John Harvard Walks the Yard!

A Commencement cartoon by KAL

The normally sober and strait-laced Harvard Gazette, the University's official news publication, had a little fun with the cover of its Commencement issue, celebrating Harvard's 375th anniversary. Editorial cartoonist Kevin Patrick Kallaugher '77 (KAL), regularly featured in The Economist and The Baltimore Sun, rendered the John Harvard statue rising from its pedestal to lead the annual alumni parade, representing the infant College of 1636 (before there was, or could have been, a graduating class). This is, of course, his thirty-fifth reunion year.

The theme might be "John Harvard Walks the Yard!"—appropriately for a day in which 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, Litt.D. '98, a former faculty member, returned to Tercentenary Theatre to read his 350th anniversary poem, "Villanelle for an Anniversary," for Harvard's 375th. Its resonant refrain is, "John Harvard walked the yard." (The poem was also set to music, in a composition premiered during the Morning Exercises.)

Read more about KAL in “Where the Eyeballs Are,” from this magazine's archives, and see more of his work at his Kaltoons website.

You might also like

Two Momentous Faculty Retirements

Arthur Kleinman and Harry Lewis depart the classroom.

Five Questions with Cass R. Sunstein

The Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar on what Star Wars can tell us about today’s Supreme Court

Harvard Releases Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Task Force Reports

University publishes findings from thorough examinations of campus conditions.

Most popular

Two Momentous Faculty Retirements

Arthur Kleinman and Harry Lewis depart the classroom.

Harvard Renames Diversity Office

The decision follows pressure from the Trump administration to eliminate DEI practices. 

Harvard Releases Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Task Force Reports

University publishes findings from thorough examinations of campus conditions.

Explore More From Current Issue

The Trump Administration's Impact on Higher Education

Unprecedented federal actions against research funding, diversity, speech, and more

89664

Jessica Shand—Math and Music at Harvard

Jessica Shand blends math and music.

89677

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life

89684