Legendary late-night host Conan O'Brien, who was his high school's valedictorian, attended Harvard as a history and literature major. The school newspaper dubbed him the "pre-eminent jokester" of the class of 1985, which makes sense, as he was also the president of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret social organization that published a humor magazine.

His 72-page senior thesis, "The 'Old Child' in Faulkner and O'Connor," argued that "the New South's emerging identity is manifested in the literature of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor via the motif of children that age too quickly."