Harvard University is an American private Ivy League research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32 billion as of September 2011.

A university press (U.P.) is an academic, nonprofit publishing house. Most but not all are affiliated with a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. They produces mainly scholarly works, but also often have "popular" titles designed to reach their target audience, such as books on religion or on regional topics. Because scholarly books are mostly unprofitable, university presses may also publish textbooks and reference works, which tend to have larger audiences and sell more copies. Most university presses operate at a loss and are subsidized by their owners; others are required to break even. In China, university presses are profit-making institutions for their academic owners. Demand has fallen as library budgets are cut and the online sales of used books undercut the new book market. Many presses are experimenting with electronic publishing.

Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press are the two oldest and largest university presses in the world. They have numerous branches around the world.

Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P. Sisler and the editor-in-chief is Susan Wallace Boehmer.

The press maintains offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square, and in London, England.

Notable HUP authors include Eudora Welty, Walter Benjamin, E. O. Wilson, John Rawls, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Jay Gould, Helen Vendler, and Carol Gilligan.

The Display Room in Harvard Square, dedicated to selling HUP publications, closed on June 17, 2009. HUP has lent its name to the Harvard comma, because its house manual of style favors its use.

HUP owns the Belknap Press imprint, which it inaugurated in May 1954 with the publication of the Harvard Guide to American History.

It distributes the Loeb Classical Library and I Tatti Renaissance Library series. It is distinct from Harvard Business Press, which is part of Harvard Business Publishing, and the independent Harvard Common Press.