Facts

Harvard’s academic activities take place around the globe. Likewise, the University’s students and faculty come from nearly every country in the world; and once here, they study and travel to all corners of the globe in pursuit of their academic interests.

Harvard Worldwide

Harvard’s academic activities - from research to study abroad to executive education programs - touch more than 130 countries around the world. For instance:

Harvard Worldwide has more than 2,000 international activities in its database -- not including academic courses or individual faculty members -- ranging from faculty research projects to executive education programs to grants for student travel abroad.
Harvard, its schools, and its research centers have offices in nine different countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Greece, India, Italy, Japan.
In 2010-2011, 1342 Harvard College students traveled to 76 countries for study, research, internships, and other activities.
In 2013, Harvard faculty will lead more than 20 study abroad programs to 15 different countries via the Harvard Summer School.

The research of Harvard faculty, the curriculum of Harvard’s schools, and the extracurricular activities available to Harvard students touch almost every country in the world.

International Students at Harvard

Harvard University recruits and admits outstanding students from every region of the world. In recent years, the University has expanded its international outreach and recruitment efforts, with the goal of attracting the best students, wherever they might be, and increasing the number of international students in an already diverse student body.

As shown in the chart to the left, the total number of international students at Harvard has grown by 21% since 2002. In 2011-12, more than 4,100 Harvard students - almost 20 percent of total enrollment - came from outside the United States. These students represented more than 130 different countries. A full list of students enrolled at Harvard, sorted by country and school, can be found below.

View Students by Country

Alumni Demographics

Given the quality and diversity of Harvard’s student population, it is no surprise that Harvard alumni are found in nearly 190 different countries. A full list of Harvard alumni, sorted by country and school, can be found below.

View Alumni by Country and School back to top

Worldwide Research

Harvard faculty members are actively engaged in every corner of the globe. A tiny sampling of examples:

Harvard research centers like the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Divinity School and the University-wide Committee on African Studies bring scholars, students, and practitioners together to explore a limitless range of subjects.
Professor Sugata Bose of the History Department studies the political, economic, and cultural links that have united people along the vast rim of the Indian Ocean; Biology Professor Naomi Pierce travels regularly to locations around the world, including Australia, South Africa, Borneo and Japan to study interactions between plants, pathogens, and insects; and Professor Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education studies the relationship between teacher quality, educational expansion, and social inequality in Mexico.
The Botswana AIDS Initiative in the School of Public Health trains health care professionals in Botswana and Harvard students alike, and conducts research aimed at stemming the spread of HIV in Botswana and southern Africa.
The Global Research Centers of the Harvard Business School support faculty research and case writing in their regions, so that today, approximately one-third of the 350 cases developed each year by HBS faculty are international in scope. back to top

A Worldwide Curriculum

Since Harvard faculty members have research and teaching interests worldwide, students at Harvard have the opportunity to study in and about every region of the world. A small handful of examples include:

Each semester, hundreds of courses focused on international and transnational subjects are offered at Harvard, like “Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China,” offered in the Graduate of Design; or “Nutrition and Rural Medicine in Latin America,“ offered in Harvard Medical School.
The Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies program is the oldest and most extensive academic program in the U.S. devoted to the study of the law and legal history of the people of East Asia.
More than 70 different languages are taught at Harvard, from African languages like Hausa and Zulu to Near Eastern languages like Arabic and Persian to Romance languages like Portuguese and French.
Graduate and undergraduate students who complete an approved course of study can receive a Certificate in Latin American Studies from Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Harvard Summer School's Study Abroad Programs offer undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to take summer courses for credit in more than 20 locations around the world, from Prague to Seoul to Buenos Aires. back to top

Worldwide Extracurricular Activities

Harvard's dynamic intellectual environment is immeasurably enriched by the numerous visiting scholars, dignitaries, politicians, and practitioners who come to Cambridge each year, and by the numerous opportunities that Harvard students and faculty have to engage with activities that link them to the wider world:

The Harvard calendar overflows with lectures, symposia, seminars, and conferences on global subjects. These events are open to the Harvard community and range from lectures by visiting heads of state, like Mexican President Felipe Calderón, to the regularly scheduled events of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies' seminar series on Central Asia and the Caucuses
Harvard students can join literally hundreds of different student organizations, many of them devoted to the support of international students at Harvard, like the Woodbridge Society of International Students; to student service and volunteerism outside the United States, like Harvard College Engineers Without Borders; or that examines and evaluates international legal issues, like the Harvard International Law Journal.
Many Harvard students enhance their educational experience with internships outside the United States, like those offered by the Center for European Studies or those available around the world to students in the Master of Public Administration/International Development program at the Harvard Kennedy School. back to top

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Fighting a global menace: HSPH students stress cancer’s impact in poorer nations

If the focus on cancer sometimes tilts toward its impact in rich, industrialized nations, statistics show that the disease is a scourge all around the world, with 70 percent of cancer deaths occurring in developing countries. Children in poor countries aren’t spared. An estimated 95 percent of cancer deaths among children occur in poor countries. That glaring disparity has mobilized a group of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPS) students. The students, together with the HSPH student government, the student group Students in Latino Public Health, and the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, have put together a half-day event to raise awareness and dispel myths about cancer as a global health issue. The event, scheduled for Friday at the School of Public Health’s Kresge Building, marks World Cancer Day on Monday. As part of their commitment, students are also gathering signatures for the World Cancer Declaration by the Union for International Cancer Control, which contains a list of 11 cancer-related health priorities.

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