The President of Harvard University is the chief administrator of the university and the ex officio chairman of the Harvard Corporation. Each is appointed by and is responsible to the other members of that body, who delegate to him or her the day-to-day running of the university. The current incumbent is Drew Gilpin Faust, formerly the dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Harvard is a famously decentralized university, noted for the "every tub on its own bottom" independence of its various constituent faculties. They set their own academic standards and manage their own budgets. The president, however, 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, he or she is expected to make such decisions after extensive consultation with faculty members.
Traditionally, as the leader of one of the United States' most prominent universities, Harvard presidents have 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.
Recently, however, the job has become increasingly administrative, especially as the president has become increasingly responsible for conducting fund-raising campaigns. Some have criticized this trend to the extent it has prevented the president from focusing on substantive issues in higher education.
Each president is a qualified academic professor in some department of the university and teaches courses on occasion.
History
At Harvard's founding it was headed by a "schoolmaster", Nathaniel Eaton. He was soon dismissed, however, and when in 1640 Henry Dunster was brought in he adopted the title "president". The origins of this title have been grounds for a certain amount of speculation; see President#Title.
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 through Nathan Pusey were graduates of Harvard College (i.e., they were undergraduates at the university). Of the presidents since Pusey, Bok took his undergraduate degree at Stanford, Rudenstine at Princeton, and Summers at MIT, but each earned a graduate degree at Harvard. Drew Gilpin Faust is the first president since the seventeenth century with no earned Harvard degree.
Presidents of Harvard
John Winthrop served as acting president in 1769 and again in 1773; but both times he declined the offer of the full presidency on grounds of old age.
Other minor acting presidents have included William Brattle, Edward Wigglesworth, Henry Ware (1810, 1828–1829), Andrew Preston Peabody (1862, 1868–1869), and Henry Pickering Walcott. Henry Rosovsky, former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, served as acting president for three months in 1987 when Bok traveled abroad. Provost Albert Carnesale served as acting president November 1994 – February 1995, during Rudenstine's leave of absence. Bok served as interim president July 1, 2006 – June 30, 2007, until the appointment of Faust.