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Welcome from the President
Welcome from the President
I am delighted to welcome you to Harvard Worldwide, and I hope you will find it useful as you explore the breadth of Harvard's international activity and the diverse opportunities available to the world's students and faculty on the Harvard campus.
Harvard University was founded in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in
1636, but to situate the University in a particular geographic
location today is to define it too narrowly. Members of the Harvard
community from every corner of the globe breathe life into the
University's enormous teaching and research enterprise, and the
knowledge they produce and transmit is unconstrained by boundaries
on a map. Since at least the 19th century, the reach of Harvard's
teaching and research has extended across national borders, and in
recent years the University has made its connection to the wider
world even more explicit.
The number of international students at Harvard has grown by more than 35 percent since 1998, and Harvard students today come from more than 140 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Once here, Harvard students have the opportunity to travel the globe, and since 2002, the number of Harvard undergraduates studying, working, or doing research abroad has more than doubled. Likewise, the work of Harvard faculty members knows no geographic or intellectual bounds, with research touching on topics as diverse as stemming the spread of AIDS in Africa and exploring the political and economic development of pre-modern China using 21st-century mapping technology. Harvard alumni can be found in all but a handful of the world's countries. To support, enhance, and expand all of these activities Harvard schools and research centers have, in recent years, launched offices outside the United States, such as the Chile and Brazil offices of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the global research centers of the Harvard Business School.
In recent years our place in the world has become increasingly
interdependent, and I am confident that you will be astonished, as
you browse this site, at the multitude of ways in which members of
our community are interacting with the world and at the many
opportunities for you to participate.
If you have a Harvard ID and PIN, you can add to or edit the activities in Harvard Worldwide.
Michael VanRooyen: Rebuilding places that peace abandoned
“When they put the gun in my mouth, I decided it wasn’t so ridiculous after all.” In 1996, Michael VanRooyen was on a relief mission to Nyankunde Hospital, near Busia in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then called Zaire.
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