Text 3 Harvard University

Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nation's most prestigious. It was founded in 1636. The main university campus lies along the Charles River a few miles west of Boston. Harvard was named for a Puritan minister, John Harvard, who left the college his books and half of his estate.

Harvard's history began when a college was established at New Towne [taun]. Later the site was renamed Cambridge, after the English alma mater of some of the leading colonists. Classes began in the summer of 1638 with one teacher in a single house. At first Harvard was under church sponsorship. But later the college became free from church and political control. Harvard grew, new faculties were begun and gradually it became an institution with national influence.

Today Harvard is one of the main universities of the USA. The university has many faculties among them the faculties of arts, sciences, medicine, law, business, theology, education, government, dental medicine, design, and public health. There are some research institutions, which collaborate with Harvard. They are a Museum of Zoology, a Herbarium, a Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, an astronomical observatory, the Arnold Arboretum, and others.

Harvard is closely associated with many areas of American intellectual and political development. Among Harvard graduates, there are many scientists, justices, cabinet officers, congressional leaders, literary figures and US presidents.

Vocabulary

alma mater — альма-матер (от лат. alma mater, буквально — “кормящая мать”), старинное студенческое название университета, дающего “духовную пищу”.

archaeology — археология

campus — университетский городок

estate — поместье, имение

ethnology — этнология, наука об этносах (народах), изучающая их происхождение, историю и культуру

herbarium — гербарий

prestigious — престижный, авторитетный

On Monday, January 20, 1986, in cities and towns across the country people celebrated the first official Martin Luther King Day, the only federal holiday commemorating an African-American. A ceremony which took place at an old railroad depot in Atlanta, Georgia was especially emotional. Hundreds had gathered to sign and to march. Many were the same people who, in 1965, had marched for fifty miles between two cities in the state of Alabama to protest segregation and discrimination of black Americans.

All through the 1980s, controversy surrounded the idea of a Martin Luther King Day. Congressmen and citizens has petitioned the President to make January 15, Martin Luther King's birthday, a federal legal holiday. Others wanted to make the holiday on the day he died, while some people did not want to have any holiday at all.

Finally, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan declared the third Monday in January a federal legal holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. Schools, offices and federal agencies are closed for the holiday. On Monday there are quiet memorial services as well as elaborate ceremonies in honor of Dr. King. All weekend, popular radio stations play songs and speeches that tell the history of the Civil Rights Movement.

Television channels broadcast special programs with filmed highlights of Dr. King's life and times.