University Hall and the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Roman Babakin / Shutterstock.com.
Harvard University sits in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hundreds of miles from the streets of New York City and the towns and villages of New York State. Yet there is a remarkable New York story within its alumni history. Students who grew up in Brooklyn apartments, on Long Island, in the Bronx, beside the Hudson River, and in Upstate cities traveled to Harvard and later became presidents, scientists, writers, actors, judges, and business leaders. Some are so strongly identified with New York that their college years in Massachusetts are easy to overlook.
For this list, being a famous New Yorker means something specific: a person must have been born or raised in New York State, not simply moved to Manhattan after becoming successful. And the word graduated matters. Everyone included earned a degree from Harvard College or a school within Harvard University. That includes Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, as well as the historically associated Radcliffe College, whose graduates were part of Harvard’s academic world before the institutions fully merged.
This distinction produces some unexpected combinations. The 26th and 32nd presidents of the United States both came from New York and both graduated from Harvard, although they belonged to very different generations. A Brooklyn boy studied engineering before writing some of the most debated books in American literature. A young woman from Long Island completed a psychology degree while already working as a major movie actress. Another New Yorker earned a Harvard law degree and eventually returned to Cambridge to become dean of the law school.
The geographic connections vary in strength, and that is worth making clear. A few were born in New York but grew up elsewhere; others spent their entire childhoods in neighborhoods that remained important to them. The stories below identify those differences rather than treating every New York birthplace as an identical experience. What connects the 25 people is that each brought a genuine New York beginning to a Harvard education and carried that education into a very different kind of public life.
1. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in Manhattan and grew up in New York City, spending part of his childhood in the Bronx. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city’s celebrated specialized public schools. His interest in astronomy developed early, encouraged by trips to the Hayden Planetarium and time spent observing the night sky. Even in a city where stars could be difficult to see, he found a way to make the universe central to his life.
Tyson graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1980. He went on to earn a doctorate in astrophysics from Columbia University and eventually became director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. His books, lectures, and television work, including Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, brought scientific ideas to audiences far beyond university classrooms. There is something fitting about his career returning him to the same New York institution that helped inspire him as a boy.
2. Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem, but she has a substantial New York childhood connection. After her family lived in other parts of the United States, they settled on Long Island in 1990. Portman attended schools in Nassau County, including Syosset High School, from which she graduated in 1999. Her professional acting career was already underway, and she appeared in films while managing the demands of schoolwork.
Portman went on to Harvard University and graduated in 2003 with a degree in psychology. Her education was not a publicity detour from acting: she studied seriously while taking film roles and participated in academic research. She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Black Swan and appeared in productions ranging from V for Vendetta to the Star Wars prequels. Her story belongs here because of the Long Island years that formed an important part of her childhood, even though she was born outside New York State.
3. Chuck Schumer
Charles E. Schumer was born and raised in Brooklyn and graduated from James Madison High School. His family’s roots and his years in New York City are essential to his public biography. When he left for Harvard, he was a Brooklyn student heading to a university that had educated generations of public officials, but his political career would eventually be built in the city and state where he grew up.
Schumer earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1971 and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1974. He served in the New York State Assembly, won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, and entered the U.S. Senate in 1999. He later served as Senate majority leader. Whatever one’s views of his politics, the educational record is notable: both of his Harvard degrees preceded a long career representing New Yorkers in Washington.
4. John Roberts
John G. Roberts Jr. was born in Buffalo in 1955. His family later moved to Indiana when he was a child, so his New York connection is principally his birthplace and early childhood rather than a complete upbringing in Western New York. He attended high school in Indiana, graduating at the top of his class before continuing his education in Massachusetts.
Roberts received an undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1976 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1979. He served as a law clerk, worked in the federal government and private legal practice, and became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 2005, he became chief justice of the United States. His inclusion is a useful reminder of how a person’s birthplace and later home can be quite different; his Harvard education and legal career are firmly documented, while Buffalo marks the New York beginning of his life.
5. Colin Jost
Colin Jost grew up on Staten Island, a New York City borough that doesn’t always receive the attention it deserves in entertainment histories. Before national television, he attended Regis High School in Manhattan and spent summers working as a lifeguard on Staten Island. Those early experiences would later supply material for both his comedy and the film Staten Island Summer.
At Harvard, Jost studied literature and became president of the Harvard Lampoon, the university’s long-running humor publication. He graduated in 2004 and joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live the following year. He later became a co-anchor of the show’s Weekend Update segment and published the memoir A Very Punchable Face. Unlike many graduates whose New York roots receive only a passing mention, Jost has repeatedly drawn on Staten Island as part of his public identity and work.
