Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

January-February 2008

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Letters

I sympathize with the shocked Athenians and disgusted Germans who visited the exhibit of ancient sculptures that had recently been colored, as...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Three worthy books full of Harvard references have arrived...

Treasure

The stock market plummets. Credit is tight. Bankers quake. Then J.P. Morgan organizes a consortium of financial saviors to provide cash to banks...

In this Issue

Photomontage by Stuart Bradford

When Alison finally heard her son Matthew’s diagnosis, she had already spent a night on the Web, terrifying herself, as she puts it...

This posthumous portrait of Whitman by her friend Helen Merriman hangs in the Radcliffe College Room of the Schlesinger Library. The leaves in Whitman's bodice may be laurel, symbols of victory and of artistic achievement.

Courtesy of Imaging Department, Harvard University Art Museums, © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Sarah Wyman Whitman was an original and compelling figure in late nineteenth century Boston. Very much a public personality, she was a painter...

Illustration by Annie Bissett

When Dan Kindlon watches the Tigers play softball, he sees the legacy of feminism for girls. “My daughter’s concentrating on...

Soldiers' graves near General Hospital, City Point, Virginia, circa 1861-1869. Photographer unknown

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Civil War transformed American society and institutions. It brought about the formal end of slavery (but not of racial discrimination). It...

Letters

I sympathize with the shocked Athenians and disgusted Germans who visited the exhibit of ancient sculptures that had recently been colored, as...

Right Now

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Are some experiences so horrific that the human brain seals them away, only to recall them years later? The concept of “repressed...

Photograph courtesy of Robert Wood

Small, winged insects have a reputation for accidentally buzzing into closed windows or swooping into your eye during a bike ride. But the...

Prehistoric quids—wads of masticated leaves found in dry rock shelters—are yielding DNA clues to the origins of framing in the American Southwest.

Photograph by Steven Leblanc

A question mark has long hovered over human transitions from hunting and gathering to farming: did agriculture spread by communication—in...

Photograph by Shepard Sherbell/Corbis Saba

Until the mid 1980s, victims of domestic abuse who called the police could expect the officers to do little more than tell the abusive spouse to...

After the announcement that Tom Cruise would not play the male lead in Cold Mountain, the movie’s value on the Hollywood Stock Exchange dropped by $21.50, indicating a drop of $21.5 million in traders’ expectations for the movie’s ticket sales. The price rebounded on news that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman (pictured) would star in the film.

Courtesy of Miramax Films/Zuma/Corbis

For Anita Elberse, whose latest research investigates the impact of big-name stars on films’ revenues, pop culture and rigorous analysis...

New England Regional

Tom Towers at a gathering for Staying Put in New Canaan

Photograph by Stu Rosner

As board president of Staying Put in New Canaan, Tom Towers, M.B.A. ’64, believes in self-reliance. The Connecticut organization, modeled...

Enjoy nature this winter: take a brisk walk in the Arnold Arboretum, view the stars from the Harvard College Observatory, or learn about the...

During the last five years, MIT’s former director of planning, Robert Simha, MIT president emeritus Paul Gray, and a core group of other...

The Beehive's boiler-room-with-a-touch-of-Paris bar

Courtesy of the Beehive

If you’re 30-plus and want a fun night out with live music and a splash of funk, where do you go? The clubs and bars lining Lansdowne and...

John Harvard's Journal

Harvard president Drew Faust made the inaugural performance at the New College Theatre, on November 1, the setting for her announcement of a...

Hasty Pudding Theatricals (HPT) returns to its historic home this year for its 160th production. (Since the inaugural show in 1844, the group...

For a while, all seemed to go well at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the New College Theatre on October 17. As a jazz trio played in the...

Politically, U.S. professors are less liberal than many people believe, but their ranks also include fewer conservatives than in the early...

Photograph by Jim Harrison Bruce Western His interest in prisons began “almost by accident,” says the new director of the Kennedy...

