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FOUR MINUTES TO REMEMBER
An unprecedented approach to a reunion panel led to an especially engaging offering by the class of 1972, “My Favorite Four Minutes.” Each of the five panelists chose a four-minute scene from a movie that came out during their years in college. These excerpts were shown to the audience, and after each one the classmate who chose it revealed why it stuck in memory. Thus, after revisiting “Hot Lips” Houlihan in the shower in M*A*S*H, panelist Timothy W.H. Peltason ’72, of Wellesley, Massachusetts, discussed antiauthoritarianism and “mean-spirited misogyny.”
Photograph by Stu Rosner
Each summer the Crimson Summer Academy welcomes 30 ninth-graders from low-income families in Boston and Cambridge, who commit to the
program for three years. They live on campus during the week in
summer and take rigorous courses. The inaugural class graduated at
this Commencement. Each member received a diploma and a $3,000
scholarship check toward college. They marched at the tail of the
afternoon alumni procession, being the youngest.
PRIZEWINNERS
The Phi Beta Kappa scholars honored three members of the faculty with teaching prizes: David A. Evans, Lawrence professor of chemistry; Anne Harrington, professor of the history of science and Harvard College Professor; and poetry critic Helen Vendler, Porter University Professor. The senior class bestowed the two Ames Awards, for “selfless, heroic, and inspiring leadership,” on classmates Rajan Sonik, of Adams House and Sacramento, California, and Rabia Mir, of Pforzheimer House and Karachi, Pakistan. The Radcliffe Institute gave two Fay Prizes, for outstanding scholarly work, to Rowan W. Dorin ’07, of Adams House and Edmonton, Alberta, for findings about the development of trade and trading networks in the medieval Adriatic Sea, and to Emily K. Vasiliauskas ’07, of Lowell House and Penhook, Virginia, for her analyses of German poet Paul Célan’s work.
Photograph by Jim Harrison
Bubble-blower Siri Trang Khalsa, M.P.A. ’07, of Española, New Mexico, carries a globe, a Commencement prop favored by degree candidates from the Kennedy School and more worldly than the Dental School’s tube of Crest. She is a Sikh, thus the turban. With her is Rostom Sarkissian, M.P.P. ’07, of Glendale, California. The school granted 605 degrees to students from 67 countries.
TERM LIMITS?
Introducing President Derek Bok, who spoke on Commencement afternoon, Paul J. Finnegan ’75, M.B.A. ’82, of Evanston, Illinois, outgoing president of the Harvard Alumni Association, asserted that Bok’s second tenure was “the shortest presidency on record, but it has seen no shortage of accomplishments.”
“Derek did well to respond by invoking Nathaniel Eaton, whose term lasted just one year, from August 1638 to August 1639,” notes John T. Bethell ’54, author of Harvard Observed and a contributing editor of this magazine. “So he has tied that record (though purists might note that Eaton held the title of master, not president). However, the shortest term as acting president would seem to have been that of Andrew Preston Peabody, who stepped in when Thomas Hill resigned in September 1868. Charles W. Eliot was elected president in May 1869, and even though he would have needed some time to wind up his responsibilities at MIT, he almost certainly would have been on the job before the 1869-70 academic year started. I think Peabody beats Bok by at least a few weeks.”