6. Elena Kagan
Elena Kagan grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in a family deeply involved with education and the law. She attended Hunter College High School before leaving New York for Princeton University and then Oxford. Her return to the United States brought her to Harvard Law School, where she studied constitutional and legal questions that would later become central to her professional life.
Kagan earned her law degree from Harvard in 1986 and served as a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for federal judges, including Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, she taught law, worked in the Clinton administration, and returned to Harvard as a professor. In 2003, she became the first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School. She subsequently became U.S. solicitor general and joined the Supreme Court in 2010. Her academic and professional path connects a Manhattan public-school education with one of the country’s leading law schools.
7. Fred Gwynne
Fred Gwynne was born in New York City in 1926, though his family moved frequently because of his father’s work, and he spent childhood years in several other states. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he attended Harvard University. Gwynne was interested in drawing as well as performance, and his artistic talents found a home in the campus’s comedy and theatrical life.
He graduated from Harvard in 1951 after contributing cartoons to, and eventually leading, the Harvard Lampoon. New York television audiences first came to know him as Officer Francis Muldoon in Car 54, Where Are You?, and he later became internationally recognizable as Herman Munster on The Munsters. He also worked onstage, wrote and illustrated children’s books, and delivered a memorable film performance in My Cousin Vinny. His unmistakable voice and physical presence had a surprisingly broad artistic career behind them.
8. Stockard Channing
Stockard Channing was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan. She attended the Chapin School and later pursued higher education in Cambridge during an era when women’s undergraduate education at Harvard had a different institutional structure. That distinction is worth preserving: Channing graduated in 1965 from Radcliffe College, the women’s college historically associated with Harvard, rather than from the then all-male Harvard College.
Channing studied history and literature and became an accomplished stage and screen performer. Film audiences remember her as Rizzo in Grease, while television viewers know her as Abbey Bartlet in The West Wing. Her work has earned Tony and Emmy Awards, and she has sustained a substantial theatrical career. Harvard itself includes Channing in its prominent alumni materials, making her a legitimate entry in this university-wide list as long as the Radcliffe distinction is explained.
9. Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, but grew up in Brooklyn after his family relocated there while he was a small child. He attended Brooklyn schools and developed an early interest in reading and writing. At sixteen, he entered Harvard with engineering as his intended field, carrying his Brooklyn upbringing into an academic environment where he began taking his literary ambitions more seriously.
Mailer graduated from Harvard in 1943 with a degree in engineering sciences. He served in the Army during World War II, and his experiences helped shape his first major novel, The Naked and the Dead. His later books and journalism earned him two Pulitzer Prizes, but also made him a frequently controversial public figure. The contrast is striking: a student trained in a technical discipline became one of America’s most discussed literary voices. He qualifies as a New Yorker because he was raised in Brooklyn, not because he happened to write about the city.
10. Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was born in a Manhattan townhouse on East 20th Street in 1858. As a child, he struggled with asthma but developed a strong interest in natural history, reading, and physical activity. He collected specimens, studied animals, and spent time outdoors with his family, including trips beyond the city. Long before public office, those interests shaped the subjects he would pursue as a student.
Roosevelt entered Harvard College in 1876 and graduated magna cum laude in 1880. He studied subjects including natural history and zoology, and soon afterward began a career in New York politics. He served in the New York State Assembly, later became governor of New York, and eventually served as the 26th president of the United States. His home at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay remains one of Long Island’s major historic sites. Harvard is one part of a life that began in Manhattan and retained deep New York connections.
11. Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd Blankfein was born in the Bronx in 1954 and raised in East New York, Brooklyn, where his family lived in a public housing development. He attended New York City’s public schools before earning admission to Harvard. His upbringing was very different from the privileged backgrounds often associated with elite universities, and that contrast became a recurring part of his career story.
Blankfein graduated from Harvard College in 1975 and Harvard Law School in 1978. He initially worked as an attorney but moved into commodities trading, joining J. Aron & Co., a firm acquired by Goldman Sachs. He became Goldman Sachs’s chief executive officer in 2006 and led the company through the 2008 financial crisis, a period that brought intense public scrutiny to Wall Street. His life traces a route from a Brooklyn housing development through law school to the leadership of a global investment bank.
12. Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon was born in New York City in 1956 and grew up in a family with strong connections to the securities business. Both his father and grandfather worked in finance. He attended the Browning School in Manhattan before earning an undergraduate degree at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Harvard came later, when he pursued graduate management training rather than another bachelor’s degree.
Dimon received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1982, graduating with high distinction as a Baker Scholar. He began his career working with banker Sandy Weill and eventually held leadership positions at several major financial companies. He became chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase in 2006 and chairman the following year. This is an example of a Harvard graduate degree connecting a New York upbringing to a career that would influence the city’s financial industry and international banking.
