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July-August 2018

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Letters

Tax reform, shopping week, and enabling expertise

The urgency of getting Gen Ed right

The College Pump

Courtesy of Penelope Laurans

Attendance artifact, women’s work, and “Fair Harvard” redux

Treasure

Photograph of gymsuit by Kevin Grady/Radcliffe Institute

Lest young ladies’ “tides” be deranged

In this Issue

Elsie Sunderland
Photograph by Stu Rosner

Elsie Sunderland traces the flows of human pollutants in the oceans. They come back to bite us.

Portrait of Moorfield Storey by John Singer Sargent, 1917. Charcoal on paper

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; partial gift of James Moorfield Storey

Brief life of a patrician reformer: 1845-1929

Drew Gilpin Faust and her husband, Charles Rosenberg, at Massachusetts Hall, May 9, 2018.

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Drew Faust’s presidency in perspective

Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad studies one of the most powerful ideas in the American imagination.

Letters

Tax reform, shopping week, and enabling expertise

The urgency of getting Gen Ed right

Right Now

Illustration by James Yamasaki

Developmental psychologists find a surprising relationship between age and emotional understanding.

Solar panels on the roof and fixed shading on the windows suggest that this is no ordinary wood-shingled house.

Photograph by Stu Rosner

The Center for Green Buildings and Cities aims to reduce energy used to heat and cool buildings to nearly zero.

Illustration by Blair Kelly

Harvard researchers revisit and reaffirm a controversial environmental study.

Harvard Squared

The daylily garden

Photograph courtesy of the Heritage Museums and Gardens

Cape Cod’s Heritage Museums & Gardens

If I was standing alone I wouldn’t stand it at all (2017)

Photograph by Jason Wyche; © Kevin Beasley

Sculptures that resonate with what’s not there

MAA MoCA is housed in a repurposed industrial mill conplex in North Adams, Masachusetts.

Photograph courtesy of MASS MoCA

MASS MoCA’s summer smorgasbord

The splendid interior of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall.

Photograph by Len Levasseur

Seasonal concerts at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall

John Harvard's Journal

Jubilating J.D.s

Photograph by Jim Harrison

A celebration of President Drew Faust, and wariness about the assault on “veritas”

The 2018 honorands, from acclaimed artists to celebrated statesman

Phoebe Lakin
Photograph by Jim Harrison

Phoebe Lakin ’18 invokes J.K. Rowling.

Gina Raimondo and Hillary Rodham Clinton
Photographs by Jim Harrison and Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Radcliffe hosts Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the Rhode Island Rhodes Scholar’s modest roots

Photograph by Jim Harrison

The 2018 rites in print and digital, M.D. on her toes, and more

President Drew Faust

Photograph by Jim Harrison

President Faust’s Commencement afternoon valedictory address on hope and higher education

Phil Torrey

Photograph courtesy of Phil Torrey

Harvard Law students address immigrants’ legal challenges.

Erika Bailey

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Coaching voice and speech at the A.R.T.

Seen at the Arnold Arboretum: a paperbark maple in winter

Photograph by Jim Harrison

A veteran photographer of people turns his lens to plants.

Illustration by Mark Steele

Headlines from Harvard’s history

From left: Penny S. Pritzker and Carolyn A. “Biddy” Martin
Photograph on left © Moshe Zusman Photography Studio. Photograph on right courtesy of Amherst College

A business leader and a college president join the Corporation.

Photograph reproduced courtesy of the artist, Stephen Coit

S. Allen Counter, undergraduate-education dean, teaching prizes, and more

From left: Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Bridget Terry Long

From left: Photographs by Kris Snibbe/HPAC and Stephanie Mitchell/HPAC

Two new deans, a graduate-student union, modest gains in faculty diversity, and a final-club update

Photograph by Harvard Magazine/JC

Mass Hall makeover, Adams House renewal on deck, quantitative biology, and more

Photograph by Lydia Carmichael

What makes it “real”?

Montage

Tom Morello at a 2016 show in Inglewood, California

Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

With his supergroup Prophets of Rage, the musician faces down a president.

W.H. Auden

Photograph from the Library of Congress

A sweeping history of the idea of privacy in America

Madelyn Ho during a playful moment in Esplanade, one of choreographer Paul Taylor’s most famous works

Photograph by Paul B. Goode

Madelyn Ho pursued two tracks: modern dance, and getting her M.D.

Robert Humphreville, a frequent Harvard Film Archive accompanist, says he’s mostly asked to play comedies, especially from “the big three”: Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. (A scene from Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. appears over his shoulder.)

Photograph by Stu Rosner

Three pianists making silent film sing

When sail was swift. Pallada in Nagasaki (1854; no artist given), from A World of Empires.

Photograph by Paul Fearn/Alamy Stock Photo

Recent books with Harvard connections

Illustration by Sonia Pulido

Keith Gessen’s second novel deftly interweaves politics and personal history.

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Alumni

Amory, Francis, Sandi, and Alex Blake pause briefly for a family portrait…

Photograph by Lynn Donaldson

Working a cattle ranch and tree nursery in Big Sky country

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences honorands (from left) Choon Fong Shih, Harold Luft, Beth Adelson, and Guido Goldman

Photograph courtesy of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Contributions to society from graduate research

Clockwise from top left: Robert Coles, Robert N. Shapiro, Alice Welch, and Drew Gilpin Faust
Photographs by Jim Harrison

For extraordinary service to the University

Harvard graduates are Britain-bound.

Evelyn Richmond ’41 and Theodore R. Barnett ’41
Photographs by Jim Harrison

Seventy-seventh reunioners Evelyn Richmond and Theodore R. Barnett led the 2018 alumni parade.

The annual election results

Chai confers with a colleague in SPiNE’s Yangon office.

Photograph courtesy of SPiNE

Practicing architecture in Myanmar

The College Pump

Courtesy of Penelope Laurans

Attendance artifact, women’s work, and “Fair Harvard” redux

Treasure

Photograph of gymsuit by Kevin Grady/Radcliffe Institute

Lest young ladies’ “tides” be deranged