Letters
Cambridge 02138
Alpha girls, repressed memories, Undergraduate insights
March-April 2008
Features
Saving Money, Oil, and the Climate
The United States is in urgent need of a comprehensive, rational, and—above all—honest policy to guide its energy future, a policy...
Toward a Liberal Realist Foreign Policy
On January 20, you will inherit a legacy of trouble: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, North Korea for starters. Failure to manage any one of...
Trails of Tears, and Hope
The hamlet of Alkali Lake, about 100 miles north of Vancouver, is home to one of a handful of surviving Shuswap bands of Native Americans in...
Ko K'un-hua
Yale was the first American college to offer instruction in Chinese, in 1877; apparently, no one signed up. The next year, a group of Boston and...
The Physics of the Familiar
Photograph by Jim Harrison Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan “Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That...
RIGHT NOW Harvard research and ideas
"Born Digital"
Forty years ago they were “Born Free,” 20 years ago they were “Born in the U.S.A.,” but today kids are born digital, and...
Life's Speed Limit
Mutation is the engine of evolution: organisms would not be able to evolve new characteristics if their DNA did not randomly acquire small...
When Minnie Turns Mickey
If males are from Mars and females from Venus, as self-help author John Gray memorably suggested, sex hormones usually get the blame for placing...
"Tyrant Fever's" Trigger
When an infection assails the body, the response is predictable. Fever, loss of appetite, fatigue, that achy feeling—we never get just one...
John Harvard's Journal University news
Law School, Looming Larger
Photograph by Jim Harrison (View larger) Subsurface construction proceeds on Harvard Law School's northwest building, which extends along...
Boosting College Financial Aid
Harvard’s new undergraduate financial-aid policies, affecting even students from high-income families, were announced on December...
Raising the Ante
In the wake of Harvard’s December announcement, a host of other institutions—Haverford, Penn, Pomona, and Swarthmore among...
David Charbonneau
On camping trips in northern Ontario as a Boy Scout, David Charbonneau, Ph.D. ’01, Cabot associate professor of astronomy, remembers...
Gains for Graduate Students
Harvard’s new formula for undergraduate financial aid, unveiled on December 10, overshadowed its consequential changes in support for...
Yesterday's News
1923 The committee examining Harvard’s admissions process discourages giving preferential treatment to alumni children because...
The Talking Cure
For decades, insurers and risk-management departments have told doctors that if they make a mistake, the last thing they should do is admit it...
Inevitable Mistakes, Avoidable Harm
The culture of medicine has long tried to keep doctors from making mistakes by indoctrinating them to believe that they shouldn’t make...
A Century of Commerce
Harvard Business School (HBS) is throwing a year-long centennial celebration. The anniversary itself falls on April 8, the date in 1908 when the...
Doctoral Director
Allan M. Brandt became dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), on January 1. A...
Focusing on the Ph.D.
During her tenure as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), from mid 2005 through last December, Theda Skocpol says, “I...
Brevia
Endowment Manager EarningsHarvard Management Company’s (HMC) annual disclosure of the salary, bonus, and benefit payments to its president...
Off Harvard Time
Many Harvard undergraduates give personal happiness and reflective decision-making short shrift in the race for academic accolades and...
150 Years of Glee
During its first international tour, in 1921, the Harvard Glee Club inspired French composers Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud to write new...
Stick, Helmet, and Butterfly
Hockey parents, they say, don’t like their kids to become goalies because goaltenders wear so much costly protective equipment. But those...
Crimson Queens of the Rink
The women’s hockey team ended January with a perfect 14-0 record in the ECAC, and a 17-1-0 record overall, earning them the top ranking in...
Montage Books, creative arts, performance and more
Sweet Science
At the Leverett House Grill in the late 1980s, Joanne Chang ’91 first turned pro as a baker, selling four freshly baked chocolate chip...
Off the Shelf
How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (Free Press, $35), by James L. Kugel, formerly Starr professor of Hebrew literature...
Moving Pictures, Hard Questions
It was a rare rainy night in Los Angeles. Filling up his tank at a local gas station, a man noticed the silhouette of another man, just beyond...
Not Groucho (but Way Funny)
For a long time, Patricia Marx ’75 assumed she “would wake up in the suburbs with three kids and a mother hairdo.” It...
Postmodern Medicine
We are all “medical citizens,” embedded as potential or actual patients, with physicians, in a system of social, moral, and...
Past the Peak
Nearly 50 years after declaring their independence, Americans were electrified by the triumphant return of the Marquis de Lafayette, eager to...
Storytelling Spaces
Set designer Derek McLane (Harvard ’80) has designed stages for "Grease," "Guys and Dolls," "The Pajama Game," and Pulitzer Prize-winning "I Am My Own Wife," and many other plays.
Chapter & Verse
Suzanne Ekman hopes someone can identify a source for the following line, possibly from a Mark Van Doren poem: “…but where were...
Almuni Harvardians far and wide
Wartime Legalities
At 6 a.m. in western Baghdad, the thermometer has already punched through 100 degrees across the barren lands around Camp Victory. As Colonel...
Vote Now
This spring, alumni will choose five new Harvard Overseers and six new elected directors for the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) board. Ballots...
GSAS Alumni Day
On April 5, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni and their guests are invited to a day-long celebration featuring afternoon symposiums on...
HAA Clubs Committee Awards
The HAA clubs committee Awards honor individuals who provide exemplary service to a Harvard club or shared interest group (SIG), as well as...
The Harvard Club of Boston Turns 100
The Harvard Club of Boston, founded “to give effective expression to the Harvard spirit,” kicked off its centennial celebration with...
Return to Harvard Day
On April 16, all College alumni and their spouses/partners and high-school-age offspring can visit the College, attend classes, and meet faculty...
Harvard in Chicago
The Harvard Club of Chicago, the oldest continually operating Harvard club in existence, celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2007. The year-long...
