The Office of the Provost seeks to facilitate collaboration in a variety of ways, most notably in the form of seed-funding and oversight for certain large-scale, cross-school, faculty-led initiatives (in the tradition of the original five “Interfaculty Initiatives,” established by President Neil Rudenstine in the 1990s—four of which continue operations today: Environment, Ethics, Health Policy, and Mind/Brain/Behavior). Often created to address a pressing social or intellectual need, these University-wide initiatives typically span Harvard’s Faculties in such a way as to necessitate direct reporting to the provost (or joint reporting with a dean). The University reinforces its financial stewardship of these efforts with a close level of Provost’s Office staff engagement.

Over time, an increasing number of School-based programs, centers, and institutes at Harvard have begun to describe themselves using such terms as “collaborative” or “cross-school” or “interfaculty” or even “University-wide,” and the Office of the Provost applauds and encourages all such collaborative ventures. The office does distinguish, however, between two sorts of endeavor: multidisciplinary, cross-school activities that the University helps to fund, on the one hand, and on the other, similar activities that are undertaken with the approval of the University but not its financial sponsorship.

A full list of formal University-wide initiatives can be found below, including several emerging cross-school efforts.

Arts and Culture

• Harvard University Native American Program
• Mahindra Humanities Center

International

• David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
• Harvard China Fund
• Harvard University Asia Center
• Harvard University Center for African Studies
• The Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University
• Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University

Science

• Harvard Brain Science Initiative
• Harvard Data Science Initiative
• Harvard Origins of Life Initiative
• Harvard Stem Cell Institute
• Harvard University Center for the Environment
• Microbial Sciences Initiative at Harvard
• Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative
• Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

Social Sciences

• Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
• Center for Geographic Analysis
• Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
• Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
• Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
• Institute for Quantitative Social Science

Health

• Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
• Harvard Global Health Institute
• Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
• Harvard University Center for AIDS Research
• Program in Health Policy

Other

• Advanced Leadership Initiative