Brevia

An Eye on Immigration

Photograph courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Harvard University Library’s Open Collections Program has created “Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930,” a Web-based set of 1,800 books and pamphlets, 6,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages of manuscript and archival material. Drawing on published works as well as private ones, such as diaries, the collection makes visually rich material on immigration, especially during the nineteenth century, available worldwide. Among the images is this circa 1903 print of New York City arrivals writing a first letter home. The site also links users to other digital resources. See http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration for access to the full archive.

Engineering Emerges

Concluding work begun last spring, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on December 12 approved the renaming of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, recognizing it as a separate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (see “Quantum Leap for Engineering,” July-August 2006, page 63). The school, with greater visibility, expects to be better able to recruit faculty and attract students. It will administer and finance itself, while still conducting admissions through the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The Corporation and Board of Overseers approved the change in early February.

Sudan Stockholdings

In April 2005, responding to concerns about support for the government of Sudan during the war in Darfur, the Corporation instructed Harvard Management Company to divest shares of PetroChina, whose affiliated company is a close partner of the Sudanese government. That action, and subsequent divestiture from Sinopec, set off a national wave of academic institutions’ decisions not to invest in companies doing business in Sudan. In January, however, Crimson reporters Daniel J. Hemel and Paras D. Bhayani revealed that University investments in two funds managed by Barclays include stakes worth as much as $16 million in the two companies—a larger position than the direct holding divested earlier. The University declined official comment; the use of externally managed index and country funds (a common technique for making liquid investments in smaller markets) apparently raises issues not covered by most institutions’ social- investing policies.

More Capacious Colleges?

Should elite schools with large endowments and far more qualified applicants than they can accept enlarge their student bodies? Princeton is doing so, raising undergraduate enrollment from 4,700 to 5,200 during the next six years. Harvard’s Allston master plan (see "Harvard's 50Year Plan") makes provision for additional undergraduate Houses in a second stage of development, but no decision on proceeding is even near pending. Now, Yale president Richard C. Levin has floated the idea of expanding that college’s population by about 15 percent, raising class size from 1,300 to 1,500; a committee is studying the idea this semester, as Yale pursues a $3-billion capital campaign. Among smaller research universities, Rice is scaling up enrollment about 30 percent, and the University of Rochester is planning a one-quarter increase, according to Inside Higher Education.

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