Since George Washington first took the presidential oath—153 years after Harvard’s inception—a total of seven Harvard graduates have captured the country’s top spot. On January 20, 2009, Harvard Law School graduate Barack H. Obama became the eighth.
And while it may be unfounded and self-gratifying to view Obama solely as the product of his years in Cambridge, Harvard does have a record of success as an executive incubator. It is difficult to tell, however, to what degree the Harvard diploma opens the door to the nation’s highest office.
THE ADAMS INTELLECTUALS
Harvard’s history in the West Wing began with John Adams, the second president of the U.S. Though Adams, class of 1755, was one of the most studious future presidents during his time at the College, he graduated 14th out of a class of 24. At the time, class rankings were based on one’s dignity of birth and hierarchy of parentage rather than merit. In his autobiography, Adams wrote about his intellectual growth at Harvard, which came at the expense of more leisurely and amorous pursuits: “I perceived a growing Curiosity, a Love of Books and a fondness for Study, which dissipated all my inclination for Sports, and even the Society of the Ladies.”
Following closely in his father’s footsteps, John Quincy Adams, class of 1788, was similarly academically occupied during his time in Cambridge. In 1787 he was charged with the unhappy task of defending the practice of Law at Harvard’s Spring Exhibition, according to the Harvard Guide. Rutherford B. Hayes—yes, he was a president—was also a devotee to legal studies, though he was a bit wild during his time at Harvard Law School, attending temperance meetings and binging on theater performances. Realizing upon his graduation in 1845 that enough was enough, he wrote in his diary, “The rudeness of a student must be laid off, and the quiet manly deportment of a gentleman put on, not merely to be worn as a garment but to become by use a part of myself.”
THE SOCIALLY-CONSCIOUS AND THE SOCIALITE
When Theodore Roosevelt arrived at Harvard, it was beginning to look like the school it is today—a place of legacy, tradition, old money and high class. Later in life, the irascible, excitable president would recall that he had been something of an eccentric during his collegiate days. Never able to master the drawn-out “Harvard drawl” or careless “Harvard swing” that would characterize upper-class cool at the time, he pursued boxing, rowing and bird-watching with fanaticism and kept a zoo with lobsters, snakes and a tortoise, according to the Harvard Guide. Though it would be decades until the department of Women, Gender and Sexuality would come into existence, Roosevelt had all the characteristics of a concentrator. His senior thesis eschewed the chauvinistic currents of his Harvard masters and mates—he wrote about gender equality, even proposing that women keep their own names in marriage.
While Teddy may have never quite fit in, his nephew Franklin D. Roosevelt felt right at home at Harvard. FDR was the handsome and charming captain of the freshman football squad in addition to being a member of the Fly Club, the Hasty Pudding Club and the president of The Harvard Crimson. In class he consistently earned “gentleman’s C’s,” (read: a B today) focusing instead on his extravagant and exciting social life, according to the Harvard Guide.
At his 25th class reunion in 1929, FDR, then a rising political star, announced a new age of social consciousness before an audience in Sanders Theater. “It is not so long ago that our own Harvard catalogues listed the young gentlemen’s those with ‘Esquire’ after their names, and those with the mere prefix ‘Mister’,” he said. “[Today] the Kansas farmer and the New York Mechanic send their sons and daughters to college.” FDR recognized that the Harvard of wealth and prestige, the Harvard at which Adams was judged by parentage and where the “Rough Rider” stuck out, was in the throes of change.
“A TRAITOR TO FINE EDUCATION”
But by FDR’s first run for the U.S. presidency in 1932 Harvard had not changed enough. A straw poll held by The Crimson revealed overwhelming student support for Herbert Hoover, FDR’s Republican opponent. The Crimson, his former paper, would later brand FDR “a traitor to his fine education.” Classmate Walter Russell Bowie, class of 1904, noted “the rancorous and almost hysterical political animus which rose against him and what he stood for among the privileged groups to which many of the Harvard graduates happened to belong.”
Despite his cool reception on campus, FDR invited Harvard men to the White House throughout his presidency, once shaking the hands of two dozen Crimson oarsmen after a race in Annapolis, according to an article in Harvard Magazine. Among them was polio patient Tommy Hunter, whom Roosevelt, himself afflicted with the disease, rose to embrace.
FDR’s brain trust, like Obama’s, had strong Harvard representation. Professor of Political Economy Alvin H. Hansen was one of the central architects of the New Deal. Harvard Business School Lecturer Adolph A. Berle Jr. ’13 and HLS Professor Felix Frankfurter served as close advisors, with Frankfurter later becoming one of FDR’s appointments to the Supreme Court.
But FDR did wield the privilege of his birth at times. His first presidential nomination was orchestrated by fellow Harvardian and millionaire real estate speculator named Joseph P. Kennedy, class of 1912. Kennedy’s machinations behind the scenes won FDR the California delegation during the Democratic primary.
THE CHARISMATIC CATHOLIC
While he never captured an elected office, Joe Kennedy bequeathed his political hopes to his sons, both of whom attended Harvard. John F. Kennedy ’40 arrived in Cambridge under the shadow of both his father and his brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. ’38, who was one of the most popular men on campus. In contrast, JFK was seen by his peers as a lesser version of Joe—classmates called him “attractive, witty, and unpurposeful.” He, like FDR, maintained “gentleman’s C’s” in his classes and wrote for The Crimson. He concentrated on his social life, playing junior varsity football and gaining entrance to the Spee Club and the Hasty Pudding Club. His swim coach at Harvard would call him “a fine kid, frail and not too strong, but always giving it everything he had,” perhaps foreshadowing John’s heroic rescue during World War II.
During John’s sophomore year, his father was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain. John used his father’s connections to travel abroad in the summer of 1937, visiting fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. As a junior JFK made the Dean’s List and arranged for a grand tour of Europe that would count as a Harvard semester.
In the spring of 1940, the beginning of his senior year, war was in the air. JFK’s honors thesis, entitled “Appeasement at Munich,” gathered the observations he had made during his travels into a well-formulated, far-seeing study of England’s actions leading up to war. The paper was published, with a little monetary help from a wealthy father and literary advice from a hired reporter, as “Why England Slept,” which became a modest bestseller.
Henry Luce, the founder of Life magazine, described the difficulty of separating Kennedy the man from Kennedy the scholar in the book’s preface: “For it is Kennedy, after all, who launched the Peace Corps, challenged his country to land a man on the moon, and stirred countless young Americans with his optimistic talk of a New Frontier,” it read. “Destiny was in every fiber of young Jack Kennedy’s being.”
THE MODERN PRESIDENTS
After John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 it would be 38 years before the Crimson would retake the White House, during which time three Yalies called it home. Forty-third President George W. Bush attended Harvard Business School in the midst of the Watergate scandal, quite the unfortunate time to be the son of a prominent Republican in liberal-leaning Cambridge.
Bush’s successor to the presidency thrived during his time at HLS, becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review. But despite his stellar academic record, Obama has been much more reticent to fly his Harvard colors. “It seems very clear that Obama has not tried to identify himself with his collegiate background,” said Morton Keller, a professor emeritus of history at Brandeis University and author of the book “Making Harvard Modern.” Keller, who holds two Harvard degrees himself, said that for Obama, attending Harvard was probably not essential for his future success. “Insofar as Harvard represents him its his intelligence and in that sense Harvard could have been anyplace else,” he said.
