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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

November-December 2016

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Letters

Readers comment on charter schools, final clubs, the doubly disadvantaged, veterans’ memories

President Faust on Harvard’s changing campus

When it pays to rethink a policy

The College Pump

Defense secretary Robert McNamara arguing with Harvard protesters in 1966

Photograph by Julian Levy

McNamara on campus, the “Cambridge conceit,” and a lyric puzzle

Treasure

Photograph by Jim Harrison

A century of mini political mileposts

In this Issue

Quan Le ’15 guides a biology lesson.

Photograph by Jill Anderson/Harvard Graduate School of Education

Harvard gets serious about training its graduates to teach in the classroom.

This portrait of Edward Holyoke, Harvard’s ninth president, painted ca. 1759-1761, was Copley’s first commission from the College.

Harvard University Portrait Collection (H6); photograph by Harvard Art Museums Imaging Department/©President and Fellows of Harvard College

When the College commissioned Copley

Illustration by Wesley Bedrosian

Harvesting innovations from around the world to improve American medical care

The poet as French legionnaire in 1916

Photograph: HUD 3567.219.2 no. 296, Harvard University Archives

Brief live of a premonitory poet: 1888-1916

A death-row inmate at San Quentin; Californians vote to end or keep the death penalty this November.

Photograph by Eric Risberg/Associated Press

Sibling scholars Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker seek to change how America thinks about capital punishment.

Letters

Readers comment on charter schools, final clubs, the doubly disadvantaged, veterans’ memories

President Faust on Harvard’s changing campus

When it pays to rethink a policy

Right Now

Illustration by Taylor Callery

Business leaders explain how they went astray.

Illustration by Jeanine Murch

Research aims to discover whether happiness improves physical health.

Illustration by James O’Brien

New methods for manufacturing antibiotics aim to replenish a dwindling drug pipeline.

Harvard Squared

In the past, Moby-Dick marathon-readers gathered, fittingly, beneath whale bones to enjoy the epic tale.

Photograph courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum

Herman Melville’s epic is “brought to life” in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Wreath-making activities with farm co-founder Jean Miner White (at right)
Photograph courtesy of Holly Hill Farm

 

Holly Hill Farm’s winter fair in Cohasset, Massachusetts

The Blue Hills Reservation offers treks, along with cross-country and downhill skiing.

Photograph by Lorna Ruby

Appalachian Mountain Club’s winter hiking in the Blue Hills

Shumachine, by “Steampunk guru” and guest curator Bruce Rosenbaum

Photograph by Matt Norris Photography/www.MGNorris.com

Brockton’s Fuller Craft Museum offers Steampunk art that celebrates the city’s shoe-manufacturing legacy.

John Harvard's Journal

Photograph by Jim Harrison

At Harvard Business School, contemporary art moves outdoors.

Investment losses and distributions for the budget reduce the assets by $1.9 billion.

Winthrop House is being renovated and enlarged.

Photograph by kris snibbe/hpac

Affording House renewal

Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JB

The capital campaign proceeds.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Cultural historian Matthew Wittmann makes a home at Harvard's performing-arts library.

Illustration by Mark Steele

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

MOOC technology in classroom use, for degrees, and more

Portrait of John Adams by Benjamin Blyth, ca. 1766

Courtesy of the Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society

What he learned and what he made of it

Laura Levis

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

The untimely death of a former colleague

George Q. Daley

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Medical School dean, humanities and sciences honorands, and an app for thriving at Harvard

Illustration by Francis Livingston

Learning to negotiate the backyard and the divine

New quarterback Joe Viviano ’17 unfurled passes with force and finesse, even as defenses had to account for his dangerous running ability. Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications

A successful beginning of the football season

Kathy Delaney-Smith, the winningest coach in Ivy League basketball

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith lives up to, and inspires, with her motto.

Lavietes-to-be: the renovated entry façade, as it will appear by the beginning of the 2017-2018 season

rendering courtesy of Bruner/Cott & Associates, Inc.

Upgrading a venerable basketball arena

Montage

Working on his 2012 short film, Reckart hangs a puppet upside down from the set’s ceiling. “Head over Heels” took a 40-member crew some 15 months to make.

Photograph courtesy of Timothy Reckart

The director of Head Over Heels and The Star, on animation's different dimensions

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

wikipedia

Crowd painting that attracts crowds.

Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine

Photograph by Tyler Flynn Dorholt

Poet Jean Valentine on literary companionship

A border, defended: Francesco di Giorgio’s elegant hilltop fortress of San Leo, Marche, Italy, ca. 1480

wikipedia

Recent books with Harvard connections

Ken Liu

In 2012, Ken Liu’s short story “The Paper Menagerie” swept science fiction’s highest honors: the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. He has won the Hugo as well for his translations of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem (the first translated novel to win), and Hao Jingfang’s short story “Folding Beijing.”

Photograph by Lisa Tang Liu

Ken Liu’s hybrid fiction crosses oceans and galaxies.

James Kloppenberg conveys the evolution of democracy from early theorists through Tocqueville’s celebration, written some years before this beatific electoral scene, The Verdict of the People (1854-55), by George Caleb Bingham.

Image from the Bridgeman Art Library

Reviewing a masterwork on the past, and future, of democracy

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Turntables, headphones, a mixer, and his eclectic music collection prevail in Jace Clayton’s home “office.”

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer; styling by Prellezo

In Uproot, Jace Clayton ’97 explores technological trends in music around the globe.

Plans to overhaul the Board of Overseers’ election procedures 

Seven alumni are honored for volunteer College admissions work.

The College Pump

Defense secretary Robert McNamara arguing with Harvard protesters in 1966

Photograph by Julian Levy

McNamara on campus, the “Cambridge conceit,” and a lyric puzzle

Treasure

Photograph by Jim Harrison

A century of mini political mileposts