The story
19th century
In the 1840s, the Universalist Church wanted to open a college in New England, and Charles Tufts donated 20 acres to the church in 1852 to help them achieve this goal. Charles Tufts had inherited the land, a barren hill which was one of the highest points in the Boston area, called Walnut Hill, and when asked by a family member what he intended to do with the land, he said "I will put a light on it." His 20-acre donation (then valued at $20,000) is still at the heart of Tufts' now-150-acre campus, straddling Somerville and Medford. It was also in 1852 that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chartered Tufts College, noting the college should promote "virtue and piety and learning in such of the languages and liberal and useful arts as shall be recommended." During his tenure, Hosea Ballou spent a year travelling and studying in the United Kingdom. The methods of instruction which he initiated were based on the tutorials that were conducted in the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh. Now more than 170 years old, Tufts is the third-oldest college in the Boston area.
Having been one of the biggest influences in the establishment of the college, Hosea Ballou II became the first president in 1853, and College Hall, the first building on campus, was completed the following year. That building now bears Ballou's name. The campus opened in August 1854. President Ballou died in 1861 and was succeeded by Alonzo Ames Miner. Though not a college graduate, his presidency was marked by several advances. These include the establishment of preparatory schools for Tufts which include Goddard Seminary, Westbrook Seminary, and Dean Academy. During the Civil War the college actively supported the Union cause. The mansion of Major George L. Stearns which stood on part of the campus was a station on the Underground Railroad. In addition to having the largest classes spring up, 63 graduates served in the Union army. The first course of a three-year program leading to a degree in civil engineering was established in 1865, the same year MIT was founded. By 1869, the Crane Theological School was organized.
Miner's successor Elmer Capen was the first president to be a Tufts alumnus. During his time, one of the earliest innovators was Amos Dolbear. In 1875, as chair of the physics department, he installed a working telephone which connected his lab in Ballou Hall to his home on Professors Row. Two years later Alexander Graham Bell would receive the patent. Dolbear's work in Tufts was later continued by Marconi and Tesla. Other famous scholars include William Leslie Hooper who in addition to serving as acting president, designed the first slotted armature for dynamos. His student at the college, Frederick Stark Pearson, would eventually become one of America's pioneers of the electrical power industry. He became responsible for the development of the electric power and electric streetcar systems which many cities in South America and Europe used. Another notable figure is Stephen M. Babcock who developed the first practical test to determine the amount of butterfat in milk. Since its development in the college, the Babcock Test has hardly been modified. Expansion of the chemistry and biology departments were largely led by scholars Arthur Michael, who was one of the first organic chemists in the U.S., and John Sterling Kingsley, who was one of the first scholars of comparative anatomy.
P. T. Barnum was one of the earliest benefactors of Tufts College, and the Barnum Museum of Natural History (Barnum Hall) was constructed in 1884 with funds donated by him to house his collection of animal specimens and the stuffed hide of Jumbo the elephant, who would become the university's mascot. The building stood until April 14, 1975, when a fire gutted Barnum Hall, destroying the entire collection.
On July 15, 1892, the Tufts Board of Trustees voted "that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as men." Metcalf Hall opened in 1893 and served as the dormitory for women. At the same meeting, the trustees voted to create a graduate school faculty and to offer the PhD degree in biology and chemistry. In 1893 the Medical School opened and in 1899 the Boston Dental College was integrated into the university. In 1890, the Department of Electrical Engineering was created, and in 1892–1893 the course of three-year program in civil engineering was extended to four years. With the advent of the four-year program the degrees granted were bachelor of civil or electrical engineering. Tufts College added the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1894 and 1898, respectively. In 1898, the trustees voted to formally establish an undergraduate College of Engineering.
20th century
African American students, many from Medford, began attending Tufts in the 1870s. The first known Black graduate was Forrester Blanchard Washington, a native of Salem, who graduated in 1909. In 1919, Jessie Katherine Gideon Garnett was the first Black woman to graduate from the School of Dental Medicine; she was the sole woman and Black student in her class.
The Jackson College for Women was established in 1910 as a coordinate college on the Tufts campus, in part because there was a feeling that men would not want to attend a Tufts College where women were a large-scale presence. The Jackson College and the Tufts College of Liberal Arts shared the same courses and faculty, but for much of its existence, Jackson College had its own student activities and student government, separate from that of Tufts, and its own dean. It was a prestigious women's college at its peak; in comparison to the Tufts undergraduate schools that men attended, Jackson College was considered harder to get admitted to and to have an academically stronger group of matriculants. Students of this era were very proud of being associated with Jackson and felt identity with, and loyalty to, the Jackson name. Over time, things changed, and female students felt more of a belonging to Tufts University itself. In 1980, Jackson College was integrated with the College of Liberal Arts but was still recognized in the formal name of the undergraduate arts and sciences division, the College of Liberal Arts and Jackson College. Undergraduate women in arts and sciences continued to receive their diplomas from Jackson College until 2002.
Tufts expanded in 1933 with the opening of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the first graduate school of international affairs in the United States. The Fletcher School began as a joint effort between Tufts and Harvard University, funded by an endowment from longtime Tufts benefactor and alumnus Austin Barclay Fletcher. Tufts assumed full administration of the Fletcher School in 1935, and strong linkages between the two schools remain.
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During World War II, Tufts College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
Due to travel restrictions imposed by World War II, the Boston Red Sox conducted spring training for the 1943 Major League season at Tufts College. In 1955, continued expansion was reflected in the change of the school's name to Tufts University, though the corporate name remains as 'Trustees of Tufts College'.