When physicist Eric Mazur’s research group created a new material called black silicon one day in 1998, he knew right away they were on to...

The University’s Office of News and Public Affairs has debuted HarvardScience (http://harvardscience.harvard.edu), a website on...

Illustration by Mark Steele

 1913 The Alumni Bulletin welcomes the founding of the Harvard University Press as an “eminently appropriate [way to] powerfully...

A year ago, Harvard filed three sets of plans for building in Allston with the City of Boston: a master plan for the new Allston campus, plans...

How will Americans know that their Supreme Court is truly dedicated to interpreting the Constitution as the Founding Fathers would wish?...

The museum of modern and contemporary art that Harvard plans to build in Allston will have to wait. In September, the Harvard Corporation...

Five alumni—two of them former faculty members—and the recipient of an honorary doctorate were among those to whom Nobel Prizes were...

Photograph by Justin Ide/Harvard News Office Jorge I. Domínguez Harvard’s engagement with the world widened significantly during...

Public Health Dean Steps Down Photograph by Kris Snibbe/ Harvard News Office Barry R. Bloom Barry R. Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of...

Mollie wright ’09 expected to spend her summer in Costa Rica teaching English. She was, after all, a volunteer for WorldTeach, a...

On a hot September day in 2004, President Lawrence H. Summers was addressing the large group of newly arrived freshmen and their parents about...

Rebounding from a rocky start, the football team defeated its first six Ivy League opponents and scripted a stunning finale by routing a...

In the fall, the Tokyo publisher Asahi Shinsho released a new title in Japanese, loosely translated as The Unknown Story of Matsuzaka’s...

In the north country of New Hampshire, skiers from Dartmouth, the current NCAA champions, reign supreme, while the Green Mountains are home to...

Montage

Pink Martini onstage, with Thomas Lauderdale on piano at far left, and vocalist China Forbes.

Photograph by James Wilder Hancock/Pink Martini

At the end of Pink Martini’s Carnegie Hall debut this past June, a conga line broke out in the audience and bounced its way up and down...

The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine, translated by Norman R. Shapiro ’51, Ph.D. ’58 (University of Illinois, $80 cloth, $25...

Lisa Nestles into the folds of Adam’s grey fleece jacket, her hand entwined in his. The two lovers share a park bench and an uncertain...

With its muted hues and pine floorboards, the store resembles a medieval library with a blinking Apple iMac on the counter. Inventory at James...

Improbable as it may seem, James D. Watson—the co-discoverer (with Francis Crick) of the structure of DNA—has written a Book of...

Porter University Professor Helen Vendler grew up with her mother’s poetry books, which “stopped with the Victorians.” It was...

Marcia Chellis requests a source for “Everything is high school.” Barbara Murray would like to verify an anecdote involving...

Alumni

Sarah Chayes in a war-ravaged village near Kandahar

Photograph by Eve Lyman

The sound of a bomb detonating breaks the stillness of Kandahar’s morning hours. To Sarah Chayes ’84, in her office in the small...

Physician-photographer Judith Peterson evokes “adoption.”

Photograph © Judith R. Peterson

Images are integral to the way human beings understand the world around them. As a physician and a photographer, Judith R. Peterson ’82...

En route to the math placement exam, Annette Ghee ’83 met classmate Burt Hamner. Each one thought the other cute… and they were...

Eye on Harvard is an Internet talk show “for and about Harvard people” that appears on InTimeTV.com. The subject matter is...

University clubs offer a variety of social and intellectual events, including Harvard-affiliated speakers (please see the partial list below)...

University president Drew Faust stopped in Chicago on November 9 for a black-tie dinner to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city’s...

The College Pump

"Your wooden arm you hold outstretched to shake with passers-by." Three worthy books full of Harvard references have arrived...

Treasure

The stock market plummets. Credit is tight. Bankers quake. Then J.P. Morgan organizes a consortium of financial saviors to provide cash to banks...