The Origins of Harvard Kennedy School: Foundation in 1936 and Early Research Collaboration

Preparations were public before 1936. On December 11, 1935, The Harvard Crimson reported that glove manufacturer and former congressman Lucius Nathan Littauer had given his alma mater $2 million to establish a graduate school of public administration. Harvard President James Bryant Conant also announced a committee chaired by Princeton President Harold Dodds to examine how universities could prepare people for public service.

The gift distinguished buildings from personnel. The $500,000 already received would construct the Littauer Center of Public Administration, while at least three-quarters of the funds would remain as an endowment supporting faculty and students. The educational aim extended beyond a particular technical skill to broad understanding of problems facing national, state and local administration.

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The school treats twelve faculty appointments on December 7, 1936 as its formal beginning. All held appointments elsewhere at Harvard, and the new institution initially drew on existing economics, government and other departments. Its first dean, John H. Williams, argued that the reason for founding the school was to organize new methods of work, bringing the social sciences closer together and the university closer to public service.

The earliest students were mainly government employees called Littauer Fellows, and the school initially awarded no degrees. Faculty and fellows brought different academic training and administrative experience to seminars. This arrangement allowed activities to start quickly, although the school did not yet have the comprehensive independent curriculum and faculty of its later professional form.

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A special committee recommended a three-semester experiment lasting until June 1938. Five research seminars covered fiscal policy, the public implications of price policy, administrative processes, land-use planning and government public relations. Faculty from relevant disciplines led them to examine what university research and training could contribute to administrative practice.

Sustained participation by experienced people from outside the university required additional funds. In 1937, the Rockefeller Foundation provided $65,000 for practitioners to spend varying periods in the seminars. The foundation had already supported Harvard’s public-service training and internships; the new school drew these earlier efforts into a shared research organization.

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The fiscal-policy seminar of 1937–1938, led by Williams and Alvin Hansen, had two complementary levels. Friday meetings were open to interested faculty and students and invited guests from the Treasury, Federal Reserve and social-security bodies to present practical problems. Some members continued discussing them with guests over dinner. On Mondays, the group directly engaged in research presented papers for closer examination.

Discussion covered taxation, public expenditure, economic cycles and social insurance. On March 18, 1938, it considered old-age insurance and assistance; on March 25, social-security taxes. Guests supplied policy experience, and the working group developed questions into papers open to criticism. The dean’s report recorded that journals had accepted some papers and that a broader study was planned as a book. Training, investigation and production of research therefore proceeded together.

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By the 1939 reporting year, the school was working in the new Littauer Center. It had separate institutional status within Harvard, but faculty generally retained appointments in other schools or departments. Research expanded to collective bargaining, legislative processes, public contracts and government regulation of private enterprise, with experienced advisers continuing to participate.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1939 report listed $55,000 over five years beginning in July 1940 for the school’s regular budget. Unlike the initial building gift, this support funded continuing research and exchange of personnel. Collaboration across departments acquired both space and a budget while still requiring coordination with each discipline’s own teaching commitments.

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In 1966, the Graduate School of Public Administration became the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Institute of Politics was established that year. Public-policy courses, training in analytical methods and dedicated faculty subsequently developed, taking the school’s organization and curriculum into a new stage.

Graham Allison, a later dean, recalled that the early school had long depended on other departments and lacked a distinct curriculum and identity. His assessment reveals the limits of its founding collaborative model. Its particular achievement in the 1930s was to make public-administration problems subjects for joint university investigation and discussion, with a regular channel for practitioners to participate.

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