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Your independent source for Harvard news since 1898

May-June 2018

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Letters

Feeding the world, Alain Locke’s faith, divestment

At work on Harvard’s Washington agenda

Ideas for the president-elect’s consideration, from costs and partnerships to Allston and admissions 

The College Pump

Illustration by Michael Witte

When teaching was gendered, Porsche populism, and Harvard’s presidential symbolism

Treasure

Click to see full image of the Ziegler models.
Photograph by Jim Harrison

Artifacts of embryology


In this Issue

Linnea Olson, shown with her dog, Kumo, has survived 13 years with lung cancer.

Linnea Olson, shown with her dog, Kumo, has survived 13 years with lung cancer.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Using precision medicine, Harvard researchers target cancer.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver races her brother Ted and others in Washington, D.C., to kick off a 1975 Special Olympics fundraising coast-to-coast marathon.

Photograph by Bettmann/Getty Images

Brief life of a world-changer: 1921-2009

Jim and Deb Fallows in his hometown, Redlands, California

Photograph by Coco McKown

James ’70 and Deborah Fallows ’71 explore “what the hell is happening in America.”

Sunset in Sampela, a village standing a few hundred yards from land in southwestern Indonesia. The nearest sizable island with an airstrip is a two-hour boat ride away.
Photograph by David Hu

In Indonesia, the Bajau fishermen’s way of life is under pressure.

Illustration by Phil Foster

Understanding the real consequences of the new tax law

Letters

Feeding the world, Alain Locke’s faith, divestment

At work on Harvard’s Washington agenda

Ideas for the president-elect’s consideration, from costs and partnerships to Allston and admissions 

Right Now

Illustration by Jason Ford

Interventions that mobilize family support networks have powerful effects.

Illustration by Doug Panton

The digital tools advertisers rely on can be easily manipulated to influence public opinion on politics.

A deputy sheriff confronts civil-rights marchers in front of the county courthouse in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1966. Greenwood, nicknamed “the Cotton Capital of the World,” depended heavily on slave labor in the nineteenth century and became a flashpoint for racial strife throughout the twentieth.

Photograph by Bettmann/Getty Images

A new book traces today’s politics back to chattel slavery.

Harvard Squared

Sleeper’s summer home sprawls across Eastern Point, with views of Gloucester Harbor.

Photograph by Eric Roth/Courtesy of Historic New England

A sprawling house museum celebrates decorative arts and the creative spirit of Henry Davis Sleeper.

Abbi of Bacabi (1978), among Cannon’s last and unfinished works

Image © 2017 Estate of T. C. Cannon.

Works by T.C. Cannon at the Peabody Essex Museum

Cyclists at the Harvest River Bridge, which opened last year on the newest section of the trail

Photograph by Jessica Mink

Cycling the Neponset River Greenway

Among the museum's “Ugly Truth” figures are Aunt Jemima and golliwogs.

Harvard Magazine/NPB

The National Black Doll Museum

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Speakers, ceremonies, and celebrations

Pammy’s jewel-box interior

Photograph courtesy of Pammy’s

Best new restaurants in and around Cambridge

John Harvard's Journal

A homecoming: Announced as president-elect, Lawrence S. Bacow speaks on February 11

Photograph by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Lawrence S. Bacow named Harvard’s twenty-ninth president


David Davidson

Photograph by Stu Rosner

A dining executive on Harvard’s changing food environment

FAS dean to step down, John Lewis to speak at Commencement, Hillary Clinton at Radcliffe, and more

Illustration by Mark Steele

Headlines from Harvard’s history

Mara Sidmore, artistic director of Applied Theatre Practice at the Bok Center
Photograph by Jim Harrison

A theatre troupe aims for higher ed.

News briefs, from green-energy goals and a move to course preregistration to final-club final sanctions

Course credit toward fast-tracking the A.B. is eliminated.

Photograph by Lydia Carmichael/HM

First-Gen policies, Smith Center services, and more University news

Professor Jorge Domínguez is placed on administrative leave.

Illustration by Wenting Li

The Undergraduate chooses a concentration.

The son and nephew of MLB players, Quinn Hoffman ’20 has played the game for as long as he can remember.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

For Quinn Hoffman, baseball is the family business.

Seth Towns ’20, the Ivy League Player of the Year, scored a game-high 24 points in the Crimson’s 74-55 victory over Cornell in the Ivy tournament semifinals.

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications

The basketball teams fall short of the NCAAs.

Harvard sprinter Gabby Thomas ’19

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications

Late winter and early spring highlights

Montage

Photograph courtesy of Jack Lueders-Booth/Gallery Kayafas

For seven years, Jack Lueders-Booth (above, left) visited the Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Framingham to teach a photography workshop several days each month. Roaming the grounds, he took women prisoners’ portraits with Polaroid, Leica, and medium-format film cameras, documenting scenes from daily life.

 

The portraits in Jack Lueders-Booth’s 40-year-old series feel even more vivid today.


Claire Chase

Photograph by Stu Rosner

How flutist Claire Chase signals a key change for Harvard’s music department

Richard III

Photograph by Bridgeman Art Library

Stephen Greenblatt mines Shakespeare to interpret modern times.

Battle hymn: surmounting the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989, to the tune of “Ode to Joy,” a setting Beethoven scarcely imagined

Photograph by Peter Kneffel/AP IMages

Recent books with Harvard connections

Hanna Holborn Gray

Photograph courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

The former University of Chicago president and Harvard Corporation fellow crafts a timely memoir.

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Sellers at the John Brown Fort, at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

Photograph by T.J. Kirkpatric

William Sellers aims to expose a new generation to America’s origins.

The official 2018 slates

Adams speaks at a national meeting to address LGBT elder housing issues, hosted by the Obama administration in 2015.
Photograph courtesy of SAGE

Michael Adams of SAGE is looking out for LGBT elders.

Shared Interest Group gatherings in Cambridge

The College Pump

Illustration by Michael Witte

When teaching was gendered, Porsche populism, and Harvard’s presidential symbolism

Treasure

Click to see full image of the Ziegler models.
Photograph by Jim Harrison

Artifacts of embryology