion of the following provision, unusual for its time:
No instructor in said University shall ever be required by the Trustees to profess any particular religious opinions as a test of office, and no student shall be refused admission . . . on account of the religious opinions he may entertain; provided, nonetheless, that this section shall not apply to the theological department of said University.
Every department of the new University was also open to all on an equal footing regardless of sex, race or (with the exception of the School of Theology) religion.

Campus and facilities
The University's main Charles River Campus follows Commonwealth Avenue and the Green Line, beginning near Kenmore Square and continuing for over a mile and a half to its end near the border of Boston's Allston neighborhood. The Boston University Bridge over the Charles River into Cambridge represents the dividing line between Main Campus, where most schools and classroom buildings are concentrated, and West Campus, home to several athletic facilities and playing fields, the large West Campus dorm, and the new John Hancock Student Village complex. As a result of its continual expansion, the Charles River campus contains an array of architecturally diverse buildings. The College of Arts and Science, Marsh Chapel (site of the Marsh Chapel Experiment), and the School of Theology buildings are the university's most recognizable and were built in the late-1930s and 1940s in collegiate gothic style. A sizable amount of the campus is traditional Boston brownstone, especially at Bay State Road and South Campus where BU has acquired almost every townhouse those areas offer. The buildings are primarily dormitories but many also serve as various institutes as well as department offices. From the 1960s-1980s many contemporary buildings were constructed including the Mugar Library, BU Law School and Warren Towers, all of which were built in the brutalist style of architecture, drawing mixed opinions. The Metcalf Science Center for Science and Engineering, constructed in 1983, might more accurately be described as Structural Expressionism. The most recent additions to BU's campus are the Photonics Center, Life Science and Engineering Building, The Student Village (which includes the FitRec Center and Agganis Arena), and the School of Management. All the these buildings were built in brick, a few with a substantial amount of brownstone. These buildings have been praised for successfully combining elements of old Boston (brownstone, brick, and federal architecture) with contemporary elements.