Harvard Crimson fencing Harvard Crimson fencing The Harvard Crimson fencing team is the intercollegiate fencing team for Harvard University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The team competes in the Ivy League within the NCAA Division I. The university first fielded a team in 1888. The team is currently coached by Peter Brand. Harvard founded the first collegiate fencing team in the United States in 1888. The team has captured seven individual NCAA titles. Eli Dershwitz (saber) was the seventh Harvard fencer to compete in the Olympics when he fenced for Team USA at the 2016 Rio Olympics, with the prior two having been Emily
Harvard University by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. A. Lawrence Lowell, who followed Eliot, further reformed the undergraduate curriculum and undertook aggressive expansion of Harvard's land holdings and physical plant. 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.