John Thornton Kirkland (August 17, 1770 – April 26, 1840) was an American Unitarian Congregational clergyman who served as President of Harvard University from 1810 to 1828.

Eleazar Wheelock, D. D.[2] John Kirkland studied as a child at Andover and thereafter enrolled at Harvard College at the age of 15.

He finished his degree there and noted in a brief autobiography that he had achieved excellence and received recognition from his professors there but also had "wasted much time, much money, some virtue, and some health."

Kirkland's studies were briefly interrupted by a stint in the military during Shay's Rebellion in the winter of 1787, when he served under General Benjamin Lincoln.

He served with very little controversy, a record marred mostly by the so-called "Great Rebellion" in 1820 that saw almost an entire class expelled and a personal conflict with Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, to whom some at the time attributed Kirkland's resignation.

Oliver Wendell Holmes describes him thus, in his study of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "His 'shining morning face' was round as a baby's, and talked as pleasantly as his voice did, with smiles for accents and dimples for punctuation....

His contemporary George Ticknor described Kirkland's sermons as "full of intellectual wealth and practical wisdom, with sometimes a quaintness that bordered on humor."