13. David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller was born in Manhattan in 1915, the youngest son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. His childhood included the family’s large Manhattan residence and time at its Pocantico Hills estate in Westchester County. He attended the Lincoln School in New York before studying economics at Harvard, where he graduated in 1936.
Rockefeller went on to earn a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago in 1940 and served in the Army during World War II. He later rose to become chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Bank and was involved in numerous civic, cultural, and philanthropic organizations. His banking career and family connections placed him close to major decisions about New York business and institutions. His Harvard education was part of a much broader educational and public-service background rather than the end of his academic studies.
14. Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman grew up in Chappaqua in Westchester County and graduated from Horace Greeley High School. The northern suburbs of New York City were his home long before his career made him a familiar name in financial reporting. In interviews, he has discussed his family life and the commuting routines that shaped his childhood in the Hudson Valley’s suburban communities.
Ackman earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1988 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1992. He became the founder of Pershing Square Capital Management and developed a public profile as an activist investor, often drawing attention for high-profile investments and campaigns involving major corporations. His financial strategies have generated both support and criticism. Whatever the assessment of his investment decisions, the underlying facts are clear: a Westchester upbringing preceded two earned Harvard degrees and a prominent Wall Street career.
15. Caroline Kennedy
Caroline Kennedy was born in New York City in 1957. She spent part of her early childhood in Washington while her father, John F. Kennedy, served in the Senate and then the presidency. After his assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy raised Caroline and her brother in Manhattan, giving New York a lasting place in the family’s private life. Caroline later studied in London before beginning university in Cambridge.
She graduated in 1980 from Radcliffe College, then the women’s undergraduate institution associated with Harvard, and later earned a law degree from Columbia University. Kennedy worked in museums and publishing, edited literary and historical anthologies, and served as U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia. Her degree is frequently described in institutional biographies as a Harvard bachelor’s degree, but the Radcliffe history deserves to be acknowledged rather than erased.
16. J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in Manhattan in 1904 and grew up in a well-to-do family on the Upper West Side. He attended the Ethical Culture School, where he developed interests in literature, science, and languages. Those early intellectual pursuits were not limited to a single discipline, even though physics would eventually define his place in history.
Oppenheimer entered Harvard in 1922 and graduated in 1925 after studying chemistry and other scientific subjects. He pursued advanced work in physics in Europe and developed an influential academic career before directing the Los Alamos laboratory during the Manhattan Project in World War II. His role in the development of the atomic bomb brought extraordinary scientific responsibility and moral debate. His name remains closely associated with one of the most consequential projects of the twentieth century, but his educational path began in New York City classrooms before moving to Harvard.
17. John Lithgow
John Lithgow was born in Rochester, New York, in 1945. His family moved repeatedly as his father worked in theater, so Lithgow’s connection to Rochester is a birthplace rather than a claim that he spent his entire childhood there. Growing up around theatrical rehearsals and performances gave him an early view of a profession in which he would eventually become successful.
He graduated from Harvard in 1967, studying history and literature and acting in student productions. A Fulbright scholarship later took him to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Lithgow built major careers onstage and on screen, earning Tony Awards and Emmy Awards and appearing in productions including 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Crown, and numerous films. For a Rochester-born performer, Harvard was a bridge between a childhood shaped by theater and the demanding professional stage.
18. Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky was born and raised in Brooklyn, growing up in Manhattan Beach and attending Edward R. Murrow High School. His early New York years gave him a firsthand connection to the borough that would later play a major role in some of his filmmaking. He was interested in the arts and the natural world before settling on film as his central creative pursuit.
Aronofsky graduated from Harvard College in 1991, where he studied social anthropology and developed his filmmaking skills. He later studied directing at the American Film Institute. His feature debut, Pi, used New York streets and apartments as part of its atmosphere, and he went on to direct Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan. His combination of a Brooklyn upbringing and Harvard education offers a particularly interesting example of how local experience can become the raw material for an internationally recognized artistic career.
19. William Weld
William Weld was born in Smithtown on Long Island in 1945 and was raised there. His upbringing in Suffolk County makes him a direct New York connection, not merely an individual who later worked in the state. He attended private preparatory school in Massachusetts before entering Harvard College, where he studied classics.
Weld graduated from Harvard in 1966 and, after further study at Oxford, earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1970. He worked in federal law enforcement and later served as governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997. His career also included involvement in later national political campaigns. There is a pleasing geographical twist in the story: someone raised in a Long Island town went to Harvard and became the governor of the state where the university is located.
20. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born at Springwood, his family’s estate in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, in 1882. The Hudson Valley remained central to his identity throughout his life, even as his public career brought him to Albany, Washington, and the international stage. He was educated at home before attending Groton School in Massachusetts and then Harvard College.
