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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

July-August 2017

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Letters

Readers comment on linguistics and sign language, academic class gaps, “Fair Harvard,” final clubs, and more.

President Drew Faust on scientific research and federal funding

The administration’s potentially costly misunderstanding about science

The College Pump

The Radcliffe Institute’s garden oasis

Photograph by Thomas Earle/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

“Fair Harvard,” liberal arts Soviet-style, campus oases, and more

Treasure

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Art Museums; ©President and Fellows of Harvard College

A collection of stunning Jun ceramics displayed—and analyzed

In this Issue

Click on arrow at right to see additional images
A 1948 record from Frederick C. Packard’s Harvard Vocarium label, T. S. Eliot: Reading His Own Poetry, on a turntable in a console designed by Alvar Aalto and engineer Jack L. Weisman. 

Objects courtesy of the Woodberry Poetry Room. Photographs by Stu Rosner

In the Woodberry Poetry Room, a landmark audio collection waits to be heard.

Bllanche Ames

Blanche Ames

Photograph courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

Brief life of an intrepid botanical illustrator: 1878-1969

Andrew LeClerc in his home garden

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Harvard geneticists seek the biological basis for schizophrenia.

Yale-NUS, an ambitious Singapore-based experiment in liberal arts, is built around this central courtyard.

Photograph courtesy of Yale-NUS

Yale-NUS, Nicholas Lemann, and Minerva remodel liberal arts for the twenty-first century.

Letters

Readers comment on linguistics and sign language, academic class gaps, “Fair Harvard,” final clubs, and more.

President Drew Faust on scientific research and federal funding

The administration’s potentially costly misunderstanding about science

Right Now

Illustration by Jungyeon Roh

Studying how a movement went from activist activity to aspirational lifestyle

Illustration by John Holcroft

Domestic outsourcing, not globalization, has redefined employer-employee ties.

Faced with many candidates from the same party, as in the 2016 Republican primary, voters tend to choose celebrities.

Photograph by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Why people vote for celebrities—even when they say they don’t want to.

Harvard Squared

Lone paddlers take in the sunset

Photograph courtesy of UMass Lowell Kayak Center

Paddling the Merrimack in Lowell and Lawrence

End of the Line, Cleveland Circle (2012), by Kate Sullivan

Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum

A Boston Athenaeum print exhibit reveals “a distinctive sense of place.”

A summer exhibit at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (above) highlights abstract art…

Photograph courtesy of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

Lincoln offers rich history, nature trails, local food, and art.

Dusk dining at Cantina 229, in New Marlboro (Berkshires)

Photograph courtesy of Cantina 229

Massachusetts restaurants in lush country settings

John Harvard's Journal

Haiyang Zhao, LL.M. ’17, adjusts a rain poncho from the Law School.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Harvard’s wet 366th Commencement proved the occasion for thoughtful conversations about social media, inclusion, and the political landscape.

The 2017 honorands 

Mark Zuckerberg
Photograph by Jim Harrison

Words of wisdom from Joe Biden, Drew Faust, Mark Zuckerberg, student speakers, and more

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Regalia update, alumni who serve alma mater, family ties, notable guests, and more features from the festival rites

The status of a contested election

Sarah Lewis
Photograph by Stu Rosner

An art historian on race and photography

Click to see full graphic: An evolving, and increasingly tenured, professoriate emerges from these data published by the office of the senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity. “URM” means underrepresented minority. More data and details appear at faculty.harvard.edu.

Documenting a decade of gradual evolution in the professoriate

Illustration by Mark Steele

The 1932 solar eclipse, the Naval Training School, and more from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

Scott A. Abell and Tracy P. Palandjian

Photographs courtesy  of Scott A. Abell and Tracy P. Palandjian 

New Board of Overseers leaders, top teachers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and more

The vexatious business of defining a gen-ed course in quantitative literacy

The College’s final-club sanctions: an update

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

New Law School dean, new House leaders, Harvard’s top salaries, and more

From HarvardX to the classroom, Harvard Medical teaching online, and more

Meme by Lydia Carmichael/Harvard Magazine

The Undergraduate dives into meme culture.

Jade Miller
Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communicaitons

Track and field, golf, crew, tennis

Montage

Jaunts to Nashville and Italy aside, Master of None stays, and is filmed, in New York City. On set in the subway, castmates Lena Waithe (left) and James Ciccone confer with co-creators Aziz Ansari and Yang.

Photograph by KC Bailey/Universal Television/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Alan Yang serves up warm, epicurean comedy.

Tahmima Anam

Photograph courtesy of Tahmima Anam

Tahmima Anam’s Bengal trilogy finds a resting place.

Stephen Peabody, 1809, by John Johnston

Photograph by American Antiquarian Society

The diary of a “unexceptional collegian”—attending class, or not

Where the coastal “professional-managerial elite” are not: view of a closed coal facility from Green Mount Cemetery, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

A review of Joan Williams’s powerful book on the resentments reshaping American politics

Children’s grotto cave at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, Texas

Images from The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring Through Creative Design, by Lolly Tai. Used by permission of Temple University Press. © 2017 by Temple University. All Rights Reserved.

Beach reading, the West, segregation, gardening with children, and more

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Debbie Bial

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer

Harvard alumna Debbie Bial's Posse Foundation and a “new national leadership pipeline”

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences honorees (from left) Russell A. Mittermeier, Sarah P. Morris, Thomas F. Pettigrew, and Richard Sennett

Photograph by Tony Rinaldo/Courtesy of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Honorands whose contributions to society emerged from graduate study

Honorees include an architect, athletics enthusiast, and longtime University administrator.

Leon Starr and Rhoda Lesser Diamond brave the inclement weather on Commencement Day.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

The oldest graduates at Commencement

The annual election results

Four from the class of 2017 are off to the other Cambridge.

The College Pump

The Radcliffe Institute’s garden oasis

Photograph by Thomas Earle/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

“Fair Harvard,” liberal arts Soviet-style, campus oases, and more

Treasure

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Art Museums; ©President and Fellows of Harvard College

A collection of stunning Jun ceramics displayed—and analyzed