In 1945, Tufts formed an affiliation with the Boston School of Occupational Therapy, which had been in existence for several decades. The Boston School was officially merged into Tufts in 1960. During the 1980s, its campus moved from Boston to Somerville to Medford, and it became a school within the College of Arts and Sciences. Later it became a department within the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Still sometimes referred to as the Tufts University – Boston School of Occupational Therapy, it remains one of the top-ranked occupational therapy programs in the nation.
The university experienced some growth during the presidency of Jean Mayer (1976–1992). Mayer established Tufts' veterinary, nutrition, and biomedical schools and acquired the Grafton and Talloires campuses, at the same time lifting the university out of its dire financial situation by increasing the size of the endowment by a factor of 15.
The College of Engineering added graduate study to its curriculum beginning in 1961, with master's degrees available in four departments. It added PhD programs in mechanical engineering in 1963, electrical engineering in 1964, engineering design in 1981, and civil engineering in 1985. In 1984, CEO and chairman of Analogic Corporation and NeuroLogica Corporation Bernard Marshall Gordon founded the Tufts Gordon Institute as the first educational institution created to foster entrepreneurship in the engineering fields. In 1991 the New England Association of Schools and Colleges accredited the institute to confer the degree of Master of Science in Engineering Management and in 1992 the Gordon Institute became part of the College of Engineering. In 1999, the College of Engineering became the School of Engineering, when oversight of graduate engineering programs was transferred from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. As part of the same reorganization the Faculty of Arts and Science became the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (AS&E).
21st century
Under President Larry Bacow, Tufts started a capital campaign in 2006 with the goal of raising $1.2 billion to implement full need-blind admission by 2011. As of December 10, 2010 the campaign raised $1.14 billion. Tufts received the largest donations in its history since 2005, including a $136 million bequest to its endowment upon the dissolution of a charitable trust set up by 1911 alumnus Frank C. Doble, a $100 million (~$143 million in 2024) gift from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to establish the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance Fund, and a number of $40 million (~$61.6 million in 2024)-plus gifts to specific schools.
Anthony P. Monaco, formerly of Oxford University, became Tufts' thirteenth president on October 21, 2011.
As of October 15, 2015, Computer Science surpassed International Relations as the largest major at the university, with 466 declared majors.
On December 22, 2015, the university announced that it would acquire the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The merger was completed on June 30, 2016. One of the key figures in the merger, Nancy Bauer, became the dean of the museum school.
In December 2015, the university completed a reconstruction of the Memorial Stairs. A new Central Energy Plant was under construction and set to finish in the summer of 2016. It will replace an aging 60-year-old plant and provide new efficiency boilers which in addition to providing the university directly with electricity, heated and chilled water, will help the university cut emissions. The university also completed construction of the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) in 2017. The SEC features laboratories and fosters interdisciplinary research between the neuroscience and environmental science departments. The SEC joins the newly rehabilitated 574 Boston Avenue in the expansion of classroom and laboratory facilities for the engineering school. In the spring of 2022, the university plans to open the newly constructed Joyce Cummings Center, an interdisciplinary academic building which will house the computer science and economics departments, among others.
In 2016, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen pledged a $10 million (~$12.8 million in 2024) donation over four years for the creation of the Allen Discovery Centers at Tufts and Stanford. The centers would fund research that would read and write the morphogenetic code. Tufts biologist Michael Levin will lead the center with research focusing on communications between cells, and the causation of birth defects, cancer, traumatic injuries and degenerative diseases.
In 2018, Tufts officially launched University College, the division of the university focused on lifelong learning, workforce development, and enrichment for learners at all life stages.
In 2020, Tufts announced that it would pay the MBTA $2 million (~$2.38 million in 2024) over 10 years to rename the adjacent Green Line Extension station from "College Avenue" to "Medford/Tufts." The Medford Branch opened to Medford/Tufts on December 12, 2022.
After twelve years as president, Anthony Monaco retired in 2023. Sunil Kumar, previously the provost of Johns Hopkins University, became the university's 14th president on July 1, 2023.
On April 7, 2024, Tufts students joined other campuses across the United States in protests and setting up encampments in protest against the Gaza war. The protestors demands included disclosure of university investments and divestment from Israel. The encampment ended after a month with Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) rejecting what it called "a bad-faith deal" offered by the administration. More than 250 members of the graduating class threatened to boycott commencement and called for an end to "Tuft University's financial complicity in the ongoing devastation of Gaza".
In fall 2024, Tufts SJP was suspended through 2027 for "policy violations, which include[d] using images of weapons and urging students to 'escalate' and 'Join the Student Intifada'" in a post on social media.
In September 2025, the university opened the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education, which is intended to help support faculty at Tufts and elsewhere in teaching and researching difficult civic and policy issues and to engage community members across cultural and other differences.
In April 2026, Tufts University and its Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy were designated as undesirable organizations in Russia, a designation that Russia has given to other organizations that oppose Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The school began to disassociate from Russian institutions following the invasion and Russian authorities claimed that the university and its school were "instruments of anti-Russian propaganda". They also the university's support of LGBTQ communities.
In September 2026, the first undergraduate class admitted as part of the Tufts Tuition Pact matriculated at the university; the pact, first announced the preceding September, affirms that U.S. students whose family income is less than $150,000 per year attend Tufts tuition-free. Students whose families make less than $60,000 per year will receive financial aid offers that do not include loans but students whose families make more may be offered loans to pay for other costs such as housing, food, and books.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tufts University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4