Roosevelt completed his Harvard undergraduate degree in 1903; university alumni records commonly identify him with the Class of 1904. He worked on the Harvard Crimson and later studied law at Columbia, although he left without a Columbia degree. After serving in the New York State Senate and as governor of New York, he became the 32nd president of the United States. His administration confronted the Great Depression and World War II, and he remains the only American president elected to four terms. Few names better connect Harvard, the Hudson Valley, and American history.
21. John Ashbery
Poet John Ashbery was born in Rochester in 1927 and spent much of his childhood in the Wayne County community of Sodus, where his family had a fruit farm. He also had ties to Rochester through his grandparents and schooling. The contrast between rural Upstate New York and the artistic circles he later entered became part of a life that moved through very different cultural environments.
Ashbery earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1949 and later a master’s degree from Columbia University. At Harvard, he met writers associated with the emerging New York School of poetry, including Frank O’Hara. He became one of the country’s most influential experimental poets and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. His presence here is especially valuable because it broadens the list beyond politicians and entertainment celebrities to someone whose literary work changed the possibilities of American poetry.
22. Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1949 and moved with his family to Manhasset on Long Island when he was a boy. His father was a professional jazz musician. Dalio has described working as a golf caddie while growing up, an experience that exposed him to investors and helped spark his curiosity about the stock market. His first encounter with finance was therefore tied to the routines of a New York childhood, not a college finance classroom.
He graduated from C. W. Post College on Long Island in 1971 and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1973. Dalio later founded Bridgewater Associates, which developed into a major investment management company. He became known for his writing about financial systems and his management principles. His educational path includes both a Long Island college and Harvard, making him an especially useful example of how the two sides of our Famous Graduates series can intersect.
23. Elise Stefanik
Elise Stefanik was born in Albany in 1984 and grew up in the Capital Region. She attended Albany Academy for Girls, graduating in 2002, before continuing to Harvard. Her upbringing and early education make her an Upstate New Yorker with a clearly documented academic path to Massachusetts.
Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006 with a degree in government. She worked in the administration of President George W. Bush and later entered electoral politics, winning a U.S. House seat representing northern New York in 2014. She subsequently held leadership positions in the House Republican Conference. Her political career has prompted strong opinions and debate, but the purpose of her inclusion is straightforward: she is a Harvard graduate whose early life and career are closely connected to New York State.
24. Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead was born in Manhattan in 1969 and raised in New York City. He attended Trinity School before going to Harvard, carrying with him an appreciation for the unusual characters and rhythms of the city. His childhood and later New York experiences became particularly significant when he began writing fiction that could turn familiar settings into something strange and revealing.
Whitehead graduated from Harvard in 1991 and returned to New York, where he worked for The Village Voice writing about books, television, and music. His novels include The Intuitionist, The Underground Railroad, and The Nickel Boys. The last two won Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, making him one of the relatively few authors to receive the prize twice. His career is a powerful reminder that New York’s literary history continues to be written by people who grew up here, studied elsewhere, and returned with stories to tell.
25. Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn was born in New York City and raised in Manhattan, the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker. His childhood was surrounded by books, conversation, and the performing arts, but his own path toward a career as a playwright was not predetermined. He attended the Dalton School and then Harvard, where he pursued historical studies rather than a professional theater degree.
Shawn graduated from Harvard in 1965 with a degree in history and went on to study at Oxford. He became a playwright known for intellectually demanding works such as Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Designated Mourner. Popular audiences may know him best from My Dinner with André, The Princess Bride, Clueless, and his extensive voice acting. His literary and theatrical achievements place him squarely within New York’s artistic tradition, even though his college education took him to Cambridge.
Looking across this list, the variety is what stands out. Harvard was the destination, but the points of departure included the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, Queens, Long Island, Westchester County, the Hudson Valley, Buffalo, and Rochester. The graduates did not share a profession or a political outlook. Some returned to New York, some made their careers elsewhere, and some became so closely associated with the city that their years in Massachusetts are rarely the first detail anyone remembers about them.
There is also a story here about the changing role of higher education. Harvard College students share this list with people who earned professional or graduate degrees years after completing their undergraduate work elsewhere. Radcliffe alumnae remind us that women’s access to Harvard’s academic world once followed a separate institutional path. The degrees and the New York roots are part of each person’s history, but neither one fully explains the life that followed. That’s precisely what makes these connections worth discovering.
For more stories of famous New Yorkers and their education, explore our articles on 25 famous people from Manhattan, 25 famous people from Brooklyn, 25 famous people from Staten Island, and 25 famous people from the Hudson Valley. You can also read our feature on famous people who went to college in Upstate New York, which approaches the college connection from the other direction.
